Hello everyone,
Welcome back to the monthly review. This one is definitely too long for email, so you’ll probably want to view it in the app or your browser. Below you’ll find the usual sections, and as always, feel free to skip through at your leisure.
(Some) books I read:
The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt (first time)
I wanted to enjoy this one, I really did. And the first quarter (maybe third) was quite good, in a Dickensian-meets-contemporary-semi-thriller sort of way. But it fell apart after that — it was incoherent (especially the sermonising at the end, which went on forever), characters made sillier and sillier choices the older they became, and at least two fairly major plot events were simply passed over and summarised later. Actually I think the summarising was really what did the book in for me, though I did finish it, which says something, if a very disappointed something.
The Lathe of Heaven - Ursula K. Le Guin (first time)
Really enjoyed this one, in part because the plot got steadily less predictable as the dreams multiplied. One thing that did strike me as funny was the bit where really “high” property prices are mentioned — sad to say they seemed like a very good deal.
A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter M. Miller (first time)
I knew exactly which friend I would recommend this to as soon as I finished the book, whereupon I remembered that he had already recommended it to me years ago and I had completely forgotten it until that moment.
Things I wrote:
In June I published three regular poems and one short story, as well as five posts in the Journal.
I’m really happy with all three of these poems, especially Midsummer, which I wrote back in March while on holiday.
This was the story I wrote for the sadly canceled Macabre Monday writing contest. I had a couple of ideas which perished along the way, but the one that survived was more or less along the lines of “something like the Weeping Angels — but infectious — they can turn you into a statue by touching you and you wind up standing on your own gravestone — also Gothic”. I think it turned out very well, despite the fact that I realised halfway through I can’t actually spell cemetery. Slight oversight there…
And here are all the Journal poems I wrote this month:
Things other people wrote:
Pictures I took:
Song:
RIP Françoise Hardy.
Thanks for reading!
Iris Shaw
Oh wow! Thanks so much for including my poem here!
Thank you Iris for the mention!