What I Read - Liz Busby

What I Read: March 2024

I’ll keep this summary short since it’s April and all the grad school papers are due in a couple of weeks. During March, I presented at both the BYU English Symposium and the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts. You can read my notes about ICFA over here.

Since I was already in Florida, I also took the chance to slip away by myself to Epcot without kids. I ate way too many snacks at the Flower and Garden Festival and spent my time in line listening to books for class on headphones, but a break is a break!

Obligatory picture with the giant golf ball at Epcot

Results for the various creative writing contests that BYU runs have also been trickling out. My essay “Growing Up L’Engle,” which reflects on the various times I have read A Wrinkle in Time, was the second place winner of the Elsie C. Carroll Informal Essay contest. And my story about a robot nanny, “Insufficient Memory,” won the specialty short story category in the Vera Hinkley Mayhew Student Creative Arts Contest. I’m hoping that I’ll find a place to publish both of these someday.

Over on the podcast, I highly encourage you to check out our exploration of Pride and Prejudice adaptations featuring the wonderful Katherine Cowley, author of The Secret Life of Mary Bennet mystery series. We’re hard at work on some fun episodes that should come out with greater frequency once winter semester ends.

And now, onto the book reviews!

What I Read: Feb 2024

February was a busy month outside of school. My presentations at LTUE 42 went well and I had fun meeting up with old friends. I read from my essay “Through the Wardrobe: Inhabiting the Divine Story” at the Wayfare issue 3 launch party; I’m always impressed by the quality of writers they find, so I’m very humbled to be among them. Check out the previews of issue 3 (including this amazing art combining The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe and the Kirtland temple that was commissioned to go with my piece) and consider subscribing to get one of the beautiful print copies.

This month I’ll be presenting a paper on using CS Lewis’s interpretation of Spenser’s Faerie Queene to understand the poetry of another early modern poet, Amelia Lanyer, at BYU’s English Symposium. I’ll also be travelling to Florida to attend the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts and read my paper on Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi and using speculative fiction to cope with trauma. So many conferences this semester! Remind me to limit myself to one next time.

The podcast has been a little dormant due to grad school, but we did release a short today on a short Pixar film called Self. The episode is twice as long as the film itself; we do some interesting twisting of the short into a religious reading that the filmmakers certainly didn’t intend. Hopefully, you’ll enjoy it, and we’ll get back to more regular episodes soon.

I also made a concerted effort this month to revive my non-school related reading. I find that reading for school becomes more interesting when I have things from my own interests to connect with it. So even though February is a short month, I’ve got 10 book reviews for you. Let’s jump to it!

What I Read: Jan 2024

January is my birthday month, and usually one of my favorites, but things got off to a rough start this year. The school board was thinking about closing a program my kids participate in, so I had to make time to go and speak at a board meeting. Success: they’ve decided to expand the program instead of close it. Then one of my kids slipped in the snow and got a concussion. On top of regular life stuff, I’ve been struggling to keep all the balls in the air this semester. I finally decided to withdraw from a class last week, so hopefully there will be a bit more breathing room.

photo of a black and white trees — Photo by Ona Buflod Bovollen on Pexels.com

Next week is the Life, The Universe and Everything Symposium (number 42!) in Provo. I’ll be presenting my paper on Mormon portrayals of aliens on Thursday and participating in a panel about religious clashes in speculative fiction. On Saturday, I’m on another panel about speculative fiction for various school ages and classes. If you’re coming, please send me an email and let’s meet up!

Speaking of upcoming conferences, my paper on representations of Latter-day Saints in The Expanse and Stranger Things was accepted by the Mormon History Association for their conference in June. I really love this paper and am excited to work on it a bit more in preparation for the conference.

On the podcast side, we’re back in the swing of things with an experimental new short format which will hopefully let us cover more things while spending less time on post-production. Our first short episode is on a documentary called The Mission on Disney+, which is about an evangelical missionary who is killed trying to contact an isolated people. We also released an episode today on Indiana Jones as a possible lapsed Latter-day Saint, with the authors of the popular post over at By Common Consent. It’s a really fun episode!

And now, forward to the book reviews!

What I Read: Oct-Dec 2023

I’ve had my October book reviews in my drafts folder since November, but again, grad school got the best of me. (I’m plotting how to do better at this next year.) So you’re getting a mega-three-month edition of book reviews.

Fortunately/unfortunately, I also had quite a few publications happen during these months, meaning they didn’t get nearly as much attention here as they ought to, but here they are in belated fashion. My essay “Turning the Corner” was published in the Fall 2023 print edition of Exponent II. You can’t find this one online, so you’ll have to track down a copy, but it’s about being sick at Christmas and moving to a new stage of parenting where your kids no longer need you to keep them alive from minute to minute.

My short genre confused piece “The Cost” was part of the 12th annual Mormon Lit Blitz. I was completely surprised when it won the judges’ choice award as well as fourth place in the audience choice because all of the pieces in the contest were really strong. I recommend reading them in order together because there’s a great theme of family and life stages that seems to naturally flow.

My creative nonfiction essay “Knit Together” was published in the latest issue of BYU Studies. It’s accompanied by some photographs of a few of the knitting projects that I mention in the essay. This essay was one I wrote over the course of about a week last year when I was still in the emotional throws of the events that happen at the end of the essay, so it’s a really vulnerable piece for me. I hope it can be helpful for others who struggle with family relationships.

I’m also experimenting with mirroring my blog over on Substack, so subscribe over there if you prefer to read on that platform.

What I Read: Sept 2023

Graduate school has begun in earnest, and man, I’m sliding back into school like a fish into water. It’s so refreshing to be around people who are deep thinkers, great writers, and prolific readers all day long. Grad school is a blast! (Remind me of that in December when the paper deadlines hit.)

bundle of books on a library — Photo by Guilherme Rossi on Pexels.com

This weekend (Oct 13 & 14) I’ll be at the Latter-day Saints and Media Studies Symposium presenting my analysis of the portrayal of LDS characters in The Expanse and Stranger Things. Tickets are $30 for two days of interesting research about the interaction between the media and the church and its members. If you’re in the Las Vegas area, I’d love to say hello!

A short essay/fiction/something I wrote made the finalist list for the 12th Mormon Lit Blitz! The Lit Blitz will be starting on October 23rd with my piece being released on November 2nd. I’m also involved behind the scenes this time as I’ll be putting together a podcast version of the Lit Blitz to make it even easier to follow along and vote.

Over at Pop Culture on the Apricot Tree, we finished our Barbenheimer miniseries by talking about Barbie. I know there’s been a lot of LDS coverage of the film, but I think our discussion added a perspective that wasn’t as prevalent. I also really enjoyed our discussion of season two of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. If you’re not already watching it, I highly recommend using your free trial of Paramount+ to do so (maybe over the holidays?).

Onward to book reviews!

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