Reading Wednesday

Finished One Man's Meat by E.B. White, a collection of essays from 1938-1943 that I had originally been drawn to by the humorous tone of the one I encountered in the wild (on spending so much time thinking about all the things you need to do today that suddenly it's 4 pm and you haven't done any of them— a mood!) and turned out to have more heft than I'd expected, emotionally - or philosophically? - speaking. (The period it covers, which I didn't know at that first encounter, would be a clue.) Maybe "heft" isn't quite the right word, either: even at its most serious— which is probably the essay tearing Anne Lindbergh's The Wave of the Future to shreds over her stance of "totalitarianism: just lie down and take it"— his writing has this mix of firm conviction and general bemusement that's like... charming in the way that Columbo is charming...? I don't know; it's a good book and I'm glad I read it.

Read Susan, Linda, Nina & Cokie: The Extraordinary Story of the Founding Mothers of NPR by Lisa Napoli, which is what it says on the tin.

Read River Mumma by Zalika Reid-Benta, fast-paced urban fantasy rooted in Jamaican folklore and set in Toronto.

Read The Happy Couple by Naoise Dolan, about an angsty millennial couple in Dublin heading towards their ill-advised wedding day. I tried reading this when it came out last year but found the lightly ironic tone too grating to get far— I guess I just had to be (and finally was) in the right mood for it?