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 of water for passers-by are no longer useful. Many more rock doves come by during the day, now, for a drink from the heated bowl, but there’s no lineups in the mornings yet.

In MARM developments, my final short stories felt like such a perfect pair that I returned my copy of Burning Questions to the library early, happy to end on a high note.

This concludes my three-year-long amble through her first collection Dancing Girls: The War in the Bathroom, The Man from Mars, Polarities, Under Glass, 
The Grave of the Famous Poet, Rape Fantasies, Hair Jewellery, When It Happens, A Travel Piece, The Resplendent Quetzal, Training, Lives of the Poets, Dancing Girls, and Giving Birth.

MARM 2024 PLANS

Launch (November 1)
Dancing Girls, “Training” (November 5)
Old Babes in the Wood, “My Evil Mother” (November 7)
Week Two: Update and Check-In (November 10)
Dancing Girls, “Lives of the Poets” (November 12)
Old Babes in the Wood, “The Dead Interview” (November 14)
Week Three: Update and Check-In (November 16)
Margaret Atwood’s 85th Birthday (November 18)
Dancing Girls, “Dancing Girls” (November 19)
Old Babes in the Wood, “Impatient Griselda” (November 21)
Week Four: Update and Check-In (November 24)
Dancing Girls, “Giving Birth” (November 28)
Old Babes in the Wood, “Bad Teeth” (November 28)
Wrap-Up (November 30)

Others who posted about their MARM reading this week include:

Next year I’ll read a few more from Old Babes myself, and Bill has already declared his interest in his too-long-a-time-shelf-sitter copy of The Blind Assassin, so if anyone wants to read or reread that one next November, pencil it in.

I know some of you also use Novembers as a way to nudge yourself through a backlist so, if you already know what you’re targeting, feel free to share your plans (or inklings) to see if someone else has their eye on the same book(s). Which reminds me, special thanks to Paula for including talk of MARM in her Wind-Ups each September, which also helps everyone plan.

I’ve added this year’s contributions to the MARM page. It’s so interesting to see which titles have been the most “popular” over these seven years. As usual, please let me know if I have missed anybody (and if you are a little bit behind schedule with your November reading, that’s absolutely fine of course).

In conclusion, if you’ve been MARMing (or, been observing the MARMing), I’d appreciate knowing your favourite quotation from the flip-boxes (a paraphrase is fine).

That’s a vague request, isn’t it?! But I have something in mind, thinking ahead to next year’s MARM.

Thanks for contributing, and here’s to MARM2025, the 8th MARM.

MARM Quote-of-the-Week

Margaret Atwood

“We learned to lip-read, our heads flat on the beds, turned sideways, watching each other’s mouths. In this way we exchanged names from bed to bed: “Alma. Janine. Dolores. Moira. June.”