BooksIWouldHaveToldMySisterAbout

It’s the end of March. Less than three weeks now (by one day) till the tortured poets. Four more months to August. It feels like spring in certain breaths, the freshly rained scent in the air, the damp pavement, little buds slowly opening on trees on my walk to work.

This week has been one of melancholy. I miss you in all the little moments of the day. I want to show you pictures of Jenny, curled up so close to me. I want to stay up late, talking about everything. I want to hear your thoughts, not someone else’s.

Recently I read Annie Bot, by Sierra Greer. It’s about a robot who becomes, well, she becomes essentially. Some parts of it were so frustrating. So many similarities between being a robot and being a woman, and none of them are the good. But her curiosity, her interest in things made my brain spark. That feels like a rare thing these days, and I hate it. I want the spark and I want the follow-through.

I feel like I’m existing in a small blurry cloud with all my senses dialed slightly down. Perhaps this is just how I will experience things now. Still irritated by the screaming kids, still pausing to take pictures of the moon through tree branches. Still eager to start a new book. Just none of it is is completely there. 79%, that feels about right.

When I think of August, it fills me with quiet, aching despair. How does time keep on moving?

I still haven’t finished The Lost Story.

Discuss...

We Used To Live Here – Marcus Kliewer.

This was good, unsettling and creepy. Like with all things I wanted to know more about the slipping in and out of different times, and how that worked and the memories left behind.

The ending, like a lot of life, is sad.

Open Minded – Chloe Seager

Genuinely surprised at how much I enjoyed this one. Anytime someone tries to make open relationships palatable for readers at large is a gamble, but overall I think this author did a really good job. Especially of writing both the character familiar with the open relationship as well as the one just starting out with one. Very curious as to whether the author has people amongst their family or friendsgroup with this kind of relationship or past history. Where did you get your information…

A lot of it would have annoyed you, Eames, though. The primary partner bullshit, and the no talking about relationships and “the rules about falling in love.” I suppose that’s unfair, because open relationships and being poly aren’t technically the same thing, but the former just seems very…constrained, which as I find frustrating on paper, I know how you would have felt about it. Still, it was nice to see a semblance of your relationship desires and thoughts in a book.

Dear Hanna – Zoje Stage

This was the followup to Baby Teeth, which I remembered being published, but had never gotten around to reading it, so I borrowed that from the library even though I was fairly certain you had a copy upstairs in your room. One, it was late when I wanted to start it, and two, sometimes it’s hard to be in your room, even though I love it too. I love the skylights and the openness, and being surrounded by your books and possessions. I feel bad, now I know what you’d say and it’s still hard not, I don’t spend more time up there with Jenny, but I do plan on changing that in the future.

Anyway, I did enjoy Baby Teeth, and I enjoyed Dear Hanna, even though I guessed early on the truth about her letter writing. I understood it though, well, obviously. Here I am, writing blog posts to you, long after you’re gone.

It’s not so long though, is it? It’s that in-between time where it’s no longer just last year. Nearly two years. Which seems impossible when I think about putting it into words.

The Lost Story – Meg Shaffer

I just started this at work this morning, and it has that good spark of a book just waiting for the magic to begin. As our pal, Barnaby said. “The best kind of book s a magic book.”

And yet, foolishly, I almost want to close it and not continue. It’s so much easier to just read my way through thrillers and suspense, and contemporary fiction. While I do want to write those, they’re not as built into my bloodstream as magic books. Magic books hurt more even as I want to read them.

Why are these people allowed to be out there in the world writing their stories and getting them published? Why didn’t you get that chance? Why didn’t you get more time?

Anyway, I’ll let you know how it ends. At the moment I am simply enjoying the premise of ‘oh, I like the magic world of Narnia, let’s run with that without any of the religious undertones.’ Because I do still care for Narnia and the children who venture there. Even though I have never even slightly desired to get into Heaven.

I hope that wherever you are in the universe now, it’s interesting and vast and magical. I hope you’re having adventures in another life or form. I hope you get to experience all the things you always dreamt of.

Discuss...

I’m thinking about my books for once. All those unfinished stories. At seventeen I thought I’d be a properly published author by now. Is it a good thing I can’t tell her how things will go? Would it change anything? Would things be different if I could?

I didn’t write at all in January. Oh, a paragraph one afternoon, that didn’t lead anywhere. It was getting harder and harder, putting the words together, so I thought I’d just let them sit. Let them wait. And slowly, far more slowly than I liked, I feel them crawling back from the corners of my mind, wanting attention once again.

I miss the days where I’d write hundreds or thousands of words. They’ll come back, I always said. Usually I’m right about this.

This time though, the words keep knocking against my mind. What’s the point? What’s the point in writing if you’re not here to read it? To discuss it? To explore the possibilities? What’s the point in any of this without you?

And the answer, I suppose, is because there are still others who will want to read my stories, and to talk about them, even though they’re not you… And that I should write for myself as I always have, to put the stories I want to see out into the world. I have to want them badly enough to make them happen, and at times I don’t know if I do. I always thought I did. I want to want them that much. Because, without writing, without creating stories, what am I?

I miss you. It never changes. I miss your voice, your tone, your laugh. Some moments I can hardly breathe for it.

Send me a sign, Eames, that the stories are worth it in the end. Remind me of the magic I once believed in. I need it.

“There are some awful things in the world, it's true, but there are also some great books.” – Among Others – Jo Walton

‘They tell me everything is gonna be all right But I don't know what all right even means’ – Trying To Get To Heaven – Bob Dylan

Discuss...

We both know they’ve stayed up longer than that. What year was it, I can’t remember, that we left them up all year then added Halloween ones in October so that there was just a mishmash of ornaments and spiderwebs and lights all around the apartment? I know it was the apartment on North. But other than that, I don’t remember.

Speaking of, our old apartment is up for rent again. I saw it on a listing the other night. I wander if the building managers have actually fixed the intermittent leaking from one apartment to another or whether they’ve just fixed it well enough for now. I want to warn the future tenant: once the water came streaming down in the doorways like in a horror movie. water should never drip inside your house like that. there’s probably still mold in the walls. I hope the pigeons still rule the back porch.

And so we moved.

And.

And.

I can’t say you died last year anymore for this is a new year.

Somehow, I made it through 2023. A whole year without you. I hated it. I reached for things that we loved with both hands, trying to hold on to what it was like when you were by my side. I spent a lot on concert tickets and takeout and books, of course. I drank and I read and I thought about writing, but it felt hollow most of the time. I returned to England and saw the sea again. I scattered some of your ashes over Glastonbury Tor and in the sea at Whitby, and a few other places I thought you would like. Jasmine hugged me tight after each time.

Sometimes I think I’ve lost the capacity for happiness. There are moments of contentment and pleasure and imagination. Jenny crawled onto my lap voluntarily yesterday. I watched a sci-fi movie that made me want to work on the Space Lesbians. I have two interlibrary loans checked out, one ready at the branch, and four more in the holds request. (A small attempt to spend less money on books…we will see.)

I’ve been thinking of rereading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn again. It feels like it might be that time.

“People always think that happiness is a faraway thing,” thought Francie, “something complicated and hard to get. Yet, what little things can make it up; a place of shelter when it rains – a cup of strong hot coffee when you're blue; for a man, a cigarette for contentment; a book to read when you're alone – just to be with someone you love. Those things make happiness.” – A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

Discuss...

Yesterday I read Hey Zoey by Sarah Crossan yesterday. It was short enough and the day was slow enough that I was able to do so. I’d planned to start the second book in the Millennium trilogy, having spent a good portion of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day reading the first one. Instead I became absorbed by the woman finding her husband’s sex doll and unearthing her childhood trauma.

You often read a book a day. You were good at that.

I have two interlibrary loans out at the moment, and requests for at least three more. I am making an effort to request weird old children’s books I want to read instead of simply just buying them, but it’s hard at times. If I could board myself up inside my book nook, I would.

But the cats…I know, I know.

I bought two books on grief the autumn after you died. I haven’t read either of them. I requested a new book on a grief called Always a Sibling. I haven’t read that one yet either.

I purchased cases for both our kindles yesterday so I could tell them apart. (and also take them to work and read more easily.) Black for yours, of course.

“Have you read this?” a coworker holds up A Dark Is Rising. “I haven’t read it in years, but.”

“So good.” I chime in.

“I’m putting it on hold.” they say decisively. “I should reread it.”

And then later, the patron came in to pick it up and said her friend was loving it and had recommended it.

Before Christmas I reread A Little Princess, and the fierce love for stories rose up in me again. Why can’t I translate that into writing my own? Why aren’t those as important to my brain when they are literally the only thing keeping me going*?

What is the trick to get my stories to come willingly to the page?

Why can’t this be the kind of grief where I produce something magnificent so everyone knows how much I will always love you?

Two women came in to get library cards yesterday. Newly moved to the city, newly moved in together, clearly sisters. And they were happy, excited about moving in together, you could tell. I was happy for them, but oh so jealous at the same time. Why can’t I go back to then, and keep you safe?

Why is this the reality that will not end?

*and the cats obviously.

Discuss...

I read the new Peter Swanson book yesterday, started in the morning, took a three hour nap, and then finished in the late afternoon. It’s his tenth book, titled A Talent For Murder.

It was a lovely day to spend reading. It rained all morning, and the apartment was dark and cozy. Stretch spent a lot of it on my chest, purring contentedly. Jenny came down to investigate now and then, reminding us that she’s here too. Sometimes they are on either side of me and I can pet them both, and that’s a real accomplishment honestly.

A Talent For Murder features Martha, a librarian who has a cat, came from Missouri and marries a stranger that she then suspects of being a serial killer.

Of course it’s not that straightforward. It never is.

Martha gets into contact with an old schoolfriend who just so happens to be Lily Kinter from The Kind Worth Killing and The Kind Worth Saving. Aka my favorite Peter Swanson character, though Henry Kimball is not too far behind. To be fair though, there’s not many of his characters that I don’t like. Even the murderers are interesting in their own terrible ways.

I reread Peter Swanson’s books every year. Not the same ones always. Sometimes I alternate.

The Girl With a Clock For A Heart (Published 2014) Read: 2016 & 2020

The Kind Worth Killing (2015) Read: 2016, 2018, 2020 & 2022

Her Every Fear (2017) Read: 2018 & 2020

All the Beautiful Lies (2018) Read: 2018, 2020 & 2021

Before She Knew Him (2019) Read: 2018, 2019, 2020 & 2021

Eight Perfect Murders (2020) Read: 2019 & 2021

Every Vow You Take (2021) Read: 2020 & 2023

Nine Lives (2022) Read: 2021 & 2023

The Kind Worth Saving (2023) Read: 2022 & 2023

A Talent for Murder (future book! to be published in 2024!) Read: 2023

Bonus: The Christmas Guest: Read earlier in 2023 and will probably read again this month.

I don’t believe these statistics are entirely correct because I’m almost certain I’ve read Her Every Fear more than twice. See also Eight Perfect Murders. On the other hand, I know very well I’ve only read Every Vow and Nine Lives twice, and both of their rereads were this year. They are probably the only two that don’t grab me as much as the others. I don’t feel like the cult in Every Vow is fleshed out enough…or maybe I just wanted more creepy horror! I like the premise of Nine Lives and yet it also frustrates me. The murders don’t seem fair, which is an odd thing to complain about a murder I know, but there you go.

I love each of the others in its own particular way.

I love Hen with her art and her obsessive nature. I always wish things ended differently somehow for Matthew, that he’d somehow get help, even though it’s far more realistic that he doesn’t.

Eight Perfect Murders always leaves me feeling melancholy. I tend to semi- Memento myself about the ending every time. How! How! Because I want it to be different, I suppose.

If you’ve ever seen a really beautiful girl, you just can’t really blame George for falling for Audrey, you just can’t. Similarly you might feel a little unnerved by Harry’s attraction to Alice, his stepmother, but you still get it.

Alice, pale, unsettling, beautiful Alice. And Joan, devious, menacing, intriguing…These two feel more like sisters than Joan and her actual sister honestly. Though obviously they would be a dangerous set of siblings. (Murder siblings…that’s what I would like to see Peter Swanson write next. Just throwing that out there to the universe. I’m a sucker for murder siblings.*)

There is almost always a character I would rather not get murdered, even if I feel they sometimes deserve it. (Looking at you, Corbin Dell.)

But Lily Kinter with her love of nature and animals, Monk’s House, and that buried well…Let’s just say I was very glad to have her back yet again in A Talent For Murder.

There is deep affection for books and reading, poetry and mysteries within all these pages. I find this deeply comforting in spite of all the murder. Also I’ve grown fond of Maine over the years and would like to visit someday.

There is nearly always a cat.

*maybe I should write murder siblings…

Discuss...

I am building a book fortress around me in my mind*. I just finished Tell Me Who You Are by Louisa Luna (Unlikeable female characters!** Out in June 2024! Sorry you have to wait, people-who-don't-get-future books-delivered-to-your-email.) Yesterday I read Self-Portrait by Trina Schart Hyman, one of my favorite illustrators, who lived a really interesting life and honestly I would like a full length memoir. I've had the book in question sitting on my library book table for several months now, hoarding it as the book dragon I am. The only reason I haven't bought it on thriftbooks yet is that it's just expensive enough to make me think about it before I put it in my cart. One of these days though...

I wish you were here, filling our home with more books. These days the packages from thriftbooks and abe are always mine.

Someone else finally requested Self-Portrait though, and so I finally read it so I could return it for the next patron. Only I forgot to bring it to work with me today, so it's just sitting on my kitchen table, oops.

Before that I read The Hungry Dark, by Jen Williams, who you might recall is the author of A Dark and Secret Place (but NOT Mirrorland, even though I always think she is for a moment. That’s Carole Johnstone. You read The Blackhouse a few months before you died. I came across it on your goodreads the other day. Even in death, you're still ahead of me in books. Only fitting I suppose.) and Games for Dead Girls which I read a few days before that. I've now read all of Jen Williams' books, and have to wait impatiently for her next one.

I wish you were here to hear 'okay the mountain really was just actually HUNGRY.'

Previously I mentioned I was saving Bright & Deadly Things by Lexie Elliott. I'm glad I did. I read it when I came back from England, and it was exactly what I needed. The grief parts didn't so much hit close to home as open the front door, walk right in and make a cup of tea.

“There have been a few disapproving faces who clearly feel I've moved on too quickly, but thus far I've managed not to get exercised about that; I can only imagine they are lucky enough to have never lost anybody they're close to. Otherwise they would know that you never move on exactly: you take the person you've lost with you. And nobody else can ever tell you how you should grieve.”

Obviously, losing a spouse is different than a sibling, but you know. I will make new friends since losing you, I already have. But there is no replacing you. There will never be another sister like you. I know we said it all the time, I know we were aware of how lucky we were, and I’m fucking glad of it. I’m so glad we were sisters. I take you with me wherever I go, and so I am not just sitting alone on the couch with the cats, you are still there too. If I could, I would lean my head on your shoulder and say it again. I love you, Eames.

*I can just imagine someone casually pointing out that technically I could build a physical fortress of books too, and believe me, if I could, I would live in it and never leave.

**I mean, I enjoyed them obviously.

Discuss...

how is grief categorized who decides when and where and why things should be memorialized? where is the box for the mundane relentless little daily attacks

like when I realize that the laundry detergent bought last when you were alive is nearly gone, shampoos I bought for you to try, ibuprofen bottle finally empty, no one else is using up the wash clothes. i'm doing laundry just for me, and it's stupid. what I am going to do with all these towels?

how I am supposed to remember what spices we have in the kitchen, when I can't text you about them? who else thinks about Hilary McKay when saying 'cardamom' even though that's not right, Cause Caddie was named after cadmium, not a spice

all these library books, on the side table, taking up space like always, you never complained, who I am supposed to talk to about them now?

the frozen dinners we would split on hard nights, are simply there now, leaving me half to take to work the next day convenient, sure.

oh but I would give that convenience up, just to have you back in the world again.

let us split half a pizza and watch some tv together before we have to get up and face the world again

I could bear anything, when you were here.

Discuss...

New Scott Carson book on Edelweiss.

One of my favorite parts of the day, any day, was when we'd text each other that a new book by one of our authors had appeared on Netgalley or Edelweiss+. Sometimes the book has just been added so we couldn't request it yet, only stare at it hungrily until the request or download button had been added. Sometimes it was already available and that was pure magic. A book from the future just dropped into our laps.

The new Scott Carson is either called In a Town Like Yours or Lost Man's Lane, and again is either thriller or horror. I prefer In a Town Like Yours, and hopefully it'll be horror, though obviously I have nothing against thrillers. Where They Wait was so good though. Probably I should finally read The Chill.

I finished the new Simone St James the other day (Murder Road). V good, v murdery, but sad at the same time. Can you really be angry at ghosts who just want their stories resolved? Yes, it's terrible they're killing people, but grief makes people do strange things, even dead people. Also my brain keeps trying to sing it to the tune of Thunder Road.

Other new books I'm looking forward to are Safe and Sound (Laura McHugh), A Step Past Darkness (Vera Kurian), The Hitchcock Hotel (Stephanie Wrobel) and The Alone Time (Elle Marr.)

The spreadsheet of authors I keep track of has now reached 140. Only about seven of those are men. I should organize it a little better, condense the lists of books I've read into neat little lists, but I like to watch them spreading. Blue green for the books I've read. Fern green when I've been approved/acquired them. Gray when they've been newly added to Goodreads, Edelweiss, etc.

There are authors that have only one book that I check in on occasionally. Hoping they'll have something new. Is it better to have written one book and nothing else, or nothing at all? Is it worse?

I also read All Our Lies Are True (Lisa Manterfield) and it was...fine.

(Spoilers for All Our Lies Are True................................................................)

It took the main character a very long time to realize she was the one who'd accidentally killed her twin sister when they were kids and that her family had been keeping it from her AND medicating her ever since then. Anytime someone has a ritual of nighttime cocoa, or morning smoothies that they insist you drink, you know you're being drugged.

The strangest thing though was that it was set in England, written by an English author but it just didn't...feel like it. The author has apparently lived in California for some time. Either way it didn't satisfy the 'England book' want that is eternally there.

This problem is partly why I haven't gotten very far in Ruth Ware's latest either. (Zero Days). It doesn't feel like it's set in England, and I can't tell and it bugs me. But also the plot hasn't grabbed me like her other books.

Nothing new from Taylor Jenkins Reid this year. sighs sadly

Armistead Maupin on the other hand is releasing Mona of the Manor, the tenth installment in Tales of the City, and it does take place in England, so somebody is doing it right.

This has been Book Updates.

Discuss...

I miss making tea for you in the morning and bringing it to you while you were still half asleep. You'd look happily surprised every time, never expected it. It was such a little joy to get to be the one who brought you a cup of tea in the morning.

I miss sitting on the steps and porches of the various apartments we've lived in together while you needed to smoke and talk. Except for that one apartment where there was no porch, and the backyard was full of dog shit all the time. You had to lean out of the window in the back room if you wanted to smoke without going all the way downstairs, where there was a good chance of getting caught by the nice, but very chatty neighbors.

I miss you telling me about what book you read that day, what was good about it, what could have been better. In-between there were patron stories and things you wanted to get done at the library, and talks about the future.

We were always talking about the future; we were almost always grateful for the present. Time with you was never wasted, always precious, as nauseating as that sounds. We never had to do anything. I was happy sitting on your bed just talking while you organized stuff. I've sat on your bed in almost all of the bedrooms you've ever lived in and been there while you organized. I would sit on a bed anywhere you wanted to be.

I can't believe we'll never move again. We'll never finally manage to get a house somewhere, or buy a camper van and travel across the country, cats wildly outraged at the lack of space. I can't believe we'll never have a porch covered in plants and drink tea there in the morning. i can't believe all these mornings where i wake up and you're still not here.

None of this is new. This grief isn't new....it's the weight of losing you. This space inside me so empty and deadened and dull and yet full of memories. I understand all the sad bastard characters in stories now. How easy it was back then to wish they would get over it and move on with the plot. But they had a plot, they had plans.

I'm a broken record without you. All my plans are still perfectly fine plans, they just lack you. This emptiness is so heavy, so alone.I don't know how I have gotten through almost an entire year without you here in this universe.

Discuss...