Art for the heart
Film and book recommendations to escape the news this week
I’m writing this on Monday January 20th, and T***p has just been inaugurated. It also happens to be Martin Luther King Jr. day, and my daughter has the day off from school. The sun is high and bright and our town is covered in over a foot of snow. At noon, the church bells rung and I went outside and made a silent prayer that I am going to keep private. I have thoughts about the election. I have thoughts about this President and the slobbering cookie monsters he’s appointing to his cabinet, but mostly, I have thoughts and fears for Mother Earth. I’m going to aim for awe and gratitude in the months ahead instead of desperation, because there is beauty in the world around us, still. I’m looking at some of that beauty in my yard right now.
Deep breath. And exhale.
Today’s post is going to be all over the place in terms of recommendations: we’ve got books, we’ve got a book trend, we’ve got films that I have loved. Before I share these recos, I want to remind everyone that this Friday, I’m running a Friday Office Hours on query-writing questions. Here’s how it will work—you post a question you have about querying in the comments and I commit to responding to all questions until the date the Q&A closes. To ask a question and receive personalized feedback, you need to be a paid subscriber. This button will get you there.
Book recommendations part one - What I’m reading; what I’ve read
I’m making this first part a video because there is a “show and tell” component that is important to these recommendations involving book size. I believe on the vertical dot menu at the top right of the video you can choose “transcript” so that you can read the video instead of watch it, if it doesn’t work— I apologize—that option has been a little wonky as of late. (Substack please get on it.) Also, I refer to indie publisher Two Dollar Radio as “Two Dollar Press” once in this video. Sorry for the snafu, Two Dollar Radio!
Have you read any of the titles I mentioned in the video post? (“Us Fools” by Nora Lange; “Pond” by Claire-Louise Bennett or “The Most” by Jessica Anthony?) Let me know in the comments, but don’t give away any spoilers for folks who haven’t read these books yet!
Book recommendations part two—a book category I love to hate
The other day, I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, “You’re Wrong About” hosted by Sarah Marshall, where Sarah invited writer and long distance dogsledder Blair Braverman on to discuss outdoor enthusiast Aron Ralston, the hiker who cut off his own arm when it was trapped beneath a rock. I found the episode riveting. I knew about the arm story, but what I didn’t know was just months before the arm loss, Aron almost lost two close friends when he led them into avalanche territory against their wishes and instincts and…there was an avalanche.
Aron Ralston sounds like the kind of person who infuriates me but captures my attention. I’ve long been obsessed (in a love-to-hate-them-kind-of-way) with stories of people who are wildly confident and outsizedly unprepared for a task they’re undertaking. I have named this category of stories “The Ill-Equipped Hero.” Here are four recommendations in that category1:
Rough Magic: Riding the World’s Loneliest Horse Race by Lara Prior Palmer (Catapult, 2020) : This chick travels to Mongolia so poorly equipped for one of the world’s hardest long-distance horse races that she has to borrow another rider’s sanitary pads for the entirety of her cycle. As an equestrian and a type-A person who believes preparedness is next to godliness, the memoir’s narrator drove me batshit. But I couldn’t put it down.
A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson (Vintage, 2006): It’s amateur hour o’clock when a classmate from Bill Bryson’s college days shows up to ask if Bill wants to hike the Appalachian trail with him for no particular reason. Both men are in terrible shape, middle-aged, and ignorant as hell about the mental and physical challenges of the AT—they didn’t like each other much in college, and they don’t like each other now. I wanted to throw both men into a dumpster but I read the memoir in a day.
Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer (Vintage, 1997): This is an interesting mash-up: extremely prepared journalist recounts the life of an extremely unprepared young man. This book, of course, revisits the life and motivations of the ill-fated 24 year-old suburbanite Chris McCandless who left Washington D.C. for the Alaskan wilderness with a small-caliber rifle and a 10-pound bag of rice. Chris McCandless has always reminded me of the guys I knew in high school who (by “knew,” I mean “dated”) penned quotes by Nietzsche on their backpacks and had dogs they insisted were wolves. Obviously, this book was candy corn for me.
How I Made a Huge Mess of My Life: (or Couples Therapy with a Dead Man) by Billie Best (Widowspeak Publishing, 2020): I knew Billie Best when I lived in the Massachusetts Berkshires (she’s since moved, as have I), so when she asked me to read her self-published memoir about giving up a successful career in marketing to become a farmer, and farming while also nursing her husband through cancer and then discovering that he cheated on her during his cancer bout, reader, I read it. This is an unwieldy but boisterous book that made me cheer for it all the more because Billie self-published and managed to promote her memoir to great effect during the pandemic. No small feat! I continue to cheerlead her self-pubbed work; her latest is called Clitapalooza.
What do you think of the ill-equipped hero? Is this a book category that infuriates but intrigues you as it does me? Let’s take it to the comments.
Films to escape inauguration week with:
Flow directed by Gints Zilbalodis: This Latvian film about an unlikely crew of animals that has to bond together for survival during a climate disaster will probably call to mind the way we are all trying to survive together now. Be careful if you assemble a bunch of kids to watch this with you because it’s animated: this is a serious, and seriously affecting film that is lovelier than anything I’ve seen in some time.
The Animal Kingdom (“La Règne Animal” in French) directed by Thomas Cailley: For people like me who loved the novel “Nightbitch” by Rachel Yoder but didn’t think the film adaptation went far enough toward fury and horror, this film goes the distance. While it’s not specifically about the rage of motherhood, it’s very much about the rage of not being comfortable in one’s skin and does—in my opinion—a far better job of showing the humiliation, pain and bodily discomfort of a human body morphing into something else. Warnings: there’s body horror in the movie (but artistic, not for shock value). And the film is French.
The Feeling that the time for doing something has passed directed by Joanna Arnow: This film is perfection. The writing is economy itself. The humor is outrageous. It’s a perfect film and I loved it with all my heart. In addition to being a wildly talented writer and director, Arnow is a gifted actor, too. Lots of nudity in this film and acts of (consensual) BDSM so if that’s not for you, skip it.
Sing Sing directed by Greg Kwedar: I wish this gorgeous, heartbreaking and uplifting film was required watching for all Americans. Based on a true story, you’ll meet the incarcerated members of an in-prison theatre club while they fight to put on a new play. I don’t have words to express how important and beautiful this film is. Just watch it!
Those are my recommendations for escaping life this week. I’d also like to suggest that if you are one of many people deciding to get off certain social media platforms or leave social media all together that you check out my 2017 novel TOUCH which explored (or perhaps, predicted?) the exodus away from technology back toward human skin. It’s basically a sociological book wrapped up in a sexy rom-com and any orders help keep the book in print. Please help me keep the book in print! (TOUCH came out right when Trump was elected the first time and the book’s potential was squashed by the news cycle and general shitstorm of his first months in office.)
TOUCH is available wherever you get books. (I hope! If it’s out of stock, tell ‘em to order it! That helps us authors so much.) Thank you.
See you on Friday for our querying Q&A!
xoxo
Courtney
Courtney, you always reveal a little bit about yourself to your Substack Family. It might be about your pregnancies, or your health, or, yes, about your political views. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, which is neither right nor wrong. That just makes you feel like a friend, even though most of us have never met you in person.
I don't agree with everything you say about many different subjects, publishing or otherwise, but everything you say is worth contemplating and learning from. I'm sure all of us here, your subscribers, have love in our hearts for you and all you do for us. To those unsubscribers that don't, I say: "Good riddance, and don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out!" I bet most of them were unpaid subscribers anyway. Don't engage with them at all, Courtney. Keep doing what you always do - enlighten and entertain us.
I’m not sure what I think of the ill equipped hero, but I think maybe I don’t like them (the characters not the book). I’ve only read 1 of your 4 examples and I certainly didn’t like that guy. Definitely interesting as a category though. I’ll have to check out the other three!