Jen > Recent Status Updates

“Should pity be subdivided?” I have wondered this many times. Penelope is casually shameless to nearly reptilian, and now I wonder if I’ve been wrongheaded and baseline human is indifference.

Yes, this is the point of relatable fiction.

Definitely feeling a bit Hill House and now torn about Penelope, even as her motivation makes sense for the 1950s and any time. Valpy and Chela and Jo Hopper are easier.

“…Penelope could chart Elena’s progress by the expression of her guests. .. Almost all immediately freshened their drinks after talking with her.” LOL

The stoic reporting of just-outside-normal-behavior from a sympathetic protagonist as everyone tilts surreal: it’s giving Shirley Jackson x Ann Patchett. I’m vaguely uncomfortable and like it.

Also I ordered a new notebook and inserts. God damnit, I just realized what has happened. Lochby, Atlas Stationers, Jet Pens, this dude is an enabler.

P 150 bequeathed another band name for the 2026 list: Herring Busses, from the Dutch, “haringbuisen.”

Not picturing them sitting in rows peeking out the deck and smiling with their mouths open, drenched in the spray of speed boats traveling in convoys.

So interesting! I forgot about the Chaucer-Boccaccio link. I am compelled to note here I went back to the TOC as this is Ch 7 now and we’re back in what is now S Europe again. Okay. I realize, this is not “The” history of thinking on paper, this is a very limited history of the thinking on paper by people in a handful of western countries populated by white people. Fine, but be for real.

Michael of Rhodes: not only was he teaching himself algebra, modern notation hadn’t been invented yet - no symbols for =, x, +, - nevermind exponents which he was also doing in words. I’m shook. When I read the original description of his manuscript I thought this dude was neurodivergent; now I’m convinced. I am also struck with sonder: every life highly textured when you look closely.

I wish this wasn’t so well written and weren’t eating me alive, because it’s dark and miserable, and now is not a great time while our country is burning to the ground, and I’m writing this and reading it on an end-stage malignant capitalism platform. We were not informed of the risks and benefits; we did not knowingly consent. This is fine.

Oh. This is probably one of those books you need to go back and reread when you clock the structure. That’s why some of the reviews say she’s meandering - because it’s subtle. I almost missed it - it wasn’t until the religious iconography and the bindweed that it dawned on me. Very proud of myself; I rarely notice hidden metaphor.

John Cummings, the owner of the Whitney Plantation in LA says it well: “…and all of a sudden, you feel very strange. It’s not a feeling of guilt. It’s a feeling of ‘discovered ignorance.’ I don’t know how else to explain it. When you wonder, How could this have happened and I didn’t know about it? How could that happen?”

Links between things I knew and things I didn’t. The vast gaps. Wondrous.

Reading this book while traversing a divorce, and it’s an excellent choice if I do say so myself - a lantern in the darkness. hooks is a luminary and warm, safe house in a cold, bleak winter. So grateful to have finally picked up this book now; the timing is perfect.

Factfulness is excellent - explains some phenomena of thinking I see and do everyday and haven’t understood well.

Late December 1864: some are camping and dying on the east side of the mountains, some have gone over the summit and are lost in a river canyon arguing about who should be eaten first. Alternately mad at them and trying not to cry.

You know what, maybe it’s going to be okay. They’ve abandoned the idea of going over the Sierra Nevada and making camp. Go on into Reno, get you some hand warmers, balaclavas, stock up on meat and Mountain Home dehydrated meals, get you a JetBoil. One of those foil emergency blankets and a real first aid kit, the kind with a suture kit. I think you’re going to need it.

It’s Aug 25, they’ve just come out of the Wasatch, OMG people, the pedal on the right! It’s not looking good, y’all better look for a Hampton or a long stay and try again next spring, this isn’t safe.

They’ve just left Missouri 3 weeks late, and I’m thinking about how I shudder leaving Boise heading for Reno in January in a Ford Explorer with 4WD, snow chains, a shovel, GoreTex, a cell phone, OnStar, and giving Donner Pass very wide berth. The innocence! I am already stress eating.

“Since I was digging his sample pits, I felt enfranchised to remark on what I took to be the literary timbre of his science.”

Deffreyes: “You may recall Archelaus’s explanation of earthquakes,” he said cryptically, “Earthquakes were caused by air trapped in underground caves. It shook the earth in its effort to escape. Everyone knew then that the earth was flatulent.”

“…for when Hutton finally wrote his book most readers were trampled by the prose.” LOL

He included an excerpt and it wasn’t that bad but it was highly parenthetical and the reader would have to be hella committed.

It’s true that a) there are no TOC or chapter names or orienting points; McPhee just jumps right in on p 3, b) some sentences do go one for over page but I barely notice they are so cogent, and c) this is excellent writing. I read the first chapter a little breathless with that catch you get when a book is a treasure and you know it right away.