May is here, with its sunshine and flowers and seasonal allergies! Perhaps I can interest you in a book while the pollen count is high? Or a BRAND NEW BLOGCAST to listen to whilst you reap and/or sow your raised garden beds? Read on for recommendations, my friends, read on!

What I'm reading

We Love You, Charlie Freeman, Kaitlyn Greenidge

I'd never heard of the genre "psychological fiction" before I read We Love You, Charlie Freeman, but if there's a poster book for the form, this is it. On its face, this story is about a family recruited to adopt a chimpanzee (Charlie) and teach him sign language. Underneath, though, it's about EVERYTHING: adolescence, otherness, race, eugenics, language. It sounds dense, but it's somehow...not. It's fast and compelling and I read it in three days, and I think Kaitlyn Greenidge just might be the new boss of all of us.

What I'm watching

The Lost City, Amazon Prime

Oh my friends, what a perfectly toasted meringue of a movie The Lost City is. It's good in the way capery '90s rom-coms were good—silly, mildly predictable, filled with easy jokes and attractive people. It's sort of Temple of Doom with the roles flipped (and the human sacrificed removed), with Channing Tatum playing the hot idiot and Sandra Bullock the gruff archaeologist. Well, the failed archaeologist turned romance writer. For her benefit and ours, we get some on-the-nose dialogue about embracing marshmallowy garbage if it brings people joy—and if that's not printed right on the poster, someone ought to be fired.

What I'm listening to

If Books Could Kill, Michael Hobbes & Peter Shamshiri

If you're in the mood for a takedown of pretty much any Oprah's Book Club pick from the past 20 years, listen to If Books Could Kill. Reproving, as their tagline puts it, "the airport bestsellers that captured our hearts and destroyed our minds," hosts Michael and Peter go after all the big ones——The Secret, Men Are from Mars/Women Are from Venus, Hillbilly Elegy, Outliers. Turns out the more popular the book, the less likely it is to be supported by actual facts. And, if it was published in the '90s, the more likely it was to encourage distressed women to make their husbands sandwiches. Pick an episode, any episode! It's a ride.

What I'm thinking about

I'm thinking about a few things.

Obviously, I'm thinking about Tears of the Kingdom. A lot. I'm not sure I've picked up anything in my home—least of all a mushroom, a wooden stick, or an errant bat eyeball—for the past two weeks without hearing that little bink-bonk item sound. And I pick up a lot of things. Especially since my children learned to navigate hallways using trails of discarded socks. The point is that I'm saving Hyrule all the time, Switch or no Switch, thanks to the power of my imagination and a mild video game addiction.

I'm also thinking about my golf game, which is a stalwart game indeed. Immovable, even. Like a circus performer you could pay to punch in the stomach. Expensive lessons, new equipment, and endless practice bounce off its swarthy mustache like kernels of popcorn. In this way, I'm beginning to think it's come to me as something of a spiritual teacher.

If you work hard enough, my golf game says, you, too, can stay sort of okay at a sport you've been trying to master for over thirty years.

It's called the radical acceptance of mediocrity, and I'm thinking of monetizing it.

Finally, I'm thinking about the phrase, "Just wait." Especially as it is levied at young parents. Lately I hear a lot of, "Just wait until she's a teenager!" but when the kids were babies I was also treated to, "Just wait for teething," "Just wait for the terrible twos," and most notably, by a former coworker, "Just wait until he can talk."

Yes. Because if there is one thing we should all be dreading, it is the timely development of our children's ability to speak.

It's not a particularly kind thing to say in any case, is it? Especially not to someone who hasn't eaten a meal without another human attached to her in ten years.

Listen, new parents. The real secret is not to avoid "just wait." Instead, you must BECOME "just wait." Set your sense of mortal dread on an event so far in the future you can spend your life in "just wait," rendering all other warnings moot. I, for example, exist in constant state of waiting for the sun to lose its nuclear core. Just wait until she's a teenager? Ha! Just wait until our oceans are vaporized by the radiant heat of a dying red giant! That's what I always say.

Just wait until I tell you about supervolcanoes!

Writing updates

Have you heard that I started a blogcast? Well pay more attention! That's a blog crossed with a podcast, if you don't know, and I'm positive I invented the concept. I plan to take this on the road, along with The Golfer's Guide to Radical Mediocrity, starting in the fall of 2025.

If there are any of us left by then.

I'm still working on the romcom novel, too! I'm at 56,000 words, which if my English education degree serves me means I'm closing in on the 3/4 mark. If anyone wants to volunteer to read a beta version in a couple of months, let me know now. Spaces are limited and I've got a lot of product to move on the blogcast circuit.

Recent blog posts and blogcasts

The twelve of you who read this far last time have, through your willful deployment of the reply button, become accessories to any crimes I may commit. Don't worry; you can work for Lisa Swander Omnimedia when you get out. We hire sommeliers and felons. Thanks for your support! And your getaway vehicles!

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