Anyone else have trouble focussing this week? I know I’m not the only one.

At the same time, it felt particularly important to read the words of a writer like this.

I have this quotation flagged in my notebook from an earlier reading of her essay collection Second Words:

“I’ve implied that the writer functions in his or her society as a kind of soothsayer, a truth teller; that writing is not mere self-expression but a view of society and the world at large, and that the novel is a moral instrument. Moral implies political, and traditionally the novel has been used not only as a vehicle for social commentary but as a vehicle for political commentary as well. The novelist, at any rate, still sees a connection between politics and the moral sense, even if politicians gave that up some time ago. By ‘political’ I mean having to do with power: who’s got it, who wants it, how it operates; in a word, who’s allowed to do what to whom, who gets what from whom, who gets away with it and how.”

But this week, I turned to a new essay, available in the U.K. via Profile Books, in Democracy: Eleven Writers and Leaders on What It Is—and Why It Matters.

“Democracy” is also available via the Financial Times website. She reads her piece in six minutes and the video makes those minutes fly past. (Even in print though, it’s a slim pocket-sized book, and the essays are short, language honed.) This post’s Flip-box at the bottom of the page features a quote, so even if you don’t have six minutes, you likely have six seconds to watch that flip.

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 18)
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 26)
Old Babes in the Wood, “Bad Teeth” (November 28)
Wrap-Up (November 30)

What else did I read this week? You’ll see that both stories this week filled a square in my Bingo card, which I’ve already managed to muck up, with a carelessly placed glass or mug, so now it’s not just a layer on the image making it look like a crumpled piece of paper. #therealdeal

And I read the first poem in Interlunar because Bookish Beck mentioned she borrowed it from one of her libraries; there are a couple of lovely snake poems at the beginning, which suited another square.

Because I was feeling some kind of way on Wednesday, I also read a 2013 essay included in Burning Questions: “How to Change the World”.

Right away in that essay she raises the point that we need to define all sorts of those terms, like ‘How’ and ‘Change’ and ‘World’. That might sound glib, but her positioning of the need for clarity makes it clear that these are the kind of essential conversations that we need to have more often. It reminded me that, even when we think we are communicating, we aren’t meaning the same thing when we utter even commonly used words let alone when we discuss complicated ideas.

Several of you are already thinking about your MARM reading and some have already begun.

Kaggsy is returning to an old favourite,

Bill has posted about one of the short stories in Old Babes (the one about Orwell) and one of his comments on another from that collection this week reveals he’s also well into Life before Man, which Bookish Beck is also reading (along with the poetry above).

Laila is reading The Tent and Good Bones. 

Alice has three books in mind (two of the bigger novels and Burning Questions).

Whispering Gums is eyeing a short story,

Madame Bibi has two posts planned about short stories.

Helen is thinking about Alias Grace.

And a few of you (like Larissa and Naomi and Reese) are still contemplating. Ohhhh, I hope I didn’t miss anyone. Please leave a link below if I have overlooked a post-or a person!-somewhow.

Or maybe you’re only just discovering our cosy little MARMy corner of the bookish world. (This is the seventh MARM and here was the first chat of MARM2024. Links in the text box too, of course.)

It’s lovely to be “in company” here, for one more MARM. Thanks for reading!

MARM Quote-of-the-Week

Margaret Atwood

“When a government fails to deliver basic necessities, the result is either a toppling of power or a brutal crackdown. So says history.”