Shaved Meats, Piled High: November 2018
I'm Not Busy, You're Busy
Mindy Kaling writes in her first memoir, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me, that her mother once told her everyone is busy, so it's tiresome to speak of how busy one is. I took that lesson to heart. And the thing is -- I don't feel particularly busy. I am writing this at 3:30 p.m. on a weekday. Tomorrow I will start proofing the galleys of my 2019 book, but today all I had to do was go to my annual physical and visit my daughter's school for Parents Day. In an hour or so, I'll start working on dinner.
It's the week before Thanksgiving. If you've ever heard me speak, it's almost certain you've heard me say that I try to be consciously grateful every day for the good fortune of being a full-time novelist. To quote one of my favorite writers, Laurie Colwin, "it's a deeply wonderful life."
But last month brought a reminder that happy lives are always on loan. My friend Duane Swiercynzski and his wife, Meredith, lost their 15-year-old, Evie. And I'm pretty sure that I speak for all their writer friends when I say that we have never felt more worthless, more wordless. Still, I tried and I continue to try.
Busy, busy, busy. We are all so busy. We wake to our to-do lists; this newsletter was on mine today. And the holidays, which are supposed to be joyful, only add to our daily tasks. Yesterday, I ordered holiday cards; today I need to figure out if there's time to commission a custom-made gift for the relative I drew in our annual gift exchange. I have a book to proof, a short story to write, a daunting revision of a project on which I'm collaborating with my husband
But also: the quarterly awards ceremony at my daughter's school, a little exercise, dinner with my family. What's the most important thing I'll do today? Chances are, it won't be on a laptop.
READ/READING: The Amado Women, Désirée Zamorano; Thriving Through Uncertainty, Tama Kieves; The Baltimore Book of the Dead, Marion Winik; Nothing Good Can Come From This, Kristi Coulter; Crudo, Olivia Laing; Fleishman in Trouble, Taffy Brodesser-Akner; Frankenstein, Mary Shelley; These Truths, Jill Lepore.
REREADING: Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray; Kitchen Yarns, Ann Hood.
ME.ME, ME: SUNBURN has been named one of the best crime novels of the year by Kirkus Reviews and the Washington Post. Liza Jane and the Dragon received a very nice write up in the New York Times Book Review.
Laura Lippman
November 2018