[Julie Steiner]

I've been reading Megan Whalen Turner's The Queen's Thief series to my nieces via Zoom. We're near the end of the third book, my favorite, The King of Attolia. They loved this bit:

The meeting on wheat production seemed to be a recitation of the yield of every wheat field in the country in the last year. Costis tried unsuccessfully to pay attention. They were a half hour into the list when the king asked, "What's the difference in the wheat?"

"Excuse me, Your Majesty?"

"The different kinds of wheat you keep mentioning. What's the difference?"

The two men looked at each other. The king waited, leaning back in his chair with one booted ankle crossed over his knee.

"Pilades would be most helpful. If Your Majesty would excuse us?"

The king waved one hand, and the two men hurried away and returned with Pilades, a bent older man with wisping white hair and an expression of delight on his wrinkled face.

"If Your Majesty would like to see, I have samples here." He reached into a variety of small bags that he was carrying and dumped handful after handful of grain onto the table. Dust rose in a cloud, and the king winced, waving his hand in front of his face. Pilades didn't notice. He called the king's attention to the formation of the seeds, to the number of the seeds, to their shape. He dumped more piles onto the table and explained the advantages of each, which one yielded the largest crop, which survived the most inclement weather, which could be planted summer or fall. Many facts Costis knew, having been raised on a farm. Some were new, and the lecture, once begun, was clearly unstoppable.

The king, who normally wandered away to a window during meetings like this, sat immobilized. He had little choice. If he so much as shifted in his seat, Pilades moved in closer, hovering over him with zeal. No doubt he rarely got a chance to expound to this extent and was reluctant to lose the king's attention. The king made a few abortive attempts to escape but was ultimately forced to sit and listen.

Over the king's head, the counselors and the attendants exchanged glances of awed delight. When Pilades finally wound down, the king, his face blank, thanked him. He thanked the two men he'd begun the meeting with and suggested that perhaps they could finish their business at another meeting, or better—they could just give him a written summary and he would look it over sometime himself. They nodded; the king rose and escaped into the hall. Once there, with the door closed, he put his face in his hand.

"Thank gods I didn't ask about fertilizer," he said.

[RCL]

I'm still howling like a twelve-year-old!

[Jayne Osborn]

Never mind.

[Susan McLean]

Julie, Megan Whalen Turner is a favorite of mine, too.

I recently finished reading Ann Drysdale's excellent Feeling Unusual, and I am currently reading Dick Davis's Love in Another Language: Collected Poems and Selected Translations. In terms of fiction, I've recently read Elena Ferrante's The Story of a New Name and Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, Richard Osman's The Bullet That Missed, and Anthony Horowitz's Magpie Murders, The Word Is Murder, and The Sentence Is Death. Though I am not a huge fan of mysteries, my mother is, and I am staying with her at the moment, so we have been sharing books from the local library.

Susan

[Clive Watkins]

Currently, I am rereading all of Seamus Heaney, something I have done several times since first meeting him in early 1966, fifty-seven years ago now; at the moment I am reading Field Work (1979). I am also reading James Gillray: A Revolution in Satire by Tim Clayton (2022). In parallel, I have just begun rereading Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen by P. G. Wodehouse (1974).

Clive

[Mary McLean]

I'm reading Ali Smith’s Summer, the 4th in her series of seasons. I picked up Autumn soon after it came out, read the first few pages, and thought Meh, not my cup of tea. But then last year I realized Ali Smith is actually someone I was a student with at Cambridge – she and her partner directed a women-only Footlights comedy show I helped out with, called Daughters of England. I was encouraged to think there might be some fun in the books and gave them another try. And they are humorous, in a Kafkaesque way, as well as lyrical and wise. There is a moment towards the end of Autumn that is one of the most beautiful scenes I’ve ever read, touching but lightly handled. That was my favorite of the books so far, but Summer is probably next-top for me, and all have been worth reading.

[Max Goodman]

Walter, yes, it's fun to read how little fun Wallace had on that ship.

I'm enjoying these lists, descriptions, and quotes. I hope they keep coming.

[Christine P'legion]

I've been reading John McPhee's Draft no. 4, which is a delightful collection of essays about writing, both writing-as-process and writing-as-career. Here are two passages I copied out into my notebook tonight:

The writing impulse seeks its own level and isn't always given a chance to find it. You can't make up your mind in a Comp Lit class that you're going to be a Russian novelist. Or even an American novelist. Or a poet. Young writers find out what kind of writers they are by experiment. If they choose from the outset to practice exclusively a form of writing because it is praised in the classroom or otherwise carries appealing prestige, they are vastly increasing the risk inherent in taking up writing in the first place. It is easy to misjudge yourself and get stuck in the wrong genre. You avoid that, early on, by writing in every genre. If you are telling yourself you're a poet, write poems. Write a lot of poems. If fewer than one work out, throw them all away; you're not a poet. Maybe you're a novelist. You won't know until you have written several novels.

---John McPhee, "Editors & Publishers," Draft no. 4, pp. 78-9.

and:

...no two writers are the same, like snowflakes and fingerprints. No one will ever write in just the way you do, or in just the way that anyone else does. Because of this fact, there is no real competition between writers. What appears to be competition is nothing more than jealousy and gossip. Writing is strictly a matter of developing oneself. You compete only with yourself. You develop yourself by writing. An editor's goal is to help writers make the most of the patterns that are unique about them.

---John McPhee, "Editors & Publishers," Draft no. 4, p. 82.