The Entire Fairy Smut Book Club Just Finished A Court of Wings and Ruin, and Part of It Was Actually Really Good! Most of It Was Not Tho...

You guys. Do you remember that my first introduction to fairy smut was back last Spring, when I was touring a college with my younger kid and saw a student-made flyer in a hallway advertising the "Fairy Smut Book Club," with a picture of the cover of A Court of Thorns and Roses on it? That's the entire reason why I got started reading this series! As the secret non-student participant and only active member of the Indiana chapter, I had to do my part!

On that topic, I have terrible news for you. My younger kid actually attends that college now, and I'm sorry to tell you that she reports that currently, there IS no longer a Fairy Smut Book Club. They weren't at the Activities Fair, they never post any meetings or activities on Bionic, and no more flyers have ever appeared in the hallways of the Old Library. 

Friends, I appear to be the last remaining member of the Fairy Smut Book Club. 

I promise to make them proud.

SPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILER

In all serious, DO NOT READ THIS if you ever want to read any of these books for yourself, because I want to properly write about them here, not play coy with the plot details.

If you've read them, though, here's my review of ACOTAR and here's my review of ACOMAF.

And here's a TikTok about what it's like to be me just to take up some more room on the screen in case you're still deciding...

Okay, if you're in, you're in. Here's my review of ACOWAR!

A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This has been eating at me for three books now, and so I’m just going to come out and say it:

Y’all, I don’t think that Feyre and Rhys and their good-guy gang are very smart.

I’m not going to go so far as to say that EVERY decision they make, individually or collectively, is flat-out wrong, but I’m definitely willing to say that most of their decisions are in the neighborhood of wrong-ish.

Except for when Feyre single handedly takes down the entirety of Tamlin’s Spring Court solely out of spite--that shit is HILARIOUS and is my favorite part of this entire series. It turns out that Feyre only becomes her truest self when she is being a petty little bitch, and I loved it. When they go low, you go lower, Feyre, darling! I literally cackled when she went so far as to get up in the middle of the night and go move around a bunch of rocks just so that during their fairy ceremony the next morning the first magical sunbeam would just happen to strike her and not Ianthe. Lol! Oh, and when she did a bunch of machinations to make Tamlin think that she and Lucien were having an affair, for no other reason than to piss him off! I want THAT Feyre to be my best friend and come with me to every social occasion!

Sooo…. that was the 20% of *this* book that I liked! See also: Under the Mountain in ACOTAR. If we’d stopped at Feyre’s reunion with the Night Court--I’d even have allowed that gross sex scene at the end, just because I’d been spared smut up to then--I’d have given this book 5 stars. Feyre as High Lady of Chaos and then on a buddy adventure with Lucien is just that good.

But then Maas has to go and spoil it all with another billion pages of bad decisions by people I think we’re supposed to see as smart?

BUT THEY ARE ALL SO STUPID! Which is understandable, I guess, as none of them are scholars or appear to have been academically trained in administration, politics, or bureaucracy. All their history seems to be oral, told in folk tale format? There’s also not a lot of logic, or even common sense, on display. When two more of the bloated cast of characters, Miryam and Drakon, make their miraculous appearance at the end of the book, it turns out that they hadn’t actually mysteriously disappeared at all? They’d just put a glamour over the island they’d been living on, so when fairies flew over it the island would look empty? And so everyone thought it was empty and they’d disappeared? But they hadn’t? It was just that nobody had ever thought to, I don’t know, LAND on the island and look for clues? Perhaps even look to see if they’d left a note saying where they’d gone? They were just all, wow, that island looks empty from the air, guess Miryam and Drakon disappeared what a mystery!!!

And part of their trouble is that none of the other courts trust them because Rhys spent the past several hundred years acting like a sociopath to protect his one special city. So maybe he should stop acting like a sociopath! Like, YEAH Tarquin hates you and doesn’t trust you and is unwilling to cooperate fully at first, thereby hindering your ability to defeat Hybern--you all acted like ABSOLUTE SOCIOPATHS to steal his artifact, and then you let that artifact fall into the enemy’s hands and now it’s going to kill everyone. MAYBE THAT’S WHY TARQUIN HID IT IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Oh, that reminds me! It’s actually 25% of the book that I liked, because my other favorite thing is how they all try to have a meeting of the “high lords” (vomit) and when Tamlin shows up, he is such a petty little douchebag and I loved it. He is my college boyfriend who, when I told him that I was breaking up with him, immediately became incensed and started screaming, “NO, I’m breaking up with YOU!!!”, and then my Uncle Sherman, who was sleeping on the couch in the den and woke up to the sound of this random-ass guy screaming at his niece out on the carport, had to come outside and be all “Young man, it’s time to go home.” Thank you, Uncle Sherman!

In all fairness, the 25% that I liked should have been more like 60%--it only wasn’t because this book is sooooo loooooong! At one point I lost serious momentum with it when hoopla auto-returned it and then when I went to check it out again for some reason like 12 people were randomly in line ahead of me and I couldn’t get it again for months, but even when I got it back the last four hours were, like… oh, right, we’re still at war and we’re FINALLY having a battle now! I keep forgetting because we keep going on side-quests to ally with people and save random magical creatures and visit other random magical creatures and make deals with magical creatures and come back to visit them again to for more wheeling and dealing or whatever and fight somebody else and have a chat with our allies and go visit the mortal world for a minute. Like, can we not do a little more of that off-screen? Or just… not?

And THEN I lost the book again for a few weeks when I had only 45 minutes left, and when I finally got it back I listened to those last 45 minutes while riding the TranzAlpine over the Southern Alps from Greymouth to Christchurch, and absolutely nothing happened in that time. Feyre talked with the legendary fairy people who’d been lost. She had a funeral for her father. Amren doesn’t drink blood anymore (and that whole side-plot to get her god powers unveiled was also stupid). For FORTY-FIVE MINUTES. UGH!

Arthur’s Pass is sooooo pretty, though!

I’m sorry to report that my second-book prediction was correct and Nesta and Elain ARE part of the ensemble cast now, and I still hate them. I’m especially pissed that Elain is mated or soulbonded or whatever to Lucien, because Lucien is clearly the hottest fairy and he does not deserve that. The second-hottest fairy is Cassian, though, so FUCKING SIGH. I think we’re supposed to see Nesta and Elaie as… redeemed? Sisterly? now, but they still act basically the same as those basic bitches who wouldn’t even help Feyre chop wood or skin rabbits in the first book, and I don’t care what kind of powers and shit they have now--they’re still not very helpful! But the wooooorst redemption is their father! I mean, come ON! We’re supposed to believe that the bastard who ALSO wouldn’t get off his ass to keep his family from starving, or at least give his youngest daughter a little bit of help every now and then while she singlehandedly kept their family alive, had an off-screen redemption and is now a knight in shining armor? Ugh, whatever. Whereas Tamlin’s complete personality change is totally believable because even in the first book I thought he was high-key gross, this complete overhaul of Feyre’s awful family does. Not. Work. I know it sucks that Maas wanted to do something different with them after she’d written them into a corner, but sorry, that’s just what happens when you write people into a corner. Pick a different plot that works with what you’ve already done! And honestly, it would have made Feyre a much more interesting character if she chose to fight so hard to protect the mortal realm even though nearly everyone in the mortal realm had been worthless pieces of shit to her. She should have had more of Greyson’s characterisation, because that dude was all, “I fucking hate you but fine, I will help you, because morals.”

I’m also a little sorry to report that my second-book prediction that Feyre was going to have Rhys’ winged babies was INCORRECT, gasp! I would have bet real money on that one! I was also really hoping Rhys was going to die at the end, and he kind of did, but only for a minute, sigh. So I guess they can have some bat babies in the next book. Which, at this point I have NO idea what the next two(?) books are supposed to contain? I’d kind of thought we’d carry the war on for longer, but nope, everything is all wrapped up! So what on earth are we going to plot next?

And there was a little bit of queer representation in this book, finally, but most of it was brief and uninteresting enough that you’d miss it if you happened to instead notice a deer next to your walking trail, or a squirrel ran out in front of you (I eventually took to listening to this book almost entirely on walks, where I couldn’t get away to do something, anything more interesting). The only “significant” inclusion was solely to give me an extremely disappointing #bisexualrolemodel, sigh. Or, rather, what Morrigan describes is actually being a closeted lesbian with some really terrible self-hating masking techniques, right? That was… genuinely upsetting to read, tbh. The fairy realm really needs more qualified therapists.

Oh, but the good news--for a fairy smut book, it wasn’t super smutty! Or at least… I don’t think? Just between us, the sex scenes are sooo cringy that I do the 15-second skip forward every time one starts, then repeat until it’s over, and the little snippets are still veeeeery cringey, but I don’t think I had to do that too many times, so yay! The psychic snapchatting between Feyre and Rhys is something I’m super embarrassed for them about, but hey--what mutually consenting couples do together is their own business. They don’t know we’re invading their privacy, so we need to give them some grace.

So, predictions for the next two(?) books:

Feyre and Rhys will have a baby, maybe even twins so they can have a girl and a boy barf. Maybe there will be a kidnapping plot or something?

The only possible overarching plot I can think of is something with those cross-universe old gods, just because they got brought up a lot in this book for not really any good reasons.

PLEASE do not let the POV shift from Feyre to Elain or, god forbid, fucking Nesta! Feyre already gets on my very last nerve but I will flat-out stop reading this series if I have to continue through the eyes of either of those worthless pieces of shit.

It won’t happen, but it would be HILARIOUS if we had another complete turn-around in the next book, so that Rhys is now a total dick and we cheer as Feyre falls into the loving arms of Tarquin. I would read the snot out of that!

As for the Fairy Smut Book Club, perhaps it was just a busy semester for the members, and they'll reactivate it next semester, fingers crossed. My kid has told me flat-out, numerous times, that no, she will NOT join the book club on my behalf, but she IS a member of the school's Sherlock Holmes book club, so I guess there's that. The other day she was all, "One of the other members is really obsessed with Holmes slash Watson... you wouldn't know anything about that, would you?"

And that's how I may or may not have found myself sharing fanfic recs with yet another total stranger!

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I Read Dark Carnivals and I Still Think Jaws is a Family Movie

Halloween 2018

Dark Carnivals: Modern Horrors and the Origins of American Empire by W. Scott Poole
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I’m not sure how one could rewrite the title of this book to clarify that it’s not really about the history of the horror genre and how it reflects the American empire, but actually about the history of the American empire, explaining and illustrating some of the events via action, sci-fi, horror, and thriller movies that speak to the politics of the day.

But they need to, because I kind of feel snookered.

During some chapters, mind you, we get a little bit more of the former, and Poole’s claims in these chapters are liberally peppered with film mentions and analyses. A discussion of Poltergeist (remember their haunted house is built on a graveyard that was also supposedly built on an “ancient Indian burial ground”?) leads to a discussion of the history of European settlers’ long genocide of the Native American peoples, which leads to mentions of other movies that also use this “ancient Indian burial ground” trope. But even in this chapter, in which there are numerous horror movies that hint at that genocide, these mentions of Pet Sematary, The Amityville Horror, and The Shining really are just mentions, along the lines of “Here are some other movies with the same theme.” I wanted an analysis of each of these movies and how each speaks to this theme separately. What is the significance of the usage of an “ancient Indian burial ground” to now bury only pets? Or the significance of the undead from that burial ground becoming murderous against their guardians? Or in Amityville Horror, the significance of the conflation of demons with the ancient burial ground and the Catholic Church as another force that the horror must stop? Or how about the general opinion that the parents made up the entire original story to get out from under a mortgage they belatedly realized was WAY too big for their finances? Or what is the reasoning for why the Native American genocide had its climax so long ago and we’re only just horroring about it in the 70s and 80s, as well as what it means that these three were all books first?

Dunno, because we don’t get into any extensive semiotic analysis of any cultural artifact within the bounds of this book. The lens through which we’re meant to be studying American imperialism gets forgotten quite a bit in favor of simply laying out and opining on the history of American imperialism.

Throughout his book, Poole implies a dual responsibility that Americans have, in tune with these occasional films that metaphorically present a select atrocity that has been committed by their country. Poole asks, are the movies meant to pacify us Americans, desensitize us to the real horror around us, and we should watch them and be pacified, or are the movies meant to motivate us, to break us out of our shells of ennui, and we should watch them and then revolt?

cupcake sharks circa 2009

Poole illustrates this duality via continued reference to Jaws (which he claims pacifies and desensitizes us) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (which he claims motivates us to revolt). I think it’s interesting that out of the two, Jaws is a “family” movie that I’ve watched with my kids several times since they were small, once even with an entire themed family dinner that included, among other delicacies, blue Jello studded with Swedish fish and cupcakes with half a Twinkie on top, arranged and frosted to look sort of maybe reminiscent of a shark breaking out of the water if you turned your head and squinted juuuust right. Texas Chainsaw Massacre, on the other hand, I watched exactly once, mostly through my fingers, and do not plan to ever so much as be in the same room with again, much less screen for even my now-adult daughters, much less with themed snack foods. Although I have SO many great ideas--meatloaf and smoked sausage-heavy, but still--about Texas Chainsaw Massacre-themed snack foods!

ocean Jello, complete with whipped cream waves and a graham cracker crumb beach!

I thought the strongest parts of Poole’s book were his discussion of wars and conquests that were so overtly American imperialist that even a child could make the connection, and the films that were made by the filmmakers influenced by those wars. A director (George A. Romero) and a special effects artist (Tom Savini) who brought their experiences explicitly into the visuals they created is strong stuff, and one of the few insights that will make me watch some of these films with new eyes. On a similar note, I was stoked when Poole started writing about The Serpent and the Rainbow, a movie that I watched by myself on the floor of my den WAY too many times as an unwholesomely unsupervised child, and which probably now explains a lot about me, ahem, but I didn’t get a ton more from the discussion than I got from watching the movie a dozen times at the age of 13. It’s racist and sexist, and its depictions of Haiti are fucked up. Also, tangent: that’s a good way to describe JD Vance!

One of the more annoying and obvious flaws in the book, at least to me who loves myself a good recommended list, is the absence of an index that lists the movies and where they’re discussed. You would not believe how long it took me to flip through the book--three times!--to find the Poltergeist discussion that I remembered. And if Poole ever got back to that discussion I’ll never know, because I’d have to re-read the book to find it. And God forbid that he at least included a list of all the cultural artifacts discussed in the book so we can watch them for ourselves. It would also let us see the titles like Independence Day and Fight Club that were included in the book even though they’re not horror titles.

On the whole, I did think that Poole’s thesis question of whether we’re meant to be pacified or inspired is significant and relevant, and it’s something that I’ll continue to think about when I watch horror. Instead of this comprehensive-ish history that offers references to films, though, I’d rather have had deeper discussions of fewer, select moments of American imperialism, with more extensive film references and analyses intertwined. Some of these imperialistic moments are clearly more ingrained in our collective consciousness than others, and I think that the movies that speak to those moments are saying much more than Poole was willing to tell us about here.

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I Made a Little Quilt That Is a Ghost for The Little Ghost Who Was a Quilt

The best thing, for me, about having a small niece, is that I can still make all the cute children's things that I want to make, because I still have someone to give them to!

Honestly, I might actually make more things for my niece than I did for my own kids, if you don't count things like clothes or homeschool materials or collaborative crafts, because when my own kids were this little kid's age, I was too busy parenting little kids to get enough crafty time to actually make them cute things! My younger kid was four years old by the time I made her first quilt, oops!

So when I saw The Little Ghost Who Was a Quilt in a local bookstore a few weeks ago, and I was immediately charmed by it, and then immediately after that I wanted to make a little ghost quilt--I did!

Happily, the book's endpapers feature the quilt design of the titular little ghost, making it super easy to see what similar fabrics would look like. And even more happily, I did not have to buy a single thing to make this quilt! To be fair, a couple of the fabrics that I used are remnants that I'd previously bought with no purpose in mind, but everything else was honest-to-goodness scraps and stash, from the fabric for the top to the cotton batting to the cotton sheet I used as the backing.

All of the pieces are 5" squares. I wanted my quilt to be 10 blocks by 12 blocks, so I needed 120 blocks total. I sort of tried to keep the colors even between purple, aqua, and white, but it's a little blue-heavy. There are just a few grey blocks scattered in, because it turns out that I don't actually own very much grey fabric. The little ghost quilt in the book also has tan blocks, but for some reason I don't have ANY tan fabric, and anyway, I wasn't really feeling the tan colorway... which is perhaps one reason for why I don't own any tan fabric, lol!

To make the quilt, you lay out your pieces and rearrange them until you like the way they look as a whole, then stack them by rows, piece each row, then piece the rows themselves together, being quite fussy about lining up the corners:

Then you take up your entire family room floor making your quilt sandwich!

This is why I can never say that my creations come from a pet-free home, ahem. I would NEVER want my creations to come from a pet-free home!

I pinned my quilt quite well to the batting/backing, trimmed it out roughly, then quilted it via stitch in the ditch, earning myself yet another day of having a wonky back in the process. Why must quilting be so ergonomically incorrect?!?

Here's how it looks all nicely quilted and ready to be properly trimmed:

I got through trimming the batting before my supervisor came to check up on me:

I trimmed the backing to 1" wider than the quilt on all sides, then folded it in half twice, clipped it in place using every plastic sewing clip I own, and stitched it down:

Proper quilters use a blind stitch or another invisible stitch, but I'm happy with a plain old zig-zag.

And there's my little ghost quilt!

The lighting was soooo perfect right when I finished, but in the hour it took me to run out and do early voting, it got completely overcast. But I had to take my photos anyway, because Halloween presents are more fun if you can get them in the mail in time for the recipient to receive them before, you know, Halloween!

...and that's a bunch of cat hairs there on the purple block, sigh. I did wash it and dry it, and then go over it with the lint roller, before I put it in the mail.

Because you don't have to follow a pattern, just make sure that the pieces look cute together as a whole, this is actually one of the quickest quilts I've ever sewn:

I'm always especially pleased when I can work any of my favorite meaningful fabrics into a piece. Below, the smocked blue fabric used to be part of the only skirt that my older kid ever willingly wore. The silky white fabric to its right is actually from my wedding dress!

My favorite part, though, is that I used variegated thread to quilt it, and it looks so nice from the back!

Isn't it crazy that you can make something so substantial, and so pretty and perfect, entirely from materials you already have on hand? Historically, that's exactly what quilting should be, including reusing those bits of old clothes, and I LOVE that there's a children's book that encourages children to notice and care for the simple, unassuming gift of a patchwork quilt:

I didn't have any ghosts on hand to put into it, though, so that part's going to have to figure itself out later. 

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I Read The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs Because I'm a Sucker for a Gossipy Paleontologist

My amateur paleontologist glory days!

The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World by Steve Brusatte
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In which I rediscover (for the hundred millionth time) that dinosaurs are awesome, and continue my journey to read everything ever written about them.

I was a Space Kid, not a Dinosaur Kid, so I didn’t actually get interested in dinosaurs until my older kid did, around the age of five or so. Let me tell you, you have not SEEN obsession until you’ve seen a five-year-old whose Special Interest is propped up, encouraged, and in every way indulged by a parent who’s just as obsessively taken it as her life’s mission to do such. The kid in question is now an adult doing oceanography on a research vessel in the South Pacific, and I’m still over here reading dinosaur books!

Allosaurus at age 5. I honestly can't remember if I scanned the picture backwards or if her reverse writing really was that extreme back then. She writes going the normal direction now!

So: dinosaurs. I most enjoy books written for the non-academic, and I MOST most enjoy books that mention the personalities involved, because I think it’s interesting to follow their research, look for their discoveries in the museums I visit, suss out any gossip about them… you know, the usual! So I liked all the name-dropping that Brusatte did, talking about his lifelong interest and work in paleontology, etc., nearly as much as I did the actual paleontology. Anyway, if you don’t at least minimally cyberstalk the other paleontologists that Brusatte mentions, how are you going to learn that Poland’s leading paleontologist, Grzegorz Niedzwiedzki, is high-key hot? “Steely face,” indeed, Brusatte!

I’m interested in the analytical work of paleontologists after they get home from the field, so I’m glad that Brusatte also talked about this quite a bit--probably so he could quietly be a bit braggy about his own contributions, but still. His contributions are pretty cool! I texted my other kid, who’s in college and worried that her Statistics class is too babyish, to tell her that Brusatte essentially uses statistics to make his dinosaur family trees and other cool dinosaur discoveries. She wasn’t that excited because she thinks dinosaurs are boring, but now she knows some more options!

We also get info about the historical paleontologists along with this history of dinosaurs. Although he doesn’t mention my favorite paleontologist, Mary Anning, which is fine because she didn’t actually find dinosaurs, he does briefly discuss my second-favorite period in paleontology, the Bone Wars.

checking out some of Mary Anning's best finds

What’s my favorite period, you say? The discovery of Sue and all the drama surrounding who got to own her!

Sue!

Oh, and he mentions my favorite non-dinosaur, the Sarcosuchus!

SuperCroc!

I also like hearing about the life and works of these paleontologists because they give me more tips and ideas for my own fossil hunting--that Riker Hill Fossil Site that Paul Olsen got national protection for is conveniently located in between the Thomas Edison National Historical Park (you’ve got to make advanced reservations for the house tour) and Morristown National Historical Park, and depending on how dirty you got fossil hunting, there’s a Medieval Times not too far away, either!

Also the Burpee Museum of Natural History in Rockford, Illinois, where I learned that I must go to see the most complete skeleton of a T. rex ever found. I’ve got extended family in Rockford, so I’ll be putting on my fake mustache and skulking around corners so I don’t have to small-talk, but I’ll be there!

And the Chicxulub Crater. I’ve actually been there before, but I have NOT been inside every single cenote yet, so obviously I have to go back.

I've been inside some of the cenotes, though!

I really appreciated the extensive author’s notes at the end of the book, with all the recommended reading I could want. I requested several more titles from the library, thanks to those notes, so I should be flush with dinosaur reading through the new year!

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I Read Prairie Fires, and I'm Pretty Mad about Rose Wilder Lane

paying my respects (with awful white balance) in 2012

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

So you know how I’ve mentioned before that if Pa Ingalls has no haters in this world, then it’s time to plan my funeral?

Well, if Rose Wilder Lane has no haters left in this world, then it’s because I’ve discovered time travel and gone back in time just to experience the joy of smacking her across the back of the head. Christ, what an asshole!

This book made 21 hours of the approximately 35-hour road trip I took to visit my kids at college fly by, and meant that I could also profitably use every bathroom break to text the family group chat bitching about Pa and Rose… at least until I hit up the Roger Williams National Memorial on my way from Falmouth to Philadelphia, after which I started obsessively texting everyone all about how we’d all still be living under the thumb of extremist Puritan theocracy if it hadn’t been for Roger Williams, but that’s a whole different review.

There are certain historical figures/famous people whose life stories I can’t get enough of, and honestly, the more gossipy the information is, the better. I will read about Vincent Van Gogh, Louisa May Alcott, and Britney Spears FOREVER, just like I am always thirsty for more info about Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family. The lure is that they’re all complicated people with complicated familial relationships, and I get to play armchair psychologist while satisfying all my looky-loo urges. I may have finally met my perfect match in Caroline Fraser, as this massive, sweeping history of America and biography of not just Laura, but also Rose and Pa and Ma and, to a lesser extent, a dozen other people, FINALLY contains the bounty of information that I want to know when I want to know about someone. Like, Darling, don’t just tell me your life story, also tell me the life story of your three-times great-grandfather and how the Dakotas became separate states and the timeline of legislation that moved the native peoples off their lands and something or other about Albania--to be honest, I’m still a little lost about most of the Albania stuff. As I was driving through a mountain range in a downpour, avoiding the toll roads per usual, there was a giant sign that said “Reduced Visibility When Flashing,” with the lights flashing, and then all of a sudden I was in a fog bank in a downpour on a terrifying bridge between two mountainy bits and I was pretty sure I was about to die. But I didn’t! But I also didn’t absorb too much about what the deal was with Albania, either. Something something houses. Something something another creepy relationship between Rose and a young man she told to pretend to be her son.

paying my respects to Ma--but NEVER Pa!--in 2014

Because I’ve read Wilder’s works so avidly, a lot of the material about Wilder, herself, was actually less interesting to me, because Wilder, herself, was the ultimate source material. It was sort of like Fraser was retelling Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography to me, then The First Four Years, then On the Way Home, then West from Home: Letters of Laura Ingalls Wilder, San Francisco, 1915. But the biographies of Pa’s ancestors were a genuine revelation, more fun because I was driving into New England while I listened--they were PURITANS! THAT explains his insane stories about how his great-grandfather wouldn’t let anyone have any fun on the Sabbath, which by the way began at sundown the night before and you had to walk soberly and sit in several hours of church, etc. One of Charles’ ancestors was even executed as a witch during the Salem Witch Trials, maintaining to the moment she was hanged a stubbornness/independent spirit that wouldn’t have looked out of place on Pa, Laura, or even that asshole Rose.

Another person with an “independent spirit” who also used it for evil was Eliza Jane Wilder. I don’t know if it’s bias, exactly, because Fraser is definitely correct in her evaluations, but when one of these figures in Laura’s life is not the good guy, Fraser definitely lets you know it! AND she brings the receipts to prove it! Like Eliza Jane: Laura clearly didn’t like her, and made it clear that Almanzo didn’t like her either, and made it equally clear in every book in which she shows up exactly why. Eliza Jane is bossy and high-handed, stuck-up and often high-key incompetent. But in case you think that Laura was just being mean in her books, Fraser literally quotes sections of Eliza Jane’s diary in which she is SO MEAN about Almanzo, and paints herself as the hero of the day in such a cringey, over-the-top, unbelievable way that I immediately added her to my haters club. Also, she bankrupted her parents, for Christ’s sake. And I am very suspicious about that time that she took teenaged Rose to live with her, because whatever Rose got up to under Eliza Jane’s supervision, it certainly didn’t improve her personality.

So. You guys. I am sure that Laura was a shit parent, because hurt people hurt people, you know? And trauma gonna trauma. And not only had Laura been parentified since at least the age of 11, and likely earlier, and had just a wagon-load of her own childhood trauma that she definitely didn’t work through, but hoo-boy, were Laura’s first years of marriage, including all of Rose’s early childhood, just an absolute shitshow all around. Almanzo, too, was likely depressed (that little survey he filled out for Rose in later years, in which he wrote to his own child that “My life has been mostly disappointments,” is just… whoa), likely had a wet dishrag for a backbone, and was physically disabled to the point that Laura, who during their courtship could have seen him as a strong, capable partner who could finally free her from this life of labor and privation, instead found herself within two years his caretaker as well as her children’s, and forced back into that same damn life of privation and labor. More labor, even, because she now had to do many of Almanzo's chores, too.

So yes. She was probably a shit parent. And she had a stubborn kid, which, just between us, does not improve one’s patience. Fraser really doesn’t go into this part a ton, but reading between the lines of writing about the family, I’m guessing Laura was a screamer, and a shamer, and Almanzo was the parent who showed his love better but also didn’t do any of the discipline and didn’t curb any of Laura’s harmful methods. And yes, I’m describing my own childhood here, as well, which is why I picked up on it so well.

Laura and Almanzo's sweet little Missouri house

So that sucked for Rose. I know it must have been painful, and I know she must have been thrilled the first time she moved away. But, like, get away and go low- or no-contact, or don’t get away and show some fucking compassion. Rose, though, chose the third option, which is absolute batshit toxic nasty behavior both to and about her mother, while never letting go/letting her mother go or giving her so much as the slightest benefit of the doubt. Imagine someone always in your life who clearly dislikes you, someone who invites you on a once-in-a-lifetime trip and then while you’re on it writes your husband to make fun of you and tell him how fat you’re getting (and ooh, that one pissed me off the most, because seriously? Fat shaming? That’s what we’ve sunk to?). Someone who insists on giving you money you didn’t ask for and then asks YOU for even more money, repeatedly. Someone who helps you write your life story and then steals part of your story and writes her own book with it, then hides it from you, then gets pissed at you when you find out and you’re upset.

And we don’t know any of this from Laura, because Laura, in all writings that we know of, only ever expressed pride and love for her daughter. She held a birthday party in her daughter’s honor while Rose was in Albania, passing around all of the letters Rose had sent her and getting all the guests to write her letters in return--people apparently thought it was kind of dumb but super sweet. She wrote to people to brag about Rose’s books, and tell them how they could buy them. And in return, Rose wrote just the most vile, mean-hearted shit about her mother in her own letters to her friends. In every instance she painted Laura in the worst possible light. She’s pretty much the first recorded instance of Bitch Eating Crackers.

To be fair, it’s pretty obvious that Rose was mentally ill throughout much of her life, untreated and unmedicated, of course. She had to deal with chronic depression and suicidal tendencies and what were probably episodes of mania, as well, all on her own, however she could figure out to do so. Unfortunately, her symptoms/coping mechanisms included narcissism, blaming others for all perceived injustices, suspicious and very questionable relationships with teen boys, including bringing them to live with her, giving them money and expensive gifts, instructing them to pretend to be her sons/grandsons, and cutting them off in adulthood. She had weird issues with money, constantly overspending and then borrowing from her parents; with houses, constantly overspending to build and remodel them; and with individualism, partly founding the libertarian party and lying about her grandparents’ history of government aid to bolster her philosophy. The most heartbreaking thing she did, though, was leave her entire estate to her “adopted grandson,” Roger Lea MacBride, a guy with mercenary sociopathic tendencies to equal her own, who courted her with yet more overtly cringy pandering letters and little gifts and solicitations until he got exactly what he wanted, which was the rights to all of Laura’s books. Rose’s body was barely cold by the time he transferred all the copyrights to himself, completely dismissing Laura’s will, which had read that Rose could have the rights and profits until her own death, at which point it should all go to her favorite public library. Instead, MacBride, and then his daughter after him, are millionaires.

the back of Rose's headstone, in 2012

And that’s how a biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder also became a pretty extensive biography of Rose Wilder Lane, too, because that’s how it goes with enmeshed folks. It would have been interesting to have seen what Laura would have been like, and could have accomplished, if she’d been given the opportunity to be an independent young woman like Rose was--would she still have been a writer without Rose’s help, with a longer career and no material wants to weigh her down? I wish both Laura and Rose could have gone to college. I wish they both could have gotten some excellent therapy, parenting classes for Laura, mental health care for Rose, and a mentor who could explain the importance of journalistic integrity and the role of authorship.

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I Read the English Heritage Book of Glastonbury Because the Spirit of a Medieval Monk Told Me To

English Heritage Book of Glastonbury by Philip Rahtz
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I wish I had read this book before I went to England, not after, because not a single person bothered to tell me about poor Richard Whiting, the final abbot of Glastonbury Abbey. During the Dissolution he was dragged across town and then up Glastonbury Tor and hanged, and THEN he was quartered and his head was mounted over the gateway of the Abbey!

Apparently people thought he'd hidden treasure in the Abbey? But the thing is that later they literally DID find a ton of treasure in the walls, but poor elderly Abbot Whiting probably didn't have anything to do with it.

Fun facts like these kept me fascinated by this history of Glastonbury, and I enjoyed reading the history through the lens of the texts and archaeological evidence that vividly illustrate it. I really liked the Lady Chapel when I visited, for instance, and it was cool to read that this spot is also the location of St. Joseph's Well, which is likely pre-Normanic and possibly the very first thing ever built on this site. 

Lady Chapel crypt, but the part with St. Joseph's Well is out of frame because I didn't know it was important, damnit.

I wish I'd known that when I was standing next to it--I would have taken a photograph! It's a bummer that the on-site resources didn't tell me all this interesting info, so thank goodness for archaeologists who write books for English Heritage!

The literal illustrations are also excellent, and now I get to pine for my own print of the works of Judith Dobie, who apparently has the coolest-ever job of creating illustrations of historical England. I wish *I* knew how to watercolor Neolithic long barrows! 

Embed from Getty Images

My teenager, who's very into Arthurian legends, really wants Dobie's print of the exhumation of Arthur and Guinevere from this book--you can actually see in the illustration both the monk who picks up Guinevere's golden hair only to watch it disintegrate in his hands (doh!) AND the monk who finds the lead cross that super conveniently is inscribed something along the lines of "Here Lies the Definitely Very Real Not Fake King Arthur."

Even though Rahtz is very much NOT a fan of the Arthurian legends like these that surround the place, which is a bummer because I think the legends are the most fun and that's why I went to visit Glastonbury myself, he still devotes time to mentioning them and other woo theories, including some woo theories that I hadn't heard about! I know about King Arthur and ley lines and Joseph of Arimathea, etc., but I did not know that in the early 1900s a wealthy artist also decided that the entire Zodiac was recreated in the topology around Glastonbury. What Rahtz says about her is probably my favorite quote in the entire book:

When Mrs. Maltwood died, she left a considerable sum of money to further the understanding of her ideas. The Trust which administers this has taken the liberal view that understanding of the Zodiac will be achieved only by a wider understanding of the archaeology of Somerset; to this end many grants have been made to archaeologists in the area (including the present author), for which we must be thankful.

Lol!

This is rivaled by my second-favorite anecdote, that of the director of excavation in the early 1900s (what was with the early 1900s and its woo?!?), F. Bligh Bond, who decided that archaeology probably wasn't as good of a way to get at the truth as sacred geometry and automatic writing guided by spirits would be. I mean, of course! He effed up a BUNCH of stuff before the Church of England finally got wind of his shenanigans and fired him. Rahtz sums up his biography this way:

In 1926 he went to America, where he lectured on Glastonbury, and on his psychic techniques concerning the 'Company of Avalon.' He returned to England in 1936, and died, very much alone, in North Wales in 1945.

I did some more reading up on Bond because he sounds so weird, but nowhere else have I seen the fact that he died "very much alone." Like... Rahtz, you got a bone to pick with this guy? He's already dead--you don't have to keep punching him!

The book ends with some excellent suggestions for further readings and a thorough bibliography, both of which I've picked through. I'm especially interested in the "Myth and Legend" sources that Rahtz gamely includes despite his abhorrence, and the Bond book entitled The Gate of Remembrance: A True Story of Psychic Archaeology. I want to see for myself what bonkers stuff he wrote via his spirit monk!

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I Read Caroline, Or, If Pa Ingalls Has No Haters In This World Then It's Time To Write My Obituary

Throwback to that time in 2014 that I slept in their backyard and then sat on their graves!

Caroline: Little House, Revisited by Sarah Miller
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Laura, Rose, their extended family and friends, and all their writings is one of my Special Interests, and I will never not be down to read anything concerning any of them. I am fascinated by the bits of fact that mix with their fiction, the bits of fiction that mix with their non-fiction, the hints at juicy family drama, and how palpably trauma informed their writings, their behaviors, and their relationships.

Also, I am Pa’s biggest hater, and I will happily see him trashed anytime!

I don’t necessarily love Caroline Ingalls, either--she messed up Laura nearly as badly as Pa did--but I see, perhaps because I, too, am a woman who had a childhood and has children, how her own childhood trauma informed her own behaviors and relationships, and I can’t make myself blame and shame her like I can Pa. Seriously, fuck you, Pa.

To that end, I kind of liked that Caroline was high-key annoying in this book. I firmly believe that she literally was an annoying person! Reading Laura’s fiction and non-fiction, I VERY much get the vibe that Caroline could have been exactly as introspective and contemplative as she was in this novel. To be fair, she was constantly left alone with multiple small children in a shack out in the middle of nowhere with no amenities and a ridiculous burden of menial labor--it reads totally real that she had nothing better to do with her mind than chew over her thoughts and feelings and hold up a mental microscope to her every bodily function. RIP, Caroline--you would have loved LiveJournal!

Throughout the book, I really enjoyed the small call-outs to the overall Ingalls history that a less-avid fan would breeze past: Carrie is always portrayed as smaller and frailer than the other children, and detailing all the miseries of a covered wagon journey full of privation and hardship during Caroline’s pregnancy with her goes a long way towards explaining why. Oh, and there’s also the time everyone got malaria when she was a baby and she nearly died of neglect and starvation!

Speaking of that road trip from Hell, I get why Miller would write Caroline as perceiving herself to have the agency to postpone that trip, because otherwise it’s just too depressing for words, but… I think the reality was really just too depressing for words! I do not think for a second that Charles would have postponed that trip for any reason, because he was a selfish pig and he wanted what he wanted exactly when he wanted it. I have read nothing about Pa, in Laura’s rose-colored fiction or in her more reality-based memoir or in what little we can find about him in other historical documents, that has painted him in anything but the most selfish and unflattering light. I loved all the small moments of resentment of Charles that Miller let Caroline feel, and it’s just too bad that I have also read nothing about Caroline that has ever painted her as anything but completely in control of her deportment at all times, because I would have loved to see her, all hopped up on pregnancy hormones, rip Charles to shreds just one time. I mean, for Christ’s sake, he bought window glass instead of food! He bought a big-ass plow instead of the land to use it on! The actual timeline of the sale of the Big Woods house and the Ingalls' various wanderings is unclear, but early on it was very clear that Gustafson was going to cut and run out on the mortgage. Charles moved himself, his pregnant wife, and two small children across the country IN A WAGON and had no Plan B! Like, it’s the 1800s--what if Gustafson had simply died?!? 

I can’t even with this guy.

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I Read Lies Across America Because I Love It When Other People Are Wrong

This log cabin is a lie!

Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong by James W. Loewen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I love little nitpicky bits of information, and I love tiny moments in history, so although I never really found my groove with this book, I did love learning all its little nitpicky bits of information and discussions of tiny moments in history.

I read the 1999 version of the book, not the updated 2019 version, so there is some outdated terminology that I hope has since been corrected, and I know for sure that there’s been positive progress in the depiction of some of these historical figures and events, as well. I was loaded for bear when I visited the Levi and Catharine Coffin State Historical Site recently, ready to fight for Catharine’s due representation, only to happily find that it’s already there! Most of my tour of the house was actually about Catharine’s work, since she was the one most often home with the freedom seekers, and the docent was well-prepared to be peppered with all of my Catharine Coffin questions.

The Wikipedia page for the Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Site, at least, also now also indicates the “symbolic nature” of the log cabin inside that weird mansion-like mausoleum they’ve got on their premises--

--and relates a short version of the shell game-like history of its logs that Loewen goes into more detail about, but I remember that when we went there as a family I still thought after reading the info and viewing the exhibit that it was an authentic cabin--not Lincoln’s cabin, but someone’s proper cabin!--so Loewen’s criticisms were still valid then.

I was interested to read Loewen’s retelling of one of my other Special Interests in History, that time in 1924 when the Ku Klux Klan took over nearly every political office in Indiana from school board up through the governor’s seat. Loewen’s 1999 version lacked some of the nuance of the story that we know now (shout-out to The Ku Klux Klan in the Heartland!), but I wonder if his synopsis is the first time that the tale had been told via mass publication? I don’t know if I really agree with his assessment that there ought to be some historical markers about the period, because it’s not really a place-based event--unless we want to put a marker at each of the Indiana Welcome Centers?--but I do wish that it was part of everyone’s general education, and especially part of Indiana history books. There are a few more important things kids can learn about in the fourth grade other than the Constitution Elm!

Parts of the book had some weirdly overt assertions of opinion that I’m not used to in a history text, and I also didn’t love most of Loewen’s first-person hijinks--he really did not need to write a passy-assy honest-to-god letter to the Jeffrey Amherst Bookshop omg how embarrassing. But hey, it’s closed now, so Loewen won!

After reading the book and looking at the pages that I’d marked, it’s clear that I was most interested, by far, in the lies that have been told me about the places I’ve lived, like Arkansas and Indiana, and the places I’ve visited. Combine that with the fact that this book took me a really long time to slog through, so much so that I only managed to finally finish it during a 54-hour power outage when I felt like I absolutely had to do SOMETHING productive sans electricity, and I think that what I really want is a Lies Across America travel guide! I want glossy photos, specific locations for each marker, and related interesting amenities, quirky things to see, and ideally even nearby sites with accurate information. Bonus points for corny on-theme buffet restaurants!

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