Reading, Writing, and Me

Colored Television  by Danzy Senna  Overview: Jane hasn't published a book in ten years. It's holding her back from tenure at her job teaching writing at an LA liberal arts college, and her career has stalled while her peers have charged ahead through publishing, branching into television, or finding new creative. Her husband isn't excelling either, though, in Jane's mind, this is because of his own choices in his abstract art. Having a family to support in LA, Jane feels the pressure to figure out this novel, or else figure out a new way to support her family. Overall: 4 Characters: 4 Jane is a great character, especially for a story like this. She comes across as almost placid— calm, collected, and internal on the outside, but internally, she's packed with contradictions. She struggles to hold herself as a mom and a writer at the same time. She's in a marriage that is both the great love of her life and something she loathes. Jane so obviously yearns for thing

Cassie and I were having a mediocre lunch in Edinburgh when I discovered the next stop on my bookstore tour of Europe... or, well, my trip to Ireland, Scotland, and England that has become an excuse to visit as many bookstores as possible. It started with discovering my new favorite indie bookshop of all time in Dublin (more on that in another post), and this happy accident has officially turned bookstores into the theme of our trip. Given how incessantly I've babbled on about Sally Rooney in the last five days, books were always going to be front and center. I am who I am.  That being said, I wanted the bookstores to find us and not the other way around, so checking off a bookstore in every country is down to fate. I'd been surprised that there wasn't a single bookshop on the Royal Mile or Victoria Street (mostly, it's just shops for cashmere, cashmere, and even more cashmere), but turning down a random side street in search of food put us in the way, finally, of an Ed