Monica Nolan's Blog: Nattering

I posted episode I of a new serial, "Sheltering in Place at the Magdalena Arms" on my blog: https://monicanolan.com/pulppep/. Yes, it's another pandemic-provoked experiment in fiction! I've had to drag the Magdalena Arms girls into the future a bit, but otherwise they're the same as ever. I'm eager to see what readers of the Lesbian Career Girl series think! Please post or send me your comments.

Hoping everyone is well and coping--

I identified my first bird as a child, on vacation in Wisconsin. I saw a bird hopping down a tree headfirst and I realized it was a White Breasted Nuthatch, a bird I had recently read about in my aunt's two volume "Birds of North America." It was a real Helen Keller-water moment. A description I had read came alive before me, no longer abstract and irrelevant but a tool in triumphantly naming something.

Then I forgot about birds, living in a city of English sparrows and pigeons as I did.

Until I wrote Bobby Blanchard Lesbian Gym Teacher. And yes, the crucial role played by the White Breasted Nuthatch is no coincidence. Birding became research, and then when the book was written, I was somehow hooked on what a friend once described as "an old people kind of hobby."

Whatever. I'm swiftly heading towards that age-group, and really, birding is the gift that keeps on giving. Today I screeched to a stop biking in Marin because I caught sight of an odd bird--could it be--yes, it was a Black Crowned Night Heron! A bird I've been longing to see ever since I read about it in my Birds of San Francisco and the Bay Area book.

It was thrilling. Like the time I passed Isabella Rossellini in lower Manhattan. Just as good. Maybe even better. After all, everyone knows Isabella Rossellini. But only the privileged few (million) can recognize a Black Crowned Night Heron.

Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century. So I don't feel like my intellectual life comes to a halt just because I have a fever and a cough. Got through the introduction and started the first chapter.

The Science of Making Friends. Turned out there is loads of entertainment value in this how to for parents of teens on the autistic-asperberger's spectrum. I laughed out loud more than once. Plus the advice works for everyone!

Illusions Perdues. I enjoyed this so much when I first read it I periodically try to reread. The long french sentences effectively put me to sleep, although I did manage to get through the section where Madame de Bargeton dumps Lucien when they get to Paris.

The Infatuations. Talk about your long sentences! I was mildly intrigued/entertained for about forty pages, then I got fed up. I feel badly that I don't have more patience for literary fiction, but I just don't.

Bad Things Happen. The perfect sickbed book. An improbable mystery masquerading as plausible, with a new twist every chapter. I finished it in a day and a half. Eight corpses by the end!

Now it's time for the Y-Teen comfort books: Dinny Gordon, Marsha, Pam and Penny, Betty Cavanna. Which will I get through first? Post-flu malaise, or my teen library?

I'm doing a reading at Gay's the Word bookshop in London on Thursday November 13 for the new book, Dolly Dingle Lesbian Landlady, and a salon-thing at King's College the next week, but both events are just an excuse for a vacation. I don't travel enough, and the list of places I have never been is very long.

Naturally I'm getting in the mood with books, although my current choice, the Patrick Melrose novels, is rather putting me off English people altogether. I'm hoping the Melroses are the 1% and I won't run into any. I liked Never Mind a lot, but the next in the cycle, Bad News, feels like it's embracing its character's snobbishness rather than critiquing it. I'm also in the middle of Ghost Map, which is disgusting in a good way. I love sewage stories. It makes me want to reread Our Mutual Friend or Midnight Is A Place but I should save my time for new books.

Next up is Hangover Square which has been recommended to me by my noir friends multiple times over the years with the magic words, "better than the movie." And I liked the movie. I could also finish reading Mrs. Dalloway and City of Dreadful Delight and I could take another bash at White Teeth. I've got a whole five days before I leave!

In recent years I've been disappointed by the Big Book Sale--the same stacks of Harry Potter and Twilight as I comb the kids' table looking for discarded Berkley Highland paperbacks. But this year I made a real find: Willow Hill, a Scholastic paperback written in 1947 about a teenager facing the problems of integration! This is a welcome addition to my small "progressive teens" collection, a subset of my larger collection of mid-century teen literature. The euphoria of the discovery filled me and soon the old frenzy took hold and I was grabbing everything. After all, it was the last day of the sale, and each book was only a dollar each! Here are my buys:

Tall and Proud. Source: Kids' table. Plot: A girl stricken by polio is inspired by a horse to walk again. Why: It looked vaguely familiar.

The Team. Source: Kids' table. Plot: Ruth struggles to improve her horsemanship as the weak member of the pony team. Why: It's the sequel to Fly-by-Night which I vaguely remember reading as a kid. And it's by K.M. Peyton, whose Flambards I enjoyed.

Black and Blue Magic. Source: Kids' table. Plot: Klutsy Harry grows magic wings and flies around each night. Why: Well, it's still my fantasy.

Stupeur et tremblements. Source: Non-asian languages table. Plot: A kafkaesque tale of a woman's descent to the bottom rung of a Japanese corporation. Why: the author (Amélie Nothomb) sounded familiar, and it was a very clean copy. Last year all the french books I got were kind of mildewy.

Picture Framing & Wall Display. Source: the Craft and Home Improvement table. Plot, er, content: Colorful decorating ideas for framing and displaying art. Why: I can't leave the Big Book Sale without a Sunset building and craft book from the seventies and I already have Easy-to-Make Tables and Chairs.

The Over-Functioning Woman. Source: Women's Studies, but it belonged on the Self-Help table. Content: The perils of doing it all. Why: I can't resist dated self-help books, especially when they contain lots of anecdotes about messed-up women.

With all the books I'm reading. Is it the books or the short attention span age we live in? The only book I'm actually ejoying is my 1979 edition of Miss Manners.

Time to obtain another career girl book for my collection.

So the Dolly Dingle Lesbian Landlady ARC giveaway is over, and I now must mail out the books. After choosing between the mailing envelope options at Office Max (I went with the plastic free cushioned rugged mailers with superior edge protection over the bubble envelopes) my next dilemma is: should I sign the books before I send them or not? On the one hand, people generally like signed copies, no? On the other hand, what if one of the winners prefers to preserve the pristineness of her copy and would only be irritated to see it mucked up by a signature?

Thoughts? I have until tomorrow's trip to the post office to decide.