The Lost Days

That nowhere week that exists between Christmas and New Year’s always feels like a gift, like something stolen: none of the rules apply, none of the laws, none of the restrictions. I remember being at work a few years ago and our Executive Producer running around, gleefully offering to add Bailey’s to everyone’s coffee even though it was seven in the morning. There’s something almost glutinuous about these extraneous days and these spare nights; they stretch and pull to fit whatever you need them to be.

I spent the first part of this nowhere week recovering from a cold, which was a novel experience: I trend towards being obnoxiously healthy, for the most part. But in that time, I’ve also gotten a lot of reading done. I finished Amal El-Mohtar’s The River Has Roots which, surprising absolutely no one, is excellent. Its bones come from a murder-ballad about two sisters, but it’s bigger even than its source material; bigger and stranger and queerer, centering the love between the sisters above all else, the women in the heartwood of these stories. If it doesn’t collect every award known to the literary world, I’m going to be very disappointed.

I’m halfway through V.E. Schwab’s Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, which I actually did not expect to love. Make no mistake. I love Schwab’s work. I’ve read everything she’s put out and enjoyed every book thoroughly. (Vicious has a special place in my heart, though.) But I don’t, in general, like vampire stories. I love Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, though. Oh my god, do I love it. I love how it depicts hunger; I love how it depicts feminine hunger, in particular, and how society does its goddamned best to repress that appetite. I love the monstrosity of the POV characters, the way time unfolds like sheets of silk. It’s a gorgeous, hypnotic read.

(I finished reading an early copy of St. Death’s Herald by C.S.E Cooney ages ago, but because we’re talking about books, I’m going to demand you go pre-order this beauty right the hell now. It’s joyous and whimsical and beautifully ornamented with some of the most gorgeous prose you’ll ever read, but also black-as-midnight dark in places and unashamed to be cruel when cruelty is necessary. It is a wolf of a book, all shining eyes and soft pelt and sharp teeth.)

I travelled far too much this year for the girls’ liking so I’m writing you while book-ended by a pair of giant Maine Coons, neither of whom particularly accepting of the idea I might have anything to do that doesn’t involve them being in a six inch radius. There’ll be yowling later because I’m off to make a dense bean salad but also hot chocolate the way I learned to make it in Barcelona, which is to say, I’m going to make a hot chocolate pudding. (Yesterday, I spent it making white chicken chilli and after a year of being too exhausted to cook for myself, I’m luxuriating in this mental space, this need to create for no other reason than the desire to satiate an impulse.)

When I set out to write this newsletter a few days ago, I wanted to say something more profound but it’s been a long year and these precious days belong to no one but us. So, instead of writing something elegiac, I’m going to ask you a question instead:

How are you spending this spare week, this nowhere time, these stolen hours? What are you doing between now and the New Year?

As always, a cat photo.