Up to Something #9
Up to Something #9
3 Book recommendations, a poem, and a snapshot of autumn bliss.
Up to Something is an occasional segment of my newsletter through which I let you all know what I’m reading, watching, listening to, and/or thinking about. This is the 9th edition.
Hi! It’s been a while!
As always, I’m currently in the process of listening to an array of audiobooks. Here is a selection of three that I think are worth sharing:
FANTASY: This past summer, the feature film animation studio LAIKA secured the rights to make a film adaptation of Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, a fantasy novel (which I revisited upon learning of this rights acquisition) that follows the titular character as he lives in a place he calls “the House.” The House is a seemingly endless place decorated with marble statues, and it fills with sea water and associated ocean creatures at high tide. Piranesi spends his days catching fish to eat, writing entires in his meticulously kept series of journals, and anticipating visits with a character he calls “the Other” …until things begin to unravel, and the plot begins to make both more AND less sense. LAIKA is known for its intricate stop-motion children’s films, most notably Coraline of 2009, and I’m excited to see what they do with Piranesi.
NONFICTION: After listening to an interview with the author on a New York Times podcast, I began listening to The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center by Rhaina Cohen, which came out this past February. The book explores what the author argues is an underrated relationship dynamic: deep friendships. Cohen recounts the stories of friends who are usually close; some call each other platonic life partners, co-parents, or platonic soulmates. We live in a society that currently places monogamous, romantic relationships at the very top of all relationship hierarchies, and we are all conditioned to believe that romantic relationships are superior to close friendships. But it doesn’t have to be that way! I’m only a of couple hours into this audiobook, but so far, it feels like a warm, nonfiction-y hug.
SCIENCE FICTION: The (audio)book I am thinking about the most is one that I finished just this weekend, and I haven’t stopped thinking of it. Bewilderment is Richard Power’s thirteenth novel, and it has absolutely sent my heart through a paper shredder. Bewilderment is told from the perceptive of Dr. Theo Byrne, an astrobiologist who looks for life on faraway planets. He is steadfastly devoted to caring for his son, nine-year-old Robin, who, following the death of his activist mother in a car accident, has an increasingly difficult time coping with his own sensitivity to the natural world as the Earth slowly descends into disaster. Upon Robin’s impending expulsion from the third grade for his explosive rage, Theo—who refuses to have his son medicated with psychiatric sedatives—grudgingly agrees to let an old scientist acquaintance try an experimental treatment on Robin. Using an MRI machine, the boy begins retraining his brain on a map of his deceased mother’s euphoric connection to nature.
I was initially drawn to this book because its synopsis seems to heavily imply autistic representation from Robin—and listening to it was meaningful for that reason—but I did not expect to be so engrossed in a story that, when boiled down to its bones, is really about a father’s love for his son in the throes of familial grief (and the metonymy of everyday life-as-usual) on a dying planet. The story is deeply beautiful and equally haunting, and I listened to all seven hours and fifty-one minutes of the audiobook without stopping. Bewilderment clearly takes inspiration from the 1959 short story Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, and it packs the same punch to the gut, tenfold.
In other news, here is a brief poem I love that I’ve been revisiting more often in recent weeks: It’s called Meditations in an Emergency by poet, academic writer, and professor Dr. Cameron Awkward-Rich. You can click the title in my previous sentence to read it on the publisher’s website or hear the poet read the piece aloud, but here it is, copied and pasted with its original spacing, for your convenience…and because it’s short:
"I wake up & it breaks my heart. I draw the blinds & the thrill of rain breaks my heart. I go outside. I ride the train, walk among the buildings, men in Monday suits. The flight of doves, the city of tents beneath the underpass, the huddled mass, old women hawking roses, & children all of them, break my heart. There’s a dream I have in which I love the world. I run from end to end like fingers through her hair. There are no borders, only wind. Like you, I was born. Like you, I was raised in the institution of dreaming. Hand on my heart. Hand on my stupid heart."
Hmm…I think I might begin always sharing a poem with each new edition of Up to Something!
Thinking about sublime sensitivity and natural beauty, I am going to close out this 9th edition of my newsletter with this picture I took at golden hour at a lake here in Seattle, while listening to Bewilderment on Saturday.
More soon! Thank you for reading.