2008. My first book launch, seventeen years ago. I remember seeing this photo for the first time and thinking I looked fat. Now I see it differently. Why can’t we just be generous with ourselves at the start, why only in hindsight? *sigh*

Tomorrow! This is where I’ll be. Come on out.

Taking a knife to this heart seems almost criminal. But I did it. And it was good. (Ally’s Valentine to the household, plus homemade cinnamon rolls with pink frosting.)

Just finished reading these two memoirs back to back. Highly recommend. Read Grealy first, then Patchett. It is the story of a friendship. It is a medical memoir. It is a memoir about the prize & fellowship circuit. It is a love story. But don’t just read one without the other.

There are so many worse things in the world but I’m having a hard time making peace with the fact that our time is limited. Cancer sucks. He is 16.

memoir rec list on a separate spreadsheet. It helps to have a list when I’m in a bookstore. My last trip was to Half Off Books in Fullerton where I found one on my list, Ann Patchett’s Truth and Beauty, about her friendship with the writer Lucy Grealy. Nearby on a shelf? Lucy Grealy’s memoir.

#BlueSky, we have pie. (Baked by one of my kids.) Also, I vacuumed the cat hair off the couch covers, finished @appletwigli.bsky.social’s Wednesday’s Child and started Crying in H Mart. And I submitted an essay to @longreads.com.

One of the books I picked up at a used bookstore last weekend. I hadn’t noticed until I started reading it that some passages are underlined. The book had a life before it was mine. Also: I silently apologized to the author when the booklight clamp covered her face, a little weird but fitting.

I love working with teens and poetry. Last week we “revised” The Red Wheelbarrow by rearranging ourselves, resulting in “the glazed rain chickens”. SO MUCH BETTER, don’t you think?