EPISODE 21: SALON SERIES – Spiritualism Part II

In Part II of our Salon Series: Spiritualism series, we formally enter our salon and hear a few works from our authors. Emma Hardinge Britten gives us some useful seance instruction, Rebecca Cox Jackson shares a real life account of her travels, and Ella Wheeler Wilcox delves deep into her spiritual poetry.

Listen on ITunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Castbox, or on the blog. Comments and ratings are appreciated on all platforms!

Resources:

Rules to be Observed When Forming Spiritual Circles by Emma Hardinge Britten

Viels by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The Gifts of Power by Rebecca Cox Jackson

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EPISODE 20: SALON SERIES – Spiritualism Part I

In this inaugural episode of the Salon Series, we’re learning about the Spiritualism movement of the late 19th / early 20th centuries and introduce our Salon attendees Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Emma Hardinge Britten, and Rebecca Cox Jackson.

Listen on ITunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Castbox, or on the blog. Comments and ratings are appreciated on all platforms!

Resources:

Essay Review: Science, Religion, and the Spiritual World: The other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850–1914 (link)
The Rise of Spiritualism During the First World War: Raymond, Or Life and Death (link)
The Fox Sisters and the Rap on Spiritualism (link)
Brittanica Spiritualism (link)
The Banner of Light, The Boston Investigator, The New-York Times, The Brooklyn Eagle (link)
The Unseen Worlds of Emma Hardinge Britten: Some Chapters in the History of Western Occultism: The Unseen Worlds of Emma Hardinge Britten (link)
Poetry Foundation Ella Wheeler Wilcox (link)
Wisconsin Electric Reader – Ella Wheeler Wilcox (link)
Wisconsin Lit Map (link)
QSpirit: The Two Rebeccas (link)
Holy Spirits: The Power and Legacy of America’s Female Spiritualists (link)
Gifts of Power: Writings of Rebecca Cox Jackson (link)
How the Nineteenth-Century Spiritualist Movement Gave Voice to American Women (link)
Spiritual Paths Spiritualist Church: Emma Hardinge Britten & The Seven Principles (link)
Rules to Be Observed When Forming Spiritual Circles by Emma Hadinge and Others (link)
Ectoplasm (Paranormal) (link)
The Color of Angels: Spiritualism in American Literary Culture (link)
PBS: Rebecca Cox jackson (link)
Review: Rebecca Cox Jackson and the Uses of Power (link)
PBS: About the Shakers (link)

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PODCAST UPDATE: NEW EPISODES INCOMING

This post is for our dear TWWR Podcast Listeners – aka the most patient audience in the world. I know it has been an age since our last episode was published but it’s for good reason, I promise!

Trapper has been living his best life in Louisiana and I’ve recently relocated to England. Wild times, I know. So I figured, what better time to relaunch the podcast? While I have dreams of one day resurrecting the format Trapper and I created, this time around I’ll be shaking things up as I take on solo podcasting for the first time ever.

Listen to the podcast update for more details (and some mild rambling). Also, get ready for a spooky episode coming out on Halloween!

More coming soon.

x

Kait

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JUST AS YOU ARE BY CAMILLE KELLOGG

Just As You Are by Camille Kellogg was described to me as “A queer Pride and Prejudice inspired enemies-to-lovers, featuring a queer magazine and it’s brooding, new investor.“

Well, let me tell you, my experience with this book could be described as enemies-to-lovers as well. Actually, welcome to the first enemies-to-lovers book review on thewriterwhoreads.com.

Let’s go back to the beginning, shall we?

September 4, 2023. Lucky for me, my birthday landed on labor day and I packed the day with all my favorite things: Thai food, leisurely strolls through boutique knickknack stores, expensive lattes, and a bookstore or two.

When we happened upon The Ripped Bodice, I practically ran in. The Ripped Bodice is an independent, woman and queer owned bookstore dedicated to romance novels. It’s pink. I walked in like I was home. It was crowded as hell; full of women and few uncomfortable looking straight boyfriends. Right as I felt a bit overwhelmed, my partner popped out of nowhere with a wrapped book.

I had always wanted to buy one of those “blind date with a book” things and leapt at this one. Pride and Prejudice, you say? Queer? Sold.

In classic Writer Who Reads fashion, I didn’t unwrap this book for a good month.

Then, when I finally unwrapped the book and read the first chapter, I threw it in a dusty corner never to be seen again. The first few chapters of this book really annoyed me. It was like someone handed a straight writer a list of stereotypical lesbian things and said, “don’t leave a single detail out.“

Maybe I felt personally attacked because I, too, am a queer in Brooklyn but do not own Doc Martens, have some type of shaved head, or own any suggestive gay t-shirts.

And, while I enjoyed the play on words with the Nether Fields magazine, every element of that office being named after some queer icon was annoying. It took me out of the story every time the “Kioyoko Kitchen (named after Hayley Kiyoko of course)” was mentioned.

Despite sounding like the hater that I am, I can see how this may delight other readers, which has forced me to self reflect. Why was this so irritating to me? Shouldn’t our queer culture – dress and references and language – be celebrated at every turn?

Yes, of course.

Sometimes, however, I find that the culture can hinder genuine self expression. We can’t all love Doc Martens and rainbows, and that’s okay.

Okay, here ends the enemies portion of this review. Let’s fall in love.

I’m moving soon and need to decide which books in my library will move with me. I also accepted that I have a mild (read: aggressive) social media addiction and quit cold turkey. I picked up Just As You Are again to kill two birds with one stone.

Without the cooking videos and wedding content of Instagram to distract me, I trudged through the first 100 pages of the book. I began to enjoy meeting the characters and making the connections to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

Liz was Elizabeth Bennet

Daria was Fitzwilliam Darcy

Bailey was Charles Bingley

Jane was Jane Bennet

Then the story sucked me in a bit. Then a bit more. Then more.

By page 200, I was invested.

Our main characters hated each other so much, I read on to see if the author could convincingly make them fall in love. There was tension, there was drama, there was pining and secret sexual attraction.

Lust, betrayal, misunderstandings!

These were elements of the classic Pride and Prejudice that we all loved, except there was texting, instagram, and queers! How fun.

I especially loved the diversity of the characters, from race to gender. We get to see Liz work through her own fluctuating gender expression, struggling to find her own personal combination of masculine and feminine.

One of my favorite characters was Jane, of course. I always liked Jane in Pride and Prejudice. This modern Jane was very similarly quiet and reserved, but also a Black trans woman who was damn good at her job. I loved her.

By the end of the book, I couldn’t care less about our rough start. I read the last chapter in bed at 7:00am if that proves how invested I became.

Considering how overwhelmingly white the regency era inspiration for Just As You Are was, this novel could have gotten away with being a cis, white, lesbian book claiming to be groundbreaking. I appreciate Kellogg’s inclusion, believable plot, and complex characters.

Three and half stars.

P.S. I’m logging into Instagram to share this review. Come pull me out if I get sucked in.

THE SEVEN HUSBANDS OF EVELYN HUGO BY TAYLOR JENKINS REID

I read this book begrudgingly. Actually, I listened to this book. Begrudgingly because Bookstagram took me by the collar and beat it across my face for a consistent year.

I gotta see what Evelyn Hugo is about, I’d think against my own will.

Then one day I found myself reading reviews of the book online. Amid tons of 5-star spoiler-free reviews, one salty loser lady wrote a 2-star review with some vague homophobia. It surprised me. It thrilled me!

Wait wait wait.

This book about a woman with seven husbands is queer? I was immediately in.

I downloaded a copy on Libby and started reading…but something was off. I don’t know if it was the writing or the format but I couldn’t get into it.

Trust me, I know how absurd that sounds. Taylor Jenkins Reid is a great writer. 2017’s The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is her fifth published novel and the one directly following – Daisy Jones & the Six – was made into a mini-series on Prime. This woman knows what she’s doing.

Still, something bugged me about reading Evelyn Hugo. Then, a few months later, that all too familiar cover popped up on my Spotify. Stalking me. Calling to me.

After listening to one chapter, I was hooked. It was like this book was written to be narrated aloud. The narrators (Alma Cuervo, Julia Whelan, and Robin Miles) did a great job jumping from our present day narrator Monique’s point of view to Evelyn’s vivid recounting of the golden age of Hollywood to the snarky tabloid snippets of the past.

It’s an incredible story that I hungrily needed to finish once I became invested. Jenkins Reid is very talented at creating tension and raising questions from the first few pages. Hell, she did this from the cover.

Who is Evelyn Hugo and why should I care?

Why seven husbands?

The novel would have been great with simply answering these questions, but we were given a few delicious and devastating twists as well.

As always, I won’t throw in any spoilers but I will say what worked and didn’t work. I appreciated Monique’s personal storyline, rich with its own history and drama which our author dove into just enough to develop the character. As a Black woman, I enjoyed the representation through Monique (a biracial journalist who has been tasked with writing Evelyn’s life story). I also appreciated the queer storyline and the steamy scenes that read quite poetically – both tasteful and overwhelmingly romantic.

On the other side, I would have loved a bit more character development of Monique’s mother. The ending also seemed to come rather quickly, which could have just been my unwillingness to part from the story.

This review is shorter than my others because I feel like I cheated by listening to an audiobook. I didn’t get to underline especially well-written excerpts or connect with the author’s writing style. Regardless, I have no regrets. I’m grateful to have finally discovered why this book is so beloved. I’m even more grateful to learn that Netflix has been working on bringing this story to the screen.

Now, let me go come up with my dream cast. I’ll see y’all at the premiere.

Four and a half stars.

THEN SHE WAS GONE BY LISA JEWELL

This book made me sick to my stomach.

I’m skipping my usual review introduction: Omg, I’m such a bad reader. I haven’t written a review in years. Blah blah blah.

No. I have to tell you about the physical reactions that flooded through my body with each and every page. Well, maybe not every page. Lisa Jewell’s 2017 novel, Then She Was Gone actually bored me at first. I found myself putting it down and finding excuses to read other books and do other tasks. Then it got good and everything that wasn’t Then She Was Gone was an inconvenience.

What do you mean you bought tickets to the sold-out Barbie movie that I’ve been dying to see? Don’t you know my book just got good?

Jokes aside, let’s talk about the plot. Without spoiling anything, the story centers around the disappearance of a glittering and popular teenage girl named Ellie. She’s blonde haired, well-mannered, and well-loved. She’s likable. Once Ellie vanishes, we stick close to her mother, Laurel, whose thoughts swirl around Ellie and nothing else…for years. She is a shell of her former self until she is awoken. Then things get even more mysterious and sinister and perplexing than I thought possible. Laurel turns into a detective while coming to terms with the neglect she’s shown to her other two children and husband over the years. Eventually, a few other characters’ voices come into play.

In writing this review, I’m realizing I can’t even tell you what made me want to heave without sharing spoilers. We’re gonna have to start a book club, y’all. But I will say that it wasn’t just blood and gore that had me heaving. It was the slow realizations of betrayal; the intimate kind. Everything was too close, too concentrated. A little nauseating microcosm in one London neighborhood.

It all felt real, too. I’ve heard bits of every part of this story in true crime documentaries and news articles. I hate it all. You should read it.

As this is the writer who reads blog, we should talk about the writing. I’m always in awe when a story is all over the place and still makes sense. How does that work, Lisa Jewell? How does that look in your head? We have multiple narrators who tell the story in various ways: present tense, past tense, letter writing, and some weirdly aggressive form of journal writing. I ate it up. It wasn’t just the plot that kept me turning the page, but the need to get back to my favorite character and/or out of a psychopath’s head.

Amidst all of that, Jewell gives us some great writing. I would call her writing style balanced. Easy to read, clear, and laced with some really beautiful lines. Like when Laurel has a moment of self-reflection:

She’s talking in lazy clichés, using words that don’t quite add up to the sum of her disquiet.

p136

Maybe I just really love the word disquiet. Or maybe I liked how Laurel always seemed to call herself out internally because I can relate. Speaking of Laurel’s mind, there’s this bit in chapter 23 after another character shares their feelings:

The pronouncement is both surprising and completely predictable. She can’t process it fast enough and there is a small but prominent silence.

p129

I love how succinct Jewell is here. In two short sentences she says so much about Laurel’s emotional state, her ideas about this character, and gives a peak into the aftermath. The silence will affect them both.

As I wrap up this review, I’m remembering a moment right before the book got can’t-put-it-down good. My partner’s sister saw my book on the counter and mentioned that she’d read it awhile ago. She said something liked, “I can’t really remember much about it but it was really good.” Now that I’ve finished and gone through six stages of nausea, I need to ask her how she’d managed to forget the plot.

This book will stay with me. I’ll probably have the occasional nightmare. If I have a teenage daughter, she may never be allowed outside alone. Or maybe not. Maybe I’ll forget on purpose.

At any rate, I thoroughly enjoyed this read and Lisa Jewell’s ability to stir a world’s worth of feelings within me in 356 pages.

Four and half stars.

THE WRITER UPDATE: FOR OCTOBER

Wow. It’s been over 5 years since I’ve written one of these updates!

My poem, “For October” was published in the July-August issue of The Gay & Lesbian Review and I just got my hands on a copy! This is the first poem I’ve ever had published and the first time I’m seeing my work in print. You can buy a print or digital copy here if you’re so inclined.

There’s nothing like finding out your creative work is being published. It’s exciting, affirming, and thrilling. It’s also always a little (read: very) terrifying for me. This time feels even more terrifying because I’m wading into a new genre: poetry.

My poetry writing started in college when I was really into intertwining religious themes from my Catholic upbringing with my queer identity. I left the church but kept the mysticism. Eventually, I moved onto love poems. I’m one of those mushy stereotypical love poets. Even worse, I really catch my stride in poetry when I’m teetering on romantic desperation and longing. Break my heart, don’t give me the attention I want? At least I’ve got some good writing content out of it.

I wrote “For October” in 2018, submitted it to The G&LR in the summer of 2022, and received word it would be published a year later. It’s been a long journey. The momentary love-madness captured in “For October” has gone. The woman who inspired it is gone. The veneration and self-sacrifice is gone. Still, I’m comforted that a significant moment in my past can live somewhere in its full intensity.

Until the next one.

x

TWWR Playlist | Pride and Prejudice

Nitehawk Cinema in Williamsburg had a special brunch screening of Pride and Prejudice (2005) back in February. I’m usually looking for any excuse to go to Nitehawk, mostly because I’m a sucker for a quality fried chicken sandwich, strong frozen drink, and an elevated theatre experience. But when I saw that one of my favorite movies was playing, I bought two tickets immediately.

I invited one of my girlfriends, ready to swoon over broody Mr. Darcy together while getting splendidly day drunk. She texted me that morning to let me know she couldn’t make it, apologizing for the last minute cancellation. I told her it was okay and turned over in bed with a sinister smile.

“What are you doing today?” I asked my partner, knowing they had no choice.

I’ve already gushed over Joe Wright’s Pride and Prejudice online, so I’ll rein myself in here.

However, it was amazing to watch the timeless adaption on the big screen for the first time. The soundtrack is perfect. The bucolic landscapes and beautiful homes are all captured gorgeously on film. The writing and acting are intoxicating. I could watch Elizabeth (Keira Knightley) and Darcy (Matthew Macfadyen) communicate through silent body language for hours. It was such a treat to enjoy, half-drunk and cuddled up with my partner who either genuinely enjoyed the film or lied to avoid the destruction of our relationship.

Anyway, I’m here with a gift.

Sometimes when I’m over music and podcasts, I’ll play an audiobook. Sometimes I’m indecisive and I want a music / audiobook combination. Thus, The Writer Who Reads Spotify was born.

The Pride and Prejudice playlist is first up. I’ve spliced Wendy Ellison Mullen’s reading of Jane Austen’s novel with Dario Marianelli and Jean-Yves Thibaudet’s breathtaking movie soundtrack. It yields a perfectly balanced listening experience. Give it a listen and let me know what you think!

Also, let’s be friends on Spotify! I’ll be adding more audiobook playlists, author playlists, and playlists that’ll help you write.

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Podcast Episode 19: Claude Mckay

In this episode, we discuss the life of author Claude McKay—a Jamaican-born activist and writer who was an important part of the Harlem Renaissance.


We examine a number of his poems as part of our “Nostalgia” theme, exploring subjects like grieving familial loss, romantic love, and the fight for racial equality in the United States and beyond.


Please join us as we try to read a little more, write a little better, and explore the human condition—together.

Readings: The Tropics in New York, December, 1919, Romance, If We Must Die

Resources:

Poetry Foundation

Biography.com

Libcom.org 

Grade Saver

Jamaican Information Service

African American Poetry

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Podcast Episode 18: Eudora Welty

In this episode, we journey into the lush and soulful musings of author Eudora Welty—a woman who used plain observation to confect rich and dynamic portraits of everyday life in the American south.


We examine one of her short stories as part of our “Nostalgia” theme, and carve into complex subjects like narrative reliability, the struggle for power within the family unit, and the universal need to be heard.


Please join us as we try to read a little more, write a little better, and explore the human condition—together.

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