Reading, Writing, and Me

In August, I got back on the reading train. If you noticed that I didn't have a post for July's Wrap-Up, you can probably guess that my reading (and blogging) month didn't go exactly to plan. Luckily, August has felt much more fulfilling on a creative front, and part of that means doing more reading. Beyond books, I ended up joining a critique group, registered for a writer's conference in my hometown, and made steps towards both submitting more short stories and progressing on my novel draft. Part of my career choices post-grad were heavily made to prioritize writing, and I'm trying to honor that in both my reading and writing. I read a new favorite book this month as well as some others I'm greatly enjoying. I read a recommendation from a friend and a book that sparked Twitter drama months ago. It was a varied reading month and hopefully one that will be repeated.  stats. August felt like a strong reading month coming out of July where I worked a ton, got sick

Daddy  by Emma Cline Thoughts:  I want to start this off with the preface that I'm not a huge Emma Cline fan in general. I really didn't like The Girls , and I liked The Guest  enough. But there's a certain charm to her writing that intrigues me, nonetheless. So, since I wanted to read more short stories this year, I picked up Cline's anthology with collected stories from esteemed literary magazines like the Paris Review, Granata, and the New Yorker.  And there are many great stories here. I'm impressed with the quality of the writing and the craft evident across the collection. Writing a short story is hard. It's an incredibly difficult form to get right. And Cline does it in story after story in this anthology covering a range of topics and places–mostly different looks at various people's unique and privileged lives, a peak behind the curtain. Some of these stories are directly   embedded in these worlds, while other stories brush with it from an outsider