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Late winter gardening season, the big prune when it's cold enough that the prunees don't immediately take as invitation to grow in response to the cut, or: I've been burning through audiobooks, again.
The weather has been uncooperative, lots of rain, pushing my timeline later and later. I've also been more aggressive in my pruning; almost everything got long and droopy last year so, none of that: cut deeper and with more abandon and trust future growth to extend from there. I'm learning, as I inhabit a garden for multiple years. There's a growing confidence but also a lot of grace, because I'm learning that the plants on our property were planted for a reason, mostly that common garden plants are hardy and enthusiastic growers. So many pruning guides will have a "here's your ideal perfect growth pattern" and then "and, yes, you can just wack this down to the ground if you gotta." So the rain hasn't stressed me. I wish I'd gotten more done pre-March, but also know there is space for imperfection.
A trend in GR review for The Ruin of All Witches is "it's fine but such a slog" but, see, the secret is that when a book reads itself to you, there is nearly none such thing. On the other hand, it is now forever one of many grapevine books.
Title: The Kiss
Author: Kathryn Harrison
Published: Random House, 2011 (1996)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 255
Total Page Count: 503,315
Text Number: 1791
Read Because: personal enjoyment, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: The author's memoir of her romantic and sexual relationship with her estranged father, and its effect on her troubled relationship with her mother. This is, I take it, one of the earlier well-read incest memoirs, and highly divisive at the time of release. It doesn't feel as surprising, now: rather than shocking or grotesque, Harrison is restrained to the point of sterility, scope parred down, sentences overwritten, everything narrativized to within an inch of its life. I can't say if that makes it less honest, and it remains engaging and thoughtful, but it's a very self-conscious approach to honesty that kept me at a distance.
Title: Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism
Author: Amanda Montell
Narrator: Ann Marie Gideon
Published: HarperAudio, 2021
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 315
Total Page Count: 505,880
Text Number: 1802
Read Because: IIRC this came up in a review of Dickey's Under the Eye of Power, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A bloated but promising text, weighed down by an excess of signposting, a chatty style, and repetitive restatements of the thesis which all amount of "so, the unifying feature is language, thus the title and subject of this book"; a thesis frequently undermined by recurring non-linguistic social elements. Still, Montell looks at a diversity of cults and cult-like spaces, not quite satisfying in breadth or depth but still productive when compared, and the thesis holds water. The more technical discussions of concepts like thought-terminating clichés, gaslighting, and lovebombing are what stick with me. As pop-sci cult studies/linguistics go, this is definitely that: approachable to its own detriment, but I buy it.
Title: The Ruin of All Witches: Life and Death in the New World
Author: Malcolm Gaskill
Narrator: Kristin Atherton
Published: Random House Audio, 2002
Rating: 4.5 of 5
Page Count: 335
Total Page Count: 506,890
Text Number: 1805
Read Because: personal enjoyment, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Nonfiction, a history of the witchcraft trials of Hugh and Mary Parsons in Springfield, 1651, forty years before the Salem Witch Trials. Gaskill does something I love, which is to report the events as the townspeople themselves experienced and reported on them, ex. when someone says they saw/experienced an uncanny event, Gaskill simply reports it from their PoV, not interpreting or doubting the account. Simultaneously, Gaskill provides the historical context of social tensions and contemporary religious conflicts, and the broader context of witch trials across Europe and America, although a date-blind reader like me could have benefited from an explicit timeline. Nonetheless, the commentary writes itself: these events were real to those who experienced them; they were, also, the product of their social and cultural milieu. It's a demystifying and compassionate approach that digs deep into one local case, offering takeaways that can be applied to the history of witch trials in the United States, particularly the events in Salem. Very solid!
The weather has been uncooperative, lots of rain, pushing my timeline later and later. I've also been more aggressive in my pruning; almost everything got long and droopy last year so, none of that: cut deeper and with more abandon and trust future growth to extend from there. I'm learning, as I inhabit a garden for multiple years. There's a growing confidence but also a lot of grace, because I'm learning that the plants on our property were planted for a reason, mostly that common garden plants are hardy and enthusiastic growers. So many pruning guides will have a "here's your ideal perfect growth pattern" and then "and, yes, you can just wack this down to the ground if you gotta." So the rain hasn't stressed me. I wish I'd gotten more done pre-March, but also know there is space for imperfection.
A trend in GR review for The Ruin of All Witches is "it's fine but such a slog" but, see, the secret is that when a book reads itself to you, there is nearly none such thing. On the other hand, it is now forever one of many grapevine books.
Title: The Kiss
Author: Kathryn Harrison
Published: Random House, 2011 (1996)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 255
Total Page Count: 503,315
Text Number: 1791
Read Because: personal enjoyment, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: The author's memoir of her romantic and sexual relationship with her estranged father, and its effect on her troubled relationship with her mother. This is, I take it, one of the earlier well-read incest memoirs, and highly divisive at the time of release. It doesn't feel as surprising, now: rather than shocking or grotesque, Harrison is restrained to the point of sterility, scope parred down, sentences overwritten, everything narrativized to within an inch of its life. I can't say if that makes it less honest, and it remains engaging and thoughtful, but it's a very self-conscious approach to honesty that kept me at a distance.
Title: Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism
Author: Amanda Montell
Narrator: Ann Marie Gideon
Published: HarperAudio, 2021
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 315
Total Page Count: 505,880
Text Number: 1802
Read Because: IIRC this came up in a review of Dickey's Under the Eye of Power, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A bloated but promising text, weighed down by an excess of signposting, a chatty style, and repetitive restatements of the thesis which all amount of "so, the unifying feature is language, thus the title and subject of this book"; a thesis frequently undermined by recurring non-linguistic social elements. Still, Montell looks at a diversity of cults and cult-like spaces, not quite satisfying in breadth or depth but still productive when compared, and the thesis holds water. The more technical discussions of concepts like thought-terminating clichés, gaslighting, and lovebombing are what stick with me. As pop-sci cult studies/linguistics go, this is definitely that: approachable to its own detriment, but I buy it.
Title: The Ruin of All Witches: Life and Death in the New World
Author: Malcolm Gaskill
Narrator: Kristin Atherton
Published: Random House Audio, 2002
Rating: 4.5 of 5
Page Count: 335
Total Page Count: 506,890
Text Number: 1805
Read Because: personal enjoyment, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Nonfiction, a history of the witchcraft trials of Hugh and Mary Parsons in Springfield, 1651, forty years before the Salem Witch Trials. Gaskill does something I love, which is to report the events as the townspeople themselves experienced and reported on them, ex. when someone says they saw/experienced an uncanny event, Gaskill simply reports it from their PoV, not interpreting or doubting the account. Simultaneously, Gaskill provides the historical context of social tensions and contemporary religious conflicts, and the broader context of witch trials across Europe and America, although a date-blind reader like me could have benefited from an explicit timeline. Nonetheless, the commentary writes itself: these events were real to those who experienced them; they were, also, the product of their social and cultural milieu. It's a demystifying and compassionate approach that digs deep into one local case, offering takeaways that can be applied to the history of witch trials in the United States, particularly the events in Salem. Very solid!
