So, I went out and bought…well OK, that’s not really true. Ahem. Let’s try that again.

So, since my beloved local bookstore allows curbside pickups but nothing more these days, given our collective Covid-19 trauma, I went online and bought a bunch of books, thinking that since my workload is generally lighter in August (no Faulkner jokes, please!), and we were going to try to vacation, a pile of books was the way to go. Here’s what I got:

The Only Good Indians

City of Girls

Whisper Network

The Need

Beneath the Rising

I managed to hold off on reading ANY of them until we arrived at the appointed relaxation place (relaxation ended up something we had to really work for, given some unexpected cancellations of campus living, sharks, sudden illnesses and so on). I started with The Need, which was smart and creepy and clever, but not…profoundly engaging.

Even so, I still had the rest, which I splayed out on the couch with my accomplices. We deployed the old “page 101 technique”* and started with  The Only Good Indians. Which was really, really strange and good and well-written, but it turns out I can’t go with the horror for real. I am, it seems, more of a “horror-lite,” person, which sounds terrible and probably is, but I wanted to give it to you straight. The book took one dark turn, and I went swimming and took a few deep breaths. And then I came back, and I was OK, until it took another dark turn and…that was it. It’s on the shelf in my house, waiting for me to become stronger. This may never happen.

But we knew, from our page 101 test, that the other book that passed the page 101 test, that flew along swiftly on the wings of powerful prose, was City of Girls. Which I did not read next. Why? I think, probably, it had to do with the title. And it’s by Elizabeth Gilbert, who wrote Eat, Pray, Love. She wrote a smart and lovely novel called The Signature of All Things. Which I enjoyed! So why did not go ahead and read it? I think there is some deeply ingrained misogyny in me, telling me to read something that was not about girls.

Sigh.

All of which is to bring me to: I began reading City of Girls once I was back in my regular house, sweating unpleasantly in my living room while we tried to figure out how we were going to make everything work even though nothing works, and…it was wonderful. So much fun. Delightful! Fizzy and fast and knowing, just a pleasure. How long has it been since I read anything that was such a pleasure? I don’t even know, but I do know that I stayed up reading late late in bed, and I wish us all that kind of lovely distraction from all the ills and sorrows of this poor old world.

I know my former readers are scattered to the winds, and that the blog has changed its time and place and address. I hope to be here for a while, and for those of you still here, I hope you are all well.

And if you have ANY books that are a pleasure, let me know in the comments! We could all use them right about now.

* The page 101 technique, about which I once wrote a blog post that I can no longer locate, involves reading page 101 of a book as a test to see whether you will enjoy it. Skips the sometimes misleading polished prose of page 1 and the spoiler situation of the back cover. Try it! (And I will try to find that post.)