Book Lovers was an ideal summer read.
My favorite part of Book Lovers was the many excellent book references and book loving quotes. Books are the best, aren’t they?
The funny writing in Book Lovers hooked me from the beginning, and I loved the characters and sister relationship. This book gave love to both small towns and big cities, and had a satisfying frenemies-to-lovers type romance. ( )

Henry does it again! I have been picking her novels for when I need go to a "lighter" vibe - and somehow, I'm crying at the end of the novel. I love how she writes her characters, and loved the city/country contrasts through the main character, Nora. ( )

I need more books with this type of dynamic ( )

There are only a handful of authors whose books I will drop everything else on my shelves to read - Emily Henry is one of them. Yet again, she’s delivered a killer and one I’ll come back to time and time again - absolutely recommend! ( )

Despite Emily Henry naming all her books~ Generic Title, basically, and not that I was expecting it to be bad because of that, but I was surprised and impressed how litsy and conscious it is; it seems like a comedic version of Jojo Moyes, you know. (From what I can tell Jojo writes romantic drama. That’s certainly what “Me Before You” is.)

It’s the kind of book to make you wonder why rad people complain that books they’ve never read —(ie Emily Henry)—are bad Lifetime movies~it opens with contrasting that sort of thing with real life, you know. And you know, sometimes “reality” or trashy shows/movies skew a little less obnoxiously unkind/untrue, but we all know, I think—deep down, at least—what real life is, (unless we’re in a locked ward, lol), and what the made-for-TV shame-the-NYC-girl movie you watched with your churchy father when you were eight are, you know. And now, somebody said it.

And, of course, the issue of why we still have this unspoken assumption 83% of the time, that an author—a really, really ~good~ author is supposed to emote like—fuck, ~he~ is supposed to ~look~ like—Hugh Auden, you know.

Because you know that, which ever kind they are, which end of it, that the average guy who would say that he’s not prejudiced or whatever and would maybe talk about prejudice or at least the folksy cliché about book covers to be corny and folksy, you would—he probably wouldn’t need to read five pages before dismissing “Emily Henry!” with infinite importance, you know. (He’d just need to scan the cover, lol.)

It’s funny. Women are rebels; at least, unless they’re…. I don’t know. Sad. (Sad is one of my favorite words. My friend likes to make fun of me, but I don’t use the word ‘bad’!) You know, like: the feminine principle is warmth and joy and happiness; and that’s not what you’re supposed to like. You’re also not supposed to like girls, really. So to be one of those bubbly girls everyone thinks half (51%) of the population is…. It’s like your reputation is crusin’ for a bruisin’, you know.

(opens Hugh Auden book and starts reading incredibly insincere lines about Ancient Greek religion) (passes Emily Henry book) (sneers) Emily Henry! ~(who?) Arrest her! (they laugh)

…. And the REALLY funny thing is you’re not supposed to take propaganda (dump the NYC girl; raise a family with a family girl—that’s the true life!) seriously, you know. I mean, you ARE…. but only if it makes you want to do something “bad”, you know. (And I’m not minimizing the effect of following through the propaganda to the letter on the professional woman—ie the speaker in this book.)

Imagine your a teenager or whatever, and you love female country pop or whatever, and you’re peeved about female sci-fi movie leads, you know—and you try to tell your dad about it, you know….

Slowly, and cautiously, basically: well, they’re both girls…. And girls don’t matter; not as much…. Just don’t get excited; don’t invest anything in it…. Go to church.

…. (Re: the first chapter boyfriend) Wealthy people who think that money doesn’t matter can be some of the worst people—after all they have a lot, and who doesn’t find ingratitude endearing! Not Hermes! He does NOT not find ingratitude endearing, you know! 😸 (“I know less than half of you as well as I should like….” 😹). You know: to say, “I am wealthy, sure; and I enjoy the lifestyle”, would at least take a Little guts, you know…. People would make fun of you…. Although it would sure be legal! 😉—but, just, you know…. “I am rich, because…. Well, the teachings of Marx and Saint Francis and people on the internet have all come together and converted me to their viewpoint. Therefore, I’ll keep all my money.” You know: the total, total, ~total~ mental-emotional laziness, you know….

…. It is kinda funny how if Elinor were around today, she’d have a lot more money, and she probably wouldn’t get married until she was at least thirty…. And you know, she’d still be one half of the epic folk pop duo, “Elinor and Marianne”, right….

…. It’s funny how it’s like “The Hiding Place”, albeit without the Nazis or the Romantic Hero Dutch Christians—I know that sounds like a lot, but it is kinda the same: the two sisters, the masculine sister, and the feminine sister….

I also thought it was artfully done, how she draws attention to New York City’s charming side, and also the often, kinda neglected-to-grim-and-shitty “realistic portrait” face of rural America, you know: without sounding like an internet liberal who makes it sound like everybody in all red states always commits suicide (although maybe not quick enough, right)…. [And later she does portray the “country” heartthrob as someone who will make someone happy: ‘easy’ in the good way; easy, without being nervous or quick, right…. Chill. In an abstract way, surprisingly folk, right….]

People really could learn a lot, by knowing something about love….

…. It’s like you walk into the shop with the sign ‘Looking for city slicker seeking country getaway and small-town romance’, and the sign, ‘males only’, and you say, Lemme just, (jiggles), and you just kinda, take the sign down, right.

It’s also kinda funny how when you’re a kid your dad or whoever is like, Son, let’s watch this delightful sexist family romance movie together—and by the time you’re like fifteen or whatever, you’re literally never supposed to ever watch any movie like that ever again. (But you want to: that’s why you have to get married. Although, you don’t want to watch it with your ~wife~; she’s a ~woman~.)…. It’s like you’d either have to be a femme mystique junkie, or, maybe, you know—are there adults? Are people allowed to grow up?….

…. Apparently an uncle of mine once committed a great deal of white collar crime/fraud, although to hear my dad tell the story, you’d think that it was the judge who broke The Rules, since she got angry at him: and she was a woman, right…. For someone who grew up on those Old Hollywood movies, it must have been an easy decision to make, right: a man who’s related to you versus a woman who isn’t, right. “The only way a stranger, a foreigner to our little society, can even approximate the respect we offer our own family is if they obey gender rules, son.” Although I guess that individual actually isn’t my uncle anymore; he was never a blood relative, right.

…. They both love books, but I feel like Emily Henry should just title all her books, Ironic Title (No. X), you know. Her thing is like, do do do, I’m just a stupid little girl, telling a stupid little story—about love! Oh, what’s this? A stereotype? Why, how do you— (takes out knives and goes into ninja mode and slices up stereotypes/stigma).

Right?

And the institution of the family is so weird. [The Heritage Foundation: The Last Year of Democracy—2025~ Talking Point Number One: The Family….]. Some people are so much better at conventional money making activities than home/care stuff, and then people use that person’s work skills while smearing snot over them and saying that they don’t love their sister, right. (If they’re girls, at least.) And then some people want to care for kids, but literally cannot rub two nickels together to do it, you know. The agent girl should be able to have a baby and pay to enroll it in the other girl’s home of like twenty little baby goslings, where she works for 6-8 hours a day, right. The two chicks can still be like sisters even if they’re not related—because it’s like, the birth-mother and the care-mother are like sisters, right…. It’s just not the whole “female labor is free”, “female success is bad”, “asking questions is not allowed”, thing, right…. I mean, parenting is a skill, right; the people who are good at it should be paid to do it well…. And fucking like, just assuming that people won’t abuse their kids, even though they’ve been abusing themselves for decades, right…. I don’t know. I realize that it can’t happen. People don’t really believe in our system, but that doesn’t mean that change should even be ~permissible as a possibility~, right…. (MAGA hat cursing all his neighbors in a small town) All you damn crackers are sto0pid, and Bawd…. (beat) God bless America!!!”

…. ~I can’t really say no without seeming difficult, can I.

Re: her novel entitled, “Frigid”

👾😹

…. Well, I guess there’s one guy from the South who doesn’t like getting drunk and ‘country’.

He’s probably a classical music madman, right…. But yeah: that’s not as distinctly Southern…. Even on those plantations, the rich ones, that was like England, you know. The South was like the alcoholic’s plantation, and the swampland, basically.

(chuckles) I must always sound so offensive, right. But it is…. I don’t know: there’s a cultural spectrum everywhere, right. And the dating app jokes: those were funny.

…. I try not to leave Generic Tilt to Authority/Generic Approval reviews, you know: not when I understand or have something to say, right…. But Emily just, Gets Things Right, you know…. Maybe if I understood life better, you know, I could, do a little adventure with words, like I normally do, right…. Like, she makes hoomis look good, you know…. Like, you know how when people act the wrong way around you, and even if it doesn’t materially set you back, it like, offends you, right: You Making Hoomi Look Bad, Lady…. You know, I guess it is kinda: older brother vs prodigal brother, you know: it’s religious, and classic, as much as I hate to give credit to the…. But yeah: she’s like, the opposite. She makes hoomis look good. It’s gratifying, you know.

And it isn’t because she thinks that life is an exotic vacation a New Yorker takes in Italy, you know….

…. ‘I thought I wanted to be a writer, but then I realized I like workshopping other people’s writing more.’

That’s great. You know, somehow I always thought, like…. You know, “real writers write real books”, or something—but I consider my reviewing to be serious writing, you know. I am a writer; it’s worthwhile for me. No one else has ever cared, basically; but it’s been enormously helpful for me, right…. It’s like a conversation I have with myself, lol. That makes me sound like, introverted to the point of being, not American, right…. ~You know, like the fascist code is like: weirdo or American? It’s like, Ah, weirdo, bro, (clicking sound with mouth), but thanks for asking.

It’s like: there are so many different kinds of writing, you know…. Like, I don’t mean to knock Shakespeare, for example—I read it through; it is pretty good, usually—but it’s like, how many other writers did it take to make Shakespeare, The Bard, right? And how many of those guys were ~awful~ writers, you know…. Like, stilted white men lifted up one of their number, you know, in their mind, in subconscious mind: they were exalting themselves, right. And nobody reads any of that Journal of the American Shakespeare Academy magazine crap, or whatever they’d call it, right: but they feel like those people are better than they are, so they agree with them…. Except that they don’t, since it has no influence on their lives. Zero. They won’t even read Litsy Rom-Com From Shakespeare, by Emily Henry, right. (An upcoming title, I’m sure.) Like, they’re sure even That, wouldn’t be good enough: and they couldn’t bring themselves to do it, anyway: so they just give up. The effect of all that writing, is literally just to crush their spirit, lol. To make them feel like they’re not good enough.

I realize it’s not a book with characters that are reviewers, right—whether social media people, or trad types—but it’s like, there’s editorial writing: there are all these secondary sorts of writing, you know. Shakespeare did not just fall from the sky the way that the Bible does in an evangelical’s dreamscape, right. Somebody actually had to read it, or watch it, maybe, and decide that it was good, and tell other people…. Most people in that role are incredibly class-bound—like class-bound socialists, right; or else literally silver spoon aristocrats, or trying to do that vibe…. Most people in that role are ~incredibly~ nervous about making their own decisions: about making any decisions, right. Their “self esteem” comes from inflicting their superiority on people who can’t—I guess my housemate Bob’s schizophrenic turn of phrase would be, “pick up and lift”: although it’s never exactly clear what he means, right, lol…. Like: the critic lives by inflicting their superiority in a way that can’t be borne, right: like, aww, you tried to watch a historical political drama to kiss up to me: aww, you didn’t realize that the way they filled out that bureaucracy form wasn’t historically accurate: it really would have been much more complicated…. ~It’s like, bro, Only Bureaucrats know how to fill out forms correctly, you know. I don’t know how to fill out government forms that exist today in my own country, in the real fucking world, right. Did it ever occur to you that maybe in order to tell a psychologically relevant story, you have to re-arrange the factual truth. ~(smug) That’s why I’ll always get you; you’ll never win…. (newspaper) You know, there’s a lot of ~fascism~ in the world today; Putin is attacking Ukraine…. Phipps?…. Phipps!…. PHIPPS!!! (beat) Oh, that’s right. He’s not a real person. (goes to make own tea)

But yeah: whether you’re into Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, or Emily Henry: medieval, early modern, or contemporary, in my own, (improved!) chronological sequence, right….

Like, these things don’t fall from the sky, right. First, someone has to decide it’s worth reading, so it doesn’t fall out of print: and then someone else has to read it, and decide…. Has to decide it’s a True Image, right…. Someone has to decide it’s a Mask of God, basically.

Or a paper newspaper, to beat flies, servants, and plebs with, right. “You can’t just come in like that. You have to wait outside, and have the butler announce you.” “You don’t have a butler.” “Must you quibble?” “Not if I divorce you! That’s what I’ve come to do!”

(chuckles) Anyway.

…. Like, I KNOW my jokes are funny: I laugh at them, right. You have to re-read everything you type on an iPhone, right: otherwise AI would turn it into fucking piddly-winks, you know…. “My dad is sick. We hope he’s going to get better.” “I hope he dies.” “!?!” “DOES! I hope he, DOES, get better”—you know, fucking AI: just start a nuke war; end this madness of spell check…. [Restaurant in peace, old friend….] See, see, I tried to write, “madness”: and I got it wrong, and it decided that I wrote “lender’s”, right: like: give up if you have to, but don’t fucking, write correct-crap, you know….

But yeah: and re-reading it is essentially the reason for writing it, you know: you learn what you’ve been putting in your head, basically…. It’s hard to explain…. But yeah: the first time, I’m explaining. The second time, I laugh. A conversation I have with myself.

No need to tell my psychiatrist, lol…. Oh, how society has failed our psychiatrists, lol…. It’s like, we leave them with no safe, useful tool to investigate the health of the emotions, you know…. I mean, there’s psychology, there’s a lot of things, you know; but nobody trusts any of it, right. Trust is un-American, you know…. And yeah: specialization is such, that psychiatrists don’t care about psychology, OMFG, LOL…. Hahahaha….

Anyway.

But, yeah, I talk to people: they’re like, You’re funny.

I’m like: correct. Objectively sound, you know. 👌

…. I think she’ll end up with the proud, frigid nerd, and not the sunny rural guy, right: but somehow, I’m happy for her, that she gets to…. Even though I suppose if it happened to me, I wouldn’t ask for, you know, an additional friend, myself. (Even though! Additional friend = FRIENDSHIP! 😺). (I had it all planned out, too, that if it ever happened like that, that would be my game, right. And then…. 🤷‍♂️.)

I can’t figure it out; and to be honest, I find this line of thought vaguely frightening, right.

It’s certainly the correct choice sociologically, right: introduce the sunny rural love interest, AFTER disproving made-for-TV movie propaganda, obliviousness to the coarseness of most of contemporary American rural life, the cynicism about New York City, right…. But also let people know that just because you live far from University City, doesn’t mean you have to spend your days equating misogyny with the moon landings—both fake!!!—and let’s not even start with the whole church boy church boy, revolution! thing, right. (Zombie Jesus: And His Call To Vengeance! ~a NYT best-seller…. Though perhaps not entirely because of New York! 😉)

But yeah: I feel like males have done enough to women, that I can deal with my character getting brushed off with the responsibility/no free time spiel, and then have her, you know, making eyes at a new guy like less than twelve hours later, right. I can deal with that.

Wow, and it’s sociologically useful! Sign me up, gender epithets!

…. And god, and my character is actually going to be doing a favor for her! In exchange for dating someone else, and doing other made-for-TV agitprop movie stuff, right: date the local, save the business…. Gosh, we HAD to date the local, right: so! You’d said you’d give your apartment in NYC to my sister, if I went along with her improbable list of bullshit things, right….

(makes face) Like, WTF? You went on a date, with someone that’s not me. You had a good time. Good for you.

(incredulous) You want me to like…. (laughs) give you something worth money, because you did that, like…. Like, ‘no’, maybe…. Whoo, I’m sorry, but, yeah. Glad you had a good time, though. (laughs hard, then coughs)

Ah, wow. Ok…. Wow.

But I don’t know. I don’t know what it’s like for girls, right. I really don’t. (shrugs…. smiles) But yeah….

…. And yeah: I’m not having children to take care of, because I figure if the majoritarians are too apathetic to care about family-ism being as waterproof as the Titanic or whatever, as far as nurturing/supporting children, right: well, that’s their life, the least I can do is not buy into the system, right.

But yeah: if your Perfect Jane Bennet Wife spending time with her sister in another state, actually feels snippy at you, and doesn’t want to talk…. Good for her, right.

It’s not like being fucking Jane Bennet ever actually won a girl, any actual goddamn respect, right? (smirks) Ah…. We are SO dumm. Da vero, right…. He said in fake Italian. lol.

…. (shrugs) At least she still desires affectations, right. She’s a poet, no. It’s just funny…. Like, everything that implies “respect”, also implies, “at the beck and call of”, right.

(sighs) I wonder if it’s possible to curse…. The ancestors, right. (smirks) Probably both shadow magic, and, ineffective, you know.

…. (her immense desire for affectation) (shrugs) I don’t know. I guess that affectation should be enough, right. (closes eyes) I can’t explain it, the feelings.

…. “The rules that govern family dynamics are nonsensical, but they’re also rigid.”

Raising the next generation of bureaucrats, right.

It would make people blue in the face because it’s true, right.

…. (Chapter 20) This Emily girl can write….

…. “Just because not everyone gets you doesn’t mean ~you’re~ wrong.”

And again: it’s like…. Just to speculate, right—you know what people are like; it really isn’t hard to guess, ironically enough—how many people see the cover of an Emily Henry novel, and go, ‘Huh: girl carries herself lightly; must be an idiot’, right—and never even dreams of referring to that trite proverb everyone pretends to respect, while not having the slightest reservation about ignoring it, right: when it’s ideologically convenient…. Although it’s not an ideology, right: it’s a mood; the ‘girls aren’t smart’ mood; the ‘no romantic ever really cares for anybody, or has any sense or decency or independence’, right…. It’s like a prejudice, you know: just like there’s a prejudice about Nora, the girl with a good job, who likes having a sense of agency at work, right….

And the rest of the paragraph, a lot of it could be used to touch on the differences between Hollywood/folklore magic, and…. I mean: this isn’t a book about any sort of magic, but at least it isn’t a lie, right. At least it has that in common with it, right?

…. (the ‘workaholic’, ‘shark’, etc) “…. but she’s happy, and (my sister’s) happiness has always been my drug of choice.”

I really wish that there were film directors like Emily Henry, you know. Even the very few who are female, with a very few notable exceptions, seem to be to be, So, AFRAID, right, (Anne Fletcher = rage bait 👌)….

The really ironic thing is that it’s almost like “The Hiding Place”, with the two sisters, one masculine and one feminine: you know, the WWII Dutch Christian chick who wrote the book, you know.

Although I want to re-, listen, actually, to THP, again, more critically, because it’s like…. I mean, Christians: like take that Eric Metaxas guy, (and my father, the conservative, loves EM, and THP: having white Christian heroes who fought Hitler is not a want but a NEED, right: gender doesn’t exist for him, only patriarchy; since Corrie ten Boom is alright, on some level, he probably thinks her name is Kyle, right?), he literally wrote a children’s book about Donnie’s wall and how great it is: this not a Christian politician who loves Jesus on the weekends, right: this is literally a big-name theorist/theologian, and he thinks there should be a wall to divide one Christian-majority nation from another—almost wants to strangle atheists, and then wants to keep out immigrants less likely to be atheist, right? It’s like: you expect it from like, the military ideologue who happens to be a fervent Christian (Christ is the God’s name, right? Awesome! USA! USA!), but it’s a surprising lapse in credible propaganda from the Christian historian who tries to write more scientific-materialist history than the scientific-materialists, right. (I’m pretty sure the Bonhoeffer book ended like: “And then his father turned off the radio.” It was a book about the ~science~ of history: turning the white Christian hero into a conservative hero on the sly was a on the down low thing, almost relying on the default function of white supremacy, right?), but it’s like…. (a) it’s not supposed to make sense; it’s supposed to be what I like, (b) but there are no Mexicans or non-white-conservative Americans in my church, (EM reasons), therefore, Christianity is about…. (And his reasoning MUST be perfect, because he doesn’t have a heart…. And it led him to support T-45-34!)

But yeah: it’s like…. You wonder, in retrospect, whether THP was meant to blame the Left for the “ills of the 70s”, or whatever you’re supposed to think: so then you kinda invent ills for the 70s—not the real ones, right—based on your retrospectively convenient experiences fighting against the REAL racists: the ~Europe~ ones, right!….

And yet, it’s ironic: you scrape away the race ideology, essentially, and they are very similar sets of sisters, you know. Of course, Corrie and her sister didn’t marry, you know. It’s funny, she knew that the love stories of the Forties or whenever were propaganda: she learned it the hard way, right…. And yet somehow, I wonder if you’re meant to put the book down and decide that feminism is the greater lie, and then go back to your (virtually all white), 90-95+% male theological library, right….

But yeah: girls who mock their sisters for being workaholics are by no means guaranteed to be happily married.

A lot of delusion can hide in the ultra-feminine sister, out of the pair of sisters, right. Possibility exists for great love and service…. And also almost bottomless delusion, right. The “I must be religious because I haven’t a heart” men have historically found that personality to be exceptionally useful furniture, ironically….

…. “A good contract is….”
(A Frank Capra movie)?
No….
(A novel written to be dramatized by Anne Fletcher?)
No…. A contract is supposed to be, love made into work, you know. Business as the body of love…. And it is kinda inescapable, that people hate lawyers and contracts and businesspeople, because they expect that person to hate love: to see love as…. Rape, basically: and then somehow, that becomes some woman’s fault, you know, out of sheer mental-moral collapse, essentially….

…. The societal parenting contract is B.S. Some people still think that “everyone should do it”—I do have to admit that my own “faith and flag conservative” father, who I’m pretty sure was a monk in his last life, isn’t one of those people, even when I was…. Like a pre-Trump era boy band neo-alt-right apolitical neo-natalist, in my fevered delusional imagination, right….—but yeah, realistically, some people can’t do it, can’t do it well, you know: or, realistically, some people REALIZE they can’t do it well in time—and if everyone had that fear, the parenting contract would have to change, because child abuse: and elder abuse, really, wouldn’t be acceptable….

But yeah: I like kids; they’re cute. I don’t try to suppress my desire to admire cuteness. But now when I see a kid in ShopRite, I say, “Hello child”, not, “hello baby”, without trying to…. I mean, I read one of those life span development biological psychology books, but what do you really learn, even if society didn’t judge knowledge, right—two-faced problem, right…. Yeah: because one day I said “hello baby” to this little girl, and she didn’t take it all that well; I tried to—I don’t know what I said exactly, you know, ‘Sorry it landed like that for you’, whatever I said: ironically that came from anti-racism training, not to lecture people that you would never insult them, right, (even though we know that what happens in those anti-racism trainings, is that you conspire with Jewish zombies and Hitler to stab a white baby through the heart, and then divide up the brains into portions to fry up with a little plantain, and eat, right…. That’s been documented; people like me don’t say things unless they can stubbornly insist that it’s a fact: say because of a personality flaw, right….), but yeah, it was funny: I actually didn’t get a reaction; she didn’t yell at me; I just literally got no uptake, like she was afraid of me, right…. Like I said my dumb thing, and she asked her father, Why did that man call me a baby; I’m not a baby: and then I tried to make her feedback be heard, and she just looked at me like, Why is this strange man still talking to me, and kept yapping to her father, right….

Shy = terrified, right. Children do have emotional issues at times, (which are either totally denied, or made into…. Demonic visages, almost, by parents and adults, based upon the circumstances of the comments, right), but yeah…. Terrified, sometimes, you know…. Or else just the interaction between a miniature human forest dweller, is basically what they are developmentally, and this feeling that they have six months to get an office job, or they’ll be in prison: the undeclared cradle to prison pipeline theory, right…. I don’t know; people are messed up….

“People like to remember childhood as all magic and no responsibilities, but that’s not really how it is. You have absolutely no control over your environment. It all comes down to the adults in your life….” [People forget that learning to read is difficult when you’re in elementary school, right? It’s like, your brain is literally smaller: it’s like trying to do an easier task with a simpler computer; it cancels out….]

I remember when I was a boy band freak who thought that I was the boy from “Little Women”—or one of those damn books; I didn’t read much, maybe the odd book of Victorian fairy tales, right…. Sometimes I would hang out in the children’s library, (I can almost bet money that, “maybe a drug dealer” was like a main thought, and “maybe a mentally ill young adult” was like item number 253 on the list of theories, right), and it was like…. Books on the Holocaust…. Countries of the World: Austria…. Girl’s Adventure story #457…. “The Seizing of the Throne: Struggles with Goblin Kings”…. It made me nervous! I was like: I’m glad they have Andrew Lang here, but maybe they could get rid of this other crap, get Harry Styles to write a book, you know?….

And you know: granted that society doesn’t even encourage, let alone require, or really even make possible, for children to be raised by child psychologists, right—the Randolph Scott Westerns Club secretary probably thinks they’re being clever when they point out that ~~child psychologists~~ don’t have time to raise their kids, right: therefore, stop trying to understand children, go to a globe, close your eyes, put your finger on a country, and bomb that country! Simple!…. Like, it’s something that requires a more elaborate word than ignorance, right…. But yeah: child psychologists often probably try to make it so that you can’t understand more, even after having read, right—let alone the 1,001 other obstacles…. But yeah: the state doesn’t require any…. Proof, you know, that it’s even likely that you won’t abuse your kids and getting knifed in the back by them when you’re 88, right: like, you don’t have to prove that you have skill with children: just a blood relationship, and maybe that you’re not actively addicted to cocaine, (if you don’t also have a good lawyer, right)…. (voice over an oil painting of Hitler) People are saying that parenting is about more than blood! Lies! Epithet, epithet, LIES!….

~(chuckles) But I mean, some things you could even learn by observation, right, but, especially most fathers, and all unusually pro-society-contract people, in general, right…. Like, did they not realize, after picking their kids up from the library, that there are books about children murdered in war, that you can read there? The response is either to trivialize a child’s ability to know, or else to vilify the epithet press, you know…. (shakes head) I just can’t deal with these people. They’re not trying to raise their kids, at least in even POSSIBLY trauma-free or trauma-minimizing way, right…. They’re just trying to avoid criticism. THAT is what societal tyranny—and WHAT is parental ideology, if not That, right?—trains people to do. Ok, my child’s welfare, that’s interesting…. But you know: I have my reputation to think of. And your reputation is the same as your obedience to the collective. And yeah, it’s an individualistic collective, maybe in terms of RESOURCES, right: but, values?…. [The collective is powerless to help you, FAR more often, than it is powerless to punish you, no?]

At least in its essential and abstract broad outlines: it’s hard to imagine a worse system; at least, that’s my take, you know. And the only permissible dissent is not to have children…. And sometimes, people even complain about THAT, right?….

…. But yeah: even working at HomeGoods, during my ascetic-unsuited-to-asceticism phase, my inclusive intellectualism to avoid misogyny, I hope, for one who felt himself unsuited to romance, phase, right…. Mothers would come in with kids, and sometimes a brief insight into child psychology would be revealed, although I guess I thought of it as, I don’t know, just human psychology, right: so often the vague, indefinable sense of fear that you get, even in semi-verbal children, right…. Although mostly, all anyone ever learns is to seem dispassionate and controlled, or failing that, dispirited and bored/ennui, or failing that, filled with petty annoyance, complaint/rule breaking, as circumstances dictate…. Or failing that, legal threats and/or rage, (or illegal threats: depending on what you pay your lawyer, etc., etc….)…. All to paper over that inexpressible fear of…. Being on earth with the humans, right. Why are we on earth with the humans, mommy: I don’t LIKE it…. “Ok, well…. (says something at random to feign engagement)….” [And/or calmly disputes something factual, right.]

Like, people seriously think that your individual result only reflects you, even though it happens to everyone; and your individual freedom consists in…. Being harangued to compel others, to be compelled, to do as others do, right.

(Grandpa from “Hey Arnold”) “So what’s the problem?….” ~(chuckles)

…. And, hey lemme go the full distance and alienate people 150%: when you’re dealing with the sort of 2-year-old forest child, right, with lots of, what we would indeed call transgressive energy, if they weren’t such good propaganda props about whatever nation is in question, right: but realistically at that age, not only is it very very difficult to restrain yourself, even from eating crayons, right: but I mean, your sense of self is that small/non-existent: do you really need, specifically, your mother, or your father? Or even a child psychologist, yeah? You should have a trained person caring for you when you’re twelve, and you should be in therapy with biological links to yourself, such as parents. But what do you need caring for you when you’re two, other than basic morality, and a high boiling point: nerves that can bend easily without breaking? Realistically it should just be a very basic, very very young person job, right, taking care of two year olds. (I was up all night taking care of 2 year olds like I was 22! “But we can’t trust young people; they’re traumatized druggies.” What an interesting crack in the social concrete. How do we address this? “By invading Uruguay!”) Having overworked middle aged professionals or working class people without a snowball’s chance in hell, occasionally supplemented by their 72-year-old retired parents, right—“these kids are your blood! You have all the skills necessary to get through this!”

Like…. No, just no, okay.

And that’s not to say that the whole society should be raised as non-Jewish whites, or whatever we all think we are, when we call ourselves American, right, but….

Yeah: there are just so many layers; but people don’t even believe that our system works: it’s just that they have no nerves, right; you criticize child care arrangements, the militias start planning bombings on the internet, basically: you know, the patriotic/criminal anti-government militias and everything, right…. Almost everyone is closer to that, than they are to sitting down and asking, you know, “What do you really want for your children?” I want my reputation to stay intact. I want the neighbors not to be able to mock me, so that EYE can mock, THEM! (suddenly standing up, pointing around wildly)

“Please sit down.”

…. And yeah: it shouldn’t be that the family, is almost the only institution with some sort of cultural choice, in a way, right. The State, the conformist intellectual, the atheist, the scientist, even the ad man, sometimes, at least: it’s like, “Oh, I treat each and every person like they’re an 18th century male aristocrat—no matter what they want: as long as that’s what I want. I’m as anti-racist as it gets” according to the New York Times, right….

So people see that reality: and they decide that only terrorists or whoever question the unchangeability of the family, right. And, as sympathetic as I am to seeing elites and the government as organizers of terror, right…. (sigh) People don’t think things through. Of course, they’re almost taught not to, right. Even in school: it’s impolite to have your own goddamn opinion, in a place where you sit around thinking thoughts all goddamn day, for fuck’s sake, right?…. (!!)

I don’t know where to start with it. I think I’m going to go buy a bag to keep cold foods cold and hot food hot at ShopRite, and then I’m going to try to challenge my preconceived notion that Joanne’s Girly Crafts & Hobbies, LLC, has nothing to offer me, right….

…. And you know: there are lot of stories I can tell about life: when I was an Episcopalian—you know, there are two things true of Episcopalians, or at least that are very common, and I was this type. One is that you’re stuck in your head; the other is that you’re constantly musing about how you’re stuck in your head, right. Like, you don’t want to stop being a disembodied cloud: but you think you do, right. You can explain that that’s what you’ve been looking into…. So yeah: once I floated the idea—I don’t know if this was before or after COVID quarantine: I guess right after; because I always saw Mother Lisa knitting or something in the Zoom meeting during quarantine, so one day I asked her about that, and, well, I first I learned she was crocheting, or something—the Christian church trains its guard dogs very well, right: oh no, I think that verse is in SECOND Corinthians…. ~ways to evangelize, no….—but then, I mean: she didn’t outright shoot me down, right, but she got all equivocal, like, in effect: I can’t really control these people, you do know that, right; I don’t know if the grannies would accept you as a sincere girl, you know…. I could ask them for you, though….

“Don’t bother.”

…. Romantic comedies are off the hook, right. “Crazy Rich Asians” is the same way. Things start out so light, and although you see that you’re living in the world of lies, inside the Moon-sun of illusions, you know…. You think, (Taylor Swift), “Hey isn’t this, E-asy!”

~But then, by the end: you laugh! You cry! You, die, basically! 😜

Hooo. Alright….

And yeah: I wish there were movies for Emily Henry books. Instead we have movies that are like…. Fucking…. Like if Mussolini wrote a rom-com, right. I maka you a nica pasta, I taka you to see the opera. I introduce you to the Moderate Wing, of the Italian Fascist Party…. 🎉 🤪

…. I don’t know what to say about this. It’s always funny, I think—some people might find it funny—which are the books that reduce me to vague rubber-stamp statements about Mastery and Vision, right. It’s funny, the ones that normally evoke that, I can usually get much more specific and real-talk about, right….

…. Marxists don’t have a great track record on this, partly because the world is grossly unfair and only the countries that had been looted wanted something different, and partly there is a gender riddle, men want justice and women want love, most stereotypically, and the two things are necessary, one to the other, and yet they militate each against each other…. But Marx had interesting ideas; they don’t sound polite, right: although the other thing—you could call it ‘capitalism’, but that’s would be politeness itself, and not what I mean—is hardly polite, either, right….

But yeah: the material basis of love, right….

…. It’s funny, I read that book, but I had no idea that somebody loved Heathcliff—I mean, not really.

When I read that book, I was…. My thoughts weren’t lost; I could have ideas that made sense, right….

But my heart was lost….

…. It’s funny how it’s less ageist (and less child-abuse-y) than a Frank Capra movie, right. In “Wonderful Life”, you live in order to pour the old man down the gutter like break fluid or something, your handsome-but-oh-so-above-the-Jazz-Age face getting all crazed as you explain for the camera’s benefit that defeating the Old Man is your reason for living (although you’d be happy to let an old man physically beat you up, given the ‘proper’ circumstances, right)….

~This girl can WRITE a goddamn novel, you know?

…. ‘“Just tell me”, she says. “I want to hear ~you~ describe it.”’

Ironically, we live in both an age of social media, where there are few economic barriers, from a certain point of view, on anyone creating writing that could, at least theoretically, reach the public: and an age of Google and fact-checker sneers, which, whatever the benefits they may (sometimes) provide, have also strengthened this Sherlock Holmes notion that people have, that what they need is the facts, “just the facts, ma’am”, or whatever—that there’s no reason to ask your aunt or sister or whoever, what they think, when you can just, ‘look up’, the ‘FACTS’, you know?

…. “…. one that changed you forever.”

…. The flowers of winter. ❄️ 🌸

…. And the working title was, “City Person”. Awesome. If only books could have more than one title—if there was a world where that wouldn’t be confusing, right. I could work for a publisher, and my job could be to create 22 titles for every book, right….

…. (re-reads/typo-edits review) But yeah: I get it; I’m weird…. (shrugs, then, sings) “She wears short skirts; I wear sneakers—she’s cheer captain, and! I’m in the bleachers!….”