Kate Ardis Oden

I’m a beginner writer but an intermediate human.

I didn’t know if I should go book hunting today, but then I found a signed Margaret Atwood and was pretty sure it was a good idea.

I feel very lucky to have found this.

I found a signed Martin Amis for a buck yesterday. It’s a paperback, it’s falling apart, it’s not worth any lucre, but I have Martin Amis’s handwriting in my house now.

I think I’ll be doing a write-up of this Salter for a regional email newsletter mostly because, when grabbing it greedily last week, I ran into the woman responsible for that free library. It’d be nice to take it full circle. You know, encourage greed.

Estate sale bingo

I’m sick of social media, the trolling and the take-downs (for something as straightforward as reading and buying books), the idiocy. I’m reading something great. I’ll be back as soon as (if) the need to connect overtakes the need to be on firm footing.

I don’t think so. 60 pages in and I don’t like any of the characters, for one thing.

Might just be taking a glimpse of this, but it’s so well written and compelling…

Beauty

I’m going to need to get my hands on some Marlon James today.

Spent most of the day with this novel, start to finish. It has a hungry current, has love for its subjects, has intrigue, has also clarity and space…it absolutely rips.

Yeah, this is riveting.

I can’t decide on this Booker-shortlister yet, though at 30 pages, I’m farther in than I got with either Strout or Stuart. It feels cold and easy, but like there might be a twist or some authentic darkness in store.

On roses— Rilke: “That one should open like an eye, / to show more lids … to quench / an inner fire of visionary power.” Anne Carson: “They stood up straight and pure on the stalk, gripping the dark like prophets / and howling colossal intimacies ...”

Garden heat for the chili, corked and ready.

To do laundry (visible) and clean the kitchen cupboards or read this puppy I THINK YOU KNOW MY CHOICE.

We watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid the other night. It drag-assed in the middle, but I’m committed to Paul Newman as the most beautiful human face who ever lived.

Deliciously out of control, the stacks. Every day, awake in multiple lives, through these books.

Anne Carson!

Making a pear-ricotta-prosciutto tart with gnarly little Bosc-adjacent pears from the yard