What Are You...

Reading ~ Watching ~ Making

Well, it happened. I submitted my last set of final grades and cleaned out off my office. Within the next week or so I will have turned in my retirement application, my keys, and my laptop. While I am not officially retired and there is a long checklist of adulting I need to get through before I can truly relax into the retired life, it is beginning to feel real at last. I am hoping that the retired life will bring more days when I can simply lean into watching, reading, and making - and I hope to do so in community! Please join me as I complete this transition from practice retirement to retirement reality.

I am still very much enjoying my Reading the USA challenge and have (or will within days) completed seven states so far (see Hawaii, Alaska, and Oregon for previous update). I am learning a lot and so far have only encountered one book I wouldn’t recommend compared to three I would highly recommend. I would recommend the other three but each does offer some challenges so they may not be for everyone.

Given how much I loved The Music of Bees, no one should be surprised that I also highly recommend Eileen Garvin’s Crow Talk. I really love her style and the format of building a human story around a nature story. I don’t think I can share the same level of enthusiasm for crows that I do for bees, but that may just be because I’m also slow reading The Stand which certainly does not portray crows in a favorable light.

I also highly recommend Ivan Doig’s This House of Sky. I love this type of memoir that teaches me about a place and time through the eyes of a specific person or family. Even though his family’s experience was very different from mine I still felt echoes and intersections with what I know of the struggles that my great-grandparents and grandparents experienced. The narrative and description is so well written that I devoured this book very quickly.

Emily Ruskovich’s Idaho was well written but certainly includes some challenging topics which might be hard for some readers. It also did not deliver as much detail as I would have liked about Idaho. This may simply have been in contrast to the other books that gave me so much more insight into the setting. I do recommend but definitely check out the description before checking it out to make sure this is a safe read for you.

The same warning holds true for Shilpi Somaya Gowda’s A Great Country. For many I would highly recommend this book because I was quickly drawn in and whizzed through it in a few days (which included a busy family weekend). Similar to Idaho this book was light on California in some ways because it focuses in on such a specific snapshot in time. However, I didn’t feel the lack here as much because I have read a lot about California in the past so your experience may vary. I did very much appreciate the focus on the immigrant experience because California is a great setting for an exploration of this topic. However, if you have experienced trauma from interactions with the US immigration system and/or law enforcement and/or racism then please consider whether or not this is the right time for you to read this book.

I am very excited for this journey of Reading the USA and hope that others will join me on this adventure! My most recent nonfiction read was The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by bell hooks and I also highly recommend this text. I took it slow because there was a lot to think about and talk about with others. May need to revisit again for more processing. What are you reading? Check out my current reads and to-read lists on Fable.

What I’m Watching

I am still thinking about Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord even though it wrapped last week. The show didn’t deliver everything I hoped but there was still a lot there to unpack including some of my favorite questions about the Jedi and the Force and the complicated traumatized child soldier that is Maul himself. I love animated Star Wars and both the final season of The Clone Wars and Rebels will always hold a special place in my heart. I also love The Bad Batch, btw. Right now I’m still processing Maul - Shadow Lord and consuming lots of related content along the way.

I’m also slow rolling through the final episodes of House of the Dragon (Season 2) in preparation for Season 3 which I will finally be able to consume in community in June. I cannot even tell you how much I love this show but then GRRM does know how to write for me! HotD certainly hits me both emotionally and intellectually in all the best ways. How can this fantasy show about dragon lords feel so relevant?

In addition, I have gotten back in the swing with movie watching including managing to catch Project Hail Mary on the big screen thanks to the extended run. Definitely a feel good movie that we can all benefit from viewing. Also rewatched one of my favorite (maybe THE favorite?) Marvel movie Captain America: The Winter Soldier as part of my Doomsday prep. Check out my movie watches and reviews on Letterboxd. What are you watching for fun and/or inspiration and/or escape?

What I’m Making

This is a bit trickier. I should be making poetry but I haven’t shaped anything into an actual poem in what feels like ages. I have been writing (in my journal) although not as regularly as I would like. I have been writing here on Substack and on my blogs (Metawriting and Deanna Mascle: Writing Evangelist). It has been fun to make book and movie brackets and lists on my Deanna’s Third Act Bookshop.org page. What are you making for fun and/or inspiration and/or escape?

Here’s hoping you’ll share what you are reading, watching, and making to make your life and our world a better place!