I have pretty much owned a typewriter since I was in middle school, or maybe high school. My stepfather worked in an office, and I suppose they got rid of an older manual typewriter, and he brought it home. I bought an electric typewriter with a handle once at a thrift store in 2011, and I was in an Amtrak line at Penn Station, holding my typewriter, and so was Penn Jillette. "Excuse me," I said, "are you Penn?" "Yes, I am," he replied, "is that a typewriter?" That's not a super good story, but that's okay. I had an electric typewriter that I did most of my correspondence on, but the wheel that advances the ribbon stopped working. I thought the ribbon was just dry, and I ordered new ribbons, only to find out that the issue was the ribbon advance. I couldn't find anyone I knew who could help me fix it (the only person I really had faith in to assist me with this recently had a baby, so I wasn't going to trouble her with the most minor of minor problems). Luckily, my roommate, who was the source of the previous electric typewriter, also sourced another one for me! I have been coloring it with Posca markers when I feel like it: I have been writing so much! Mostly letters, but I was antsy the other day and dashed off two pages of a story that I just pulled out of my brain. I'm not sure if that story will go anywhere, but it did give me an idea for a collaborative story, so I'm going to work on finalizing the idea for that today. Here's what I've been reading this week: I read The Hunting Party on Monday. The only reason I finished it was to learn all the secrets. I was at the halfway point and considered abandoning it. It was not good. Oh well.
I read We Have Always Been Here on Tuesday. I am so impressed with people who write entire books in a language that is not their mother tongue. I really enjoyed Samra Habib's evocative childhood memories of Pakistan. I bought jasmine oil for my hair thanks to this book. I do not have strong feelings about this book, but I do highly recommend jasmine oil for one's hair. On Wednesday I read The Silent Patient before my library loan expired. My mom actually recommended it to me after my aunt recommended it to her. It was better than The Hunting Party. I didn't care for the narrator, although the unreliable narrator is integral to the unraveling of the plot. I thought it was clever, though. So, after this week of books I was kind of lukewarm on, I finally read The Night Circus. The Night Circus is so, so good. Erin Morganstern knows how to tell a story - she knows how to bring the reader in at the first sentence, which I don't think I am getting from these other things I have been reading! She crafts these wonderful worlds of magical realism and they are so wonderful. I picked this up from the library on my last trip before they closed due to COVID-19. I had already read The Starless Sea, and this was also just delightful and I am envious of her ability to create these worlds, but also grateful that we have these two books from her! I am very excited to see what we will get next from Erin Morganstern. Yesterday I tried to read The Exorcist, which is incorrectly touted as THE MOST TERRIFYING NOVEL EVER WRITTEN, which I suppose is a great cover blurb but has so far proved untrue. Maybe it was terrifying in 1971. Maybe it is terrifying for people who have no concept of what actual Satanists do or people who think QAnon is real. Right now it is just corny and overwrought. I also don't find demons frightening, I mean, a good ghost story I can enjoy. Once someone brings Satan into it, though, I'm reaching into my theoretical bag of rotten tomatoes. Let's take the movie The Conjuring, for example. The Conjuring is spooky! There's fun haunted house drama and a creepy ghost on top of the dresser! Then they bring in the hot exorcist couple and they deduce that it's a "witch" named "Bathsheba" (eyeroll) who "made a pact with the Devil" and it's all I can do to not scream, "Booo! Booo! Get off the stage!" It's such a cheap villain that it means nothing. I have read more terrifying Ouija board stories on ONTD. This book is probably responsible for a lot of people's misconceptions about the occult. But whatever! Maybe we can do a scary story for our roundtable story. I normally wouldn't write so much about something I didn't like, but it was just so disappointing. I will give it until the halfway point, just to see if it improves.
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AuthorArtist, essayist, divinity school dropout. Here for a good time, not for a long time. Archives
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