Stuff We Like :: 1.25.20

The new semester has started, and I’ve managed to mix up my binders twice, run out of batteries for my keyboard, and make a big ooblecky mess in the junior high classroom. I’m going to say it was a pretty great week.

What I’m Reading

• I rave about The Word Is Murder in this week’s Library Chicken podcast, so I’ll just say here that I really enjoyed it.

• I picked up Magic for Liars because Suzanne recommended it (and it was super-cheap for the Kindle one day — I should really change my half of the podcast to Kindle Chicken, in which I try to actually read all the books I download because they are on sale), and I totally get why she loved it: It’s about a bitter private investigator who is hired to investigate a murder at the exclusive school where her estranged twin sister is a teacher. This isn’t an ordinary school though: Ivy’s sister is magic, and she teaches at a high school for magicians. (They call them mages.) Ivy’s entire life has been defined by absence: the absence of magic (why is her sister magical but she’s not?), the absence of her sister (who went away to private magic school, leaving Ivy behind), the absence of her family, which fell apart after her mother died and her sister left home. This leaves Ivy, frankly, not a very likable or sympathetic character — she’s chosen to wallow in all of this misery, and she consistently makes choices that reinforce how unhappy she is. Even taking the job investigating a gruesome murder at her sister’s school is just rubbing salt in the wound — her sister belongs in this world, but Ivy doesn’t. That brings something I really liked to the book, though: The magical system is mysterious because Ivy doesn’t understand it — she’s not magic. She sees glimpses and has little flashes of understanding, but she’s always outside the big magical mystery, which works really well for the story. I kept waiting, though, for some revelation (beyond the identity of the murderer, which most people will probably guess early on even if the motive turns out to be a minor twist), some emotional conclusion or catharsis, but the books winds up almost too quickly, leaving none of the complicated relationships it’s set up resolved. I liked it — but I could have loved it, if you know what I mean, and I am bummed that I didn’t.

• I picked up Rose, Where Did You Get That Red? Teaching Great Poetry to Children again because I AM teaching poetry to middle school students through creative writing this semester, and I remembered finding this book very useful with my daughter. And it is useful — if you want to help your kids write poetry and don’t know where to start, this is a terrific resource to get you over that initial hump. I was surprised, though, by how old-fashioned the included anthology seemed — I don’t remember feeling this way 10-ish years ago when I pulled it out for my daughter, but I was really struck by the sheer white-man-ness of the included readings. It’s easy — and fun! — to pull your own poems, so this definitely isn’t a deal-breaker for me, but it was a very noticeable absence.

What I’m Watching

• Have you watched the first couple of episodes of The Outsider? I have no idea what’s happening, and it’s so weird, but I keep watching, so maybe it will turn out to be worth it?

• I’m using a few episodes of Finding Your Roots this semester in my high school history class, and if you’re studying U.S. history, I highly recommend it. In the show, hosted by historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr., celebrity guests trace their genealogy through U.S. history, with fascinating results. (Comedian Wanda Sykes, in one of my favorite episodes, discovers that her family is one of the few in the United States with free Black people stretching back before the American Revolution.) I love the way they make archival discoveries seem exciting and accessible — I am at the front of the line thanking the internet for making information readily accessible, but not all information comes in quick-digest form, especially in historical research. 

• Television knitting: This scarf, just because it’s pretty, and I’m trying to use up my sock yarn stash so I can buy more sock yarn.

What’s Keeping Me Busy

• One of my big goals for middle school with my son is to help him get into a routine with his academic work. This doesn’t come naturally to him — he tends to put things off and then be horribly upset that he doesn’t have time to finish them the way he wants to. This is hard for me because I am naturally prone to embracing to-do lists — and he just isn’t. So when I come in with my color-coded flags and bullet journals and highlighters, he nods and smiles, and nothing changes. What I have to do is be patient — I have to step back instead of forward, and I have to pay attention to him and how he gets things done. That, I know, is the secret to routines — you don’t “make” them so much as you discover them, but being patient through the discovering phase is hard for me.

(We’re Amazon affiliates, so if you purchase something through an Amazon link, we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Obviously this doesn’t influence what we recommend, and we link to places other than Amazon.)

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