Just yesterday I was commenting to a friend that my reading of late has felt rather disheartening. Some beautiful writing, and vitally important stories, but it was taking a toll. It reminded me that there’s been other reading in my stacks in recent weeks that could serve to balance.
It happened: it snowed. The small lakes are still mostly open water, but you can see where people have thrown bits of snow near the shorelines, to gauge how the freezing is progressing around their edges (i.e. not very far). The creeks seem frozen through, and the dog bowls
When I started reading some of the stories in Dancing Girls for MARM in 2021, I was between short story projects and the idea of focussing on some single stories appealed. When Old Babes in the Wood appeared in 2023, I didn’t want to set the older collection aside,
When I think about novellas I’ve enjoyed this year, I recall Poulomi Sanyal’s Colour Me Confounded (2017) and Kerry Trautman’s Irregulars (2023), their settings soaked with the ambiance of their main characters’ workplaces, whether a boardroom or a diner. And I think about Helen deWitt’s The English Understand Wool
Can you believe this is the last check-in of this year’s MARM? The temperatures have steadily dropped all month and just the past two mornings, instead of waking up to a layer of frost there has been a skitter (a dusting) of snow, so December is just around the
