Tag: reading

bookish things · Reading Challenges

Why Reading Challenges Can Hinder Your Love for Books

kristenLeave a comment
From Pixabay, courtesy of prettysleepy

If you’ve stuck with me in this column, you know that I have often recommended various reading challenges to encourage us all to read outside our comfort zones, to read more diversely, and to find a new topic to learn. I believe I offered several to choose from at the start of this year or end of last year. I’ve even created my own reading challenges for a couple of years on my blog.

As is my habit, I would go through the challenges I decided to do for any given year and try to find books that would fulfill each task. I always find some great books that way. It’s interesting to me to see what I initially thought I’d read as opposed to what I actually read at the end of the year. Then, over the past couple of years, I noticed something different.

Reading, the activity I love above all things, had started to completely stress me out.

Not the act itself, but the endless choices. I had so many unread books that I couldn’t decide what to pick next, so I dithered for days between books, paralyzed by an indecision that was stealing my joy.

Eventually, I realized that I wasn’t reading for pleasure anymore or reading to learn something. I was reading only with the goal to hit an arbitrary number that I had picked based on whatever reading challenge(s) I wanted to do. Reading had become competitive, and I have never been a competitive person.

Cue my booknerd-angst. In a burst of quasi-panicked self-discovery, I realized that I didn’t actually want to do reading challenges anymore. Aside from being turned off by the competitiveness, it also felt performative. But how could that be when I loved learning about new books so much? Did not reading 100 books a year make me a bad reader? How could I be a real reader if I wasn’t wrapped up in some reading challenge or another? I told you I had angst about it.

What I eventually realized was that reading dozens of books a year might help me knock down my TBR faster, but what good did that do if I couldn’t remember a single thing about a book I’d just read? Sure, I was reading fast. I was reading a ton of wildly diverse books. But as soon as I put the book down, my brain did a big memory dump and I instantly forgot what I’d just read. Note that I didn’t say, “As soon as I finished the book.” No, it was literally as soon as I put it down to go do something else. I could be in the middle of a book and not be able tell you most of the character names or major plot points. And that was for books I was actually enjoying! If it was a bit of a slog to get through or wasn’t grabbing my attention fully, I would have been hard pressed to tell you even the title or author. It started to feel like there was no real difference between reading a book and forgetting it and not reading it at all. My “read count” might have been ticking up to 50, 80, even 100 books a year, but in actuality it was more like four, the ones I remembered because I loved and engaged with them so strongly.

I don’t think it was entirely coincidental that I was concurrently learning more about slow living and trying to apply those ideas to my life. Perhaps it was the cognitive dissonance between trying to live a slow life and also trying to burn through dozens of books a year that made me rethink my approach to reading. Mostly, it was the fact that I didn’t like reading books and then forgetting them instantly. But just like the newly apostatic, I still felt guilty about what I viewed as abandoning my beliefs and goals and the stress of it, even though it was entirely of my own making, caused me to start avoiding books altogether. At the same time, I stumbled across a couple BookTubers who reminded me that it is ok to read slowly and engage deeply with a text, to savor it, to take notes about it, to analyze it. They talked about many of the practices and habits that I used to rely on while reading, which I had fallen away from in the frenzy of reading challenges. One of them, Eddy Hood from The Read Well Podcast, even has a motto that I thought was helpful: “Read slowly. Take notes. Apply the ideas.” That simple statement kick-started me, and it felt like I was getting permission to read only twelve books a year, or six or even just one as long as I engaged with it and got something out of it. Or rather, it reminded me that I can give myself permission to slow down.

Ironically, since coming to the realization that reading challenges had become bad for me, I’ve read more books, and more deeply, than I had in the last couple years. I’ve found my joy in reading again. I’m building my new habits, or rather reviving my old ones, to think more deeply about what I read. I don’t mean that I feel the need to analyze some beach-read-brain-candy kind of book that is supposed to be read in a weekend and then passed along and never thought of again. I mean getting back into more challenging books like classics and nonfiction, maybe even some philosophy here and there. Writing down new vocabulary words, looking at the rhetorical devices used, finding symbolism and imagery, highlighting favorite quotes, disagreeing with parts of what the author says, and thinking about what I’m learning from each book. I remember why I got literature degrees in the first place. I remember why I love reading. I remember that I believe reading well is better than reading quickly.

Now if I could only find my little sticky book tabs…

Exploring Connections in ‘Landlines’ by Raynor Winn
book review · lifestyle · travel

Exploring Connections in ‘Landlines’ by Raynor Winn

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Landlines by Raynor Winn Genre: memoir/ nature writing I read it as a(n): trade paper Length: 303 pp Her Grace’s rating: 5 stars

Landlines – not just the telephones for old people! In Winn’s newest book, they are lines on maps. Lines on the land. Lines of communication. The theme of Winn’s third book are the various lines we encounter everyday and how they connect us to each other, to our home, to the places and people we love. 

Ray and Moth went walking, with the intention to walk the Cape Wrath Trail. That trail’s name sounds scary to me and I would probably die. Moth seemed to be getting worse and falling into a depression. Ray browbeat him into going walking again. At first, and for much of their trip, she felt guilty about it because Moth was convinced he was no longer able to do a long distance walk and he seemed to be genuinely miserable. But Ray, understandably, cannot give up on him or her hope. So she pushed and pulled and harangued until he kept going. And soon enough, they hit a rhythm that worked and rather than walking Cape Wrath and then going home, they decided to go to the next leg of the trail. And then the next. And the next. And ultimately they walked a thousand miles back home to Cornwall. 

As I wrote about previously, I don’t care if any of Raynor and Moth’s story is made up. I don’t think it is, but even if it is, I don’t care. I don’t think it matters. It’s memoir, not testimony, and there is still plenty of inspiration to be gleaned from any book, fiction or otherwise. I found Landlines to be just as inspiring and beautifully written as The Salt Path and The Wild Silence. I especially loved the references in this book to The Salt Path and how Ray now looks back on that time as one of the best parts of their life, even though while they were in it, it felt like one of the worst. I loved the way she weaves in reflections and memories of her life with Moth. They are all full of love, now tinged with the anticipation of dread and grief. “He reaches his hand out, and for a second I’m taking the last few steps through a freezing Arctic river and he’s pulling me up on to the bank of black ash, but that’s only a memory now” (20). 

A word I learned from this book: Moraine, an accumulation of dirt and rocks and other debris that is carried and deposited by moving glaciers. 

Some of my favorite quotes:

[Upon being given a couple bottles of beer by a stranger at a pub] “Put these in your bag, they’re for the big man later, don’t tell him ‘til tonight. What he’s doing, being out here, it’s a big thing. I might be loud, and drunk, but I know courage when I see it” (101). 

They’re the moments which turn desperate, annoying or desolate experiences into an understanding that the person you share the plastic bag with is the one, that you have the ability to laugh at anything, and that even having lost most of your material possessions you can survive on love, hope and a packet of dried noodles (105). 

“I know you’ve walked a long way.”

I look down at my clothes, muddy, ripped, smelling of dried bog-water. “I know, we do look a bit of a mess.”

“No, you can’t get away with it like that. I know who you are. Your book changed our lives – it changed the way we live our lives. We would never have given ourselves the time to just walk, not before we read your book.”

I look at the couple, heading towards middle age, but glowing from the wind, sun and enthusiasm. “The book might have given you an idea, but it didn’t change your lives.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because books don’t change lives. They can change how you think, but it’s you that changed your life” (227). 

Thousands of feet over thousands of years have trodden many of the same trails we have, tracing their passage on to the landscape, imprinting their memories into the soil. What remains are not just paths, they’re precious landlines that connect us to the earth, to our past and to each other. We’ve followed them for a thousand miles, seen so much, heard so many stories, until now, at the edge of the land, we’ve become something other than just walkers. We’re at the point where time and place and energy combine, where we become the path, the walker and the story. No need for runestones, it’s all held within us; we’re already part of our landlines, part of the song of the land (298-299).

book review

Top Quotes from Hardy’s ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’

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Sheepfold at Early Morning by Sir George Clausen. Image from Gallerix.org.

Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy Genre: British classics I read it as a(n): paperback Length: 468 pp Her Grace’s rating: 4 stars 

So this is one of those classics that I not only never read in high school or college, but I didn’t even know what the plot was. Like, at all. All I knew was from the blurb on the book that I have. Since I want to be better about reading more classics, I thought this would be a good one to start with partly because I didn’t know anything about it, and because it’s British and I like British authors for the most part. 

But I don’t feel like writing a proper review of it. It’s been sitting on my desk for weeks since I finished it, waiting for me to review it. Other than saying that I loved it and that there were quite a few parts that I thought were actually hilarious, it was a solid story. I thought it took a bit longer than necessary to introduce all of Bathsheba’s suitors, but it was fine. I loved it overall regardless. 

One thing I like to do is make a note of any books or music that are mentioned in a book. The literature mentioned in this one is:

Anyway, like I said, I don’t feel like writing an actual review. Partly because I’ve had the book sitting on my desk for weeks and I finished reading this quite some time ago. So instead of a traditional review, I’m going to share my favorite lines from the novel. Here they are. Behold.

The instinctive act of human-kind was to stand, and listen, and learn how the trees on the right and the trees on the left wailed or chanted to each other in the regular antiphonies of a cathedral choir; how hedges and other shapes to leeward then caught the notes, lowering it to the tenderest sob; and how the hurrying gust then plunged into the south to be heard no more (14).

To find themselves utterly alone at night where company is desirable and expected makes some people fearful; but a case more trying by far to the nerves is to discover some mysterious companionship when intuition, sensation, memory, analogy, testimony, probability, induction – every kind of evidence in the logician’s list – have united to persuade consciousness that it is quite in isolation (18). [Extroverts? I think this describes extroverts.]

“My name is Gabriel Oak.”
“And mine isn’t. You seem fond of yours in speaking it so decisively Gabriel Oak.”
“You see, it is the only one I shall ever have, and I must make the most of it.” (27)

There was left to him a dignified calm he had never before known and that indifference to fate which, though it often makes a villain of a man is the basis of his sublimity when it does not (43).

[Discussing Joseph Poorgrass’s shyness]
“Yes – very awkward for a man.”
“Ay – and he’s very timid too,” observed Jan Coggan. “Once he had been working late at Yalbury Bottom, and had had a drap of drink, and lost his way as he was coming home-along through Yalbury Wood – didn’t ye, Master Poorgrass?”
“No, no, no – not that story!” expostulated the modest man, forcing a laugh to bury his concern.
“-And so ‘a lost himself quite,” continued Mr Coggan with an impassive face implying that a true narrative, like time and tide, must run its course and would respect no man. “And as he was coming along in the middle of the night, much afeared, and not able to find his way out of the trees no-how, ‘a cried out, ‘Man-a-lost! Man-a-lost!’ A owl in a tree happened to be crying ‘Whoo-whoo-whoo!’ as owls do you know, Shepherd” (Gabriel noddled), “and Joseph, all in a tremble, said ‘Joseph Poorgrass of Weatherbury, sir!’” (62-63). [LOOOOOOL that poor guy! 😂]

The good old word of sin thrown in here and there at such times is a great relief to a merry soul (65).

It was one of the usual slow sunrises of this time of the year, and they sky, pure violet in the zenith, was leaden to the northward, and murky to the east, where, over the snowy down or ewe-lease on Weatherbury Upper Farm, and apparently resting upon the ridge, the only half of the sun yet visible burnt rayless, like a red and flameless fire shining over a white hearthstone. The whole effect resembled a sunset as a childhood resembles age.
In other directions the fields and sky were so much of one colour by the snow that it was difficult in a hasty glance to tell whereabouts the horizon occurred; and in general there was here too that before mentioned preternatural inversion of light and shade which attends the prospect when the garish brightness commonly in the sky is found on the earth and the shades of earth are in the sky. Over the west hung the wasting moon, now dull and greenish-yellow, like tarnished brass (104).

O I love him to very distraction, and misery and agony. … Loving is misery for women always (207).

[Petrichor!] She went out of the house just at the close of a timely thundershower, which had refined the air, and daintily bathed the coat of the land, though all beneath was dry as ever. Freshness was exhaled in an essence from the varied contours of bank and hollow, as if the earth breathed maiden breath, and the pleased birds were hymning to the scene (210).

But man, even to himself, is a palimpsest, having an ostensible writing, and another beneath the lines. It is possible that there was this golden legend under the utilitarian one: “I will help, to my last effort, the woman I have loved so dearly” (254).

[A mutt!] He was a huge heavy and quiet creature, standing darkly against the low horizon, and at least two feet higher than the present position of her eyes. Whether Newfoundland, mastiff, bloodhound, or what not, it was impossible to say. He seemed to be of too strange and mysterious a nature to belong to any variety among those of popular nomenclature. Being thus assignable to no breed he was the ideal embodiment of canine greatness – a generalization from what was common to all (277).

All romances end at marriage (281).

Where however happy circumstance permits its development the compounded feeling proves itself to be the only love which is strong as death – that love which many writers cannot quench, nor the floods drown, beside which the passion usually called by the name is evanescent as steam (409). 

References:
Clausen, Sir George. A Sheepfold, Early Morning. 1890. Oil on canvas. Gallerix, https://gallerix.org/storeroom/1363/N/287/. 

Hardy, Thomas. Far from the Madding Crowd. Edited by Suzanne B. Falck-Yi and Linda M. Shires, 2nd ed., Oxford University Press, 2008.

Why Raynor Winn’s Memoir Matters: A Defense Against Criticism
editorial

Why Raynor Winn’s Memoir Matters: A Defense Against Criticism

kristen3 Comments

Some of you fellow book nerds might’ve seen the recent scandal surrounding Raynor Winn, author of the beloved bestselling memoir The Salt Path. If not, here’s the TL;DR version: a “reporter” (we’ll be generous and call her that) from The Observer accused Winn of fabricating parts of her book. She claimed Winn lied about her husband’s neurological illness, said they secretly had a house in France, and basically tried to tear the whole memoir apart.

Then, not long after, the same journalist backpedaled, admitting maybe she hadn’t actually fact-checked her piece very well.

I call bullshit.

In Winn’s statement about this, she says that The Observer had been offered the chance to talk to her and Moth and “to correct their inaccurate account and to be guided on the truth, on the basis that the discussion would not be made public. However, they chose not to take it, preferring to pursue their highly misleading narrative” (Winn). The reporter could’ve used her platform at The Observer to do something meaningful, like highlighting an underreported social issue, talking about a bright young up-and-coming inventor, or maybe even helping someone. But no, she wrote a smear job about a wildly popular book, penned by a flawed, real human being. Newsflash: Winn is human! Not perfect. No one is. But I don’t for one nanosecond believe that Winn fabricated The Salt Path out of whole cloth.

For starters, yes, she mentioned a place in France, but a) it’s a ruin, not a livable house, and b) they were destitute. How were they supposed to get to France with zero money? By beaming there? Could they have tried selling the French place? They did, according to Winn’s statement, but the place is worth almost nothing and the local realtor “saw no point in marketing it” (Winn). Did they actually lose their house because she’d embezzled money from her employer? Not according to her statement, which she printed basically with receipts. I choose to believe she and Moth are gentle and awesome humans, but you never really know a person. And that’s just the thing. Unless you know all the details, which none of us do, don’t assume. And more importantly, it’s really nobody’s business. Writing a memoir doesn’t mean the author signs over their entire private life to public scrutiny. It’s like when a friend asks for your advice. They’re not actually required to take it. Quit acting like entitled monsters.

Also, let’s talk about memoirs in general for a second. Nearly all of them are creative nonfiction. The operative term there is “creative.” Imagine a memoir that was just a dry, factual list. “Dear diary, we lost the house. Then we walked 600+ miles.” How fucking boring. No matter what readers might say, we don’t actually care if a person lost their home or what the reason is that they lost it. We want the heartbreak, the grit, the beauty, the weirdness, the transformation, the discovery, and nature walking, all of that. We don’t want to know just what happened. We want to know how it felt. What we want, in fact, is a story. 

Storytelling makes up the biggest part of human existence. It teaches us, comforts us, challenges us, and elevates us. It is fundamental. It’s how we understand each other. Storytelling makes us human. 

I am not saying that every word in The Salt Path is literal truth. I’m saying that it doesn’t matter. It’s one woman’s lived experience. Ray and Moth are different beings, and they experienced things differently. I would have a different experience too. Interpretation is highly individual. That doesn’t make it a lie. Memoir is not court testimony, nor a science book. It’s an emotional truth that is shaped by individual memory and meaning. With any work of literature, whether it’s poetry or prose or memoir, there is a relationship between the text, the author, and the reader where they create the meaning together. The book doesn’t exist in a vacuum. The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre wrote about this idea at length. Here is a great blog post about the more salient points of Sartre’s essay: Sartre: Is There a Connection between the Reader and the Writer of Literature? For those of you who are feeling particularly spicy, you can also read the entire thing: What is Literature? Give it a go, seriously. 

This also means readers have a responsibility as well. Stop blindly nodding along with whatever some journalist says. Think for yourselves. 

I came across a YouTube video (not even gonna link it, it’s too stupid. Look it up yourselves if you want to see it and are willing to take the hit to your IQ), claiming The Salt Path harms sick people. What the eternal fuck, now? That’s idiotic on so many levels. For one thing, Winn never, anywhere in her books, said, “If you do exactly what we did, your illness will go away.” I’ve read them all. That’s simply not a thing. What she has said and done, many times, is make it clear how hard Moth’s condition is to diagnose. The only definitive confirmation comes after death through an autopsy. You might understand why she’s reluctant for a real diagnosis under those circumstances. And to these internet armchair medical experts saying, “The life expectancy for CBD is 5 to 8 years, why isn’t he dead yet?” – do you hear yourselves? That is a vile thing to say. You’re rooting for a stranger to die just to prove a point? If you’re in the mood to hope someone cops it, I can give you a list of people who actually deserve it. 

I doubt seriously that many of these internet armchair medical experts are people who trust doctors anyway. There’s almost certainly overlap between the folks who don’t believe Moth is sick and the ones who thought drinking bleach or taking horse dewormer was solid Covid advice. 

That YouTuber also claimed the book gives people false hope. Excuse me? No, it doesn’t. Hope is not a weapon. If you don’t have hope, that’s not Raynor Winn’s fault. And if you’re dumb enough to ignore your doctor’s advice in favor of something you read in a memoir, that’s on you. I’m so sorry if you’re sick. I truly am. But The Salt Path is not to blame for your disappointment. You are not entitled to drag someone else because their experience didn’t match your expectations. Manage your own emotions.

Finally, and this is really the big point for me. Both the publisher and the film company have stated they did their due diligence. They believe in Winn and stand by her. The release of her fourth book has been delayed, not because it’s being scrapped, but because they’re trying to protect her and her family while this shitstorm plays out. They’ve said as much publicly. Feel free to look it up.

So if that “reporter” wants to do some soul-searching and professional self-improvement (doubtful, but okay), maybe she could start by holding herself and her colleagues to actual journalistic standards. Maybe demonstrate some journalistic courage, while they’re at it. For example, the first reporter to ask Trump to his face, “What the fuck is wrong with you?” should instantly win the Pulitzer. She should ask why Black defendants get villainized in crime reporting while white ones get sympathy profiles. She should ask why it’s okay when powerful people lie in ways that can actually harm people and the press is silent, but when a regular person writes a memoir that maybe is embellished a little for the sake of a story, the press suddenly gets all hot and bothered. This journalist, and the people lapping up her nonsense, are part of the problem.

book review

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke: A Beautifully Confusing Read

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Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Genre: fantasy
I read it as a(n): hardback
Length: 245 pp 
Her Grace’s rating: 3.5 stars
2025 Reading Challenge tasks: TND: #33 – a title you know nothing about

Piranesi is the story of a man in a strange and hidden world. He is alone but for occasional visits from the man he calls the Other, and the bones of several people.The House Piranesi lives in has endless corridors, statues, fish and sea creatures and birds, as well as an ocean that floods rooms and has tides. When the tides rise and a room floods, Piranesi is careful to move the bones of the people who were there before him so they are safe and they know they aren’t alone. Eventually, in his mission to help the Other find A Great and Secret Knowledge, Piranesi discovers that there may be a great deal more to his world and place in it than he ever could have anticipated. 

It is appropriate that the reading challenge this book fits is the one where you know nothing about the title. I really liked this book. I thought the writing style was beautiful, I loved Piranesi as a character, I thought the setting was fascinating. And I have no fucking idea what this book is actually about. 

Piranesi is the most unreliable of narrators because the House damages one’s memory the more time is spent there. The Other has an agenda of his own and is not helpful. And of course the only other people in the House are the Bone People. So readers are left to wonder where he really is, how he got there, why can’t he get out, where are all the other people, and how long has Piranesi been in the House. He keeps a journal and that is an intrinsic part of who he is. But the entries, with interesting dating systems like “the 4th day of the 8th month in the year the albatross came” are also no help.

I think Clarke wrote this as a story to be experienced rather than understood or explained. It had a very dreamlike quality to it, which I love more the more I think about it. The narrative style bears out the idea that it’s a meditation on dreaming. There is an unnatural calmness to the entire setting. Piranesi is quiet and formal in an archaic way. He’s just so very polite, as my friend said at our book club meeting. Time seems to drift and is fairly meaningless. Overall, I think it works well as a meditation on dreaming because, like dreams themselves, the story works fine on partial knowledge. You know something but don’t know why or how. It just is. Also, things that should scare the living shit out of you, like an endless house with an ocean trapped inside it, are just part of the setting and are not alarming. Partly it’s just again with that calmness. The House and Piranesi just have their own internal logic that works. It doesn’t matter if we understand how it works, only that it works. 

Another thing that I really loved, and which also fits the dreamlike narrative, is the deliberate mix of the sacred and the profane. I’ve always been interested in that (or at least have been interested since I first learned about it in college). Piranesi reveres and even worships the House. It could just be a lower-case house, a place where you live, but he elevates it to something more. The House. And it is suitable because of course it isn’t just any ordinary house. Oceans inside it, remember? Tides and sea creatures and birds. Giant statues. Bones of other people. The bones are another way Piranesi turned the profane into the sacred. He tends to the bones as best he can, keeping them clean and in order and all the bones with its respective body. He talks to them so they don’t feel alone. He has somewhat deified them. 

The whole narrative structure is not just the vehicle or container for the story. It is a major part of the story itself. When it first starts and is entirely dreamlike and drifting, it helps readers know how to feel without telling them. Then when we start to get glimpses of other places and people outside of the House, that’s the dream turning, the point where you would either wake up or the dream shifts into something else. 

There’s also maybe some commentary on academic exploitation. The Other, whose name is Ketterley, would fit right in with a dark academia novel. He’s obsessed with this Great and Secret Knowledge, and is willing to do anything and use anyone to get whatever it is he thinks he’s looking for. That’s a big contrast as well between him and Piranesi. Ketterley will exploit the House and Piranesi, whereas Piranesi cherishes the House and Ketterley. Ketterley and his whole thing is a sharp reminder about what can result when you have intense curiosity (yay!) that is divorced from compassion (oh no!). 

Spoilers below the cut!

Continue reading “Piranesi by Susanna Clarke: A Beautifully Confusing Read” →
book review

Women, Witches, and Weyward: Exploring Nature, Patriarchy, and Resilience

kristen2 Comments

Weyward by Emilia Hart
Genre: magical realism
I read it as a(n): hardback
Length: 329 pp
Her Grace’s rating: 5 stars 
2025 Reading Challenge tasks: 

  • Her Grace’s: #21: About witches or nuns
  • TND: #35: Multiple perspectives
  • PS: #24: A happily single female protagonist

Words cannot adequately express how much I fucking loved this book. I read it in less than two days, which is astonishing considering that I have recently struggled to read a scant 200-page book within the space of an entire month. But I was hooked right from the start of Weyward. This gorgeous book tells the ways in which the lives of three women in three different time periods intersect. They are all connected by a shared link to nature and abuse at the hands of men. 

In 1619, Altha is a healer who is indicted for witchcraft after the husband of a childhood friend is killed. She has only ever used her skills to help her community, and they repay her by turning against her after a man falsely accuses her. Society fears female autonomy and strength, and we have the evidence of that in the witch crazes (and everything else that still persists today in how women are treated). There are references to Jennet Device and the Pendle Hill witch trial* scattered throughout Altha’s story, which is a historical reference I appreciate. Her trial for witchcraft underscores the dangers of being a woman with intelligence or independence in a world ruled by men. 

In 1942, Violet chafes against the harsh restrictions imposed on her by her father and society. She uses nature to seek freedom, and she goes around her father to learn about the ecosystem and insects, doing an end-run around society’s gendered constraints. She suffers mental and emotional abuse from her father, and physical abuse and rape from her cousin. When she takes matters into her own hands, using her innate understanding of nature and her own keen intelligence, she narrowly escapes forced institutionalization. Lobotomy was the implied treatment, along with hysterectomy. Violet escapes a horrorshow life in an institution mainly because her brother stands up for her and rejects their father alongside his sister. Violet’s experiences show the ways in which women’s autonomy was stripped away under the guise of propriety.

In 2019, Kate escapes an abusive boyfriend and flees to a small cottage in the north of England that was left to her by her great-aunt. Said great-aunt happens to be Violet. When she arrives at Weyward Cottage, the wilderness surrounding the area helps her to rediscover and refine her strength and confidence. Kate’s story shows the continuing battle women have to deal with even in modern times, the constant stream of bullshit from patriarchal desires and systems that are forced on society. Seriously, why do we still have to struggle with this? 

These three women are also case studies in how generational trauma works. They each have inherited both the wounds and the knowledge of their foremothers. The novel emphasizes the importance of embracing and working with that heritage. It is only by doing so that they, and we today, can find the ways to break the cycle of abuse and oppression. 

Each of these women are witches in their own way – healer, scientist, mother. This is a story about the deep strength and courage of women, how we intersect with each other even across time, and the impact of the natural world on us all. Through their connection with nature, these women reclaim their identities and strength that was stripped from them. They give the finger to their abuse, abusers, and generational trauma by refusing to allow that abuse to define them. Instead, they are defined by their resilience and the way they each embraced their rewilding.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. I think it is one that will resonate with any woman. After all, as Aunt Jet reminds us, there’s a little witch in all of us.

*Side quest: If you are interested in reading a superb historical fiction about the Pendle Hill witch trial, you will immediately go pick up Daughters of the Witching Hill by Mary Sharratt.

lifestyle · travel

Highlights of My Busy 2024: Family, Travel, and Reading

kristenLeave a comment

My 2024 was pretty busy, mostly in good ways. 

So. That happened. I am sick to death of politics, so all I’ll say is, I hope everyone gets the year they voted for and deserve. 

New Zealand sister, her husband, and kids came for a good visit. I hadn’t gotten to meet her kids before now, so that was a delight. That whole visit was a highlight of the year, though I feel bad that their schedule meant they had to come in the hottest part of summer. There’s nothing good about summer in Phoenix. Sorry, Z – I hope next time you get to come when it is not a million degrees out. 

A few months after their visit, her younger brother came for a visit as well. He had a few days to kill between arriving in the States and taking his test to get promoted to captain (he works on superyachts – how cool is that?), so he came to visit us. I hadn’t seen him since he was like 8, so that was a fun visit as well.

I took my daughter on a trip to London during her fall break from school. One of my best friends met us there a few days later and we had one epic girls’ trip. I got a new tattoo while I was there; we saw a few plays, including A Comedy of Errors at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre; got to visit my friend’s family during a trip to Kew Gardens and Camden; ate dinner at St John, which was one of Anthony Bourdain’s favorite restaurants in London; saw, FINALLY, the tomb of William Marshal in the Temple Church; and spent hours in a massive 6-storey Waterstone’s, buying books that weren’t published in the States yet because buying books in Britain is more fun, and also I have no ability to delay my gratification when it comes to books in general. 

I hit a major reading slump this year, too, but I still did alright. I read a total of: 

  • 36 books
  • 11,113 pages
  • 12 audiobooks
  • 153:27 hours listened
  • 67% of women authors
  • 33% of male authors
  • 8% LGBTQ+ authors 
  • 19% LGBTQ+ characters (I did really badly in these 2 categories this year; I try to do 25-30% at least)
  • The genre I read the most was sci-fi. Big surprise there. 44% of my reading was sci-fi
  • The month I read the most was December, which is weird
  • I had 8 books that I rated as 5-star reads
  • I had 1 book to which I gave a 1-star rating

My favorite books of this year were:

  • The Salt Path by Raynor Winn (also the audio)
  • The Wild Silence also by Raynor Winn
  • Thorn Hedge by T. Kingfisher
  • The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
  • A Closed and Common Orbit also by Becky Chambers
  • the witch doesn’t burn in this one by Amanda Lovelace

My favorite audiobooks of this year were:

  • The Salt Path written and read by Raynor Winn (also eyeball read this)
  • Lost Boy by Christina Henry, narrated by Samuel Roukin
  • Norse Mythology written and read by Neil Gaiman
  • The Gentleman by Forrest Leo, narrated by Samuel Roukin and John Keating. (Some serious, laugh out loud funny moments in this one. The side notes just about killed me)
  • The Shadowed Land by Signe Pike, narrated by Eilidh Beaton, Toni Frutin, Gary Furlong, Angus King, and Siobhan Waring (I waited 3 years for this book to come out and it was so worth it. Probably my new all-time favorite take on Arthurian legend)

I still have a few days left of 2024 so I may get a couple more books read between now and then. But it’s close enough.

My goals for 2025 are much as always – read lots, try new food, go to some interesting places, hang out with friends. I will try to complete my own reading challenge in 2025. For fun, I try to complete The Nerd Daily’s annual challenge as well, though I don’t make myself crazy if that doesn’t happen. And, of course, I try to do the reading challenges by tackling my own TBR in the process. I will post my annual reading challenge in a couple days for anyone who might want to participate. 

Happy Holidays, all!