A readable, scholarly-ish look at the magic of baseball

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 

Probably more like a 3.75, but I rounded up, because baseball is magical. If you're a baseball fan like I am, you will read The Magical Game: The Spirit and History of Baseball's Superstitions, Rituals, and Curses and think "Relatable" over and over ("Being a fan of any sport is stressful at best and terrifying at worst. Before my miraculous conversion via Syndergaard-ian fastball, I would've laughed at that sentiment, but now I say it with total seriousness. It's scary to want, to root, to hope, to put your faith in strangers, to surrender control--and that is what is asked of us as fans" [loc. 1109]).

Author Addy Baird manages to balance scholarship with the mysticism of baseball and its fandom pretty well. The book starts very strong, but ends a bit weakly. She delves into players' rituals, jinxes, fans and how fans are convinced that they are somehow affecting the game, curses (focusing, naturally, on the Cubs' Curse of the Billy Goat and the Red Sox's Curse of the Bambino), and luck. The last two chapters are...more vague and feel unnecessary, honestly, though they did involve a description of watching a Mets game from the broadcast truck, which is neat.

If you're a baseball fan, you'll enjoy this. Baird delves into the histories of a lot of words like myth and magic, but she also understands the passion and irrationality and fears and hopes of fans. She tries to find the truth behind the story of baseball itself and Babe Ruth's called shot. She describes the curses, but acknowledges that the teams' real curses were those of bad ownership and bad play ("[Historian Glenn] Stout calls the idea a 'fantasy' that he feels has given Red Sox fans a reason to excuse generations of bad baseball, bad management, and bad history . . . You don't need curses or hexes or ghosts or gods to smite down a team when your owner will do it for free (or for, you know, $100,000 and a mortgage on the park" [loc. 1450]).

She talks about how just thinking you're cursed can be enough for players to act like they are cursed, and how those little player (and fan) rituals reinforce themselves: "The daily nature of the game, the quick reinforcement of any superstitious ritual, and the long and storied history of the sport's magical culture all seem to come together in a way that appeals to our innate, evolutionary desire to control and understand our environment" (loc. 1230). Baird goes into the different attitudes of Japanese and American players; Japanese players believe their superstitious rituals help the whole team, not necessarily their own personal stats.

I enjoyed the perspective of the players, the acknowledgment of luck in the game: "This can be maddening for a pitcher--to perform well and produce a poor outcome is a recipe to drive a person crazy" (loc. 424). You can make the perfect pitch and it still turns into a bases-clearing double. What to do? Blame your new socks. In 1948, Al Demaree wrote "Often, there's a difference of no more than half an inch between a three-bagger and a foul ball--with the game, perhaps the pennant, perhaps even the World Series depending on it" (loc. 1766). Ballplayers need something to cling to.

As do fans. Fans' beliefs in their ability to affect the game from afar, whether by watching or not watching or having to maintain their own streaks along with the teams sounds nuts. And it is. But that's part of the magic of the game. (I also learned that early baseball fans were called "cranks," which is just completely bizarre! But also, given the comments on the Orioles site I frequent, sounds completely accurate.)

One notable absence from the book is that of Latin American players, who I'm sure have their own cultures of myth and curses and superstition. Baird ties baseball to America quite a few times, but she still manages to give us some stories from Japan. I'd rather have the Latin American perspective than the more squishy last couple chapters, where Baird starts getting more metaphysical about the game.

Still, a very fun read for baseball fans.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for this advance copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

The duality of Jim Jones

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Closer to a 4.5, but not quite 5 stars.

I've always been mildly intrigued by Jonestown because the mass suicide there happened only a couple of weeks after I was born. And recently I've heard more about how Jim Jones was actually pretty progressive...before. So when my book club decided to have this month be "Pick a book about a cult," this seemed like the way to go; plus, I thought author Jeff Guinn's Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson was very good.

Here's the thing: Jim Jones actually did quite a number of very good things. He was always...off-putting, let us say, but did truly seem committed to equality. Guinn doesn't shy away from the progressively bad parts of Jones, but he also doesn't portray him solely as a power-hungry cult leader (which is obviously where Jones wound up).

Guinn details Jones's rise as a minister while also examining Jones's beliefs (while noting that obviously we have no way of knowing what Jones actually believed about God or religion). One of Jones's strengths was his ability to work a crowd; he started off opening a church in a Black-majority part of Indianapolis and instead of preaching about being rewarded in the afterlife, he focused on what could be done here and now. He attended Black churches and worked Midwest revivals and learned from Father Divine, who claimed to be God in human form. He preached for hours, so much that if you were in the crowd, you probably heard something that made you think "Yes! This guy gets me!" Guinn illustrates the tricks that allowed Jones to make people think that he had psychic abilities, but also shows that Jones was a guy who was charismatic and was good with people.

Jones did, it seem, truly believe in a lot of socialist principles; he wanted racial equality and he wanted to feed and clothe the needy (and did so!). The Peoples Temple opened nursing homes in Indiana and California and they were legitimately good facilities.

As this happened, the church (nominally affiliated with the Disciples of Christ) also took in a lot of money for Jones that didn't make it to the Disciples...or the poor. And naturally, over the years, Jones moved away from focusing on socialism and more on controlling people--by preying on fears of nuclear war, by creating suspicions of any outsiders and especially the government. He lured people in by helping others and then turned on them, forcing people to sign over their Social Security checks and real estate. He curried favor with the right people and got mad if he didn't get what he wanted. Guinn details the progression of the Peoples Temple from socialist church to full-on cult; he describes Jones's descent from a narcissist to cult leader, paranoid and controlling. Jones dropped hints of mass suicide years in advance.

And, of course, came the sex with everyone and the paranoia and the drugs and the physical abuse of parishioners and getting the members to spy on each other, etc., etc.

Ironically, Jonestown itself seemed like it was a fairly decent place; the original Temple members who went to the jungle seemed to have a decent-enough time of it. The work was hard, of course, but they saw themselves as creating the ultimate socialist paradise. Multiracial (Jonestown, at the end, was about two-thirds Black), growing their own food, excellent school facilities. It got a lot worse once Jim Jones got there (fleeing bad press to a place where he thought people couldn't defect from), but even so, many government officials (from both Guyana and the U.S.) went and spoke to residents and genuinely thought people were OK. Sure, their family members were upset, but what could you do?

The story of Jim Jones and what he did to his followers in Guyana is an incredibly depressing one. And it's made more so when you realize the amount of good Jones was actually able to accomplish, and when you contemplate what more he could have done. The details of what happened in November 1978 are horrifying; so is the story of the descent of man who really could've helped make the world better. You know. If he weren't evil.

Watching Hamnet while remembering Hamnet

I was excited when I saw that the Shakespeare Theatre would be bringing in the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Hamnet this season; when it came time to actually usher, though, I was slightly less enthusiastic (though part of that was just how crowded my calendar has been lately). I enjoyed the book well enough, but didn't see the recent movie.

The play, adapted by Lolita Chakrabarti based on the Maggie O'Farrell novel, focuses on Agnes Hathaway (Kemi-Bo Jacobs)--a slightly witchy resident of Stratford-upon-Avon who has a crappy stepmother and whose brothers are tutored by a young man named Will (Rory Alexander). She and Will get married and have some children, one of whom dies (the novel actually has a subtitle: "A Novel of the Plague") and the family has to come to grips with that loss.

Chakrabarti changes quite a few things about the book as I remember it. I was pleased that the Agnes of the play wasn't quite the witch that she is in the book; the Agnes on stage is how I wanted her to be in the book--strong and independent and talented with healing and animals and such; different enough that the people in town whisper about her but not actually, like, supernatural.

However, though I was bothered in the book that William was never specified as Shakespeare, here he definitely is. And while I remember his family playing a large part in the book--the married couple does live with them--in the play, Will plays too large a part. There are scenes of him and his fellow actors rehearsing and performing. I enjoyed those bits, but they didn't seem to belong in the play.

Kemi-Bo Jacobs and Rory Alexander as Agnes and William Shakespeare in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Hamnet. Photo by Kyle Flubacker.

The story of Hamnet is that of Agnes, about her life and grief and coping. I remember it permeating the book, and while the play has some ghostly children running about in Act One, Hamnet's illness doesn't occur until the second act. The book is told in flashback format and I feel like the play would've benefited from that as well. 

And once the boy does succumb, Will continues to remain in the forefront while Agnes seems more sidelined. Grief, since it is usually pretty internal, can be hard to be depicted, particularly on stage, which doesn't lend itself to closeups and such. But I still felt like more of Agnes's grief should've been seen.

Of course, that's all with the knowledge of the book; without those vague memories of a book I read 5 years ago, I probably would've enjoyed this a lot more. I thought Jacobs and Alexander were both great; likable, with good chemistry. I enjoyed seeing their relationship develop. Ditto the various side characters, particularly Troy Alexander as Bartholomew, Agnes's brother, and Bert Seymour as Richard Burbage. I was confused about who some of the side characters were, however, which was a bit distracting during the show. I also thought the set design was neat, with a platform being raised and lowered to stand in for various rooms.

I did largely enjoy the production, though ultimately I think I would've liked it more without any knowledge of the source material. Sadly, I don't think it lives up to the book.

Secrets, Self-Discovery, and a Not-So-Mad Mabel

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 

I read Mad Mabel almost cover to cover on a cross-country flight and it really was the perfect companion; an entertaining combination of intrigue, character development, and reflection on how people come to be who they are.

Eighty-one-year-old Elsie Fitzpatrick has lived a quiet life on Kelly Lane for decades, though recently a single mother and her daughter have moved in and young Persephone has taken an interest in her neighbor. But after Elsie discovers the body of an elderly neighbor (whom she describes as her "nemesis"), people start taking an interest in her past and quickly discover that Elsie is actually "Mad Mabel," a figure connected to a number of deaths, infamous enough to be covered in schools. 

Author Sally Hepworth jumps between the present and the backstory in a way that feels natural; the two stories build on each other. I see this book tagged as "Mystery" and "Thriller," but that's not how I'd describe it (though it seems like that's a lot of what Hepworth writes); it's truly a character study that somewhat leads to a meditation on how people become who they are...and how others' and our own perceptions of ourselves influence our lives. It's a drama.

The core of the story is Elsie/Mabel's relationships, with her parents, with her schoolmates, with her neighbors. With others. There's a lot of plot, but the book rests very solidly on its characters. Did I gasp a couple of times at reveals? I did. Did my heart break over and over? It did. Did I want to put this book down? I did not.

I did feel at times that Hepworth tried a touch too hard to be clever with certain plot points and the whole "Elsie thinks she's a crank nobody likes, but she's actually good inside!" trope, and I found it hard to believe that Elsie would be so flippant with the police in the present, given her past. Still, these are nitpicks. Definitely recommend.

Thank you to the St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Hallmark Movie Roundup: Winter in Vail

Title: Winter in Vail (2020)

Actor(s) You Know:
Lacey Chabert, Queen of the Hallmark Movies (also known from Party of Five and, if you're me, Les Mis--I saw her as Young Cosette on Broadway in 1994), and Tyler Hynes, also from a million Hallmark movies

Plot:
Chelsea quits her job as an LA event planner after inheriting a chalet in Vail from her uncle. She arrives in Vail to find that the chalet is mid-reno, and also that a number of businesses in town--including a local German restaurant--are failing. (Apparently this universe's Vail isn't full of rich people.) Owen, the contractor/son of the German restaurant's owner, helps Chelsea Realize What's Important in Life. Also, they throw StrudelFest to save the town. (Because the German restaurant is failing because of the lack of Chelsea's uncle's famous strudel.)

Trope(s):
    Royalty
    Alternate reality
    Small town ✔
    Fake relationship
    Family business getting sold/going bankrupt ✔
    Enemies-to-lovers
    Best friends-to-lovers
    Second chance
    Stranded

Meet Cute: 
Chelsea arrives in Vail and parks illegally. Owen points it out in a less-than-friendly way...though it does prevent Chelsea from getting towed. Then he shows up to help fix up her uncle's house.

Rundown:
    Dead parents
    Montage(s)
    Christmas-related name(s) 
    Animals
    Returns to hometown
    Is Santa a character? 
        Secretly or overtly?
    Cookie baking ✔
    Tree decorating
    Somebody hates Christmas
    Christmas festival in a small town 
    A literal competition ✔
    Child plays matchmaker
    All work, no romance/life ✔
    Kiss before the end of the movie
    Interrupted kiss 
    Flashback to childhood
    The leads literally run into each other
    Gratuitous shirtless scene
    Big Secret
    Wacky misunderstanding
    Just. Talk. To. Each. Other.
    Someone pushing the leads together 
    Real family = chaos / bad families = cold and not chaotic
    Learns the meaning of Christmas
    Stranded by snowstorm
    Hot chocolate ✔
    Ice skating ✔
    D-list celebrity
    Enemy-to-friend storyline
    The love interest is an ex
    Career change
    Lying to each other
    Tries to apologize, but keeps getting cut off
    Christmas pageant 
    End with a flash-forward

Did I actually like/root for the heroine? How do the lead(s) annoy me?
They're both perfectly fine. There's not much in the way of conflict--Chelsea and Owen put aside their differences basically immediately--and all the characters are reasonably likeable. I'm mostly annoyed by them being like, "We can throw a Strudelfest to get into local guidebooks that come out next month!" That's definitely how that works, yes. Also, Owen is possibly too supportive.

Is it in any way not completely generic? 
Nope, not really. 

Is the BFF actually the best? Do they need their own movie?
Chelsea's coworker/BFF seems pretty cool but doesn't get enough of a personality to make me think she needs her own movie. Also, she's suckered by their boss to go to Vail and try to get Chelsea to come back.

How is the romantic alternative wrong for the heroine? 
n/a. No romantic alternatives for anyone.

Thoughts/Other Notes:
I put this movie on while on a business trip to have on while I was doing some work. This was pretty perfect background noise. In retrospect, I am unsure how this movie even filled up 2 hours, as again, there was basically zero conflict until the very end (Will Chelsea go back to her event-planning life in LA? and you can guess how that worked itself out).

Rating:
🧀🧀🧀🧀

A love letter to friendship

⭐⭐⭐⭐
 

I wasn't as in love with this book as I was with Maame, but I still really really liked this.

Remy has written a bestseller based on her relationship with her three close friends, but life has pulled them in different directions (one had a baby, one moved to New York, etc.). She bumps into Simone, with whom she went to school (though they weren't close), and the two manage to become friends--even though Simone keeps herself closed off from the world after her family finds out that she has a side hustle as an escort. It's sort of a black cat/golden retriever trope situation.

Author Jessica George does an amazing job exploring friendships--making new ones, uncertainty about established ones. Remy finds herself adrift; she quit her job after the success of her book and now is trying to deal with writer's block while also not having anything (or anyone, other than her mother) to anchor herself. Simone's sister was her best friend, but after becoming estranged from her family, Simone's talked herself into believing that she doesn't need anyone. George's depiction of adult loneliness struck home over and over; I certainly remember having the same revelation as Remy: "I'm not the priority. Their own families and careers will come before me, of course they will" (loc. 304).

The book focuses pretty much exclusively on friendship, not romance, which I appreciate. I've dealt with the loss of friendships over the years (who hasn't), some with blow-up endings and some drifting. We get older and people make different choices about their lives and relationships and careers and children and it's hard to maintain friendships, and there's a lot of reflection on that that I so appreciated:

"I keep debating whether I'm being overly emotional and that this is an expected part of life, that I'm just supposed to move on. The girls all seem to be doing exactly that, and it breaks my heart that I'm the only one reacting like this. I'm the only one who seems hurt and impacted by their absence. It makes me feel like my friendship wasn't meaningful enough. You only miss what you truly loved, right?" I look away. "Maybe that's on me, maybe I loved harder than I can be loved." (loc. 2513)

---

I decided I'd much rather devote time and emotional energy to my friends, rather than to a romantic partner. It had never fully occurred to me that, someday, my friends would not do the same. (loc. 519)

---

Or maybe it's comparable to romantic relationships, where after years together, it's less about trying to replicate what you once had an more about growing alongside each other, and allowing the other person to change. Maybe the answer lies in figuring out how we maintain what we have with distance and new priorities between us? (loc. 2132)

Not that that 100% describes me--I am not as good a friend as Remy is, to be sure--but it resonated as I reflected on my relationships over the years.

There's also a decent amount of discussion about having children or not having children, (view spoiler) There's acknowledgment that women aren't necessarily meant to have children, and that there's a middle ground between women who want children and women who don't want children. There's so much nuance and grace given permeating the book.

One minor quibble is that while the actual plot ending worked for me, it dragged on a bit too long. I didn't need a "6 months later" AND a "1 year later" AND an epilogue. We did need that information to wrap up these stories--or, at least, these parts of these stories--but I can't help but feel like it could've been handled a different way.

Still, highly recommend. George manages to take a lot of nuanced relationships and situations and bring them to a satisfying place. This book hasn't even released yet and I'm already looking forward to what Jessica George does next.

Thank you to the St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Hallmark Movie Roundup: The Way to You

Title: The Way to You (2026)

Actor(s) You Know: 
Leads Kim Matula and Aaron O'Connell have both been in a bunch of Hallmark movies, but nobody really recognizable outside the Hallmark Cinematic Universe.

Plot: 
New Yorkers Emma and Conrad each have meet-cutes on the New York subway during a blackout. Conrad places an ad to try to find the woman he was talking to, but Emma is the one who answers the ad. She realizes she can probably help him find his missing lady, and he agrees to help her try to find a date amongst his coworkers. (They work in finance, so the script makes Conrad extra nice to make up for it.)

Trope(s):
    Royalty
    Alternate reality
    Small town 
    Fake relationship
    Family business getting sold/going bankrupt
    Enemies-to-lovers
    Best friends-to-lovers
    Second chance
    Stranded

Meet Cute: 
The cutest meet is Conrad and the woman he meets on the subway--she drops her copy of The Count of Monte Cristo, he returns it to her, and they chat on the subway.

Rundown:
    Dead parents
    Montage(s) ✔
    Christmas-related name(s) 
    Animals
    Returns to hometown
    Is Santa a character? 
        Secretly or overtly?
    Cookie baking ✔
    Tree decorating
    Somebody hates Christmas
    Christmas festival in a small town 
    A literal competition
    Child plays matchmaker
    All work, no romance/life
    Kiss before the end of the movie
    Interrupted kiss 
    Flashback to childhood
    The leads literally run into each other
    Gratuitous shirtless scene
    Big Secret
    Wacky misunderstanding
    Just. Talk. To. Each. Other.
    Someone pushing the leads together 
    Real family = chaos / bad families = cold and not chaotic
    Learns the meaning of Christmas
    Stranded by snowstorm
    Hot chocolate 
    Ice skating
    D-list celebrity
    Enemy-to-friend storyline
    The love interest is an ex
    Career change
    Lying to each other
    Tries to apologize, but keeps getting cut off
    Christmas pageant 
    End with a flash-forward

Did I actually like/root for the heroine? How do the lead(s) annoy me?
Both Conrad and Emma are pretty likable. Conrad is perhaps a bit too perfect (unless you count being an early bird a flaw); Emma is a bit more balanced, but still likable.

Is it in any way not completely generic? 
I thought they did the new-friends-who-grow-to-like-each-other plot quite well; the progression worked. Good side characters. That said, Emma works in an art gallery. However, working in finance didn't make Conrad evil, so there's that. (His parents got caught in a Ponzi scheme, so he's a Good Finance Guy.) (Note that my father also worked in finance, so I don't default to finance guys = evil, but I get the stereotype.) But no bad finance bros. Even the guy Emma winds up dating a bit isn't bad; they just don't click as a couple.

Is the BFF actually the best? Do they need their own movie?
Emma's sister and brother-in-law are adorable and I love them. Would 100% watch their movie. Probably also one about Conrad's boss Lance and his wife.

How is the romantic alternative wrong for the heroine? 
Emma goes on a date with one of Conrad's coworkers and there's no spark; after Conrad finds his Mysterious Subway Lady, she gives dating the coworker another guy. He's totally fine! (Except something of a lack of sense of humor.) But it's nicely realistic! Sometimes people are OK but you just don't have that spark.

Thoughts/Other Notes:
This was cute! I liked that there were some good book discussions in there and I liked Conrad getting interested in art. Good chemistry, good side characters. Recommend.

Rating:
🧀🧀🧀🧀

A history that breaks the heart: How the Tulsa Massacre was shaped by history—and memory

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 

I think the first time I heard about the Tulsa riot/massacre was a news story that was about the effort to find mass graves. If I recall, the people doing the searching didn't find what they were looking for, but it did make an impression on me.

Riot and Remembrance: The Tulsa Race War and Its Legacy was first published in 2002; the edition I read had a preface in 2021, written for the 100th anniversary of the event, when the massacre was very much on people's minds after the summer of 2020. Author James S. Hirsch begins the new preface by noting "Anytime you write a book about a historical event, the question inevitably arises: What relevance does that event have today? No one is asking that anymore about the Tulsa race massacre of 1921" (p. 6).

This is an excellent book. Hirsch goes through the history of Tulsa, describing how the city developed and the attitudes of the residents and how those led to the events of May 31-June 1, 1921 ("Even in its early boom years, the city's lawlessness was virtually impossible to stop" [p. 33]); I was surprised to learn how new a city Tulsa is and how ingrained racism was in Oklahoma and Tulsa itself ("The ascendancy of the Democratic Party at statehood . . . meant the denial of civil liberties to blacks, but Oklahoma was determined to out-Jim Crow the other southern states" [p. 44]). Hirsch goes into racial violence and lynching and the tropes that white people believed about Black people being happy during slavery and how that affected race relations in the 1920s:

The "new Negro" was the malevolent counterpart of the "old Negro," or "Sambo," whom whites invented during slavery and later romanticized in merchandise as a simple, carefree "darky" who lived in an antebellum racial utopia. The "new Negro," according to this view, lacked the civilizing restraints of slavery and was therefore regressing to a state of barbarism. Physical force was the only way to restrain him. (p. 62)

Hirsch describes the precipitating events and what happened in Tulsa during the massacre, but it took up less of the book than I expected. It's still hard to read. Part of the issue goes hand-in-hand with the second part of the book title: "remembrance." Because in the years after the massacre, a lot of the primary documents disappear. There's debate about whether a newspaper published an editorial "To Lynch a Negro Tonight"; the editorial page and front-page story about the inciting incident were both cut from the newspaper's bound volumes. Even the official documentation has disappeared. So mostly what we're left with is what participants and victims told their descendants.

Hirsch details what happened after the massacre, what happened to the residents of Greenwood (which was awful and incredibly degrading, which shouldn't have surprised me but still did) in the immediate aftermath and as time went on. He talks about the town rebuilding and what happened to various people involved, and then how it was remembered--or denied.

Essentially, white people believed that Black people invaded their side of town and they had to defend themselves. Black people believed that a Black teenager was going to be lynched for assaulting a white woman--a white woman who pretty quickly denied that she was assaulted and said she wouldn't pretty charges--and so they went to where he was being held to prevent that from happening. In the time to come, both groups came to believe certain things, whether or not those were factual.

Hirsch spends a lot of the book going into the remembrance of the event, how people try to deny it, how it was discussed or not, how it was researched, how the threat of another one loomed over the residents of Tulsa, both Black and white, how it was commemorated. A commission was assembled in the 1990s to study it and make recommendations, including about reparations. He gets into what actually happened as well as he can.

I appreciated how even-handed he was. The horrors of the destruction of Greenwood aren't denied; he delves a lot into issues like whether the area was firebombed and whether there were mass graves of victims. (Having read this, I feel like planes definitely flew over the area but didn't bomb it; there were definitely more victims that the official tally, but I'm unsure about the mass graves.) He tells the stories of victims with respect and my heart absolutely broke for them, but he doesn't accept everything they say at face value. He does tell their story, sharing things, for example, like the idea that the massacre was planned by white city officials; my impression is more that these people took advantage of what was going on to destroy Greenwood, but they didn't plan it. Circumstances were definitely in their favor. He follows Don Ross, a Black journalist-turned-politician (who fought to get the Confederate flag off the capitol grounds) throughout the remembrance section. Ross is a fascinating figure and this from him really struck me:

When a white interviewer suggested that race relations had improved since the 1950s, [Ross] leaned forward and glared. "How in the hell can you tell me that?" he demanded. "You know, you talk about privilege and entitlement. The biggest entitlement white folks have is the entitlement of being white. Break that for me . . . I mean, it don't make sense to me, the white folks' attitude, that somehow I ought to be appreciative that you don't hate me as much. That's the progress. Once you would physically kill me, and I have evidence of that, and now you just choke me to death economically and politically and socially, and you want me to say that's progress from dying! 'Because you sonofabitch you, we coulda killed your black a**,' that's what you're telling me. But now we let you live, and I'm proud of that progress. White folks let me live. Until I get the same entitlement irrespective of skin color, f**k you . . . But I love you. (p. 228)

I feel like I learned a lot from this book, and as a history major, the discussion of how events are remembered, officially and unofficially, fascinated me. But ultimately, the book just broke my heart over and over again.

Recommend.

Helen Hayes nominations reaction post

Washington had a really solid theater year (if we, um, completely ignore everything that happened with the management of the Kennedy Center, which certainly cast a dark shadow over the city). The Helen Hayes nominations were recently announced and honestly, I have no idea how I'd vote in some of the categories.

If you're unfamiliar, the Helen Hayes Awards are for DC-area theaters and are divided into categories based on the number of Equity members involved in the production; the Hayes awards are for productions with more Equity members and Helen awards are for those with fewer. There are also some separate categories for resident and non-resident productions, so touring productions can get nominated but aren't always up against local productions. Interestingly, the acting categories are:

• Outstanding Performer, Non-Resident Production
• Outstanding Supporting Performer in a Musical 
• Outstanding Supporting Performer in a Play
• Outstanding Lead Performer in a Musical
• Outstanding Lead Performer in a Play
• Outstanding Ensemble in a Musical
• Outstanding Ensemble in a Play 

and then the overall production awards are:

• Outstanding Production, Theatre for Young Audiences
• Outstanding Non-Resident Production
• Outstanding Production - Musical
• Outstanding Production - Play

The nominees for ensemble in a musical (Hayes) are Damn Yankees (Arena), Guys and Dolls (Shakespeare), In the Heights (Signature), Sister Act (Ford's), and The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical (Signature). Outstanding production of a musical (Hayes) nominees are Damn Yankees, Fiddler on the Roof (Signature), Guys and Dolls, Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Signature), Play On! (Signature), and The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical. I was fortunate enough to have seen all of these productions.

(Also, shout-out to Ford's for its nominations for not just Sister Act, but also The American Five, which was fantastic and also got a bunch of nominations. Other shows I saw that got nominated for outstanding production and/or performers: Kunene and the King [Shakepeare], Merry Wives [Shakespeare], Waitress [Olney] and What the Constitution Means to Me [Round House], plus the touring production of Some Like It Hot. I'm surprised that Parade, which went through the Kennedy Center, didn't get any awards; perhaps an unofficial ineligibility? I wouldn't have been surprised at nominations for for Frankenstein [Shakespeare], Uncle Vanya [Shakespeare], or Schmigadoon [touring at the Kennedy Center], all of which were also great.)

I do appreciate that there are separate categories for outstanding ensemble and outstanding production, because there are certainly some shows I've seen in the past where I've loved the cast but wouldn't be able to give the show itself an award. I think my award for Best Ensemble would be In the Heights, but Best Production is probably Fiddler. Clearly, Signature had an amazing year.

I loved Guys & Dolls and thought that Sister Act was super fun, and found Hunter S. Thompson both really enjoyable and thought-provoking. Damn Yankees was an absolute delight and Hedwig was really well done. But Fiddler absolutely blew me away and In the Heights was also just magical. For me, Fiddler, particularly, was a transformative production; it changed how I saw the show itself. And if a production does that, I want to throw awards at it.

A solidly Plot-ted thriller

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 

More of a 3.75; The Plot is definitely closer to 4 stars than 3 stars.

Jacob Bonner had a promising debut novel, a disappointing follow-up, and then found himself wandering the world of a novelist who doesn't really have another one in him...but doesn't have the skills for anything else. So he winds up teaching at a program where a student tells him the plot for the novel he's working on; Bonner realizes that the student is right, the plot is guaranteed to be a hit, but over the years, the novel never appears. After finding the student died, Bonner writes the book himself (using just the central conceit of the book) and becomes a celebrity novelist, getting the fame, fortune, and even love he didn't really think was possible. But he's living with the guilt of having stolen the idea.

Of course, ideas can't be stolen; as is detailed in the book, you can only copyright actual written material. Even so, Bonner has a hard time living with himself. He knows that he did the work of writing the book himself, and after years of teaching and doing online writing consulting, he is very well aware that someone having an idea for a book is very different than actually writing it. I wonder how much of the guilt was because the student was a competent writer; not a great one, but decent.

We do learn the big twist of the plot eventually, for which I was very relieved; there's a lot of talk in the book about how it's this huge can't miss idea, guaranteed to be picked up and directed by a big name, will definitely sell millions, etc. And when I got to the twist, it was...you know, good. It's a solid story. It's not something that's never been done before, certainly (and I listen to and read enough true crime to know that it's something that has happened in real life many times). Is it a good story? Yes. I don't know that it would help Bonner to realize that the book probably wouldn't have been as big a hit if the student had written it; Bonner has the training and experience of being a good writer to turn the book into a hit. Like, I'm sure other people had probably written Gone Girl-like books before Gillian Flynn did; they just didn't go anywhere.

So I found the beginning of the book more interesting than the rest, when Bonner starts poking around the student's life after getting "You're a thief" messages from someone online. I loved the look into the writing program where he taught and how it just kept getting sadder over the years; I loved him setting himself up as a writing consultant online and working at a hotel-turned-writer's-retreat. I honestly probably would've been happy with a book about him working at that hotel, trying to eke out a life that way.

The ending worked for me, though I got a bit frustrated with Bonner not putting certain pieces together sooner in the story. Of course, it is hard when you're the main character in a story because you don't realize you are the main character of a story, and that your life will involve twists of its own.

A compelling thriller. I'll probably pick up The Sequel at some point.