“Between Two Kingdoms—a Memoir of a Life Interrupted” by Suleika Jaouad
It began with an itch.
It did start with an itch. Something so innocuous. Until it wasn’t. It started on her feet, then up her legs, feeling like thousands of mosquito bites. Then came the naps. Not little naps. But six-hour naps that didn’t help her exhaustion. She was twenty-two, graduated from college, living in Paris to start her life and she could barely get through her days.
She finally went to a doctor and was diagnosed with anemia. Phew. That can be treated. She waited to feel better. She didn’t. Then came the real diagnosis just before her twenty-third birthday: leukemia. She flew back to the states to begin the arduous treatment that kept her in and out of hospitals and emergency rooms for four years. Treatment that almost killed her in order to save her. Treatment that made her so dependent on her parents and boyfriend that she began to resent them for it.
When she was finally proclaimed cured, she thought that was that. But she quickly learned that entering the world of the well after being so sick is whole other kind of journey.
She takes us deep into the experience of being ill then stepping back into the world of the well but never feeling fully present in either world. As she steps back in, she goes on a road-trip cross the country with her dog. A journey to build up the muscle of independence that had atrophied during her illness. A journey that took her miles from home. A journey where she found home within herself. As she emerged from the realm of illness that demanded deep introspection, she realized that she was “…reorienting my gaze outward again.”
Some sentences I underlined:
“He hasn’t just embraced uncertainty, he’s constructed a whole life inside of it, building and rebuilding as many times as has been necessary.
“To learn to swim in the ocean of not-knowing—this is my constant work.”
“To witness your child’s death is a hell too heavy for the fabric of language. Words simply collapse.”
“Still Writing—The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life” by Dani Shapiro
I grew up the only child of older parents.
This is easily my eighth reading of this book. Each time I get something new out of it. Her words always reach me where I am. I underline new sentences and passages that resonate deeply. That inspire and motivate me. That nudge me gently back into my writing.
This time around I noticed I underlined much more in the “Endings” chapter than I have before. I realized that is because I am circling the end of a draft of a novel. See, this book meets me where I am.
Since reading it again, I have settled into a lovely writing ritual. It’s not the same time everyday because of my yoga teaching schedule. But the preparation is the same. Meditate for 20 minutes in my yoga room. Write morning pages in my cozy reading nook, maybe with the fire going if it’s a chilly morning. Have some tea and breakfast then migrate to my writing room. Turn on the space heater if needed to take off the chill. Light a candle. Give myself a few minutes to check my social media then pick up my writing process journal to write about how I am feeling. Am I eager to get to the work? Am I resisting it? Then I write myself lovely, encouraging note starting with the words “Dear Brave Writer.” These words are a way of gentle parenting myself into the work. And they often feel like they carry the same energy as the words in this lovely book that I turn to again and again and again.
Some sentences I underlined:
“Also, platform is one of my all-time least favorite words, unless it’s attached the sole of a very cool shoe.”
“The writing life isn’t just filled with predictable uncertainties but with the awareness that we are always starting over again.”
“I need live by certain rules in order to protect my writing life.”
“It is in the leap that the future unfolds, surprising us with what can be done.”
“Great Big Beautiful Life” a novel by Emily Henry
There’s an old saying about stories, and how there are always three version of them: yours, mine, and the truth.
Alice Scott and Hayden Anderson start off competing for the job of writing the biography of a famous recluse, heiress and former tabloid princess Margaret Ives. They alternate days interviewing her and inevitably run into each other on the small island of Little Crescent. They try to avoid the topic of their mutual subject. In fact, Hayden tries to avoid Alice completely.
As they get deeper into the one-month trial, they find themselves becoming more entangled in Margaret’s version her story as well as with each other.
Writing a story within a story containing a multitude of complex characters, Henry has written a novel adjacent to her previous ones but this one has a different structure as she explores what she calls “new terrain.” This terrain covers truth and lies, memory and reality, tabloids and publishing, secrets kept and revealed and, as always a love story threaded throughout.
A sentence I underlined:
“With writing, you could always add more. More, more, more until you got to the heart of a thing, and after that, you could chip away the excess.”
“Inciting Joy” essays by Ross Gay
I have had the good fortune in the past several years, since shortly after the publication of my third book of poems, “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude,” and probably again with my book of essays, “The Book of Delights,” to have had numerous and sustained conversations about joy.
These days we keep hearing that joy is a form of resistance which is why I was drawn to the title of this collection of essays. Inciting is a word we often use to describe riots or violence. To see it connected to joy was intriguing. He gave an interview where he liked that “Inciting” could be seen as a verb or an adjective to joy. Either way, we need joy. We need to create joy. Allow joy. Connect with joy. Share joy. And, yes, incite joy.
In a series of essays, Gay explores everything from skateboarding to the costs of masculinity. Although there were too many footnotes for my taste (to be fair, even one is too many for me) I appreciated how he wove in pieces his own life as well as culture and music and history and politics and justice. How we find and create joy in the face of injustice, political polarization and the destruction of our planet. In the end, he offers this (from the back cover): ‘What might be possible if we turn our attention to what brings us together, to what we love?”
That is where joy lives.
Sentences I underlined:
“She knew what we all know, which is that worrying about getting sick, and worrying about what you will do if you get sick, will make you sick.” (Sadly, that is our “healthcare” system in a nutshell.
“Or to say it another way: rather than cursing the darkness, what if we planted some seeds?”
“Audition” a novel by Katie Kitamura
It seemed an unlikely choice, this large establishment in the financial district, so that I stood outside and checked the address, the name of the restaurant, i wondered if I had made a mistake.
As I sat down to write this book reflection, i realized that we never know the main character’s name. We know all the people around her, but leaving her nameless adds to the tension and mystery surrounding this story.
Told in two parts, this unnamed actress preparing for a part in a play agrees to meet a young yet troubling (or troubled) man for lunch. Who is he to her? Who does he think his is to her? The second part picks up from the first but there is a new reality they are inhabiting. Is the narrator unreliable? Was there a time split and we are being shown one possible future and past they shared?
Kitamura explores the roles we play in life and on stage and how we are seen by others, how we see ourselves through their eyes and how we each wear masks depending on what role we are currently playing: wife, mother, actress, muse.
There were a couple of key points where I felt I had a grasp on what this story was doing but then it quickly slipped out of my grasp again. At first, I went to the internet to see what people were saying. But then I stopped myself. I decided I was going to let myself wander in the uncertainty of what I just read, not needing to figure it out and piece it together. I am just going to let is exist as it is.
A sentence I would’ve underlined if it wasn’t a library book:
“People always talked about having children as an event, as a thing that took place, they forgot that not having children was also something that took place, that is to say it wasn’t a question of absence, a question of lack it had its own presence in the world, it was its own event.”
“Making Time—A New Vision for Crafting a Life Beyond Productivity” by Maria Bowler
This is not the kind of book that will tell you what to do. I assume you’re tired of other people’s formulas, instructions, and hot tips anyway.
As a long time reader of the self-help/improvement genre, I am definitely tired of “other people’s formulas, instructions, and hot tips.”
Like the subtitle suggests, this book offers a vision of a new way of being in the world. It’s not a manifesto on how to do more but how to be more. And I love that. I’ve read enough books that offer the supposed secret to productivity. I pour over other artist’s routines to see if what they do will fit my life. But Bowler doesn’t offer us life hacks to be more productive with our time.Instead she offers us a way onto a path of being a maker in a world that demands that we be a producer.
She breaks down the myths of capitalism that we have been spoon fed our entire lives and instead offers a path toward a way of living that comes from our values, from what matters to us.
I underlined so much but here are just a few:
“When we collaborate with reality, we are makers. We are makers when we act in response to life from our true being, instead of merely doing.”
“To really rest, you need to give up the imperative to be good at resting.”
“You are fine as you are. There is no looming grade coming for you even if you never become everything you want to become. Where you sit in this minute and every minute going forward, in your very being, you are perfectly beloved.”
Grace Unleashed 