Friday, August 2
- Book: The Glass Lake
- Chapters: I finished it
- Location: Front porch
- Smoking: The end of my Lemon Cherry Berries or Berries Cherries Lerries or whatever it is. (its a goodun)
What I’m listening to:
Did I cry?
THREE TIMES.
Thoughts while reading (could be about the book, could not):
So I tried something a bit different today.
I’ve been working my schedule in such a way that it allows me to have Friday off completely from any sort of work. I’ve been using that as a break from writing on screen.
I tried to make it a “no writing at all” break, but that didn’t work for me, because I have to take notes.
So yesterday, I finished the book and only took notes on paper.
Here is a photo of them.
Now, let me try to make sense of them. There will be light spoilers if you have any sort of memory.
First off:
”Louis is an ass.”
This is self-explanatory. This character is an asshole. Here is the short story of this piece of shit, without mentioning any other names:
- Fell in love with a woman
- Started to make a life with her
- Left her for a newer model
- She started over with a new, more boring fella
- She settled into a life
- Had two kids
- And a separate bedroom from her husband
- Louis fucking came back and was like “Oh I still love you let’s go away together”
- They do some sexin’
- She gets pregnant
- She leaves her family without a trace (for reasons that are explained in the books)
- Loses the baby all over a train right after she left
- Starts a new life with the asshole Louis
- FUCKING THRIVES
- He still cheats, but in a way that he thinks doesn’t hurt her. It does.
- She puts up with it because she loves him that much and she can’t imagine a life without him.
- He leaves.
- She loses it.
- He comes back, begging for forgiveness.
- She forgives.
- They are happy again for a bit.
- He leaves her again
- But this time he got a 28-year-old pregnant
- She is miserable.
But luckily – he seems miserable too, by the end of the book.
”The feeling of ‘just knowing’.”
The hurt woman in the above scenario put up with Louis’ dalliances repeatedly, but near the end of the book, she had a feeling that this was the last one. This was the last time he would leave her – he’d never be coming back.
It sounds all “woo-woo” and fake, but I’m familiar with that same feeling. There are some things I just “know”. (hmm, maybe this is an OCD thing?!)
Like, I haven’t had a lot of relationships in the grand scheme of things, but my brain knew before I did that it was the last time I’d be sexin’ each one. It was just this quiet voice in my brain that told me, “Hey, this is the last time you’ll be doing this.”
And it’s always been right.
“I don’t know if any books has made me want to picture things more than this one”
Maeve Binchy does such a good job of describing things in a way that’s accessible to my brain. (If you’re new here, I have something called aphantasia, which means I can’t picture things in my head.)
She doesn’t have long paragraphs describing colors and textures and the way the light hits things. Instead, she uses concrete words, like, “Holly was draped everywhere, making it look like the outside”. That is not an exact quote. She is a much better writer than me.
I don’t know I like it. She’s one of the few writers where I don’t skip over full paragraphs of descriptions because I simply don’t get anything out of them.
But the way she wrote about the big party at the end of this book had me gagging to see it. I was so jealous of people who could picture things. I wanted to picture this party!!!
So if you read this book and picture the party, can you draw me a picture?!
”I really like Stevie”
The character of Stevie was such a breath of fresh air. Sure, there’s always the fella that sleeps with half the town in Binchy’s books, but he doesn’t normally turn that shit around.
“I feel a death coming on”
I dunno if it is because I’ve read this book before or because I am just familiar with her writing, but I can tell when a death is being set up in these books. I am terrible at predicting who it is though.
This one was sad.
Next up, I’ll be reading “Evening Class” by Maeve Binchy of course. I’ve read this one, and the next few, quite a lot of times. They are very comfortable and call back to a note that I made while reading that made me cry. The first one, in fact.
”I’ve been here the whole time”
This is something Sam Reich says at the beginning of every episode of Game Changer.
It is also how I feel about the characters I spend time with in books and television shows. I couldn’t tell you much about them outside of the books, movies, or shows, but once I slip back into the pages or screen, it was like they were there with me the whole time.
It’s like that with my writing, as well.
Idk, it moved me.
New birds heard:
No birbs today. sry
