Julie Clarenbach

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Happy Solstice

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Winter Solstice is one of my favorite holidays, which is ironic because the forced cheer and frantic festivity of the holidays surrounding it are a little much for me.

Here in the darkest part of the year, I am always called to introspection, to planning, to reflection, to depth. None of this resonates with the cultural mandate to Holiday Cheer.

And yet, on the Winter Solstice, I am deeply, profoundly happy.

For more than a decade, now, we’ve celebrated the Solstice by having a day without electric lights, where we can deeply experience the shortness and darkness of the day. (We make an exception for the fairy lights on the holiday tree.) We exchange presents, we cook, we read tarot cards, we hang out, and we usually attempt to bake something, which, by candle light, is a lot of fun and incredibly messy. (If you try this, prepare to clean the kitchen floor the following morning.)

This ritual reminds me how much I love candle light. How much I crave slowness and deliberation. How much I enjoy domesticity and spacious time.

Wishing you all returning light and the warm embrace of a delicious darkness.

white brick fireplace with a black metal spiral lit with candles, a group of candles in the fireplace, and two big plants flanking the fireplace

Books Read in October

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The Late Show, Michael Connelly
Suspense

I made it about 60 pages in before I had to put this down. It turns out I just really can’t hang with gratuitous sexual violence anymore, and transphobic language sealed the deal. I have enjoyed Connelly books in the past, but I think I have to take him off my casual reading list.

A Better Man, Louise Penny
Mystery

This is the 15th book in her Armand Gamache series, and every time I pick up a new one, I think, but how can she keep this story going? And every time, she does, with a lovely blend of modern issues, deep compassion, quirky characters, and literary references. I will keep pre-ordering her books as long as she keeps writing them.

The Calculating Stars, Mary Robinette Kowal
Science Fiction

I’m not entirely sure what genre this one should be filed under, because it combines elements of sci-fi with a historical novel. One of my favorite things in the world is people who are deeply, passionately nerdy about something, and main character Elma is that. What if a meteor hit outside Washington, DC, in the early fifties and set off a likely extinction event, forcing us to figure out how to get to space? And what if the women who flew in WWII wanted to be astronauts? You get this delightful book, for which Kowal has justifiably won major awards.

Didn’t Stay in Vegas, Chelsea M. Cameron
Contemporary romance

This is a sweet, trope-y f/f romance. A group of friends goes to Vegas for one’s bachelorette; two of them (besties) come back married, without quite knowing how it happened. Nothing that happens here is a surprise, but the delight is in watching it unfold. Also, there are some hot sex scenes.

Catch and Kill, Ronan Farrow
Memoir/creative non-fiction

Farrow helped break the Weinstein scandal that brought Tarana Burke’s #MeToo into a broader consciousness and started toppling powerful sexual predators from their powerful posts. This book describes how that happened — and how powerful men protect one another. It illustrates just how much we have a systemic problem, and not just a bad actors problem. For a situation and an experience this complicated, Farrow does an amazing job of making it clear and easy to follow. Also, he proposes to his boyfriend in the manuscript. How cute is that?

When Breath Becomes Air, Paul Kalanithi
Memoir

Kalanithi was a neurosurgeon obsessed with language and the question of life’s meaning. In his mid-30s he developed debilitating stage IV lung cancer; this is his narrative of the experience of having to rethink his identity, rethink his goals, rethink everything he knew about how he thought his life would go. It is a gorgeous, beautiful book, with a heart-wrenching afterword by his wife. Prepare to cry.

In My Father’s House: A New View of How Crime Runs in the Family, Fox Butterfield

Non-fiction

Multiple studies have shown that 5% of families account for half of all crime and 10% account for two-thirds. This deep dive into one family attempts to look at how that happens — and it explicitly and intentionally looks at a white family to disaggregate the effects of racism and unequal policing. It’s fascinating and disturbing in equal measure, and it concludes that familial criminality is caused by a subtle interplay of nature (certain genetic susceptibilities to mental illness and other traits that co-exist with crime) and nurture (a family context in which crime is normal and expected, often coupled with abuse and neglect). It has no good solutions, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

Books Read in September

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The Spy and the Traitor, Ben Macintyre

History

In the 60s, a reasonably high ranking member of the KGB became a double agent for British Intelligence. How that happened — why he did it, how MI6 ran him, how they did and didn’t share the info with allies — is fascinating, as is the detail about the inner workings of the KGB and how British diplomats broke him out of the Soviet Union. But it’s paired with a spare, cranky narrative about a CIA agent who turned double agent for Moscow for money, not ideals. While I can appreciate the difference, I wanted a deeper, more nuanced depiction and analysis than us-good-and-right, them-bad-and-wrong.

Carnegie’s Maid, Marie Benedict

Historical fiction

Historians don’t know why Andrew Carnegie went from being a ruthless industrialist to being a ruthless industrialist with a major philanthropic side (he’s why we have public libraries), but they suspect a personal relationship. Benedict imagines a young Irish immigrant trying to save her family after the Famine becomes his mother’s lady’s maid, and it’s their conversations that push him to make those choices. In addition to a great story, there’s lots of fascinating historical detail like how industry intersected with the Civil War, what industrial towns were like at the dawn of the Industrial Age, and the specifics of wealth and class at that time. (The Carnegies were so new money.)

This book was so good that I have planned a trip to the bookstore to get Bendict’s imagined life of Hedy Lamar.

How to Hack a Heartbreak, Kristen Rockaway

Contemporary romance

I loved the themes of this book — the casual misogyny of the tech world, the difficulty of knowing who to trust in a digital-dating world full of liars and surprise dick pics, the importance of friend groups. I liked the cranky heroine and her friends. But somehow the romance itself wasn’t super compelling. I’m not sure if it’s because the first-person narrator told instead of showed, but it felt to me like it needed a little more … something.

The Wife Between Us, Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen

Suspense

I won’t go too much into the plot because it’s too likely to give something away, but this was an interesting, nuanced book about the entanglements of marriage and other relationships. Beware that there is IPV, but it is not played for titillation. Worth reading if you like suspense. (Mostly it stresses me out, but once in a while I like a good one.)

Primates of Park Avenue, Wednesday Martin

Memoir/Anthropology

I picked this up for book research (it’s not like I have personal experience with overly rich New Yorkers) and while some of it was tongue in cheek, some of it was really enlightening as well. The author doesn’t seem to really grasp her privilege; she’s definitely on the lower end of the income scale on the Upper East Side, but she also bought a Birkin bag, and those are five figures. Still, I always like a look into the lives of people who aren’t me and mine.

Into the Rogue Sea, Rachel Slade

Creative non-fiction

On a routine run from Florida to Puerto Rico, a container ship goes down in a hurricane — which just doesn’t happen. Slade traces all the different forces (corporate, cultural, patriarchal, governmental) that conspired to lead to 33 people dying. It’s full of fascinating details, like how shipping shaped the Constitution and the tiny but fierce community of maritime lawyers. An excellent book.