My Cup is Full
On Goodness and Gratitude
Thank you? THANK YOU!! Thank you for opening this message. Thank you to everyone who has signed up for my newsletter. Thank you to everyone who has signed up as a A PAID SUBSCRIBER. I entered into this enterprise with the lowest expectations, with the intention of finding a different way to be online and channelling my thoughts and ideas into long-form projects whose composition seemed like it might help to further mend my brain after more than a decade of fragmentation on social media. And let me tell you, it has felt so good to write these longer pieces, so rich and satisfying. And it has felt even better to have so many of you become paid subscribers to receive these pieces (my monthly essays will be free to all subscribers until April, after which they become for paid subscribers only), to demonstrate your support of my writing and of me challenging myself in this really important way. I was not expecting any of this, and I am so profoundly grateful, and also glad for these indications that I am moving forward in a good direction.
My next essay will be arriving in your inbox next Thursday. It’s called “In Praise of Pieces: Commonplace Books, Friendship Quotes, and Our Bookless Book Club” and I’ve loved writing it so much.
My work this month has filled my cup, and I am also so grateful for that, particularly after finishing 2023 in a state of burnout and creative paralysis. I was definitely not expecting that within six weeks, I could be feeling so much better, so excited and inspired. It helped so much to (almost—nearly there!) fill up my manuscript consultation spots for the year, which means I get to stop worrying about paying my bills and supporting my family. It helped even more that the manuscript I got to work on this month has been such a pleasure to engage with—I really do love this work, appreciate being confident in being able to deliver something really valuable to clients (which hasn’t always been my experience in jobs I’ve done in my life—if you knew me as a waitress, or ESL teacher, yk), and I learn so much and become a better writer myself through the process.
I’ve also been glad, once again, to return to my job at 49thShelf excited and inspired to celebrate Canadian books. This is my other job that pays the bills, and I’ve been doing it for a really long time now, and I worry sometimes about losing my spark, but oh, the spark is there right now. It helps, of course, that there are so many wonderful new books worth celebrating. (Check out our blog to see what’s happening!)
The final thing that’s been filling my cup this month is the neatest thing, the bravest thing. I’ve created a podcast! In my previous newsletter, I alluded to that podcast, but I had not yet started making it yet. As I write this now, 6/12 interviews are edited and ready to go, and I have just two more to record. The first episode drops on March 4. I’m very excited. I’ve wanted to do something like this ever since I started doing my first (very clumsy!) author interviews on my blog back in 2008. And a month ago, as the entire project stretched before me, I was so so afraid to begin, afraid that any effort I expended would just make me look silly, paltry. Taking that leap forward took a tremendous amount of courage, and faith in my own abilities too—but I am so glad I did it.
My podcast is called BOOKSPO, and it’s a series of short-form interviews with authors of new releases about the books that made them want to write their books. The conversations have been wonderful, and what I especially love is that it includes authors of rom-coms, literary fiction, pop culture nonfiction, mysteries, thrillers, philosophical meditations on art, memoir, commercial fiction, and more, proving that bookishness knows no bounds in terms of genre.
And—speaking of gratitude—part of the reason I’ve been able to have faith and courage in my ability to pull off this new project, is because (once again!) so many people have generously supported me, in this case busy authors who are happy to sit down with somebody who is making up a podcast from scratch. That’s no small thing. And I really have been making it up from scratch—how do you record an interview? How do you edit audio? Both are questions I’ve learned the answers to in the past few weeks. And I’ve learned so much more too, about how to structure interviews, and ask questions, and that these interviews are actually more interesting when I haven’t read the “bookspo” pick the author is talking about, because I get to engage them in what the book is all about instead of demonstrating how clever I am and that I’ve really done my homework (which, it turns out, is not that interesting…)
The next question I’m going to learn to answer is “How do you put a podcast online?” I honestly don’t know! (This is why there is currently no answer to the question of, “How can I find your podcast?” NOT YET.) But I will figure it out, one step at a time. Once my final interview is recorded next Wednesday, I’m going learn by putting the teaser up, which hopefully means everything proceeds smoothly when I release the first episode the following Monday. Because I’m going to be using Substack as my podcast host, you will likely receive notice in your inbox when I do. I hope you’ll listen, and enjoy it, and share it with your bookish friends (are there other kinds of friends?).
Thank you for being part of my process. Thank you for coming along for the ride!
Below you’ll find a selection of what I’ve been writing on my blog this month, as well as reviews of recent books. My reading month (partly because it’s been prescribed by my podcast guests!) has been so rich and interesting, another reason why my cup is full.
Wishing you sunshine and good things,
Kerry
“She’s So High”
Indoctrination into this culture in the 1990s meant that I thought romantic love meant some sad sack guy with an acoustic guitar who seemed to worship me in the most solipsistic manner possible. It means that it never occurred to a lot of sad sack guys that women were actual humans with multi-dimensions and struggles of their own. It meant that it seemed very reasonable for me to have relationships with men who were distinctly not excellent, because it was part of my job description to be “high above him.” In fact, it was my job to fix him, to save him, to exalt him above his own mediocrity….. (Read the rest)
In Praise of Made-Up Holidays, Especially in February
Yesterday, for the fifteenth year in a row, I made the banana oatmeal pancakes recipe I tore out of Chatelaine Magazine in 2008 when I was six months pregnant and obsessed with bananas. Anything to perk up a Tuesday in the middle of February… (Read the rest)
You Need to Read These:
The Roosting Box, by Kristen den Hartog
A warning: once you pick up this book, you will likely annoy everyone around you by spouting fascinating facts out of context, like a bothersome robot, but pick it up anyway. In The Roosting Box, Kristen den Hartog has brought a piece of Toronto’s history to life, and the effect is pretty dazzling.
As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow, by Zoulfa Katouh
It is impossible to read As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow and not think about what’s happening right now in Gaza. Set over a decade ago in the city of Homs, during Syrian Civil War, the novel is about Salama, who—by virtue of having completed a year of pharmacy school—has stepped up to volunteer at a local hospital, removing shrapnel from people’s bodies, performing amputations without anaesthetic, saving whatever lives she can manage to save, which will never be enough, because she can’t save all of them.
Black Boys Like Me, by Matthew Morris
Three pages into the first essay in Matthew Morris’s new collection BLACK BOYS LIKE ME: CONFRONTATIONS WITH RACE, IDENTITY, AND BELONGING, and I was hooked, as Morris describes a 4am journey through Brooklyn, the way he adapts his performance of self as he passes a police station (“stage my innocence”) versus how he would have acted if he’d run into another Black man on the subway who presents himself in public as Morris does (“I would have amplified my Blackness—for survival”)….
Good Material, by Dolly Alderton
There’s this weird scene in Dolly Alderton’s second novel Good Material that reminds me of that weird scene in The Great Gatsby where Nick Carraway finds himself between ellipses in a room with a man in bed wearing just his underwear, though in the end it was not like that at all, but maybe the unreliability of the narrator was not so dissimilar, and neither was that this was supposed to be a book about one person (Andy’s ex-girlfriend, Jen) when it was really about the narrator framing the story just so, choosing to see what he wanted to see, and be seen as he wanted to be seen.
Have you read my January essay yet?
