What I Read: September 2022

This month has flown by, my friends! I feel like it’s impossible that I actually read the 12 books reviewed below because I’ve been so busy this month with back-to school and things. I’m volunteering the equivalent of a part time job running my dad’s campaign for county auditor and as the PTA council Reflections specialist.

My word count for September was 400 words short of my 4,000 word goal, but not too terrible overall, considering. I ended up writing 2-3 days a week instead of 4 and making up the word count by writing slightly longer. I need to drill into my head that 250 words doesn’t actually take that long, so I’ll just sit down and actually do it.

branches of tree with yellow leaves in autumn
Photo by Julia Volk on Pexels.com

I finished one story whose working name is “Reclaiming the Desert” but is also known as Solar Punk Utah in my file system. It’s a story about the ecological restoration of Utah and the mending of family relationships divided by a gulf of faith. Hopefully I’ll find a good home for it soon. Submissions are happening, though who knows if they are going well. 7 submissions out this fall, but no bites yet.

We released three episodes of Pop Culture on the Apricot Tree last month: one on Netflix’s The Adam Project, one on the anime film Mirai, and one on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

For October, I’m going to continue writing short stories and start work on my grad school applications. So crazy that this is really happening. Book reviews after the jump!

Continue reading “What I Read: September 2022”

What I Read: August 2022

opened book on tree root
Photo by rikka ameboshi on Pexels.com

School’s back in session and I’m working to get back on the writing horse. My goal for the fall is to write 250 words at least 4 days a week. And I restarted up my critique group after our summer break, which feels like a feat unto itself given how many critique groups dissolve and fall apart. Hopefully they’ll keep me accountable. I also plan to submit something every Friday. Not all of these will be fiction, but I figure getting myself out there is a good habit to get into. I’m also running social media my dad’s political campaign for the next two months, so I’m keeping myself quite busy.

My reading life is also busy! I finally signed up for Netgalley and found some books I’m really excited to take a look at. Plus the internet seems to be dropping recommendations left and right that I can’t wait to pick up. Does anyone else feel like there’s a book avalanche right now?

Continue reading “What I Read: August 2022”

What I Read: July 2022

woman standing near marble pillars
Photo by Andrew Neel on Pexels.com

I’m back! A two-week vacation in DC with my husband for our 15th anniversary plus a short family vacation with my parents and siblings was just what I needed after the hecticness of June. Though vacations have their own special brand of hecticness, the packing and unpacking, the chaos of not having any sort of routine or rhythm. Now there’s less than a week until the kids start school again (assuming they can all stay healthy, which given what’s been happening here the past few weeks is in doubt).

And I got a piece of good news last night: my short story “Birthright” received an Honorable Mention in the Writers of the Future contest for volume 39, quarter 2. It’s not one of the top spots, but it does put me in the top 500 or so out of the thousands of entries they received. This was my first time entering, so this result makes me optimistic about my future chances–and my fiction-writing in general. I had almost talked myself out of fiction writing, having decided that I’m more of an academic and want to get an MA rather than an MFA. But now I’m all excited to start writing stories again.

Speaking of stories, this month’s book reviews include DNFs (that’s “did not finish”) and a lot of extra vacation reading. Nine books in all, which is pretty high for me. Check them out after the jump.

Continue reading “What I Read: July 2022”

What I Read: June 2022

This month I was the ending of a lot of things: my speculative fiction class at BYU (which convinced me to apply to grad programs next year), my Under the Banner of Heaven analysis for Public Square Magazine, and my presentation on colonialism in the Stormlight Archive for the Mormon History Association. We’ve also put the podcast on summer break.

woman leaning on table
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

I am kind of exhausted and looking forward to a summer break and maybe getting back into some fiction writing of my own after all this academic and nonfiction writing. I’m going to just try to relax for the whole month of July, then jump back into the mix in August as the kids go back to school. (Did I mention my youngest is starting first grade?! It feels both so long in coming and too soon at the same time.) I will certainly be doing a lot of reading during the break, trying to catch up on a few books people sent to me for review as well as books that I bought at LTUE and MHA. A reader’s work is never done!

Continue reading “What I Read: June 2022”

Writing the Ordinary Saint’s Guide to Under the Banner of Heaven

Earlier this year, I heard that a TV series adaptation of Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer was coming to Hulu. The book title sounded familiar: I knew it was about Mormons, but I had never read it. I reached out to a couple Twitter friends to ask if the book was worth reading and if I should watch the show. After a couple conversations, I learned that Krakauer’s book was a flashpoint: though the book is generally scorned by historians, it’s been one of the top sellers in Amazon’s Mormonism category since it released in 2003. (In fact, the top 8 books as of this writing are all polygamy exposes of one stripe or another; #9 is the inimitable Rough Stone Rolling, so there’s that.)

A #Mormoninthe80s Twitter campaign I started because of the “pioneer dress gambit” in ep 1

I ended up volunteering to write reviews of each episode for Public Square Magazine. As I am not a historian (either of the Lafferty murders or of Mormon history as portrayed in the series), the perspective I decided to take was of a writer, and particularly a writer of Mormon fiction and nonfiction. (You can read an explanation of this perspective in the introduction to the series.) Again, as I’m not a member of the fundamentalist community, I tried to generally set aside the show’s portrayal of those parts of our tradition. But I do consider myself an expert on the mainstream LDS church, especially of the “Utah Mormon” variety, having grown up only a few miles down the highway from where the murders took place, though admittedly a few years later. My coverage resulted in me taking part in an interview with the LA Times about Mormon reactions to the show.

You can hear more of my overall thoughts tomorrow when the Pop Culture on the Apricot Tree episode on the series releases. (Subscribe so you don’t miss it!) But in general, I was really disappointed with the show. There is definitely a need for Mormon literature and film which isn’t one of the two extremes (faith-promoting perfection or anger-filled exposes). If this show had been more like Murder Among the Mormons, Educated, or Brigham City, there could have been more interesting discussions to be had about power dynamics in the church and the limitations of revelation. As McKay Coppins wrote in his piece in the Atlantic today, the show isn’t there for a complex conversation; it’s there “to serve a stereotype, to exoticize a people and flatten their faith tradition.” It’s a thesis driven show, not a conversation starter; and the thesis is one that every religious person in the world should be offended by, even if they don’t particularly like Mormons.

You can see all my episode-by-episode reviews on this page, or skip around to the episode you are most interested in:
Ep 1 “When God Was Love” & Ep 2 “Rightful Place”
Ep 3 “Surrender”
Ep 4 “Church and State”
Ep 5 “One Mighty and Strong”
Ep 6 “Revelation”
Ep 7 “Blood Atonement”