I'm in another Murderbot reread. Happens several times a year. But it got me thinking why we love Murderbot so much. What is it about a depressive angry ex-slave cyborg with PTSD who's on the run that gets to us?

It doesn't know itself. It doesn't know what it wants. It's angry, justifiably so. It wants to be part of a team, to belong, and to connect with others, but doesn't know that and would deny it if asked. It wants to do its job really well and be noticed for it. It mostly just wants to watch tv all day every day and not get shot at.

I'm fascinated by the internal contradictions in this character, then noticed that's true about a lot of other great characters.

Oh no, it made me realize mine might lack that, whoops. I will work on that. As soon as I finish all these massive construction projects. Which might be stopping right now because OMG my knees.

I'm endlessly interested in the ways we don't know ourselves, misrepresent ourselves, think we're one way when we're another, and don't actually know what we really want that would make us happy. We're such a mess! All of us and Murderbot too.

Next week: probably Sarah Dessen's Lock and Key since I can't quit bringing it up. Woohoo!

Other texts mentioned: the usual suspects. Battlestar Galactica, Leverage: Redemption, Cold Comfort Farm, Summerlands, Landslide.

Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh is one of the best books ever. It gets into everything good: how to transition from a complacent child to a self-aware person, what it means to be a writer, who we write for and how it affects them and us, what it means to be aware of your own emotional state and how to articulate and manage that.

Did you think this book was about a kid with a spy route who peered in people's skylights and windows and went up the dumbwaiter? It is, but it's about SO MUCH MORE.

I get into all of that, as well as the song of the gray catbird, Leverage Redemption, Head!Finn, the ongoing sagas of a) reupholstering loveseats (all done!), b) building the screened porch (frame is done!), and rewriting The Esker Road, OMG feels like I will be doing it forever but have made MAJOR STRIDES this past week so hurray for that.

Writing! Life! Having way the hell too many projects and too much stuff!

Sacred cheese of life!

Stella Gibbons's amazing novel Cold Comfort Farm features a main character without a real character art of her own, who walks into the lives of her messy dramatic cousins and solves all their major life problems. Flora Poste said from the beginning she liked cleaning up messes and making everything tidy and that's exactly what she does with the Starkadders. They are living with maximum misery and drama, each of them taking on a role where they can weaponize their misery to be the star of their own show. Flora goes methodically through the family, solving their problems and making each of them happy.

I adore this book. I saw the movie first, many years ago, then read the book. The movie is very close to the book, if that worries you.

I found so many things to use in this book, too. For example, I realized exactly what's wrong with my giant fluffy disaster of a draft, as well as how to fix it, so once again you've solved it for me, Sacred Cheese of Lifers! No? Not the term? Okay, tell me what it is.

There's plot-based writing and character-based writing. And I hate plot-based writing. Except in certain kinds of television where it's necessary, as for example procedurals. Otherwise, get out of here! Talking to you, my book, The Esker Road. I will shape you up. I WILL.

There's a movie I saw that I think was based on a book that I want to read next, except I can't remember anything about it except Amy Adams is in it and Frances McDormand is the main character who never gets anything to eat and is starving the whole time. ??? I'll find it. It had fantastic clothes. Period piece.

Other texts mentioned today: Bones, The Nerve, Summerlands, probably more. D.H. Lawrence and his tedious obsessions etc.

Sacred Cheese of Life!

William Faulkner's short story "A Rose for Emily" is widely taught because it's such a fascinating and complex collection of literary maneuvers in a small space.

We get the story of Emily Grierson, an upper class social exile who does some very weird things. Obviously I wanted to read it after We Have Always Lived in the Castle due to the major overlaps. But this story also features an unreliable first person plural narrator. So strange! They're unable to connect some very clearly linked dots A, B, and C, so how much can we trust anything else they say?

It's great fun to watch a class go from "we hate Emily, like the townspeople" to maybe wondering whether she might be the way she is because of how they treat her. Surely being treated like a freak show who's outside of all the norms can't be good for someone?

This week's episode brought to you by incredibly itchy black fly bites, the barks of Miss Tallulah Dog, too much drama, unspecified, and major progress on the draft of The Esker Road. Woohoo!

Melina Marchetta’s novel Jellicoe Road will kill you dead, in a good way, but you only get to read it unspoiled ONCE, so please I am begging you, read it before you listen to this! I will ruin everything for you. This is one of the best books there is. Go read it now. Hup hup. Okay!

Jellicoe Road is the story of Taylor Markham trying to fix her past and her present, her family and her friends, which are all in such a truly tragic disaster that it’s almost unbearable. The plot sounds like a lot of YA, but it’s so much more operatic and fraught and a real tragedy a lot of different ways. She solves the mysteries, fights through the relationships, finds her lost mother and brings her home, resolves some roadblocks for others she cares about, saves two kids from a tunnel, has a meeting of the minds with a fantastic boyfriend, and fights her way to a new family.

It’s so much. And the book is full of mysteries from the past that she has to figure out.

If I could figure out how Marchetta writes such brilliant characters that we care so much about, I’d really have something. I think I got part of the way there at least in this discussion.

Other texts mentioned: The Esker Road, I Am the Cheese, Leverage: Redemption, The Prydain Chronicles, probably others.

It’s such high tragedy with a relatively happy ending. It’s exactly how I want my books to be. Only less confusing. This is a much harder puzzle to solve than the things I write.

It’s funny to be so impressed by a book I’ve read multiple times before, but I really am. The more I analyze it, the better I like it and the more impressed I am.

Highest recommendation. Go get it.