It's been a great month for reading--less so for writing, but I'll get back to a more regular writing schedule in January. I've found myself wishing I could go back and repeat some of the reading, most particularly Ian McEwan's What We Can Know.
Would I wish that I could reread it if I hadn't heard this New York Times Book Club podcast about the book? Probably. I knew at the time I was reading it that I would want to reread it. I zoomed through it the first time just to find out what happened, and I knew I would want an additional read to appreciate some of the other aspects of the novel, outside of the propulsive plot.
My last read of 2025 will be Kristin Hannah's The Women, which I found in the community library where my folks live and where I'm visiting. I had heard such good things about it, and it, too, is a propulsive novel. But I can't see myself reading it again, once I'm done. It made me think about the TV shows M*A*S*H and China Beach. I've only read 100 pages, so I'm interested if Hannah goes in any unexpected directions or adds some depth to the characters. So far, there's lots of exploring of the place of Vietnam and the surgical procedures that nurses did under intense pressure during the Vietnam war.
My mom and I spent some time in the community library in the afternoon. She is always on the hunt for good books, and I had this momentary hope that we might find the McEwan book. After all, the Hannah book is recent--but it's one of the few in the library published in this century. We found a John Jakes novel, Charleston, along with another book.
As I have been doing more intense reading in December, I've remembered my own writing impulses, particularly the novels I thought I would write. I've been thinking about my writing goals for 2026. I'm not sure I want to commit to writing a novel in 2026, but I'm not sure I don't. Let me continue to think: if I was writing a novel that wasn't going to be intertwined stories, what would the plot be?
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