Author: Liz Busby

Liz Busby is a writer of creative non-fiction, technical writing, and speculative fiction. She loves reading science fiction, fantasy, history, science writing, and self help, as well as pretty much anything that holds still for long enough.

What I Read: March 2022

opened book in hands of person against floral background on sunny day
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March was a busy month with the launch of Pop Culture on the Apricot Tree (subscribe please!), and now I’m entering a really busy time for writing in April, which is why this review post is late. I’ve also got several pieces out on submission that I’m hoping to hear back from soon, so cross your fingers for me.

When I started compiling this list, I felt like I hadn’t been reading a lot recently because of all this busy-ness. But pulling in all these reviews reminded me of the great stuff I’ve actually read. Yet another advantage to looking back on things.

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Introducing Pop Culture on the Apricot Tree: A New Podcast Taking A Mormon Perspective on Pop Culture

As you may remember from my Writer in Review post, one of my goals this year was to start a podcast. Well, I’m happy to announce that Pop Culture on the Apricot Tree is now ready for your listening pleasure! It’s a podcast where I have on a group of guests and we discuss a film or movie (maybe books some day!) from an LDS perspective. My co-hosts and I talk about gospel lessons and moral implications through story with that “Mormons ruin everything you love” twist. Ha ha.

What’s that you say? “Why a podcast?”

Well for one, I’m a huge fan of podcasts. I’ve listened to podcasts from the very beginning, before smartphones back when you had to manually download the file and upload it to your phone on a cable. Some of my early favorite podcasts were Pottercast and Grammar Girl.

Nowadays, I have almost 60 podcasts on my subscription list. I enjoy the comradery of the podcast format, listening to some knowledgeable, friendly people discuss something interesting that they know way too much about. It’s ideal small talk for introverts!

I’ve idly kicked around the idea of starting a podcast for a few years, but could never really settle on something. All the topics I could think of felt too heavy with too much research involved when my primary focus would always be on writing.

Then, this November when I was pointedly avoiding doing my writing for NaNoWriMo by poking around on Twitter. I stumbled across a podcast where Meg Conley discussed the movie Arrival from a Mormon perspective. This discussion mashing up LDS theology with science fiction was exactly the kind of thing that gets me excited, though I didn’t agree entirely with Meg’s perspective. I shared my thoughts on the podcast on an LDS Slack group I had recently joined. Someone idly suggested that a few of us should start a podcast “Mormonizing” pop culture.

One several-hour-long group-brainstorming session later, we had a 10-page document full of ideas and a great title: Pop Culture on the Apricot Tree. I wasn’t sure I was really going to go through with the idea. After all, I was barely finding the time to write. But the idea just wouldn’t leave me alone.

So in January I got together five friends and recorded an initial episode on Encanto. It was so much fun! It barely feels like it’s work at all.

Hopefully there are others out there who want to Mormonize pop culture, or listen to me talk about it! New episodes release every other Thursday. You can watch video episodes on YouTube or subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening!

What I Read – February 2022

young woman reading book in winter park
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A short month with a lot of great books in it! I also got to attend the Life, the Universe and Everything Symposium for the first time since presenting at it as a student in 2008. I learned a lot from the panels, met up with some online acquaintances, and made some new writing friends who I’m hopefully going to start a critique group with. Lots of writing to do this month, so let’s get on with the reviews!

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Writer in Review: 2021

One of my favorite parts of the Brandon Sanderson fandom is his yearly State of the Sanderson post, which gives an overview of his year and sets out what projects he’s working on next. So I decided I should start doing my own. I haven’t yet come up with a clever alliterative title using my last name, so for now, Writer in Review it is.

And yes, it’s February and I’m writing a year in a review post. I blame omicron. Hopefully in future years I can post these on my birthday in January instead.

pens near keyboard and paper clips
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What I Read – January 2022 & 5×5 Challenge

close up shot of a person reading a book
Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

New year, new reading challenge! This year, I’m trying out the 5×5 Challenge (via the Scholé Sisters homeschooling community). The premise is to pick 5 categories or topics you want to read about more in-depth this year, then select 5 books for each category over the course of the year. It comes out to about 2 books a month. I’m hoping this will be a way to balance my need for structured reading with the ability to still pick up random books from the library (or more realistically, the new Brandon Sanderson novel).

My five categories for 2022 are:

  1. Old Testament Context – Our church’s Come Follow Me curriculum this year is on the Old Testament. In addition to reading a new translation, I want to get some background on how to get your head around the Old Testament. Some of these will be LDS-specific and some more generally Christian or even Jewish (I hope to pick up Robert Alter’s Psalm translation.)
  2. Mormon Lit Backlist – Filling in some works by Mormon authors that have been on my TBR pile for a while that I need to get to.
  3. Stoicism – It’s been a rough year for me coping with the new political environment in Utah (really, several years and the whole country would also work here). I’m hoping that reading about stoicism will give me some tools to both act according to my conscience while not drowning in anxiety and anger.
  4. Reading the Hugos – Working my way backwards through the novel winners that I haven’t read yet.
  5. Books Becoming Movies – Because I like to have read the book first, plus my other categories are so serious that I felt like I deserved a break.

Now on to the reviews!

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