Hello, 2024 (+ Recapping 2023)

Hello, my dear ones. 'Tis I, Megan the Nutmeg, back from the metaphorical abyss.

How are you? 

I hope you're well. 

On one of my last posts from this address, I said I was going on an adventure. I got a teaching position in New York City and lived in the beautiful Bronx for a year. Now I'm back in old Ohio, but my year in New York was what they call a formative experience. 

I suppose that's part of the reason I've taken down all my old posts; I'm not quite the same person I was. 

HAHAHA, THAT SOUNDS SO DRAMATIC. 

Let's talk about books! 

(Followed by writing, followed by movies/music. But first, books.) 

READERLY RECAP

With the help of Goodreads, I'm gonna just...give you the rundown on 2023.

In January 2023, I tried to make friends with Flannery O'Connor by reading a few of her short stories: "A Good Man is Hard to Find," "A Late Encounter With the Enemy," "The Life You Save May Be Your Own," and "The River." (I chiefly remember lying cozied up in my narrow New York apartment bedroom reading these. I wouldn't say I enjoyed the stories, but I enjoyed the fact that I was reading them. Then my roommate came in and said "Let's go to Central Park" so we ran around Central Park under a winter moon. Crazy girls.) 

At some point I worked through Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati's Letters to His Friends and Family.

I read Antoine de Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince mostly in the laundromat, and was crushed by it. (A lovely place, the laundromat. Smells like detergent and warm, soft linen. Sounds like Spanish radio. I miss it.) I reread it this past December, and was crushed by it again.

Rafael Sabatini's Scaramouche I read on the plane home during February break. Deliciousness, that one. Sheer deliciousness. 

Nancy Springer's The Case of the Missing Marquese wasn't my favorite, but it was a fun light read that I could commit to even in the midst of a busy schoolyear, and for that I was deeply grateful.

For Holy Week, I read select writings by Fulton Sheen on the Seven Words of Jesus and Mary. 10/10 recommend.

Howl's Moving Castle, I purchased at a Manhattan Barnes & Noble one rainy spring Saturday and finished that evening. (For book club.--If I read any long-form fiction at all in the school year, it was generally for book club. Bless that book club.) The Enigma Game also came home with me that Saturday, but it lasted considerably longer than Howl (and broke my heart considerably more). 

Sometime in May, The Case of the Left-Handed Lady turned me off Enola Holmes, and I have yet to return to the series. I remember reading it on a bus full of young adults returning from upstate New York.

That same pilgrimage to upstate New York led me to read Narrative of a Captivity Among the Mohawk Indians, by the one, the only, the heroic St. Isaac Jogues. (Pray for us, sir.)

I spent my sick days crying over Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons and (at long last) knocking out the last half of Evelyn Waugh's Edmund Campion.

Megan Whalen Turner's The Queen of Attolia was a wonderfully twisty book-club read on my library app. Having discovered the delights of said library app, I did some research on the Underground Railroad: semiseriously, the Authentic Narratives and First-Hand Accounts of William Still; and, less seriously, The Underground Railroad Adventure of Allen Jay, Antislavery Activist, which turned out to be a graphic novel for kids. 

(Someday I'll write my Underground Railroad novel. Someday.)  

After that, I came home.

Ohio was very green and quiet.

I read Rumer Godden's In This House of Brede.

I have no room for all my thoughts and feelings on In This House of Brede here. 

Writing this list out, I've come to realize it's my favorite read of 2023. 

Anyway. 

Also in the green quiet of the homecoming days, I lay in the grass and read Littsie of Cincinnati, and A Gown of Spanish Lace by Janette Oke, and Pat of Silver Bush by Lucy Maude Montgomery. (In the middle of Pat and Silver Bush, I moved into my current household.) 

The end of summer saw me read I Survived: The Battle of Gettysburg 

and King of the Wind and Brown Sunshine of Sawdust Valley (behold the Nutmeg's Marguerite Henry Appreciation Kick) 

and Saint Isaac and the Indians (which did the injustice of skipping St. Rene Goupil) 

and a fun little Catholic superhero comic entitled The Phantom Phoenix #1. 

As the new schoolyear got underway I read Colleen Carroll Campbell's excellent My Sisters the Saints, and Caryll Houselander's magnificent The Reed of God. 

Autumn came in earnest and with it Saints of the American Wilderness: The Brave Lives and Holy Deaths of the Eight North American Martyrs, which DID feature Rene Goupil, and also corrected my erroneous understanding that the layman St. Jean de Lalande was a priest. 

Then there was Til We Have Faces (a reread; wonderful stuff, also surprisingly dark) 

and Dawn Brings Glory: A Story of Blessed Miguel Pro, S. J. 

and---OH! OH! I'm excited about this one: The Shadow of the Bear, by Regina Doman. It's a retelling of Snow White and Rose Red set in 1990s New York City. The characters are great fun and the plot is a wild ride. I didn't want to do anything but lay around the house and read it. Happily, my roommates and I all went ice skating the first day of December, and I fell and banged my knee pretty good, and had an excuse to be a very lazy lounging bookworm indeed the next day. THAT NEVER HAPPENS. (The banging-myself-up doing fun physical things, that is. The lazy lounging bookworm happens all the time.)

Jesmyn Ward is a novelist of great lyrical power, but I am sorry to say I was disappointed by Let Us Descend. 

Just before Thanksgiving break, I read a book on St. Gianna: Wife, Mother, Doctor which made me very happy.

I read one of the Time Life books in the Epic of Flight, America in the Air War, which endeared me more than ever to Jimmy Doolittle (among others). 

I don't think I was in the right mood to appreciate Sid Fleischman's The Whipping Boy, but I read it anyway.

Around Christmas, I got my greedy paws on Black as Night and Waking Rose, the sequels to The Shadow of the Bear, and alas: they were not quite what I wanted. I just want characters to be HAPPY together, don't you know, especially when you have such a wonderful cast of characters as Bear and Blanche and Fish and Rose. Obviously, you need conflict. But in addition to mortal peril, I want friendly interpersonal conflict with large helpings of banter and plenty of emotional support systems in place. In short, Black as Night and Waking Rose were both Good Books, but they weren't /quite/ my cup of tea to the extent that The Shadow of the Bear was. 

This brings us to 2024; and so far this year, I have enjoyed 

two Tintin books (The Secret of the Unicorn + Red Rackham's Treasure), 

a book on Elizabeth of the Trinity: A Life of Praise to God (cool saint), 

Tom Playfair (which never gets old), 

and, of course, my obligatory January re-visitation of that masterpiece of all American masterpieces, The Great Gatsby. (!!!) 

WRITERLY RECAP

In January of 2023, I finished the last major draft revision of my comic space opera. 

I refuse to do any more major rewrites. The draft has reached a point where it is what I want it to be, insofar as is within my power. Not that I won't keep tweaking sentences here and there. But we need to move on to the next stage, this story and I. 

I may or may not have started writing the sequel. I may or may not be 10,000 words in. And I may or may not know where the plot is going. It's a fun time. ^.^ 

That's really my one major writing project. There are various other things that tug at my imagination once in awhile, but I don't think any of them are really and truly ready. 

MISCELLANEOUS (movies + music) RECAP

Musically, there's not much new over here. The artists who got me through my homesick days in New York City boil down to:

1. The Wailin' Jennys
    notable tracks:
    "Heaven When We're Home"
    "You Are Here Now" 
    "Swing Low, Sail High"

2. Dean Martin
    notable tracks:
    "My Rifle, my Pony, and Me" (from Rio Bravo)
    "The Street Where You Live"
    + anything else Google Home decided I wanted to listen to

3. Simon & Garfunkel
    notable tracks:
    "At the Zoo" (cuz NYC)
    "The Boxer" (CLASSIC)
    etc. etc. etc. you can't really go wrong with S&G

4. The Lumineers
    notable tracks:
    "Holding Out" (from Storks) (I don't know why)
    "Life in the City" (EVERY TIME I WAS AT LA GUARDIA, GUYS, EVERY TIME)
    etc. etc. etc. you can't really go wrong with the Lumineers either

Thanks to a combination of living with my roommates and getting recs from home, I also got a fair amount of exposure to Mumford & Sons and The Avett Brothers, who were also quite comforting. Lord Huron is now on my radar (thanks to Grim), 

OOH and the Arcadian Wild. I keep meaning to explore them further, but their album Principium is a tippy-top favorite of mine. 

I also brought "Peanuts" by Frankie Valli into my classroom, and will never hear it the same way again. 

In the autumn of 2022, my family discovered the animated movie The Book of Life, and it became something of an instant family classic. The soundtrack may or may not have made its way into my musical life, as well. 

The Broadway cast recording of Hamilton is, of course, a perennial favorite (and something of a universal favorite, too, as it was something my NY roommates and I could agree on). Speaking of Broadway, I encountered New York, New York and Hadestown there and it was grand, especially Hadestown. (I can't say I've listened to Hadestown regularly since then, but I have a vague intention to do so.) Les Mis holds true as the kind of friend who is there for you even when you've been away for a long while. 

This school year, I've been properly introduced to the music of Chris Renzema. 

But lately, I haven't been listening to anything but the soundtrack of Wonka.

Strictly speaking, that's hyperbole. From my roommates' point of view, it's understatement.

Wonka is my current fictional obsession. 

But that's a post (or multiple posts) for another day. 

Thank you, 2023.

Welcome, 2024.

How are you, my dear humans? What have you been up to? I hope you're well. 

God bless us, every one!

Love and prayers,

Megan the Nutmeg