Tag: New England

  • The Heat

    I hate hot weather, in general. Sure, on vacation, down near a beach, warm weather is pleasant and fun to be in. Having a little sweat near a pool or the ocean is always acceptable. But what I am talking about is my despisement for hot weather.

    Though I was born in Illinois, I spent most of my childhood, and the early part of my twenties in Texas, which is a place known for hot weather, in case you having been living under a rock, which is a nice place to cool down in Texas. Summer does last from May to, sometimes, the start of October. When I was a kid, it didn’t bother me, it just was what it was – Summer is the hot time of the year. As I got up to high school, the heat really started to bother me, and when I got to my twenties, I hated the heat. The odd thing was that in my twenties, I was doing outdoor theatre in the Texas Summer. Somehow I was okay with that, but I think that had to do with the amount of beer I was drinking.

    Living in New York has been an improvement, though not an escape from the heat. Oh, it’s not as hot here, but living on the water means we get the added bonus of humidity. That is what makes July and August awful up here. Everything is sticky, and the City smells worse for some reason. The silver lining is that by September, things do begin to cool down.

    I say all of this because we have just started the Summer of 2023. The kid’s off of school, and we still have a few weeks to kill before camp and vacations start. Right now, we are all squatting in front of air conditioners, trying not to move, like splooting squirrels.

    I don’t think there is any hope for a person like me on this planet. Things keep getting warmer, and I don’t know how far north I want to move. I think about Vermont and New Hampshire, but the locals there keep telling me that most people can’t handle the winters. Sure, I know they are out to scare the New Yorkers from moving to their state, and mission accomplished. I don’t want to shovel your feet of snow, New England. I just would like a cool place to stay for the Summer.

  • Personal Review: Five Tuesdays in Winter, by Lily King

    (I will be SPOILING this book.)

    I’ve been heavy into reading novels of late, and as such, I thought I should take a turn and read a story collection. I received Five Tuesdays in Winter, by Lily King, as a Christmas gift. It was selected off a book list that I have, which I add to whenever I hear about a title that sounds interesting. Sadly, I don’t remember where I heard about Five Tuesdays in Winter, which spurned me to add it to the list, but for whatever reason it got there, I am glad.

    It was a nice, easy book to read, and I feel like if you describe any book in that matter, it comes across as patronizing. It’s as if seriousness, authenticity, and drama has to be heavy, labored, and challenging to a reader. If I didn’t have responsibilities and a child to look after, I think I could have finished this book in a day, and not missed a beat of King’s writing.

    The collection is made up of ten stories, which feels like the proper number in a collection, or songs on an album. All the stories were good, and, not surprising, some were better than others. The collection starts off with a Murder’s Row of five compelling stories; “Creature,” “Five Tuesdays in Winter,” “When in the Dordogne,” “North Sea,” and “Timeline.” Then there is a lull with “Hotel Seattle,” and “Waiting for Charlie,” which are the two weakest of the stories. Then the final three pieces, “Mansard,” South,” and “The Man at the Door” are all solid works, and help the collection end on a strong note.

    King does an excellent job of getting to the point, describing what needs to be known, and not wasting words. I could not only see, but feel the flowers in the front of the house Carol grew up in, and was still owned by her rehab prone father in “Creature.” But, I also appreciated the way that King allowed the character’s actions to speak, indicating their emotions to us, showing us what was motivating them. This was most evident in the title track, “Five Tuesdays in Winter,” where conversation adverse Mitchell’s growing infatuation is revealed only through his slight observations and gestures.

    And what I really enjoyed, and felt encouraged by, is that there was nothing shocking for the sake of shock, or life and death in these stories. For the most part, I found that the compelling drama of each story was more about discovery in a personal truth, or the acknowledgment of a change in the direction of one’s life had occurred. In solid, confident hands, like King’s, these moments are profound in their apparent simplicity; discovering the capacity of love again, or having the strength to stand up for one’s self, or that summer when adulthood emerged from adolescence, or my favorite – you have to have the courage to slay your fear. (Maybe even bury it in the back yard.)

    It was refreshing to read stories that had big truths in small packages. I have been reading so many short stories of late, that I am beginning to get desensitized to the amount of death, or uncomfortable/aggressive sex that happens. It’s like the “trauma plot” in stories has become the issue du jour of late. In Five Tuesdays in Winter, Lily King shows real courage in creating her characters that live lives of grace and dignity which not only shows she respects her characters, but also acknowledges that her characters will continue to grow in these worlds. This collection left me feeling surprisingly optimistic about life, which is a delight to experience in the cold gloom of winter.