Happy end of July! And happy end of summer, at least as we in the Indiana public school systems understand it. The Common Core bows to no season. And neither does the newsletter! You don't mind if I send it out at the absolute last possible moment, do you? It's too hot to care about anything, and besides, you'll need a book to read as your chambermaids fan you with palm fronds and spritz your feet with rose-scented water. Recommendations ahead.

What I'm reading

The Mountain in the Sea, Ray Nayler

Man, I don't know why I bought The Mountain in the Sea. It's about a race of sentient octopi who use their newfound consciousness to MURDER HUMANS, and it's not like I wasn't afraid of the stupid things already. How long are we going to let them go on escaping zoo enclosures and impersonating other species, anyway? In the words of the last sci-fi thriller I read, THEY SHOULD ALL BE DESTROYED.

Yet I am not sorry I bought it. Rom-com immersion seems to have opened a grittiness vacuum in my reading life, a swirling black mass borne of too many happy endings and too much side character survival, and I suppose that's why The Mountain in the Sea kept catching my eye. It's certainly gritty. Many side characters are killed. Many octopi survive. And it's hard to put down, even for someone who can't order calamari without looking over her shoulder.

Austenland, Shannon Hale

I've never read Austenland before, and for that, you should be ashamed of yourselves. We're talking Shannon Hale—author of some of my favorite YA books EVER—we're talking Jane Austen adventure park, we're talking romantic comedy, and not one of you thought maybe I'd like to be tipped off about it?? It's been out since 2008! Hundreds of gift-giving occasions have come and gone since then, and nary an Austenland under my tree, Easter basket, and/or birthday shrine?

Well I found it anyway, you joy killers, and as you already know, it is a perfectly whipped chocolate mousse of a book. It's dedicated to Colin Firth, in case you weren't sure whose side Shannon Hale is on, and the combination of her gleeful fangirling and her deprecating self-awareness does great justice to us Jane Austen freaks everywhere.

The Priory of the Orange Tree, Samantha Shannon

Yeah I know, everyone is reading this right now, but I still would have picked up The Priory of the Orange Tree for the cover alone. Give me a spiny dragon wrapped around a tower any day of the week—and that severe serif font? With the long tails on the Rs and the flames in the background? Ugh. If it was any more perfect it would be disgusting.

But it's not. Instead, this is high fantasy at its best—with a matriarchal dynasty, a sprawling cast of characters you kind of can't keep track of, and over 800 pages of what I suspect is going to be a repressed love connection between the queen and her secret bodyguard, because we're fantasy readers and that's what we deserve.

What I'm watching

Speed, Amazon Prime

POP QUIZ, HOTSHOT. You have a six-hour flight to Ireland, a pair of fully charged AirPods, and another two weeks before Good Omens 2 turns your brain into a treeful of monkeys on nitrous oxide*. What do you do? What. Do. You. DO?

You watch Speed. And you let it take years off your life, from the first glimpse of its thumbnail on your device—yes, that is a flaming bus careening over Keanu's shoulder—to the last screech of the subway car sliding through the streets of Los Angeles—yes, that's four forms of public transportation destroyed in this single feature film—until it's 1994 and you've traveled back in a phone booth with Abraham Lincoln and Socrates to watch the original theatrical release.

*imagery credit: Neil Gaiman

What I'm listening to

"Harrison Ford," Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend, TeamCoco

It seems redundant to recommend Conan's podcast here—I just assume you know I love him beyond description, and that I'm consuming everything he's ever made, usually with a Late Night mug clutched to my chest and a many-times crumpled fan letter smoothed on the table before me. Conan exists; therefore, I recommend him.

I have to say, however, that the Harrison Ford episode of Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend merits special mention. I can't pinpoint when, exactly, Harrison Ford transitioned from crusty barnacle to grumpy national treasure, but he's showing off his final form here, and the chemistry between him and Conan is ART.

What I'm thinking about

I'm thinking about something I heard David Sedaris say this week, right before I spoke to him personally.

#BRAG.

No really, it was just a book signing thing. But it was still awesome (and also kind of mundane, which made it more awesome), and I'd like to do a full Sedaris-style writeup of the inanity of the whole evening at some point. But for now I'm mulling over the Q&A, and his answer to why he doesn't drive a car.

"I think there's a problem with being too independent," he said, after the crowd had finished guffawing at his insistence that he had actually never driven a car. Ever. "You lose something when you’re independent. When you're not in control of everything all the time, you take the bus. Or you ask for directions. And that's where someone says something weird to you, or something gets in your way, or another person makes you mad. And then you get a story. When you're in control, there are no stories. Nothing happens."

A snapshot of our vacation itinerary—the vacation I was on at that very moment—came into my head. "David Sedaris book signing: 90 minutes" was a late addition, typed shortly after I bought my ticket, and I'd already been thinking about extending it to 110 after the theater sound system malfunctioned.

So I felt mildly attacked.

I mean, he's right. I am unlikely to tell you a story about the pristine vacation machine I just fed my family through—with GREAT success, I must say—because success is boring. We arrived, we made it to each activity on time, and we had a nice week.

Who wants to hear about that?

The stories you want, of course, are of airplane vomit and crushing rejection and regressive coed concert experiences. They're also the stories I want to tell, because they have that built-in hero's journey to them. Hubris! Catastrophe! Acceptance and transformation! I get to feel like I climbed over something, and you get to feel like your life is probably not as bad as you thought.

Yes, what David Sedaris said about control that night, in a theater seat I had mapped for the closest aisle/restroom combination so I wouldn't have to ask anyone to get up for me or be gone for more than four minutes, was what I needed to hear. Not just because I'm controlling by nature, but also because it's summer. Summer, when I can either struggle against the zip-ties of working with children in the house or just let my hands drop. And isn't that how you get out of zip-ties, after all? By relaxing?

...Or is that quicksand?

Either way, I can't control when I can write when my kids are home. And rather than see that as the thing that binds me, I can see that as the thing that gives me something to write about. This very paragraph has taken me sixteen separate attempts to finish, in between requests for bandages, loose tooth advice, and to "watch this." Great! Nothing makes for better comedy than an outsized sense of rage!

Also, I was less than 2000 feet from [one of] Martha Stewart's house[s] on this vacation. Reportedly. You couldn't see it from the road—nor from anywhere, I suspect, without military-grade infrared technology—but you better believe I'm thinking about that, too.

Writing updates

You heard it above, my friends. I have read far more books than I could squeeze into the newsletter this month, but as for output? I mean my office calendar still says May. The blog is paused. The blogcast is paused. The novel is paused. IT'S ALL PAUSED.

Speaking of the blogcast, though, what would you like from the second season? Assuming I live to see my children go back to school?

I can keep reading blog posts, or I can read you some of my fiction, or I can write and narrate bedtime stories for kids, as my therapist suggested (the only other podcast doing this has, in her words, "The most annoying voices I've ever heard"). Or something else? Do you want interviews? Chummy banter? Do you simply crave my unstructured, freewheeling thoughts?

That's a shame if so, because I believe in scripting everything. I don't even speak to my own family without running lines a few times with the dog. But if you have other suggestions, do let me know.

Recent blog posts

Haven't you been listening? There's NOTHING. Nothing to put here. It's all trapped in my head, waiting to burst forth like the Earth's mantle emptying in the wake of an erupting supervolcano. Without the crust collapsing into a miles-long abyss, of course. At least that's what I'm hoping. I'll let you know in August, when I finally get all these mounting grievances on paper, and money, not lava, rains from the sky.

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