Happy Almost Fall!!!!!

Cuddle clothes and shaking your head at pumpkin spice everything is right around the corner!

Photo by Chris Lawton on Unsplash

Helllooooo lovelies!

This summer has been SO NICE AND QUIET. I didn’t go anywhere for July, which felt like such a luxury. Then August was back to skool time! But it’s going well and it’s always nice to get back to a routine.

The book I have out on submission isn’t getting any traction—the market is weird and publishing is, as always, in shambles. But it’s okay! I love that book and it was fun to write. And I have a job. If I didn’t have a job, I’d be singing a different tune.

I don’t know what will happen to that book, but something probably will. Watch this space. ;-)

Right now I’m working on a YA that I’m really enjoying. I’m trying to write something I would have really, really wanted to read when I was 12 (that wasn’t The Valley of Horses). I think I’m hitting that and I’m having a lot of fun writing it, so yay.

I’m also working on a project with a friend that I’m very excited about that involves my favorite topic of conversation (hint, rhymes with schmodschmast) so yayyyyyy.

I’ve also been on a big anarchy/utopia kick. In my heart of hearts I’m a closet anarchist. Or an anarchist lite. A diet anarchist. But I’m also a trekkie so I have a weirdly utopian view of the possibility of bureaucracy, like question everything except for the Federation, which would obviously work totally fine.

Wait, you may be asking, what does she mean by anarchy/utopia kick? Is she bombing post offices or starting a commune? No, silly, I’m obviously just READING BOOKS. But they’re books I want to share! I have really enjoyed the following more recent titles:

This book by Kristen R. Ghodsee rocked my world! I first heard about it on the Ezra Klein podcast and he clearly both loved it and was triggered by it (it nukes the nuclear family, which he was finding difficult).

It was such fun to read and really made me question everything, including where I also found myself sputtering. I am a firm believer that the nuclear family experiment that started last century doesn’t work, so I was fine with that, but I kept rubbing up against private property/living communally. I’m such a socialist, till I think about not having my adorable little row house full of all of my weird shit. So that was an interesting place to sit and think.

I also really loved this (very big) guy:

This is written by two archeologists who identify/-ied (one of the David’s, sadly, passed away recently) as anarchists and their raison d’être is to blow up the linear, progress-based idea of history that conceives of technological prowess and state power as the driving force behind, well, everything. Instead, by looking at the most recent archeological findings, they argue that humanity bounced between different modes of governance and that bouncing wasn’t at all linear, but mostly based on who your neighbors were (the delightful idea of schismogenesis). Anyway, it’s fascinating, especially as it includes “new” civilizations that have only been found because of recent technologies that mean we don’t just have to study giant monuments (think the pyramids, aka the statue of Ozymandius). And their basic premise is maybe humanity isn’t just a bunch of right bastards, as Hobbes told us we are.

If you like this sort of thing, or are intrigued by this sort of thing, Rutger Bregman has two delightful books, Humankind: A Hopeful History and Utopia for Realists. Both are fab.

Finally, another book that I found just delightful and directly related to all of these ideas was Frans De Waal’s Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist:

It’s definitely about gender, sure. But it’s really about the fact that humans are just primates. Plain and simply primates. It suggests that when we forget that, when we overcomplicate ideas like gender, we lose sight of something important. Frans de Waal has story after story about how his beloved primates, especially bonobos and chimpanzees, which live in just as complicated of social hierarchies as we do, accept difference. Yes, most chimps and bonobos do what you’d expect them to do, but when one of them doesn’t, no one makes it a religious or spiritual crisis, or wonders about the state of the chimpanzee or bonobo nation, or wonders if the youths will be corrupted. They just let that individual troop member let their freak flag fly and, at the end of the day, wrestle them into a wee grooming session.

It’s fucking beautiful.

So that’s what I’ve been doing! Also playing the latest Zelda, which is the only video game I play but I will always play the newest Zelda (very badly, honestly).

Have you read anything fun you want to share? I’m always open to reccies.

Take care and have a great week!