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a-queer-seminarian · 4 years

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Hagar and Sarah - was reconciliation ever a possibility?

Sarah inflicts horrific abuse on Hagar (see Genesis 16 and 21): enslavement, rape and forced impregnation, beatings, and finally, banishment into the desert. It seems impossible that their story could ever have ended with renewed relationship and solidarity. As Jewish Cuban-American anthropologist Ruth Behar puts it in “Sarah and Hagar: The Heel-prints upon Their Faces,”

“The story of Sarah and Hagar is a story about women wronging women. It is a story so sad, so shameful, so sorrowful, that to own up to it is to admit that feminism has its origins in terrible violence and terrible lack of compassion between women.”

And yet, people across centuries have imagined what reconciliation between these two women could have been like. I’m compiling some of those visions here.

Many of them rely upon Sarah recognizing that she and Hagar share much suffering: Sarah too is used as property by men in their patriarchal world; Sarah too may have experienced rape when Pharaoh takes her from Abram in Egypt (see Wil Gafney’s Womanist Midrash); Sarah and Hagar alike are valued for their fertility and little else. If only Sarah had realized that patriarchy is what sets her above and against her fellow woman! If only she could have seen Hagar as a sister in solidarity, rather than a slave to abuse and cast away!

“Only at the end, When I witnessed my young son screaming under his father's knife, Only then Did I realize our common suffering.”

- Lynn Gottlieb

[image description: a painting of two women with curly brown hair and brown skin embracing; the one being held has a blue shawl with “Sarah and Hagar” written in Hebrew on it, while the one embracing her has a bright blue dress. A dove with an olive branch hovers behind them.]

“Sarah and Hagar” by Jewish artist Hilary Sylvester, who says: “Sarah the mother of the Jewish People and Hagar the mother of the Arab people finally find reconciliation through Mashiach.”

___________

Hagar’s and Sarah’s conflict & the Israel / Palestine conflict

In the article “Reconciling Hagar and Sarah: Feminist Midrash and National Conflict,” Noam Zion explains,

“In Jewish and Muslim interpretation, Hagar and Sarah represent the matriarchs of Abraham’s blessed heirs, the Arabs and the Jews. In classical sources, the break between the two women is never mended, but feminist readers of the Bible, Jewish and Muslim, have used midrash-style poetry to rewrite the ending of their story. Part of this endeavor is the hope of rewriting the contemporary conflict and reconciling between their putative descendants.”

...On a covenantal level, this story has an all’s well that ends well conclusion. God’s promises to Abraham and to each of the matriarchs will be fulfilled, as Isaac and Ishmael will each become great nations. But what about the interpersonal level? Is there ever a happy ending to the familial and, thus, national conflict?”

They continue with examples of reconciliation between various members of the story:

Reconciling Ishmael and Isaac: “The Torah itself implies a reconciliation of sorts between the brothers. First, after Abraham’s death, Ishmael returns “home” to encounter his brother once more at their father’s funeral: ‘His sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah’” (Genesis 25:9).

Reconciling Abraham and Hagar: “In the biblical text, Hagar...is never mentioned after the story of the expulsion, leaving his breach with Hagar unresolved. In another example of midrashic rewriting of the narrative, some rabbis identify Keturah, whom Abraham marries after Sarah’s death (Genesis 25:1), with Hagar. (In the biblical text, the two are not identical.) ...Thus Abraham renews his responsibility and his affection for Hagar as soon as Sarah, who could not stand her, is buried.”

Reconciling Hagar and Sarah: “The one character who is never reconciled with either of the offended parties, in either the biblical text or the midrash, is Sarah. ...For these reasons, some contemporary feminist readers and poets have felt an urgent need to add a new episode to the narrative to bring the two women together.

Further, these feminist poets wish to reimagine the relationship between the nations born of these matriarchs in a period of ongoing violent conflict between Muslims and Jews in the Middle East and the fragile beginnings of a new religious and ethnic dialogue between American Muslims and American Jews in North America.”

___________

Common Suffering: Sarah Repents

In the opening to her poem “Achti,” Arabic for “My Sister,” Jewish Renewal rabbi Lynn Gottlieb suggests that Hagar is not a name but a derogatory epithet, and imagines Sarah’s regret:

I am pained I did not call you By the name your mother gave you. I cast you aside, Cursed you with my barrenness and rage, Called you “stranger”/ Ha-ger, As if it were a sin to be from another place.

Noam Zion says of the poem, “For Gottlieb, Sarah’s sin derives in part from her blindness to the patriarchal system that pressures wives to be fertile and generates an inhumane competition between women, breaking down their solidarity. Sarah admits to having tried to steal Hagar’s womb, as if another woman, her womb and her child, could be property.”

They used me to steal your womb, Claim your child, As if I owned your body and your labor

“Having offered an original interpretation of Hagar’s name, Gottlieb does the same with “Sarah.” Etymologically, her name is connected to “ruler” (שַׂר, sar), but Gottlieb’s midrash connects it to “see-far” (שׁוּר, shur). Thus Sarah ought to become, by virtue of her name, the far-seeing woman, the prophetess. ...Yet she realizes to her chagrin that Hagar sees visions of God, while God has stopped communicating with the woman meant to be a prophetess:”

I, whom they call “See Far Woman” / Sarah, Could not witness my own blindness. But you, my sister, You beheld angels, Made miracles in the desert, Received divine blessings from a god, Who stopped talking to me.

”Using the midrash on Sarah’s name, Gottlieb has Sarah contrast her own moral blindness with Hagar’s power of vision in having seen God. By contrast, Sarah never speaks to God or sees him. What she does witness, however, is the near death of her son Isaac:”

Only at the end, When I witnessed my young son screaming under his father's knife, Only then Did I realize our common suffering.

“...Gottlieb says Sarah’s trauma, seeing her son almost slaughtered by her husband, led her to repent. When Sarah is herself shunted aside and her son taken—without consulting her—to be sacrificed by the same Abraham and the same God who drove Ishmael away and exposed him to death, Sarah then discovers herself as an unwitting collaborator of patriarchy who betrayed her sisterly duties to Hagar by actively expelling a helpless woman and child into a life-threatening situation. Now that she has suffered, she develops an empathy with Hagar based on their common motherhood.

...She concludes her poem in the form of a ritual self-accusation, a vidui, the traditional confession characteristic of Yom Kippur, which follows soon after Rosh Hashanah, and is part of the same festival complex:”

Forgive me, Achti For the sin of neglect For the sin of abuse For the sin of arrogance Forgive me, Achti, For the sin of not knowing your name.

“In the spirit of her poem, Gottlieb takes it upon herself, through the character of Sarah “our mother,” to confess what—in her political and moral opinion as a left-wing liberal—are the sins of the Jewish people in their “abuse,” expulsion and depersonalization of Palestinian refugees which Sarah’s command to Abraham to expel Hagar and son Ishmael foreshadows.“

___________

Sarah Seeks Hagar

Eleanor Wilner has a long poem called “Sarah’s Choice.” In it, Sarah tells her son Isaac that she is going to go find Hagar and Ishmael “whom I cast out, drunk on pride,” and invites Isaac to come with her. He asks her how he should great Ishmael:

“As you greet yourself,” she said, “when you bend over the well to draw water and see your image, not knowing it reversed. You must know your brother now, or you will see your own face looking back the day you’re at each other’s throats.

In Reading Genesis: Beginnings, Kissileff writes, “The poem closes with the chilling foresight, emphasized by the pauses in the final line, that brings us back to the Bible as we know it:

“But what will happen if we go?” the boy Isaac asked. “I don’t know,” Sarah said, “But it is written what will happen if you stay?”

“What will happen, of course, is that Isaac’s own father will attempt to sacrifice him -- and that the future history of his people will be one of unending conflict with his ‘brother.’ Whenever I read this poem, I catch my breath at the last line. ...”

__________

Hagar writes to Sarah

“Hagar Writes a Cathartic as an Exercise Suggested by her Therapist,” by Syrian American poet, novelist, and professor, Mohja Kahf:

Dear Sarah, life made us enemies But it doesn’t have to be that way. What if we both ditched the old man? He could have visitation rights with the boys alternate weekends and holidays. Yeah, especially the Feast of the Sacrifice— everybody has forgotten anyway that it began with me abandoned in the desert watching my baby dehydrate for days— I dared God to let us die.

Anyway, you and I, we’d set up house, raise the kids, start a catering business, maybe. You have brains. So do I. We could travel. There are places to see besides Ur and this nowheresville desert with its tribes of hooligans

No. Your lips always thin when you disapprove, like the mother I can hardly remember from before I wound up in your house. I was barely more than a girl. You are the one Who brought me there from Egypt. You used to laugh back then. In those days, You could bear to look at me.

Oh, Sarah, you need years of therapy Can’t you admit that what he did to me was cruel? Admit it – for just one second It won’t make you hate him forever just long enough to know the world won’t fall apart. Long enough to pity him, yourself, me Laugh, Sarah, laugh Imagine God, the Possibility. Sincerely Love, Hagar

#hagar #sarah #abraham and sarah #sarah and hagar #genesis 21 #genesis 16 #readings #midrash

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imuybemovoko · 4 years

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I die inside while dissecting Jesus music, part 3

Yep. Doing this shit again. It might take me a hot minute to write this one up, but I’ll get it done sooner or later.

This one gets a bit more fucky than usual, so here’s a few (US) suicide hotline numbers and a rather serious trigger warning. If you’re going to have a hard time with religious trauma, weird indirect forms of suicidality, and that kind of thing, go read something more wholesome. Practice self care better than I do. For the love of all you hold holy, my thoughts are less important than your well-being. Do not read this if it’ll hurt you to do so.

National suicide prevention lifeline: 1-800-273-8255 Trevor Project lifeline: 1-866-488-7386 The Crisis Text Line: text HOME to 741-741 Trans Lifeline: 1-877-565-8860

I’ve looked through my playlist trying to find a song that I don’t remember as being repetitive as fuck. There are artists out there who don’t make their shit sad and modular for church camps and I was at least somewhat into their stuff. There are also older hymns. The playlist is mostly full of that weird shitty contemporary Christian music, but somewhere nestled in between stacks of almost painfully similar songs from Hillsong (they’re not all samey, but they get pretty repetitive) is Audrey Assad’s Even Unto Death.

At first glance, listening back, it seems to have some of the same formatting elements as the shitty modern-styled songs I’ve gotten tired of, but it gives me a very different vibe for a few reasons. First, Assad’s general body of work as I can find it on Youtube (and is also stored in my playlist) is largely older hymns, and that’s her general style. This song is, as far as I can tell, an original work, but its instrumental and melodic style is heavily influenced by the vibe that older hymns give off. Second, the bridge is more varied and interesting than that of Even So Come or Gracefully Broken. The song does, in the final bridge and in the choruses, engage in some repetition, but at a level that I find far closer to what’s typical in secular music. Third, the melody reminds me somewhat of old hymns in a way I don’t know exactly how to describe. I just imagine it with piano and SATB choir. Most modern Christian music just doesn’t land like that. But for the trauma, I’d say analyzing this song might end up being a breath of fresh air.

But for the trauma...

Anyway. Here are the lyrics, and here is the video again.

The song is formatted in a way that’s nearly typical of a pop song. You have a verse (in this case composed of “Jesus”, two lines of bullshit, “Jesus” again, and two more lines of bullshit), a three line chorus repeated twice, a second verse (same format), the chorus again but this time with a more personal form of address on the second time through, the bridge (which Genius divides into four distinct sections) with some repetitions of the final lines, the chorus again, and an outro that’s basically just some repetitions of lines in the chorus and then “Jesus” and the first line of bullshit from the first verse, twice.

So let’s get into this.

First verse:

Jesus The very thought of You It fills my heart with love Jesus You burn like wildfire And I am overcome

Alright. These lines are (clearly) addressed towards Jesus. (Speaking to him directly is a thing people do.) The song has a bit of a mix of a romantic bent and something a... little bit weirder, and both are starting to become visible in this first verse. The first couplet is like... straightforward. The singer is very in love with Jesus and even thinking of him makes her feel things. She’s not quite doing a John Donne here, I don’t think, but this is a pretty strong thing and this is part of why I say there’s a romantic bent to this. The second stanza contains that “fire” imagery that’s often associated with the Christian god, most often the Holy Spirit, that serves the purpose of showing how believers’ whole beings should be consumed by God. Then she says “I am overcome”. This reads to me like one of those “this makes me feel things to a degree I don’t know what to do with” kind of things, but there’s an element of what I’ll describe as a conquest narrative here. ...Again, not quite doing a John Donne, but not not doing it either.

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

Next comes the chorus, and I think it bears mention now rather than somewhere strange like I’d normally do it because this verse flows right into it.

Lover of my soul Even unto death With my every breath I will love You

It plays through this twice.

Gives me the same kind of vibe as Job 13:15 here. “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him.” The difference here is Assad’s song mentions love, which I guess goes beyond trust. So it’s even a bit crazier, and the “with my every breath” thing is the absolute kicker. This means she’s wanting to do literally everything, literally everything, in a way that expresses her love for Jesus. Extreme sentiments like this aren’t uncommon in song, sure, but given that we’re discussing Christianity...

it’s not just hyperbole, they actually think this way and it’s very fucking toxic.

Also the chorus is the main reason I say this has a romantic bent. “Lover of my soul” is a fucking juicy lyric.

Jesus You are my only hope And You, my prize shall be Jesus You are my glory now And in eternity

I think this second verse is mostly straightforward too. Literally just “Jesus is the entire source of my hope and I see him as a prize for whatever I’m doing” and “Jesus is my glory now and forever”. Glory here refers to like... honor and magnificence. In Christian parlance it refers to the condition that believers will be in after the world is overthrown by Jesus and me and all my fellow non-believing sexual deviants get hyucked straight into the eternal fire. It’s just like... shorthand for being “cleansed of sin” or whatever and living with God for eternity. I don’t know what circles Assad is active in; she might have a different take on this than I’m inclined to, but honestly given my understanding of this concept that’s primarily fueled by Protestant views and especially Evangelicalism, I’m inclined to read this as an empty threat.

Oof.

Onto the bridge.

I notice now that the bridge has essentially two main sections. Genius says four; that’s a weird choice to me because each section they label is not doing a separate thing, but the two I see, based more on the repetition of the last two lines of each stanza and the similarity of the sentiment in the first half of each, very much are.The first chunk of it goes like this:

In my darkest hour In humiliation I will wait for You I am not forsaken

The idea here is that even in the darkest hour of their life or humiliating moments, the singer is trusting in God to get them through it and like... idk, remedy their humiliation or make it worthwhile somehow? This serves as a reminder that God hasn’t left even if it looks like he might’ve.

Genius does a bit of a fucky-wucky here in the second section. They replace “though” with “oh”. I’m not sure how they could’ve messed this up, the video they link is literally the same lyric video that I linked, produced by Assad’s literal official artist channel, and the video shows this section the way I do below.

Though I lose my life Though my breath be taken I will wait for You I am not forsaken

This second chunk is more of the same “even if this destroys me I’ll trust you God”. Job 13:15 again, basically. Again, not hyperbole, they actually aspire to this. It’s not healthy at all. This first half of the bridge is basically just “haha I’m devoted to this relationship to the point of self-betrayal and inaction.”

Oof.

Second half:

One thing I desire To see You in Your beauty You are my delight Yeah, You are my glory

So this third section is basically just inserting verse 2 into the bridge in slightly different words, but the role it plays here, juxtaposed so much more directly with the extreme, self-betraying devotion expressed in the first half of the bridge, is more as a declaration that Jesus is the only thing that truly matters to the singer. Like the entire vibe here is “this life doesn’t even matter to me, yeet this body and idgaf, just let me go see Jesus.” I think I mentioned in a previous post, I think another one of these depression-spiking jesus song dissections, that this kind of mindset leads to what I’ll describe as a soft form of suicidality in which someone desires death by way of yelling at people for Jesus in places where that’s dangerous to do. If the singer’s only real desire is to see Jesus, then they’re very much at risk for this. Which prompts the question...

Is Audrey Assad okay?

You my sacrifice Oh, Your love is all consuming You are my delight Yeah, You are my glory Yeah, oh You are my glory God, yeah You are my glory Yeah

So aside from the “sacrifice” line here, which I’ll get to, this whole thing is more of the same. All-consuming love, Jesus is her delight, blah blah. The sacrifice thing refers to the crucifixion and to the framework Christianity posits by which blood needs to be spilled so that God can decide not to fucking yeet someone into an unending fire hole and that Jesus came to be the final perfect sacrifice so that no one needs to stab a goat or whatever the fuck again.

After this there’s the chorus and the outro that’s basically just the end of the chorus and then the first two lines repeated a bit, you know, just as this last little reminder that dying is ok if it’s for Jesus.

Which I guess is the overarching message of this song too. Dying is fun if it’s for Jesus, kids! Also let’s definitely not do a John Donne!

I feel like I reference that poem a lot. But it goddamn fits. Like terrifyingly well. I think the reason I latched onto that poem so hard when I learned about it in my literature survey course last fall is because, minus the borderline sexual nature of Donne’s thoughts here, it maps onto my own experience very goddamn hard. I went far enough into Assad’s self-betraying devotion to God for a while there that I fantasized about dying for Jesus in a country where that’s likely. Suicide by martyrdom, if you will.

On that note, here are the hotlines again.

National suicide prevention lifeline: 1-800-273-8255 Trevor Project lifeline: 1-866-488-7386 The Crisis Text Line: text HOME to 741-741 Trans Lifeline: 1-877-565-8860

If you read this far, I guess thanks for being interested in my thoughts, and I really hope this didn’t trigger anything too serious.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I should probably go talk to my therapist about this.

#exchristian #religious trauma #christian music

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haloud · 5 years

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“Not as Lost, Violent Souls:” Alex Manes and T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” -- part 2

- intro - part 1 -

Previously on:

(gif by bisexualalienblast, used with permission)

To recap what we’ve established so far: the epigraph and the first two segments of “The Hollow Men” portray the speaker as a man who has lost a sense of identity or purpose, both among the hollow men and wishing to be more like them, haunted by a vision of “eyes” and wishing to live more completely in the meaningless, liminal space inhabited by the hollow men. If Alex is the speaker, trapped in a sense in the world that makes “hollowness” the only state of being achievable, then the desire to inhabit that distant, liminal space is representative of the defense mechanisms he has developed to navigate the world. He takes control, avoiding vulnerability. He runs away, keeping intimate interactions with the person who makes him most vulnerable on his terms. In sections III-V, the imagery of the eyes grows ever stronger, as the world of the speaker grows more dismal and disconnected, concluding with the breakdown of connections inherent in the Shadow falling between such deeply connected things, and the final statement about the end of the world.

Part III: Lone and level sands

This segment of the poem is one of the shortest, and it shifts the focus from the hollow men themselves, the speaker, and the eyes, and onto the broader landscape the hollow men occupy.

This is the dead land This is cactus land

Of course, we, the writers of Roswell, and the characters of the show would all know that deserts are not dead at all, but instead teeming with life. However, pairing “dead land” with “cactus land” in the segment immediately following the previous lines about the kingdoms of death is meant to communicate a sense of the total bleakness of the landscape, as well as serve as a reminder of the futility of the existence of the hollow men, who are compared to scarecrows, but in this “cactus land” have no real fields to stand in, have no real function.

Here the stone images Are raised, here they receive The supplication of a dead man's hand Under the twinkle of a fading star

In Jeffrey Howard's explication of this poem[1], he identifies these lines and this imagery as being in reference to Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ozymandias.” I don’t have a whole lot to say about this in relation to Alex specifically, but it’s certainly an interesting connection in the context of some things I’ve already said regarding him and Jesse. Jesse is very much a “look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”[2] kind of guy. As Howard goes on to say, Shelley’s poem “appears as a cold sarcasm regarding humanity’s aspirations to godhood instead of being an earnest evaluation of humanity’s might, which does not, in reality, exist” (10). This entire discussion brings to my mind again Alex’s speech to Kyle in 1x12, how there exists a constant need to justify atrocities committed by one’s government (the modern American answer to atrocities committed by godhood), and how people generally fail to recognize that what seems like might is more often than not a completely empty concept.

is it like this In death's other kingdom Waking alone At the hour when we are Trembling with tenderness Lips that would kiss Form prayers to broken stone

Here, the speaker is asking if the world is just as bleak for those who have “crossed over,” as said in the first segment, to “death’s other kingdom.” In death’s other kingdom, do the people there have to wake alone, when they are “trembling with tenderness?” Do the people there have the freedom to kiss, when all the speaker/the hollow men can do is “form prayers to broken stone?”[3][4] Previously, the speaker has expressed an inability to come to “death’s other kingdom,” locked in a sort of purgatory with the other hollow men; the speaker has also expressed resistance to “death’s dream kingdom,” wanting to stay far away from the vision of eyes that that dream kingdom brings, knowing that he will always be far away from “that final meeting / In the twilight kingdom.” Here, however, the speaker expresses almost a yearning for things to be different, even if achieving “death’s other kingdom” is impossible.

Part IV: Valley of dying stars

Part IV opens with further bleak imagery and further admission of hopelessness:

The eyes are not here There are no eyes here In this valley of dying stars In this hollow valley This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

The speaker has succeeded, then, for a given value of success; he has avoided the gaze of the eyes, and now they are gone altogether. The stars are dying, the valley is hollow, even the tiny scraps of life that may have existed previously in this landscape are winking out, one by one. The line that stands out in this stanza is that about the “broken jaw” of the lost kingdom, which is a flare of violence or pain, whether by accident or deliberately induced, which stands out among all the numbness that characterizes the rest of the poem.

In this last of meeting places We grope together And avoid speech Gathered on this beach of this tumid river[5]

Sightless, unless The eyes reappear As the perpetual star Multifoliate rose Of death's twilight kingdom The hope only Of empty men.

The hollow men gather together against what separates them from what is, textually, death, but symbolically is more like salvation, paradise, or connection. This segment of the poem has strong religious imagery—strong enough that I’m forced here to talk about it when I’ve avoided it thus far because it’s not terribly relevant to any of my points about Alex. That being said, I will go into greater detail in the Watsonian analysis about what significance the religious imagery in “The Hollow Men” may have to Alex as a person, despite the lack of any religious context for his character in the show thus far. As a continuation of the Doylist analysis, I will say only that the eyes have once again appeared as a signifier of salvation or peace. “The hope only / of empty men.”

Part V: the Shadow

Here is how the fifth and final movement of the poem begins:

Here we go round the prickly pear Prickly pear, prickly pear Here we go round the prickly pear At five o'clock in the morning.

Now, before I get fully into Part V, I just want to let you all know about the deeply, deeply hilarious opinion of Smith[6] about the "prickly pear" parody of the "mulberry bush" children's song, which is that the prickly pear is a phallic symbol while the mulberry bush is all vaginas all the time, apparently[7] Grover. My buddy. My dude. What. Anyway, the remainder of the poem is a long set of dichotomies or intrinsically and existentially paired concepts, interspersed with a line from the Lord’s Prayer, concluding with the famous final lines.

Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception And the creation Between the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire And the spasm Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is Life is For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but with a whimper.

The abortive lines referencing the Lord’s Prayer indicate a struggle against a father—The Father—and, dispersed as they are among the lines about a Shadow falling between concepts that should never otherwise be separated, themselves become the Shadow. The Shadow is a higher concept, a higher being, with the power to tear apart even logically and naturally inseparable things. In the context of Alex and Roswell, Jesse Manes is, in many ways a literal Shadow obstructing connectedness and growth. However, there is another version of the Shadow which his worldview has caused to transfer to his son. Critic J. Hillis Miller identifies the Shadow as “the paralysis which seizes men who live in a completely subjective world,” and states, “Mind had seemed the medium which binds all things together in the unity of an organic culture. Now [the mind] is revealed to be the Shadow which isolates things from one another, reduces them to abstraction, and makes movement, feeling, and creativity impossible.” Alex’s “subjective reality” is not a traditional one, but rather the result of two worldviews fighting for supremacy within him and forcing him to a standstill—his own, and the one his father has imposed upon him his entire life. A subjective reality forms when he is incapable of making decisions based upon one worldview without the other intruding; there is no objective truth, no objective way of leading his life. An objective sense of purpose is, of course, something that all people strive for regardless of their circumstances, but it is the specific destabilizing outside force which in “The Hollow Men” is referred to as the “Shadow” that makes Alex’s experience resonate with the text of the poem. By the end of the poem, the speaker cannot so much as complete a sentence. The Shadow comes between, among other things, the thought and the speech. In the same way, Alex’s own “Shadow,” being both the imprinted trauma and continuing expectation as well as his father’s physical presence, comes between who he is and who he wants to be; who he can be and what face he shows to the world.

The speaker and Alex end the poem in the same way as they began. Trapped in a role that is part tool, part puppet, part propaganda, caught between wishing for hope or salvation and wishing he could even wish for as much as that. He has companions but feels no companionship; he stands on the banks of a river but has no boat with which to cross, nor any money to pay the ferryman. And all the while he is watched by these eyes which represent a state of being or an ideal which he can never achieve, but just as he scorns those eyes and wishes they would turn away, they do, and he is left sightless and silent.

This is not a happy poem. Nor do I believe that analyzing it in this way will reveal any more hopeful, happier meaning for Eliot’s hollow men or for Alex Manes. The existence of the hollow men is a bleak one, and at the very beginning of Roswell, New Mexico—the inciting events that build upon each other until Alex references the poem—Alex is in a fairly bleak place himself. However. I, unlike Eliot, do not believe in unhappy endings, so I didn’t want to close out this section just with a whimper. So while this essay concerns itself primarily with bleakness, I still want to remind everyone that “the world ends with a whimper” in episode nine of thirteen (and yet to come). Alex has already punched through the end of the world and is in the process of pulling himself through that hole and out the other side, retaking agency, rediscovering himself, relearning what he wants and how he is going to achieve those desires. The hollow men may have only empty hopes, but Alex’s hope is very real, and his character’s journey, as is the case with all characters in Roswell’s first season, has only just begun.

Part three of this essay will reexamine Alex’s character, his relationship to “The Hollow Men” at various points in his life, and his decision to quote the poem in context from a Watsonian perspective.

[1] Howard, Jeffrey G. “T.S. Eliot’s THE HOLLOW MEN.” The Explicator, vol. 70, no. 1, 2012, pp. 8-12, https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2012.656736. Accessed 2 Sept. 2019. [2] Howard goes into some detail about this line (line 11 of Shelley’s poem); he points out the capitalization of the word “Mighty,” how that grammatical convention is usually reserved for “proper nouns and deities,” and how it “solidifies just such a correlation” between “Ozymandias” and the “feigned divinity of the hollow men.” [3] I believe I speak for all of us when I say: hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh [4] Continuing the Ozymandias reference; worshipping a ruin of something that used to be grand but was always fallible. I really suggest anyone who wants to read a Romantic poet’s 14-line dunk on Jesse Manes go give Ozymandias a look. [5] According to the Norton anthology’s footnotes as well as scholarship on some of Eliot’s other work, as well as Dante’s, which is a stated inspiration for both “The Waste Land” and “The Hollow Men,” the tumid river refers to the river Acheron, which is both a real river in Greece and a fixture of Greek mythology—the river which one must cross to reach the underworld, the river from which the underworld’s other rivers all spring forth. [6] Same Grover Smith I referenced earlier. He’s a serious scholar! But serious literary scholars are also often very, very silly. And literary scholars and anthropologists share the quirk of educated guessing that demands that, when in doubt, every symbol must be either a deity or a penis. [7] The only story I’m aware about concerning mulberry bushes is the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe, very much a proto-Romeo and Juliet story in which two families hated each other, but their children fell in love by whispering through a crack in the wall between them. The myth/drama ends with a double suicide. It is the blood of the lovers that gives mulberries their color to this day. Thanks, the Greeks, for yet another heartwarming tale about nature, and one that is not particularly, uh, yonic. I think the mulberry bush children’s song might possibly be about washerwomen, hence the idea that it is feminine, but I would hardly consider the prickly pear a masculine version of that. In short: Grover. Man. What.

#rnm meta #roswell new mexico #alex manes

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suchagiantnerd · 5 years

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48 Books, 1 Year

I was just two books shy of my annual goal of 50! You can blame the combination of my adorable newborn, who refused to nap anywhere except on me, and Hallmark Christmas movie season, during which I abandon books for chaste kisses between 30-somethings who behave like tweens at places called the Mistletoe Inn (which are really in Almonte, Ontario).

Without further ado, as Zuma from Paw Patrol says, “Let’s dive in!”

1. Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes / Nathan H. Lents

We have too many bones! We have to rely too much on our diet for survival! We suffer from too many cognitive biases! Reading about our design flaws was kind of interesting, but the best part of this book were the few pages toward the end about the possibility of alien life. Specifically this quote: "...some current estimates predict that the universe harbours around seventy-five million civilizations." WHAT?! This possibility more than anything else I've ever heard or read gives me a better idea of how infinite the universe really is.

2. The Fiery Cross / Diana Gabaldon

Compared to the first four books in the Outlander series, this fifth book is a real snooze. The characters are becoming more and more unlikeable. They're so self-centered and unaware of their privilege in the time and place they're living. Gabaldon's depictions of the Mohawk tribe and other First Nations characters (which I'm reading through her character's opinions of things) are pretty racist. The enslaved people at one character's plantation are also described as being well taken care of and I just.... can't. I think this is the end of my affair with Outlander.

3. Educated / Tara Westover

This memoir was a wild ride. Tara Westover grew up in a survivalist, ultra-religious family in rural Idaho. She didn’t go to school and was often mislead about the outside world by her father. She and her siblings were also routinely put in physical danger working in their father’s junkyard as their lives were “in god’s hands”, and when they were inevitably injured, they weren’t taken to the hospital or a doctor, but left to be treated by their healer mother. Thanks to her sheer intelligence and determination (and some support from her older brother), Tara goes to university and shares with us the culture shock of straddling two very different worlds. My non-fiction book club LOVED this read, we talked about it for a long, long time.

4. Imbolc: Rituals, Recipes and Lore for St. Brigid’s Day / Carl F. Neal

Continuing with my witchy education, I learned all about the first sabbat of the new year, Imbolc.

5. Super Sad True Love Story / Gary Shteyngart

This in-the-very-near-future dystopian novel got my heart racing during a few exciting moments, but overall, I couldn’t immerse myself fully because of the MISOGYNY. I think the author might not like women and the things women like (or the things he thinks they like?) In this near future, all the dudes are into finance or are media celeb wannabes, while all the women work in high-end retail. And onion-skin jeans are the new trend for women - they are essentially see-through. Gary….we don’t…want that? We don’t even want low-rise jeans to come back.

6. The Wanderers / Meg Howrey

Helen, Yoshi and Sergei are the three astronauts selected by a for-profit space exploration company to man the world’s first mission to Mars. But before they get the green light, they have to endure a 17-month simulation. In addition to getting insight into the simulation from all three astronauts via rotating narrators, we also hear from the astronauts’ family members and other employees monitoring the sim. At times tense, at times thoughtful, this book is an incisive read about what makes explorers willing to leave behind everything they love the most in the world.

7. Zone One / Colson Whitehead

The zombie apocalypse has already happened, and Mark is one of the survivors working to secure and clean up Zone One, an area of Manhattan. During his hours and hours of boring shifts populated by a few harrowing minutes here and there, the reader is privy to Mark’s memories of the apocalypse itself and how he eventually wound up on this work crew. Mark is a pretty likeable, yet average guy rather than the standard zombie genre heroes, and as a result, his experiences also feel like a more plausible reality than those of the genre.

8. Homegoing / Yaa Gyasi

One of my favourite reads of the year, this novel is the definition of “sweeping epic”. The story starts off with two half-sisters (who don’t even know about each other’s existence) living in 18th-century Ghana. One sister marries a white man and stays in Ghana, living a life of privilege, while the other is sold into slavery and taken to America on a slave ship. This gigantic split in the family tree kicks off two parallel and vastly different narratives spanning EIGHT generations, ending with two 20-somethings in the present day. I remain in awe of Gyasi’s talent, and was enthralled throughout the entire book.

9. Sweetbitter / Stephanie Danler

Tess moves to New York City right out of school (and seemingly has no ties to her previous life - this bothered me, I wanted to know more about her past) and immediately lands a job at a beloved (though a little tired) fancy restaurant. Seemingly loosely based on Danler’s own experiences as a server, I got a real feel for the insular, incestuous, chaotic life in “the industry”. Tess navigates tensions between the kitchen and the front of house, falls for the resident bad-boy bartender, and positions herself as the mentee of the older and more glamorous head server, who may not be everything she seems. This is a juicy coming-of-age novel.

10. The Autobiography of Gucci Mane / Gucci Mane and Neil Martinez-Belkin

Gucci Mane is one of Atlanta’s hottest musicians, having helped bring trap music to the mainstream. I’d never heard of him until I read this book because I’m white and old! But not knowing him didn’t make this read any less interesting. In between wild facts (if you don’t get your music into the Atlanta strip clubs, your music isn’t making it out of Atlanta) and wilder escapades (Gucci holing himself up in his studio, armed to the teeth, in a fit of paranoia one night) Gucci Mane paints on honest picture of a determined, talented artist fighting to break free of a cycle of systemic racism and poverty.

11. I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer / Michelle McNamara

McNamara was a journalist and true crime enthusiast who took it upon herself to try and solve the mystery of the Golden State Killer’s identity. Amazingly, her interest in this case also sparked other people’s interest in looking back at it, eventually leading to the arrest of the killer (though tragically, McNamara died a few months before the arrest and would never know how her obsession helped to capture him). This is a modern true crime classic and a riveting read.

12. A Great Reckoning / Louise Penny

The 12th novel in Penny’s Inspector Gamache mystery series sees our hero starting a new job teaching cadets at Quebec’s police academy. Of course, someone is murdered, and Gamache and his team work to dig the rot out of the institution, uncovering a killer in the process.

13. Any Man / Amber Tamblyn

Yes, this novel is by THAT Amber Tamblyn, star of “The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants”! Anyway, this book is a tad bit darker, and follows five men who’ve been victimized by the female serial rapist, who calls herself Maude. Going into this read I though that it might be some sort of revenge fantasy, but dudes, not to worry - we really feel awful for the male victims and see them in all their complexity. Perhaps, if more men read this book, they might better understand the trauma female and non-binary victims go through? That would require men to read books by women though. Guys? GUYS???

14. Ostara: Rituals, Recipes and Lore for the Spring Equinox / Kerri Connor

Yet another witchy read providing more information about this Spring sabbat.

15. Scarborough / Catherine Hernandez

This novel takes place in OUR Scarborough! Following the lives of a number of residents (adults and children alike), the plot centres around the families attending an Ontario Early Years program as well as the program facilitator. Hernandez looks at the ways poverty, mental illness, addiction, race, and homophobia intersect within this very multicultural neighbourhood. It’s very sad, but there are also many sweet and caring moments between the children and within each of the families.

16. The Glitch / Elisabeth Cohen

Shelley Stone (kind of a fictional Sheryl Sandberg type) is the CEO of Conch, a successful Silicon Valley company. Like many of these over-the-top real-life tech execs, Shelley has a wild schedule full of business meetings, exercise, networking and parenting, leaving her almost no time to rest. While on an overseas business trip, she meets a younger woman also named Shelley Stone, who may or may not be her younger self. Is Shelley losing it? This is a dark comedy poking fun at tech start-up culture and the lie that we can have it all.

17. The Thirteenth Tale / Diane Setterfield

This is my kind of book! A young and inexperienced bookworm is handpicked to write the biography of an aging famous author, Vida Wynter. Summoned to her sprawling country home around Christmastime, the biographer is absolutely enthralled by Vida’s tales of a crumbling gothic estate and an eccentric family left too long to their own whims. Looking for a dark, twisty fairytale? This read’s for you.

18. Love & Misadventure / Lang Leav

Leav’s book of poems looked appealing, but for me, her collection fell short. I felt like I was reading a teenager’s poetry notebook (which I’m not criticizing, I love that teen girls write poetry, and surprise, surprise - so did I - but I’m too old for this kind of writing now).

19. Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows / Balli Kaur Jaswal

Hooo boy, my book club loved this one! Hoping to get a job more aligned with her literary interests, Nikki, the 20-something daughter of Indian immigrants to Britain, takes a job teaching writing at the community centre in London’s biggest Punjabi neighbourhood. The students are all older Punjabi women who don’t have much to do and because of their “widow” status have been somewhat sidelined within their community. Without anyone around to censor or judge them, the widows start sharing their own erotic fantasies with each other, each tale wilder than the last. As Nikki gets to know them better, she gains some direction in life and starts a romance of her own. (It should be noted that in addition to this lovely plot, there is a sub plot revolving around a possible honour killing in the community. For me, the juxtaposition of these two plots was odd, but not odd enough that it ruined the book.)

20. Beltane: Rituals, Recipes and Lore for May Day / Melanie Marquis

Beltane marks the start of the summer season in the witches’ year, and I learned all about how to ring it in, WITCH STYLE.

21. Summer of Salt / Katrina Leno

This book is essentially Practical Magic for teens, with a queer protagonist. All that to say, it’s enjoyable and sweet and a win for #RepresentationMatters, but it wasn’t a surprising or fresh story.

22. Too Like the Lightning / Ada Palmer

This is the first in the Terra Ignota quartet of novels, which is (I think) speculative fiction with maybe a touch of fantasy and a touch of sci-fi and a touch of theology and certainly a lot of philosophical ruminating too. I both really enjoyed it and felt so stupid while reading it. As a lifelong bookworm who doesn’t shy away from difficult reads, I almost never feel stupid while reading, but this book got me. The world building is next level and as soon as you think you’ve found your footing, Palmer pulls the rug out from under you and you’re left both stunned and excited about her latest plot twist. Interested in finding out what a future society grouped into ‘nations’ by interests and passions (instead of geographical borders and ethnicity) might be like? Palmer takes a hearty stab at it here.

23. The Trauma Cleaner: One Woman’s Extraordinary Life in the Business of Death, Decay and Disaster / Sarah Krasnostein

When Sarah Krasnostein met Sandra Pankhurst, she knew she had to write her biography (or something like it - this book is part biography, part love letter, part reckoning). And rightly so, as Sandra has led quite a life. She grew up ostracized within her own home by her immediate family, married and had children very young, came out as a trans woman and begin living as her authentic self (but abandoning her own young family in the process), took to sex work and lived through a vicious assault, married again, and started up her own successful company cleaning uncleanable spaces - the apartments of hoarders, the houses of recluses, the condos in which people ended their own lives. Sandra is the definition of resilience, but all her traumas (both the things people have done to her and the things she’s done to others) have left their mark, as Krasnostein discovers as she delicately probes the recesses of Sandra’s brain.

24. Becoming / Michelle Obama

My favourite things about any memoir from an ultra-famous person are the random facts that surprise you along the way. In this book, it was learning that all American presidents travel with a supply of their blood type in the event of an assassination attempt. I mean OF COURSE they would, but that had never occurred to me. I also appreciated Michelle opening up about her fertility struggles, the difficult decision to put her career on hold to support Barack’s dreams, and the challenge of living in the spotlight with two young children that you hope to keep down to earth. Overall, I think Michelle was as candid as someone in her position can be at this point in her life.

25 and 26. Seven Surrenders, The Will to Battle / Ada Palmer

I decided to challenge myself and stick with Palmer’s challenging Terra Ignota series, also reading the second and third instalments (I think the fourth is due to be released this year). I don’t know what to say, other than the world-building continues to be incredible and this futuristic society is on the bring of something entirely new.

27. Even Vampires Get the Blues / Kate MacAlister

This novel wins for “cheesiest read of the year”. When a gorgeous half-elf detective (you read that right) meets a centuries-old sexy Scottish vampire, sparks fly! Oh yeah, and they’re looking for some ancient thing in between having sex.

28. A Case of Exploding Mangoes / Mohammed Hanif

A piece of historical fiction based on the real-life suspicious plane crash in 1988 that killed many of Pakistan’s top military brass, this novel lays out many possible culprits (including a crow that ate too many mangoes). It’s a dark comedy taking aim at the paranoia of dictators and the boredom and bureaucracy of the military (and Bin Laden makes a cameo at a party).

29. Salvage the Bones / Jesmyn Ward

This novel takes place in the steaming hot days before Hurricane Katrina hits the Mississippi coast. The air is still and stifling and Esch’s life in the small town of Bois Sauvage feels even more stifled. Esch is 14 and pregnant and hasn’t told anyone yet. Her father is a heavy drinker and her three brothers are busy with their own problems. But as the storm approaches, the family circles around each other in preparation for the storm. This is a jarring and moving read made more visceral by the fact that the author herself survived Katrina. It’s also an occasionally violent book, and there are particularly long passages about dog-fighting (a hobby of one of the brothers). The dog lovers in my book club found it hard to get through, consider this your warning!

30. Everything’s Trash, But It’s Okay / Phoebe Robinson

A collection of essays in the new style aka writing multiple pages on a topic as though you were texting your best friend about it (#ImFineWithThisNewStyleByTheWay #Accessible), Robinson discusses love, friendship, being a Black woman in Hollywood, being plus-ish-size in Hollywood, and Julia Roberts teaching her how to swim (and guys, Julia IS as nice in real life as we’d all hoped she was!) Who is Robinson? Comedy fans will likely know her already, but I only knew her as one of the stars of the Netflix film Ibiza (which I enjoyed). This is a fun, easy read!

31. Midsummer: Rituals, Recipes and Lore for Litha / Deborah Blake

After reading this book, I charged my crystals under the midsummer sun!

32. Fingersmith / Sarah Waters

So many twists! So many turns! So many hidden motives and long-held secrets! Think Oliver Twist meets Parasite meets Lost! (Full disclosure, I haven’t seen Parasite yet, I’m just going off all the chatter about it). Sue is a con artist orphan in old-timey London. When the mysterious “Gentleman” arrives at her makeshift family’s flat with a proposal for the con of all cons, Sue is quickly thrust into a role as the servant for another young woman, Maud, living alone with her eccentric uncle in a country estate. As Sue settles into her act, the lines between what she’s pretending at and what she’s really feeling start to blur, and nothing is quite what it seems. This book is JUICY!

33. Rest Play Grow: Making Sense of Preschoolers (Or Anyone Who Acts Like One) / Deborah MacNamara, PhD

I read approximately one parenting book a year, and this was this year’s winner. As my eldest approached her third birthday, we started seeing bigger and bigger emotions and I wasn’t sure how to handle them respectfully and gently. This book gave me a general roadmap for acknowledging her feelings, sitting through them with her, and the concept of “collecting” your child to prevent tantrums from happening or to help calm them down afterward. I’ll be using this approach for the next few years!

34. Lughnasadh: Rituals, Recipes and Lore for Lammas / Melanie Marquis

And with this read, I’ve now read about the entire witch’s year. SO MOTE IT BE.

35. In Cold Blood / Truman Capote

How had I not read this until now? This true-crime account that kicked off the modern genre was rich in detail, compassionate to the victims, and dug deep into the psyche of the killers. The descriptions of the midwest countryside and the changing seasons also reminded me of Keith Morrison’s voiceovers on Dateline. Is Capote his inspiration?

36. I’m Afraid of Men / Vivek Shraya

A quick, short set of musings from trans musician and writer Shraya still packs an emotional punch. She writes about love and loss, toxic masculinity, breaking free of gender norms, and what it’s like to exist as a trans woman.

37. The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You / Elaine N. Aron, PhD

Having long thought I might be a highly sensitive person (lots of us are!), I decided to learn more about how to better cope with stressful situations when I don’t have enough alone time or when things are too loud or when I get rattled by having too much to do any of the other myriad things that shift me into panic mode. Though some of the advice is a bit too new-agey for me (talking to your inner child, etc), some of it was practical and useful.

38. Swamplandia! / Karen Russell

The family-run alligator wrestling theme park, Swamplandia, is swimming in debt and about to close. The widowed father leaves the everglades for the mainland in a last-ditch attempt to drum up some money, leaving the three children to fend for themselves. A dark coming-of-age tale that blends magic realism, a ghost story, the absurd and a dangerous boat trip to the centre of the swamplands, this novel examines a fractured family mourning its matriarch in different ways.

39. A Mind Spread Out on the Ground / Alicia Elliott

This is a beautiful collection of personal essays brimming with vulnerability, passion, and fury. Elliott, the daughter of a Haudenosaunee father and a white mother, shares her experiences growing up poor in a family struggling with mental illness, addiction and racism. Topics touch on food scarcity, a never-ending battle with lice, parenthood and the importance of hearing from traditionally marginalized voices in literature.

40. Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay / Elena Ferrante

The third novel in Ferrante’s Neapolitan quartet sees Elena and Lila move from their early twenties into their thirties and deal with a riot of issues - growing careers, changing political beliefs, the challenges of motherhood and romantic relationships, and existing as strong-willed, intelligent women in 1960s and 70s Italy. I’ll definitely finish the series soon.

41. Half-Blood Blues / Esi Edugyan

A small group of American and German jazz musicians working on a record find themselves holed up in Paris as the Germans begin their occupation in WW2. Hiero, the youngest and most talented member of the group, goes out one morning for milk and is arrested by the Germans, never to be heard from again. Fifty years later, the surviving members of the band go to Berlin for the opening night of a documentary about the jazz scene from that era, and soon find themselves on a road trip through the European countryside to find out what really became of Hiero all those years ago. Edugyan’s novel is a piercing examination of jealousy, ambition, friendship, race and guilt. And features a cameo by Louis Armstrong!

42. A Serial Killer’s Daughter: My Story of Faith, Love and Overcoming / Kerri Rawson

So Brad and I had just finished watching season 2 of Mindhunter, and as I browse through a neighbourhood little library, I spot this book and the serial killer in question is the BTK Killer! Naturally, I had to read it. What I didn’t realize is that this is actually a Christian book, so Rawson does write a lot about struggling with her belief in God and finding her way back to Him, etc. But there are also chapters more fitting with the true crime and memoir genres that I equally enjoyed and was creeped out by.

43. The Night Ocean / Paul La Farge

This is another book that made me feel somewhat stupid as a reader. I just know there are details or tidbits that completely went over my head that would likely enrich a better reader’s experience. In broad strokes, the novel is about a failed marriage between a psychiatrist and a writer who became dangerously obsessed with H.P. Lovecraft and the rumours that swirled around him and his social circle. The writer’s obsession takes him away from his marriage and everything else, and eventually it looks like he ends his own life. The psychiatrist is doubtful (no body was found) and she starts to follow him down the same rabbit hole. At times tense, at times funny, at times sad, I enjoyed the supposed world of Lovecraft and his fans and peers, but again, I’m sure there are deeper musings here that I couldn’t reach.

44. Glass Houses / Louise Penny

The 13th novel in Penny’s Inspector Gamache mystery series sees our hero taking big risks to fight the opioid crisis in Quebec. He and his team focus on catching the big crime boss smuggling drugs across the border from Vermont, endangering his beloved town of Three Pines in the process.

45. The Bone Houses / Emily Lloyd-Jones

My Halloween read for the year, this dark fairytale of a YA novel was perfect for the season. Since her parents died, Ryn has taken over the family business - grave digging - to support herself and her siblings. As the gravedigger, she knows better than most that due to an old curse, the dead in the forest surrounding her village don’t always stay dead. But as more of the forest dead start appearing (and acting more violently than usual), Ryn and an unexpected companion (yes, a charming young man cause there’s got to be a romance!) travel to the heart of the forest to put a stop to the curse once and for all.

46. The Witches Are Coming / Lindy West

Another blazing hot set of essays from my favourite funny feminist take on Trump, abortion rights, #MeToo, and more importantly Adam Sandler and Dateline. As always, Lindy, please be my best friend?

47. Know My Name / Chanel Miller

This memoir is HEAVY but so, so needed. Recently, Chanel Miller decided to come forward publicly and share that she was the victim of Brock Turner’s sexual assault. She got the courage to do so after she posted her blistering and beautiful victim impact statement on social media and it went viral. Miller’s memoir is a must-read, highlighting the incredible and awful lengths victims have to go to to see any modicum of justice brought against their attackers. Miller dealt with professional ineptitude from police and legal professionals, victim-blaming, victim-shaming, depression and anxiety, the inability to hold down a job, and still managed to come out the other side of this trial intact. And in the midst of all the horror, she writes beautifully about her support system - her family, boyfriend and friends - and about the millions of strangers around the world who saw themselves in her experience.

48. Christmas Ghost Stories: A Collection of Winter Tales / Mark Onspaugh

Ghosts AND Christmas? Yes please! This quirky collection features a wide array of festively spooky tales. You want the ghost of Anne Boleyn trapped in a Christmas ornament? You got it! What about the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future drinking together in a bar? Yup, that’s here too!

So, what were my top picks of the year, the books that stuck with me the most? In no particular order:

Educated

Homegoing

The Wanderers

Know My Name

Scarborough

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