TBR/TBW: August 2023

Salutations, ReaderPeople! Just to catch you up on the Filling-in-the-Gaps TBR, I've read the books for 1973 and 1980 and have switched out 1984's book several times but have finally settled on Dragons of the Autumn Twilight. I might end up switching out 2023 for a poetry book, depending on how the next two novels go. I'm going to update my Goodreads once all the books are done, filling in those gaps.

I'm also going to sideswipe the GarbAugust reading event (do the prompts for each week but skip the bingo, etc.), possibly reading Alan Dean Foster's Krull for week 3 (novelization or book by famous person). I'm going to have to locate books for the rest (Week 1: Category Romance or Men's Adventure; Week 2: Paperbacks from Hell or Vintage Smut; Week 4: Anything Goes)...I'll have to skim Paperbacks from Hell to see if there's anything my weak stomach can handle.

And then there's the writing. I've been finding NaNoWriMo/prompts really distracting lately. My least favorite part of writing is taking the pile of text badly in need of revision and doing...the...revision. I avoid it with another shiny pile of terrible text.

My solution? More shiny text! Part of the goal of GarbAugust is to remind you what drew you to reading in the first place, maybe to shake you out of the mindset that reading is merely a sport of wordcount or books completed and I'd like to give myself a writing goal that pushes me to a finished short novel. My goal for the month of August is to produce a 50K to 75K story (23 chapters, beginning, middle, and end) that incorporates my interests in dead mall content, portal fantasy, and walking. The ultimate goal is for a picture of the printed, completed novel to appear on this blog before October 1st.

Many happy summer wishes!

-- Chrissa

Comments

Treacle Season

Sharing with The Sunday Muse #190 , hosted this week by Carrie. Keaton was great in that show—the one with wings— Where he was constantly a [man]child on a ledge dreaming an angel who became a superhero. She was a sarcastic (fake?) angel—it was the 80s— But always good, on time, her lessons easy, Easy as it would have been for him to fall. The metaphor so obvious...but I didn't get it. Nor the easy and obvious good. (/s) I watch the TV movie every other December Remembering believing in easy And crushing on this character, that city... Angels should be sweet, sarcastic figures, knowing (like nurses and social workers) we prefer Sleeping on the ledge, reckless to call for "heroes." To clear up any confusion: there is no Michael Keaton movie we watch every holiday season. Although, if there were...I'd probably watch it. -- Chrissa

Seeds for the Fire Bushes

Sharing with The Sunday Muse #261 , for our final week. Thank you for reading & interacting with these poems over the past several years. Cold blood works the fire bushes: marble, serpent, maybe. Snakehearted limestone gathers a full bouquet. Line the tables, cook the feast over the flowers, Hang the bottles from the marble bodies. Gods are sporting tonight; Dancing under the empty jars Eyes clear as the darkness, Deep as the heavens. Hang bottles to catch the sparks, Bottles to cast from the shore Already burning from their nearness. Bottles to kindle a thousand Epics, hearts, madnesses, parties... Bottles to seed the fire bushes On some colder, newer shore. I'm not sure whether I'll be returning to weekly poetry for the time being. I might turn this blog to reading to inspires me to get through a grim and treacherous TBR that seems to swell with books that aren't quite read, even if bookmarks appear in their shallows. From June through September I'm going to

Turn Away

Sharing with The Sunday Muse , for #193. Turn away, like the moon, listening... Listening to the planet that rumbles with a hundred million slaps. All the feet, all the rockets, all the pistons in the cars on the asphalt over the chasm where the veins run deep, blue in sunlight, black at night. Running over the chasm. Once or twice they ran to you. Once or twice they ran by. Greetings and salutations. The sky is an entertaining shade of concrete yellow as the rain promised earlier in the week makes good on its arrival. It's a disturbing bright sallow sky, the kind of sky that puts you in mind of old movies and degraded film stock and the pops and crackles incidental to the main story. Several years ago I made a resolution to journal more and last year I came across a video that suggested I actually re-read those journals, at least those of the previous year, at the beginning of each new year. Technically, I have kept the journal resolution, making daily notes in the margins of

A Weed on The Curb

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