Nayad A. Monroe's Blog

 

The Secret History, by Donna Tartt; Catherine House, by Elisabeth Thomas; and Bunny, by Mona Awad


In 2022, I read fifty-one books in the entire year, and I felt good about it. That was actually more than I had read in the previous year.

In 2023, in the first half of the year, I have read seventy books! 

What changed? In January of this year I found out about "BookTube," otherwise known as the part of YouTube in which people review and discuss books, otherwise known as something I may be the last r...

 Hey there. Hi. Long time no post. I get it! I apologize.

Anyway, I'm alive. When the pandemic started in March of 2020, I became very cautious and probably at least a little bit depressed, and all of my writing suffered. I watched a lot of shows and got deeply absorbed in playing a few video games. One high point of 2020 was receiving a hardcover, illustrated author copy of an anthology with one of my stories: "The Circus Reborn," in Midnight Under the Big Top. It was edited by Brian James Freem...

(Sunset over Lake Mendota)
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To get myself back into blogging, I've decided to let you know that I sometimes write sonnets! Here are two of them - one new, one old. Enjoy? I hope you will.
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Into the World

We did not meet while I was in the maze,
Believing that I wasn’t lost at all,
Yet winding ever deeper through my days,
To inward darkness, ever more in thrall.

We could not meet while I, with covered eyes
Kept to my house, to pathways known and clear,
And blinded to the world’s exquisite size,
Knew onl...

(This Buddha candle is too nice to burn, and it smells great, too!)
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Today's post is over at my EcoAnxiety Club blog: Self-Care for the Climate-Aware
I hope you'll click, because I put a lot of ideas in that post!

(See what I did with this frame here?)
I'm not sure how to begin this post, but that's my problem. I struggle with being indecisive about what to start and how to start it. I think there are two reasons people might get into this state: either being too picky or too open-minded. 
If you're too picky, you don't like any idea, or maybe you've internalized a feeling of judgment from other people, so you can shoot down any idea based on the certainty that it will be despised by the entire worl...

(Here's Annabelle, reestablishing her relationship with this sparkly white throw blanket)
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Since I don't play the Christmas-before-Thanksgiving game, and since I was away over the Thanksgiving weekend, my Christmas decorations are not entirely up yet. I amazed myself by having a short burst of energy for getting started after the drive home on Sunday, so I put away some fall things and got out some "winter" things (technically it's still late fall, everybody, but I'm willing to play along). Bu...

(Flowers from my parents' 50th wedding anniversary party)
Happy final week of November to you! I'm back. Let's do this.
This year, I had a calm and relatively simple Thanksgiving, with non-crazy amounts of food that included pumpkin pie I made myself. The filling, I made. I bought pre-made pie crust and I have no regrets. The best thing about mixing up my own pumpkin pie filling is that I can have the amount of cinnamon I require in it. Last time I used the same recipe, I doubled the amount of...

(What? You don't serve your smoothies decorated with rubber duckies?)
(I had way too much fun making this picture)
(It was too boring before, because food photography is hard)
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I'm in a better mood than yesterday, so let's all get happy about that! And now for the smoothies.
I like the flavors of many fruits with textures I don’t like, so I often eat fruit in the form of smoothies. Finding good existing recipes can be a struggle for me, though, because people seem determined to include bananas wh...

(I took this photo in Door County, Wisconsin, a month ago)
(It feels like that trip was five years ago)
(Not cool, internet)
(NOT COOL)
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Today I wasn't even on the internet that much. I went out. I was in the real world. I did real things. Yet somehow I encountered, in small peeks at the internet, a wide array of arguments, news of the so-called President's ill-informed blunders, a comedian I used to like being aggressively divisive, and people mocking the physical appearance of other people. A p...

(Here are two of the four shelves of books I'd like to re-read someday)
(Yet somehow I keep reading new ones instead)
(It's a pickle, y'all)
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This is something that bothers me often. How can I balance the non-negotiable need to read more new books with the intense desire to re-read excellent books like the ones shown above, as well as the ones not shown above: wonderful books by Kage Baker and Jeff VanderMeer, and several more by Tim Powers, plus others? Hmm? How exactly is that supposed to work...