pine island projects

Sorry to double post but…

I DNF'd my first book of 2026. I'm a pretty impatient reader and I DNF quickly if a book isn't working for me.

I borrowed The Reappearance of Rachel Price because my students are really into the Good Girl's Guide series. All of those were checked out but I figured I could get a feel for Holly Jackson as a writer and have something to talk about with my middle school students.

… but the writing is so bad? like, did Jackson have an editor? I know I'm pretty, uhm, creative with my use of grammar and punctuation and I write some really long-ass sentences with lots of parentheses and digressions but I do it on purpose. This felt rushed, like a first draft - and I say that because it felt like a lot of my first drafts: so many comma splices.

I am guilty of a comma splice. (It must be heritable: when I talked about this book with my mom - also a reader, also a writer - she said she was, too.) I also know that about myself and check for it when I'm editing my work. This book was littered with them: They didn't always need to speak, that said enough, a language of their own (Ch12). and They weren't silent stares, paired with excitable whispers, and Rachel was a name that carried across a distance, that hard crunch in the middle (Ch15).

Like come onnnnn, what is this??? Does Holly Jackson have an editor or has she already hit the Anne Rice level of fame that you don't need one any more and they just let you publish whatever? Did the publisher rush to get this book out or does she always write like this?

I'm not really inclined to find out. (I was curious enough to search around and find out what happened. I feel weird saying it about a book I didn't finish, but: called it - at least one of the twists.)

… that would be a snappy place to stop this but I also wanted to add that Jackson does not trust the reader at all. My mom asked "Is it a YA?" and it is - but that's no excuse! (I was quick to defend YA to my mom. Genuine Fraud does not hold your hand like this.) Again, I noticed this because I over write in my early drafts and I get comments like "trust the reader" a lot in the margins.

P.S. I added a reading: annotations: dnf'd tag.

I'm on page 812 of 1167 (according to Libby, with the typeface set to OpenDyslexic and the size on the lowest of the "accessibility sizes," whatever that is), or chapter 13 of 17. So far, the A Study in Drowning is dancing around the question of "what do you do when you are disappointed by your favorite author?"
( spoilers ✂️ )
I could be wrong but that's my guess.

Continuing my self-help kick, I picked up A Weekend to Change Your Life: Find Your Authentic Self After a Lifetime of Being All Things to All People and was almost immediately turned off by the book's origin story: author Joan Anderson, in her own telling, "ran away" from her life (husband, grown children, empty nest) and moved to Cape Cod for a year? All I could think was must be nice - and then for her to go on about "buts," how "but" is why you stay stuck…
( ✂️ )

I'm reading a lot of self help books and watching a lot of cult documentaries. I'm not sure what that says about my mental health but it's probably not great.
I finished reading Taking Off the Mask: Practical Exercises to Help Understand and Minimise the Effects of Autistic Camouflaging by Dr. Hannah Belcher last night. It was… OK? I felt unsatisified at the end, which is probably why I jumped right into another self help book, How to Meet Your Self: An Inspirational Self-Help Workbook by Dr. Nicole LePera.
( ✂️ )
I guess it's not fair to criticize a book for not being the kind of book you wanted it to be, so if you're interested in some CBT worksheets for working through your anxiety about unmasking in public, maybe you'll get more out of Taking Off the Mask: Practical Exercises to Help Understand and Minimise the Effects of Autistic Camouflaging than I did? I mean, it's right there in the title: "Practical Exercises to Help Understand and Minimise the Effects of Autistic Camouflaging" (emphasis added), not "Practical Exercises and Interesting Stims to Try and See if You Enjoy Them."

edit: called it, re: are you a cult leader?

I finished reading Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle this morning. Unsure what to read next (because Unmasking for Life isn't out for another two days…), I opened up the Boston Public Library page with the plan to check out any staff lists; the "Similar to…" feature on Libby is… well, let's say it could be better.
Anyway, another BPL patron, Genera1America said, "The first chapter was the only useful chapter for me: explanation that there is a difference between stress and the stressor and the importance of completing the cycle of stress your body metabolizes." I agree with them on that, and the general criticism of the book that the audience seemed… young? even tho a lot of it was about career and co-parenting and romantic/sexual relationships with long term partners. Genera1America was nicer than me about what what I felt while reading it, that it was kind of patronizing? I don't need you to make Hunger Games references, especially since the science seemed good?
Here is a handout on the Oregon Health & Science University that pretty much sums it up; honestly, it seems like good advice and I am going to put it into practice but you can probably skip the rest of the book.
( ✂️ )
I never did decide on my next book, so if you've got a suggestion for what to read while I wait for The Autistic Person's Guide to Connecting, Loving, and Living Authentically to come out and/or for my library(ies) to get an ebook edition of Rediscovered: A Compassionate and Courageous Guide For Late Discovered Autistic Women (and Their Allies), leave 'em in the comments.
If Burnout was "self help 101," I'm looking for 200- or 300-level readings.

This is my second post about The Secret History of Bigfoot: In Search of an American Monster but I guess you could read the annotations in either order.
Honestly? The Secret History of Bigfoot: In Search of an American Monster is going to end up on my [print edition] nonfiction bookshelf next to Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing and Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures. Unlike Holy Sh*t, which made me want to read more nonfiction, or Entangled Life which made me (someone who has never smoked a cigarette or drank a beer) want to drop acid, The Secret History of Bigfoot didn't make me want to go Bigfooting… but it has been a constant and friendly companion through the (extraordinarily stressful) past couple weeks of my life, the [metaphorical] voice of John O'Connor there to comfort me at the end of a long day or while trying to convince myself to get out from under the covers in the morning. [I was reading the digital edition, not the audiobook… which is narrated by Matt Godfrey, anyway - not the author, John O'Connor.]
Sometimes, the book was a gut punch: 90% of North American bats have died of white-nose syndrome in the last decade? I literally cried out in pain, remembering a sky full of bats somewhere with my dad - probably a campground one elementary school summer. (He died before I started high school and we stopped camping when he got sick, so there weren't any other bat filled summer nights but the elementary school ones.)
… but mostly I laughed. I laughed a lot. Out loud, alone with my cat in my bedroom. I giggled; I chortled; I even howled once or twice, wiping tears of glee from my eyes.
Bobo, if you're reading this, sorry man. I had a terrible day today, literally puking sick from stress… but when I woke up from my sick day nap, there was O'Connor with a funny story about accidentally peeing on the winter sleeping bag loaned to him by a famous Bigfooter.
I'm not an outdoorsman. My favorite place to go hiking is Tokyo's Shitamachi area. I mean, have you seen some of the staircases in the Ueno-Yanaka-Kanda triangle? Brutal. I'll never forget pushing my bike up one of those hills, huffing and puffing like the Big Bad Wolf, only for a little old lady to zip past me on her mamachari like it was all downhill from here. That's the closest I'll ever get to hiking a mountain… but I really loved O'Connor's descriptions of vistas and views, his depth of research, and his respect for the Indigenous people on whose lands mostly white folks go searching for a monster that might or might not be inspired by Native beliefs; he always reaches out to Native researchers and elders in the areas where he writes about white Bigfooters Bigfooting and he isn't offended when he is rebuffed or ignored.
… anyway, if your job sucks and you feel like shit but you like reading funny and/or well researched nonfiction, you should read The Secret History of Bigfoot: In Search of an American Monster.
I almost skipped this episode of "American Hysteria" where I heard about the book because I'm really 0% interested in cryptids but I'm glad I listened and I'm glad I got the book from the library. Thanks again, Montgomery County Public Library, for letting me keep my card!

I will (probably) post more analysis of content and style when I've finished this book but I wanted to say that twice now, two chapters in, I've encountered words I've never seen before and could not figure out from context.

recherché adj. rare, exotic, or obscure.
métier n. a profession or occupation.

I'm not against learning new words but it does vibe with my general sense that this book is a bit… overwritten? it's really flowery and occasionally jargony in a way that I think limits the readership of a book that really ought to be read to anyone who's concerned about the fact that the U.S. is going to hell in a hand basket and how we got here.
I would like to recommend this to, e.g., my mother, who thinks of herself (incorrectly and unfairly) as a person who is "not smart." (She has a Masters of Arts in Education and she's a 2nd dan black belt and she reads all of the time and plays, like, five instruments and she's a poet and singer-songwriter so it's obviously not true that she is "not smart.") I think she will feel a little overwhelmed and off-put by the writerliness of it all and that's too bad because I know she wants to understand what's going on in the U.S. because she lives there and is a person who is concerned about the wellbeing of others. (My mom is also someone who is fundamentally so good at heart that she simply cannot comprehend why someone would do something to harm someone else. It's genuinely baffling for her - which I think contributes to her sense of being "not smart.")
Personally, I'm finding it a bit hard to follow. I'd like to think I'm "smart" enough (but honestly I'm just a A+ bullshitter) but I also have chronic fatigue and, lately, pretty bad brain fog and it's really a slog for me right now even tho this is a subject I know a bit about and am interested in learning more. So it's not like I got thrown into the subject deep end without a floatie or like I'm trying to read something I'm bored by but I keep losing track of what Talia Lavin's trying to say.

P.S. 99% my mom will never see this but if she does: hi, mom! You are smart! You're just not bitter and jaded like I am and Dad was!

I found Bear Season by Gemma Fairclough on a list of 2024 horror books and I was pleased to discover that it's epistolary, told [supposedly - we'll get there] through faux-investigative journalism (my favorite style of epistolary novel) and through the thesis of the woman who disappeared, Jade Hunter. (When I googled the book, the full suggested search was Bear Season: On the Disappearance of Jade Hunter by Carla G. Young, which might've been the pre-release title? because it's not on the cover but it does give away (advertise?) the epistolary format.
However, I was disappointed that Jade's thesis - and, if she's a doctoral student, shouldn't it be a dissertation? or is this a U.K. vs. U.S. thing? - does not even attempt to imitate the form of a thesis. Nor does it go full "ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES JACK A DULL BOY" stream-of-consciousness as Jade loses her mind or… whatever is going on with her. (I'm ~71% of the way through the book, according to my ereader app.)
( craft thoughts, spoilers )
I've thought about epistolary fiction a lot and I'm disappointed that Bear Season did not deliver on it's promise!
Most of my best work comes from a sense of disappointment with something I read. ("Not a Princess Diary," you might guess, was inspired by The Princess Diaries - but you would be wrong! It's actually inspired by the half-assed, phoned-in MG sequel series, Notebooks of a Middle School Princess.) So I guess it's time to write a fake thesis about … something. Inspiration will strike eventually.

My 2025 reading log is here. It will include books (all formats: digital, print, audio/ all forms: picture book, graphic novel, prose, novels-in-poetry, short story collections, nonfiction, etc.)

Note: news articles will still be logged in my bookmark manager but I may comment on/annotate them here.

I'm moving my annotated bibliography (not a book blog!) from Pillowfort to Dreamwidth in 2025, with the tag ＃reading: annotations. Occasionally, a particularly personal reflection will be posted (friends only) to my main account and linked back here.