It’s been snowing like crazy here in Utah. The kids even got a snow day, which was unheard of when I grew up here but seems much more common now with remote learning tools. My father-in-law has been keeping track and says he’s shoveled his driveway 20 times this year. It’s definitely been cramping my running style. I know how to run in the drizzly rain of Seattle, but I still haven’t quite braced myself for running 6 miles in the snow.
This month I attended LTUE 41 in Provo. My goal was to attend some classes about plot and structure to help me improve my ability to finish stories (still a struggle!). I also wanted to network with potential guests for Pop Culture on the Apricot Tree, which I definitely succeeded at. There was a presentation on “Faith and Film” with a bunch of LDS film people who I’m hoping to follow up with. I also met up with my online writing group, which was formed after the conference last year (Hi, Paper Wizards! You are awesome!) and had lunch with a great group of writers from the Latter-day Saint Authors of Science Fiction and Fantasy group on Facebook.
But the highlight for me was finally getting to hear Nick Fredrick’s presentation “Could Brandon Sanderson Have Saved the Nephites?” (I was so mad that I couldn’t make it up to the Book of Mormon Studies Association conference when he first presented it.) I didn’t realize the title was playing off of a 1994 presentation by Carol Lynn Pearson called “Could Feminism Have Saved the Nephites?” so now I’ve got homework to do. I loved how the paper combined the academic, the theological, and the personal into one cohesive package. It’s exactly the sort of thing I’d love to write someday. Fingers crossed, but I think we’re going to publish it in the genre fiction issue of Irreantum, so you’ll all get to read it!
February was very poor on the writing front. Only hit 2668/8000 words. Probably due to the shortness of the month, LTUE, and other responsibilities getting in the way. Oh well, time to get back to work in March. I’ve got a new short story I’m working on codenamed “Terraforming Project.” Also my proposal for the Association for Mormon Letters conference was accepted, so now I get to write my paper on how Mormons write about aliens. The conference will be streamed free online, so jump in if you’re interested. I’m excited to see what other fun presentations on Mormonism and genre fiction were selected.
In publishing news, my Solar Punk Utah story has found a home! I’ll be sure to post a link here when the story is published. We published two killer episodes on Pop Culture on the Apricot Tree this month. Episode 21 is a crossover with Radical Civility discussing the “Hated in the Nation” episode of Black Mirror and how social media makes us worse human beings. We also released an episode discussing The Chosen from an LDS perspective, including the whole “I am the law” controversy.
And the biggest news of all, which I just got this morning: my application was accepted to BYU’s English MA program, so I’ll be going back to school this fall! It’s going to be a major lifestyle adjustment, but I’m excited to put some more work into my academic side.
And now, on to the book reviews!
Speculative Fiction
Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky – My husband and I are both big fans of Children of Time and Children of Ruin, but this book really let us down. In the last 10% of the book, I finally understood what the author was doing and why, but that didn’t make up for the slog of the first 90%. When you choose to write a book with a big twist, you can’t rely on the twist to make the whole book work; the part before the twist needs to also be interesting in its own right before you recontextualize it with the twist. The majority of this book feels like you’re just spinning your wheels waiting for the author to tell you what the heck is going on. If the twist had happened at the 1/3 mark, or even at 50%, this could have been a much better book for me.
On the positive side, the new uplifted species was really well thought out, even though the plot really didn’t use them well. I’m sad that this entry doesn’t stand up to the rest of the series.
Lost in the Moment and Found by Seanan McGuire – After being disappointed with the last two volumes in the Wayward Children series of novellas, I am delighted that this book is a return to form. A serious content warning, which to the author’s credit is listed at the beginning of the audiobook: the origin story of this character has to do with gaslighting and the sexual abuse of children, though our protagonist escapes before anything happens (again, also in the author’s note). Even though I have no personal trauma to be triggered by such a beginning, it was intense enough that I had to take those chapters in small doses.
Once past that point, I found the world behind Antsy’s door to be absolutely delightful, with just the right amount of delightful exploration balanced with a looming, ominous backstory. The secret that is finally revealed resonates so well with the book’s themes. I could have taken a much longer novel set in this world, and that’s exactly the point. Fantastic novella which could stand alone from the series, though I highly recommend you pick up the whole set.
Beauty by Robin McKinley – This book was my sister’s favorite in our teenage years, and yet I somehow never picked it up. Maybe I’ve been spoiled by the excellent modern crop of fairy tale retellings, but I was a bit underwhelmed by this version of Beauty and the Beast. The prose is great and the characters are fleshed out and believable, but there’s little here to recontextualize the events of the fairy tale and surprise the reader, just a straight through novel-length retelling of Beauty and the Beast. Perhaps my reaction is because this book is the original upon which all the current books built, and I’m just reading it 40 years too late. I just wanted this book to grapple a bit more with some questions: How has the beast changed to become someone better? Is Beauty affected by her transformation from plain to beautiful? Overall, I have no particular qualms with this book; it just didn’t impress me given the hype I’ve heard from people over the years.
Genealogy of Werewolves by Mette Harrison – It’s never a good idea to jump in at the second book in a series, but here I am anyway. This book is a curious supernatural twist on the Salt Lake City area. While the vampiric events of the previous book are strongly hinted at in this book, the knowledge wasn’t necessary for understanding the plot as this book is all about the werewolves. (That said, I will definitely be picking up Vampires in the Temple at some point when I’m not swamped with other book commitments.)
The “genealogy” of the title was the most fascinating point of the story from an LDS perspective, which I won’t spoil. But there was a lack of follow-up on the implications of this revelation as the main character immediately burns the papers and the slanted version of a persona from LDS history we’ve just learned about becomes just a standard mafia-type big-bad with no particular motives. I was disappointed at how little this book did with the interesting take on a classic part of early restoration mythos.
Where this book does engage with Mormonism is in the culture. We get a deep dive into some rather sketchy parts of the nominally LDS dating pool as well as a prototypical LDS family portrayed with all its strengths and weaknesses. I think Mette Harrison’s status as both insider and outsider gave her good ground to comment on LDS foibles from, even though most of the experiences she portrays are contrary to my experience. It’s interesting that she’s chosen a non-Mormon main character to be the detective uncovering mysteries entwined in the Mormon supernatural.
Overall, I found the plot compelling, though the main character Jack was somewhat of a drag. Then again, that’s par for the course when a character is struggling with grief and depression. I can’t quite bring myself to give this book a full four stars, but I’ll round it up from 3.5 to give it the benefit of the doubt. There are three more forthcoming volumes in the series, and I am interested to see what Mette builds from the things she set up in this volume. My lukewarm opinion may be proven wrong by the worldbuilding in future books.
Nonfiction
Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear – Though I still agree with my 2019 Goodreads review that many of the principles in this book are well-known and no surprise to anyone who frequently reads in the “habits and self-control” genre, I do think James Clear deserves credit for taking these ideas into a practical form. This was much more apparent to me this time around reading the ebook version instead of listening to the audio. I have already used a few of Clear’s strategies helpfully in implementing some of my current habit goals. Particularly, I had been boxed into the idea that I had a “morning routine” and an “evening routine” and everything had to fit in those. The prescription to write down everything you do every day made me see that I have a lot more points in my day where I can stick small, useful habits. Applause to Clear for his very concise and helpful manual for the human habit.
The Upward Spiral: Using Neuroscience to Reverse the Course of Depression, One Small Change at a Time by Alex Korb – I picked this audiobook up on an Audible sale at some point but never got around to reading it. Again, many of the principles in this book are the same things I’ve read in other books, but the compilation and focus is helpful. Too many people have swallowed the idea that depression and anxiety are a result of determinate factors like immutable brain chemistry and genetics. This book sets the record straight with the idea of upward and downward spirals. Our brains are actually feedback machines: what we put in (our choices and environment) changes the way our brain physically structures itself which makes it easier to make more of those same choices. While depression is not “all in your head,” that doesn’t mean that it also isn’t “in your head” in some ways. “In your head” is not the same as “not real.” In many ways, we create our reality through our choices. This means that depression is not a life sentence, but something you can actually get better from. I am excited to apply some of the strategies in my life and help my kids see how to apply them as well.
Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible by E. Randolph Richards & Brandon J. O’Brien – A straightforward guide to the differences between the cultural audience originally envisioned by the authors of the bible and our modern sensibilities. This book generally covers how the things that make us WEIRD (that’s Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) sometimes makes us read scripture exactly the opposite way from what the text means and give us blind spots that make us privilege certain commandments over others.
I feel unqualified to disagree with the authors, but I don’t quite buy the idea that non-western cultures have no conception of internal guilt, only social shame/face. While the balance is definitely different, I doubt very much that there’s *no* social shame in western cultures (hello, social media mobs) and *no* internal guilt in non-western societies (otherwise, how did western culture ever develop its internal compass?). But if I tone down the extremity of the argument, I can see that these are useful points in trying to understand Bible on its own terms. I look forward to trying to apply these lenses to my study of the New Testament this year. (It also makes me wonder what kinds of cultural drift happened in Book of Mormon cultures and what signals we might be missing from their expectations of the text.)
