Friday Five 7/31

I am so not ready for it to be August.

1. The event last week at Porter Square Books for Diane Zinna’s Letting Grief Speak was a big success! Lots of people came and a good (griefy) time was had by all. Thanks to everyone who showed up for it and thanks to everyone who’s purchased Diane’s wonderful book through my Bookshop link. I really appreciate it.

2. Paprika’s doing great but there have been a couple of mishaps- broken knicknacks and such. She jumped up to the top of a tall bookcase in our house then fell behind it- at 6am. So we were up and racing to clean off all the books and move the shelf to rescue her. I posted to Bluesky about it and the post got 500+ likes. Thank you Paprika for setting a social-media record for your mama. Now please never do anything like that again.

   

3. It’s been a quiet-ish week for writing. We had to do a quick trip back and forth from home for errands and I have been distracted. I printed out what I have of my latest chapter and will take a look at it tomorrow to see what’s next.

   I wrote this note last week here on Substack:

   a fun thing from today: I attended a writing zoom where we told the leader what we’re writing about, & she kept referring back to my book-in-progress throughout the rest of the zoom like she was preoccupied with it. I like it when someone is preoccupied with my work.

   She also seemed flummoxed by me and my story. Then I got the nicest reply from someone who related to what I’m writing about and was glad I said what I said. Which goes to show it’s true, what the poet Sean Thomas Dougherty said: tell your story, because someone has a wound in the shape of your words.

4. Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle the movie is finally available to stream on Crunchyroll. Jeff and I are Demon Slayer fans (he even carved a Demon Slayer pumpkin last year- epic!) and we saw the movie in the theater last summer but it’s so exciting that it’s finally out on Crunchyroll. It is long. But so good. If you’ve never watched the anime or read the manga it would be a lot to catch up on and the film provides no context- it’s not a stand-alone- but I love the stuffing out of this series and highly recommend it.

   

5. I finally finished volume three of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay. I love My Brilliant Friend, the first book; I love the HBO adaptation of the series. I like this book okay. I really wish we had alternating perspectives with Lila and not just Elena’s voice throughout. Or even a Robert-Jordan-style multiple-perspectives. Because I like Elena but she is a lot and her voice feels heavy and sloggy to me sometimes. And I’d like to hear things from other points of view. I think it would be a richer experience. But the whole point of the book is Elena finding her voice. Maybe the final volume will put a new spin on it.

That’s it for me this week. I’ll get some haiku out soon. Hope everything is going well for you. Leave a comment and let me know!