#Rose Wilder Lane

[fictionadventurer]

I'm all for giving Laura Ingalls Wilder credit for writing the Little House books, but it's a little hilarious the lengths that the editor of the Pioneer Girl books will go to insist that Rose did nothing except extensive editing work.

After Pioneer Girl failed to find a publisher, Rose decided to rework some of the Wisconsin stories into When Grandma Was a Little Girl, an 8,000-word manuscript for what she thought would be a picture book. (Which I thought was absurd and showed how clueless she was about children's books, but apparently she had illustrator friends who had illustrated picture books of about that length). She submitted it to a publisher, who loved it, but wanted to expand it into a 25,000-word illustrated children's novel and so sent a letter to Laura with her editing requests.

Until that moment, Laura did not know Rose had transformed it into a children's book.

They had talked about it as an option, but the process of creating and sending in the manuscript was all Rose.

Laura immediately jumped on the opportunity, cut up the manuscript, pinned the pieces onto blank writing paper, and filled in all sorts of new material between the original pieces of the story, and was heavily involved into turning it into Little House in the Big Woods.

So she's definitely still the author of the story. But even if the material Rose was working with to create When Grandma Was a Little Girl came from Pioneer Girl, single-handedly transforming it from a piece of a memoir for adults into a standalone children's book goes a lot further than just "developmental editing", no matter how much Rose protested she was only "running it through her typewriter".

The publication process of this book was wild, and is making me realize just how strange a concept "authorship" can be. I used to be totally Team Laura when it came to the authorship question, but the more I look into it, the more complicated it becomes. I hate the suggestion that Rose was a ghostwriter, because the reality is so much more complicated and way more interesting than that. The collaboration here is endlessly fascinating to me.

[feralunicorn426]

Laura Ingalls Wilder.

The connections are too obscure to even mention, but I believe my family had a spiritual connection to her. My great aunt used to talk about two family surnames, which are buried next to one another in the same cemetery where Laura and family are buried

[volunteerismandanarchy]

What I can't understand is, how can anybody figure now that the government can support us, when we support the government.

Rose WIlder Lane

[riverspawprint]

Rose Wilder Lane

[darklingichor]

On the Banks of Plum Creek, by Laura Ingllas Wilder; Let the Hurricane Roar, by Rose Wilder Lane

I am putting these two together because they are essentially the same story, and also illustrates, at least to me, that Laura wrote pthe Little House books. As you read this ramble. Keep in mind. "Hurricane " was published in 1933, "Plum Creek" in 1937, but Laura wrote "Pioneer Girl" in *1930* and Rose not only helped her edit it, she typed the whole thing up after Laura finished writing it out long hand.

On the Banks of Plum Creek picks up after the Ingallses move away from Kansas. They settle into a dugout house on the banks of Plum Creek near Walnut Grove, Minnesota.

Caroline isn't enthused about living in a dugout, but Charles has big plans. He's going to plant wheat and he's going to build them a house with the profits. The weather is fine and mild and the wheat is coming up beautifully. The perspective price of wheat and the way the crop is looking inspires Charles to get the supplies for the house on credit and start building. All the while, life is happening. Laura learns some valuable lessons when it comes to minding her parents.

The family meets a Swedish couple and their daughter, who live near by, and eventually move into the fine new house Pa has built.

In the background people keep talking about how the weather is grasshopper weather. Laura doesn't know what that means, but it becomes clear soon.

Pa is over the moon about the wheat, and talks about it all the time. This crop will secure the family financially.

And then the grasshoppers come. They fly in in a cloud, dampening the sun. They decend on the area and eat everything. Grass, gardens, cloth, the wheat. After destroying the landscape, they laid their eggs meaning next year's crops were doomed as well. And then they all marched off and flew away.

Although the family does have a good Christmas because the church throws a party with gifts for the community, Pa must walk east to find work.

The next year is also plagued by grasshoppers and Pa has to make the trek east again. While the family is waiting for him, a blizzard hits. He makes it home to his frightened family in fairly good spirits because this cold means no grasshoppers for the next crop.

Laura wrote about this real life locust plague in Pioneer Girl and as horrific as the it sounds in the novel, the reality was even worse. And instead of walking east two years in a row, when the grasshoppers hatched again, Charles actually moved his family, which now included little brother Freddy, to Burr Oak Iowa. They went to partner with some friends, the Steadmans, in running hotel.

They didn't know that this was going to be a dark interlude.

Freddy passed away on the way to Iowa, and the pain for the whole family was such that Laura never wrote about it anywhere else.

In the hotel, Mary and Laura worked after school in the kitchen and dining rooms, and babysitting the Steadman's youngest child on the weekends. It was not the safest place to be either. Then the girls came down with measles. None of the family was paid for any of the work they did in the hotel, and the family quit the hotel, and eventually settled somewhat, but things were not great. Fires, violence and drama in the community. Charles had had enough and the family left to head back to Walnut Grove - in the dead of night to avoid debt collection. The best thing to come out of Burr Oak seemed to be the birth of the last Ingalls sister, Grace.

Let The Hurricane Roar was written by Rose and features a young couple, Charles and Caroline, newly married who head west after Charles 's father gives them enough money to make a claim. They live in a dugout, have a little boy, make friends with a Swedish couple living near by, and grow wheat that is destroyed by grasshoppers. Charles must leave to find work and Caroline spends a day in town trying to find work before deciding that it is better to be independent in her dugout with the baby. There is a blizzard that Charles must fight through to get home.

Slong with the basic story, there are several beats that are pretty much lifted right out of Pioneer Girl, including a line about a man who kept bees that left the area after the grasshoppers, saying that he refused to live in a place where even a bee can't make a living.

The writing in Hurricane is much different from any of the LH novels, and even in PG

The Hurricane tells the reader a lot, and doesn't show much until about halfway through. Description is sparse. It's trying to make a point from the get go. Hardship makes for a better life in the end, independence, even to the point of isolation is preferable to being dependent on anyone. Neighbors are nice, but something of a burden in good times and cannot be relied upon in bad times.

This is in direct contrast to Laura's writing which depends on description, and spends little time in exposition, shows more than tells. The characters are much different ad well, people value independence, yes, but are generally community minded founding churches, serving on school boards, helping neighbors.

There is the fact that she took elements of her grandparents and elements of her parents and mixed them together to make the story.

Charles in Hurricane gets money from his father to go out west. This is basically what happened when Almanzo decided to head west. He and Caroline end up on Wild Plum Creek in the Dakota Territory. Almanzo and Laura spent the early years of their marriage in De Smet South Dakota.

In essence, Rose took her parents and grandparents' stories, made a tale to appeal to her Libertarian ideals, and by many accounts, really pissed her mother off (which I'll get to later).

Hurricane isn't bad, it's compelling in its way, and effective for what it was trying to be, and I liked how it ended. However, it also serves as evidence that while the two Wilder women worked together and Rose was a brilliant editor, Laura wrote the classic novels.

[exdivine]

im so happy women agree with my irrational hatred for charles "pa" ingalls

[lands-of-fantasy]

Titular Women in Live-action Superhero Media

Cathy Lee Crosby as Diana Prince / Wonder Woman in Wonder Woman (1975)

Lynda Carter as Diana Prince / Wonder Woman in Wonder Woman (1975-79)

Helen Slater as Kara Zor-El / Linda Lee / Supergirl in Supergirl (1984)

Teri Hatcher as Lois Lane in Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1993-97)

Ashley Scott as Helena Kyle / Huntress, Dina Meyer as Barbara Gordon / Oracle, Rachel Skarsten as Dinah Redmond in Birds of Prey (2002-03)

Halle Berry as Patience Phillips / Catwoman in Catwoman (2004)

Jennifer Garner as Elektra Natchios in Elektra (2005)

Melissa Benoist as Kara Zor-El / Kara Danvers / Supergirl in Supergirl (2015-21)

Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter in Agent Carter (2015-16)

Krysten Ritter as Jessica Jones in Jessica Jones (2015-19)

Gal Gadot as Diana Prince / Wonder Woman in Wonder Woman (2017) and Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)

Olivia Holt as Tandy Bowen in Cloak & Dagger (2018-19)*

Evangeline Lily as Hope van Dyne / The Wasp in Ant-Man and The Wasp (2018) and Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania (2023)

Brie Larson as Carol Danvers / Captain Marvel in Captain Marvel (2019)

Sophie Turner as Jean Grey / Phoenix in X-Men: Dark Phoenix

Ruby Rose as Kate Kane / Batwoman in Batwoman Season 1 (2019-20)

Margot Robbie as Dr. Harleen Quinzel / Harley Quinn, Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Helena Bertinelli / The Huntress, Jurnee Smollett-Bell as Dinah Lance / Black Canary, Rosie Perez as Renee Montoya, Ella Jay Basco as Cassandra Cain in Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)

Margot Robbie as Dr. Harleen Quinzel / Harley Quinn in Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)

Brec Bassinger as Courtney Whitmore / Stargirl in Stargirl (2020-22)

Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff / Scarlet Witch in WandaVision

Javicia Leslie as Ryan Wilder / Batwoman in Batwoman Season 2–3 (2021-22)

Elizabeth Tulloch as Lois Lane in Superman & Lois (2021-)

Scarlett Johansson Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow in Black Widow (2021)

Hailee Steinfeld as Kate Bishop in Hawkeye (2021-?)**

Kaci Walfall as Naomi McDuffie in Naomi (2022)

Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan / Ms. Marvel in Ms. Marvel (2022-?)

Tatiana Maslany as Jennifer Walters / She-Hulk in She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (2022-?)

Letitia Wright as Shuri /Black Panther in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Brie Larson as Carol Danvers / Captain Marvel, Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau, Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan / Ms. Marvel in The Marvels (2023)

Alaqua Cox as Maya Lopez in Echo (2024-?)*

________________

*While not directly reffered as such in their shows, "Dagger" and "Echo" are, respectively, Tandy's and Maya's codenames in the comics.

**This also goes for Kate and the "Hawkeye" codename, but in her case the show implies she will use it in the near future with the blessing of Clint Barton (the original Hawkeye, who also stars in the show).

[ach-sss-no]

tags by @pazithigallifreya (by the way the fic mentioned is one of my favorites of all time and you can read it here and i strongly encourage you to do so)

Tags are referring to this post but I'm making a new post because i'm about to go off on a tangent. let's talk about the fate of the wormtongue for a second

so book wormtongue has a lot of very odd and direct parallels to sméagol where he's starving and crawling around and allegedly eating a hobbit and all that junk, right? he even goes through the arc of 'I committed a capital crime, stole stuff and made myself repulsive to my home community, a somewhat rustic group of people living east of the Misty Mountains with an Old English naming scheme, and then got banished and had to wander through the wilderness cursing the hardness of the world'.

the first time I read that it seemed almost like a bizarre non sequiter that these characters have so much in common when gríma never touches the Ring, and then i had a major fridge horror moment

frodo's recently witnessed the death of gollum, right

the person he tried to save and offer an olive branch to but in the end sam unwittingly sabotaged it while he was asleep gollum was too far gone. gollum couldn't be saved. he literally bit the hand that (tried to) feed him, he rejected frodo, he fought frodo, he took the ring, maimed frodo for life as a final f-you, etc, and gollum's death can ultimately be attributed to gollum. and sauron. frodo put the geas on him and probably stays up at night thinking about it, but that's because frodo has an extremely strong moral sensibility; he was very much provoked. gollum took the ring and did a lil dance and fell into the hellpit rip gollum

so frodo comes home

and right there is sméagol 2.0 who comes in out of nowhere. frodo offers him clemency

here's the crucial difference.

Saruman laughed. 'You do what Sharkey says, always, don't you, Worm? Well, now he says: follow!' He kicked Wormtongue in the face as he grovelled, and turned and made off. But at that something snapped: suddenly Wormtongue rose up, drawing a hidden knife, and then with a snarl like a dog he sprang on Saruman's back, jerked his head back, cut his throat, and with a yell ran off down the lane. Before Frodo could recover or speak a word, three hobbit-bows twanged and Wormtongue fell dead. - The Return of the King

Gríma's final act is to kill Saruman, who

just curbstomped him in the face

is actively trying to sabotage his shot at redemption

terrorized this whole community

and, crucially, also just tried to kill frodo, and everyone else also wanted to kill Saruman at that point, but Frodo said no

and then flee.

Frodo's own countrymen panic and kill Gríma on the spot when, by my reading, anyway, he did not appear to be a threat to them.

this is not Sméagol, whose penultimate act was to bite off frodo's finger and steal the Ring and who died by freely and deliberately choosing to do the thing that he had been told multiple times would lead to a direct and immediate game-over (grab the Ring).

this is way worse imo this absolutely is the piling on of absolute horror

[pjharvey-moved]

today i learned that laura ingalls wilder's daughter rose wilder lane is considered one of the founders of the american libertarian movement. the world is crazy

[mitchipedia]

Cory Doctorow reviews “Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream,” a book by Alissa Quart.

Quart addresses “the meritocratic delusion of the ‘self-made man,’ Doctrow says. He adds: “America is not a bootstrap-friendly land. If you have money in America, chances are very good you inherited it.”

… as Abigail Disney has described, in a rare glimpse behind the scenes of American oligarchs’ “family offices,” American wealth is now dynastic, perpetuating itself and growing thanks to a whole Versailles’ worth of courtiers: money managers, lawyers, and overpaid babysitters who can keep even the most Habsburg jawed nepobaby in turnip-sized million-dollar watches and performance automobiles and organ replacements for their whole, interminable lives:

<pluralistic.net/2021/06/1…>

But it’s not just that the America rich stay rich — it’s that the American poor stay poor. … If you change classes in America, chances are you’re a middle class person becoming poor, thanks to medical costs or another of the American debt-traps; or you’re a poor person who is becoming a homeless person thanks to America’s world-beating eviction mills:

<evictionlab.org>

As a factual matter, America just isn’t the land of bootstraps; it’s a land of hereditary aristocrats. Sustaining the American narrative of meritocracy requires a whole culture industry, novels and later movies that constitute a kind of state religion for Americans — and like all religious tales, the American faith tradition is riddled with gaps and contradictions.

Horatio Alger is remembered as the 19th century author of many stories about “street urchins” who raised themselves from poverty to wealth and power. In reality, “19th century American street kids overwhelmingly lived and died in stagnant, grinding poverty.” And Alger’s stories weren’t about self-made men; “the young boys befriend powerful, older men who use their power and wealth to lift those boys up.”

Also:

Alger was a pedophile who lost his position as a minister after raping adolescent boys.

Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House on the Prairie” books “recounted her family’s ‘pioneer’ past as a triumph of self-reliance and gumption, glossing easily over the vast state subsidies that the Ingalls family relied on, from the military who stole Indigenous land, to the largesse that donated that stolen land to the Ingallses, to the farm subsidies that kept the Ingalls afloat.”

Wilder collaborated with her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane,

… who used the Little House royalties to fight the New Deal, and, later, to create a school for oligarchs, the “Freedom School,” whose graduates include Charles and David Koch:

<www.politico.com/magazine/…>

All this mythmaking convinces the vast majority of Americans that if they’re struggling, that’s their problem, and they should not “seek redress through mass political movements and unions.” And the myth keep rich people from listening to their consciences.

Quart makes a case that American progress depends on breaking free of this myth, through co-operative movements, trade unions, mutual aid networks and small acts of person-to-person kindness. For her, the pandemic’s proof of our entwined destiny, at a cellular level, and its demonstration of whose work is truly “essential,” proves that our future is interdependent.

[fictionadventurer]

We could have gotten a version of the Little House stories where Pa murdered a serial killer, but nooooo, we had to make this "historically accurate" and "appropriate for children".

[straightplayshowdown]

Round 1 Bracket

Thank you to every single person who submitted to the bracket! The Straight Play Showdown will be a 32 bracket consisting of 35 contestants that were submitted more than once and 29 wildcard contestants. With each poll, there will be a synopsis of both shows (made to the best of my & the internet's ability) and propaganda (if submitted). The bracket will start on Friday September 8 at 6 PM CST.

Below the cut is the Round 1 Bracket!

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (Stoppard) v Antigone (Sophocles)

Arsenic and Old Lace (Kesselring) v Our American Cousin (Taylor)

Waiting for Godot (Beckett) v Hamlet (Shakespeare)

Midsummer.com (Kobler, Marcus) v Peter Pan Goes Wrong (Lewis, Sayer, Shields)

Indecent (Vogel) v Arcadia (Stoppard)

The Last Days of Judas Iscariot (Gurguis) v Medea (Euripedes)

Wittenberg (Davalos) v The Blender (Harshnel)

Hortensia and the Museum of Dreams (Cruz) v The Ocean at the End of the Lane (Horwood)

Much Ado About Nothing (Shakespeare) v The Rover (Behn)

The Crucible (Miller) v Twelve Angry Men (Rose)

Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead (Royal) v DNA (Kelly)

The Bacchae (Euripedes) v The Flies (Sartre)

The Pillowman (McDonagh) v Accidental Death of an Anarchist (Fo)

Fences (Wilson) v Barber Shop Chronicles (Ellams)

Appropriate (Jacobs-Jenkins) v Cleansed (Kane)

Copenhagen (Frayn) v No Exit (Sartre)

Angels in America (Kushner) v The Baltimore Waltz (Vogel)

The Ferryman (Butterworth) v Heroes of the Fourth Turning (Arbery)

Doctor Faustus (Marlowe) v The Importance of Being Earnest (Wilde)

Shoe Lady (Crowe) v Phaedra (Seneca)

The Play That Goes Wrong (Lewis, Sayer, Shields) v Les Fourberies de Scapin (Molière)

The Mostellaria (Plautus) v The Mousetrap (Christie)

The Wolves (DeLappe) v Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime (Stephens)

Pygmalion (Shae) v A Doll's House (Ibsen)

Intimate Apparel (Nottage) v Les liaisons dangereuses (Hampton)

Our Town (Wilder) v A Raisin in The Sun (Hansberry)

The History Boys (Bennett) v Peter and the Starcatcher (Elise)

Art (Reza) v Born With Teeth (Adams)

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Albee) v The Death of a Salesman (Miller)

The Mikvah Project (Azouz) v Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour (Hall)

for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf (Shange) v Gruesome Playground Injuries (Joseph)

The Woman's Prize, or The Tamer Tamed (Fletcher) v Proof (Auburn)

[volunteerismandanarchy]

The need for Government is the need for force; where force is unnecessary, there is no need for Government.

Rose Wilder Lane

[bizarrelittlemew]

Ida!!! what do u have in ur kitchen garden and what are you Changing about it 👀

OH YAY I'M SO GLAD YOU ASKED but honestly i haven't planned all the details yet, it's mostly that my kitchen garden that i started two years ago has completely grown over (the depression's been real) 😭

so i'm going to salvage all my little strawberry plants and maybe see if i can dig up some jerusalem artichokes for replanting (didn't even harvest them last year lol so i definitely have to dig some up or they will be crowded). then i'm gonna till the whole area and rearrange the beds (i just make the edges out of fieldstones, they're not raised) so they are a little narrower but longer! so hopefully it will be easier to reach in and pull weeds. at the very least i will replant the strawberries and probably have potatoes (they grow really well, our soil is excellent), onions, spinach, carrots etc. and then spread wood chips (from a tree we had cut down) in the lanes between the beds!

sidenote i live in bumfuck nowhere basically (it was super cheap for so much space though) so the garden is overall very large (and old), i also have apples and plums and cherries and rhubarb in different places 🥰 and lots of flowers and bushes and like some little wildernesses

i will also make a real effort to get my climbing rose to grow this year but unfortunately the deer and/or hares (haven't caught the culprits but it could be either) love to eat it 😭 i also have a blackcurrant bush that nearly died+got eaten during the drought last year (it came back to life a little bit after i dug it up and put it in a pot) plus some potted flowers that have NOT been happy to live in pots on my patio so i might try and plant those and see what happens! the good thing is that i have access to plenty of manure lmao (many of the people here have horses)

but yeah wish me luck because last year i got nothing done at all 😬 though mother nature is beautiful and forgiving and gave me strawberries anyway 🥰

[maddie-grove]

The Top Twenty Books I Read in 2023

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (1949): I thought somebody would make me read this book in school, but no one ever did. Now that I've read it, let me just say...mark me down as horny and scared! No, I will not explain what I mean by that.

Prairie Fires by Caroline Fraser (2017): In this examination of Laura Ingalls Wilder's life and work, Fraser skillfully weaves a portrait of two complicated women (Wilder and her daughter/editor Rose Wilder Lane) with an overview of large swathes of American history. The examination of how Wilder and Lane adapted Wilder's life experiences into autobiographical fiction and why they made those choices is particularly interesting.

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (2022): This is a retelling of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, transplanted to Appalachia in the 1990s-2000s. Kingsolver retains the warmth and the pathos of the original, and the narrative voice is great.

Song of the Magdalene by Donna Jo Napoli (1996): Miriam, a Jewish girl in first-century Magdala, finds her life altered by unexplained seizures, which she must keep secret, and a first love that ends in tragedy. Napoli often brings it when it comes to thoughtful portrayals of disability and unexpectedly weird sensuality, and this novel is one of her best.

My Sweet Audrina by V.C. Andrews (1982): Audrina Adare, a young girl with severe memory problems, lives in an isolated Virginia mansion with her domineering father and various deranged female relatives...and it gets worse. This is V.C. Andrews at her most deliciously perverse and lurid, and I was definitely rooting for Audrina to close the portal.

I Never Asked You to Understand Me by Barthe DeClements (1986): Faced with her mother's terminal cancer diagnosis and the unhelpfulness of most adults in her life, fifteen-year-old Didi ends up at an alternative school for truancy and finds a friend in Stacy, a would-be runaway whose home life is even more dire. This 1980s YA problem novel always gets me, thanks to the author's gentle, empathetic treatment of her messy teenage characters.

Black Swan Green by David Mitchell (2006): Jasons, a thirteen-year-old boy in early-1980s Worchestershire, copes with brutal grade-school politics, a tense home life, various small losses of innocence, and the odd supernatural event over the span of a year. My favorite stretch of the novel was where half a dozen scary/weird/sexually confusing things happen in the course of Jason taking one meandering walk through the countryside.

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut (1963): I'd been intending to read a Kurt Vonnegut novel since he died in 2007, so don't say I never follow through on anything. This book is extraordinarily fun and absurd, which just enhances the horror of the eventual climax.

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (1905): Cash-strapped socialite Lily Bart struggles in turn-of-the-century New York society, mainly because she can neither fully commit to gold-digging nor figure out a viable alternative. Her crumbling state, both social and psychological, is horrifying yet fascinating to witness.

The Fell by Sarah Moss (2021): In November 2020, English waitress and single mother Kate breaks quarantine to take a walk through the countryside, with disastrous results. This short novel is lyrical, compassionate, and impressively stressful.

Old Babes in the Woods by Margaret Atwood (2023): This short story collection is split between vignettes featuring elderly couple Nell and Tig, and several standalones that vary wildly in tone and form. All are well-written, but I generally enjoyed the standalones best, especially the poignant "My Evil Mother," the chilling "Freeforall," and the thought-provoking "Metempsychosis."

Beware the Woman by Megan Abbott (2023): Pregnant Jacy goes with her new husband to visit his widowed father in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, but a pleasant vacation soon turns into a paranoid nightmare. Abbott's lush descriptions--kind of sexy and kind of gross, as always--enhance a truly disturbing thriller.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925): This is another book I assumed someone would make me read in school, but I think all my teachers and professors were like "yeah, yeah, The Great Gatsby, we all know what that is." What you don't get from the Baz Luhrmann movie and pop-cultural osmosis, though, is the exquisite secondhand embarrassment of watching Gatsby pursue a married woman who is actually more into her husband, or just how fucking bizarre that husband is.

How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix (2023): Single mother Louise is pulled from San Francisco to her hometown of Charleston by the sudden death of her parents and has to coordinate funeral arrangements with her ne'er-do-well brother Mark...and it gets worse. This isn't the best or the scariest Grady Hendrix novel, but the sibling relationship is compelling and it features the incomparable Pupkin. I love that fucked-up lil hand-puppet.

Seventeen and In-Between by Barthe Declements (1984): High-school senior Elsie Edwards is beautiful, brilliant, and talented, but she's still plagued by the lingering trauma of childhood bullying, her terrible parents, and her complicated feelings for her long-term boyfriend (slightly older and jonesing to Go All the Way) and her male best friend (also trying to figure things out, albeit through working in the lumber industry in Forks, Washington). The Elsie Edwards trilogy is great overall, and Elsie's struggle to figure out how to move beyond her unhappy past is especially moving.

Don't Look and It Won't Hurt by Richard Peck (1972): Carol, the sixteen-year-old middle daughter of a poor divorced waitress, gets a front seat to her older sister's disastrous relationship with a scumbag, experiences her own first romance, and sorts through her feelings about her strained family and stultifying small prairie town. This is a sweet, understated early YA novel that offers a look into the last few years before Roe v. Wade.

I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy (2022): In this memoir, McCurdy recounts her relationship with her controlling, abusive late mother and her dispiriting time as a child star on Nickelodeon. I really enjoyed her writing style--clear, conversational, and bracingly pissed off--and she offers some good insight into the acting industry.

Just Like You by Nick Hornby (2020): Joseph, a twentysomething black working-class Londoner balancing his musical aspirations with babysitting gigs and a job at a butcher's shop, stars a romance with Lucy, a fortysomething upper-middle-class white single mom and schoolteacher. This is a pleasant, easygoing love story with some insightful commentary on how ordinary people form political opinions.

The Fourth Grade Wizards by Barthe DeClements (1988): Fourth grader Marianne is distracted in class and adrift at home after her mother's sudden death, but she has a good friend in Jack, who struggles in class because he's hyperactive. You might ask why this list is so dominated by one 1980s middle-grade/YA author, and the answer is that I love her. Also, I did not read all that many new-to-me books last year.

How Do You Lose Those Ninth Grade Blues? by Barthe DeClements (1983): Elsie Edwards, no longer the emotionally battered class pariah she was in Nothing's Fair in Fifth Grade but not yet the maturing young woman she'll become in Seventeen and In-Between, starts high school with everything going for her...except her horribly low self-esteem and her still-terrible home life. This is definitely the slightest installment of the trilogy, but it still makes an impact.

[timoswerner]

poch very much underperformed with our squad especially the season we went unbeaten at the lane and i think it’s only now where we have the benefit of hindsight and the privilege of being back in a position where there are good vibes and belief in the trajectory of the club that people are able to see it. we lacked depth which was a huge factor in our title challenges BUT i don’t necessarily think the onus falls on levy completely there - poch rejected potential transfers outright as well.

i don’t know if we could have won the league the couple of times we were challenging but i do think that we could have and arguably should have won a cup or two during his tenure. that first team of lloris, vertonghen, alderweireld, rose, walker, wanyama, dembele, eriksen, dele, son, kane and many more was absolutely lightning in a bottle insane and i think it’s fair to say that while poch was a huge reason why we continued our trajectory as a club to fighting for top 4 (and even challenging for the title), he did have a young immensely talented squad (at one point half the england setup were spurs) and somewhat underperformed considering everything. thinking back on the poch era is equal parts of pride that we cemented ourselves as a mainstay in the cl and rose up from the midtable we were before redknapp etc but also pain thinking of the squad he had and the way he has nothing to show for it

i think you're 100% right. obviously levy is not blameless - he was happy with just getting top 4 and that filters down but i don't think that excuse the performances on the pitch when it came to cups. they were still there for the taking.

with us poch had this mentality of 'we're punching above our weight so it doesn't matter if we don't get to a final/win a final' and whilst that's not wrong that obviously filtered down to the players. how is that giving them the confidence to go a win something? you're basically always telling them 'you're not good enough to win something'. if there is one thing that i've learnt from going from jose/nuno/conte to ange is that the attitude of the manager is reflected on the pitch. if a manager has confidence in his players it lifts the whole mood and they play like they believe they can do something special, but if the manager doesn't have that belief then you see that on the pitch. look at villa and wolves at the moment - their success is a reflection of the manager believing in their players, where as west ham are a reflection of moyes' negativity, palace were a reflection of hodgson's negativity... look at how luton are putting up a fight for rob edwards compared to sheffield united and wilder. i also don't think it helped that poch was always having a bit of a flirt with bigger clubs because does that not also send out a message to the players that he doesn't believe they can do it?

that chelsea performance yesterday was like something he'd have done with us. knowing what his attitude to trophies was with us, and how he seems to only be able to play the underdog card you just know he wasn't telling him team 'you know what their best forwards are out, there's a bunch of kids on the bench, go out there and absolutely do them'. that's just not poch. his mindset will have 'we're 10th and they're 1st in the league so we're not expected to win. oh well' not 'lets fucking show them'. yeah some of those expensive chelsea players aren't living up to the price tag but they don't have a bad team, they're still good, that was still a strong enough that could have done better yesterday. they've been playing pretty well over the past few weeks and much like with us he's got a final and he has just bottled it. he didn't have them playing in the same way he has in the league. and again his attitude rubs off on the players and the team on the pitch is a reflection of the manager. the buck stops with poch yesterday just as it did with us in the semi finals and the champions league final with us.

and let's not forget how he didn't value our domestic cups. he didn't see them as important and again it filters down to the players. before the game chilwell said that yeah its not the champions league like the fans are used to but for where the club is now winning the league cup could be the boost they needed and he was right. it was the same with us. you get that first bit of silverware and the mentality of the players changes and they want more. but poch never saw it like that with us and i can guarantee he still thought like that yesterday. he's not learnt a single thing from his time with us.

at the end of the day im glad chelsea lost and i hope they're miserable for the end of time, but it's somewhat disheartening to see poch there doing all this and making me look back at his time with us and realising that we could have had it so much better. yes he gave us a lot of good memories and for some fans they're the only good times at the club they've know but... idk for me now i don't look back on it and have the same affection for him as i did when it was happening. he's a good manager but he's never going to be elite and he cost us trophies when they were well within out grasp. his time with us was a series of missed opportunities and whilst they weren't all his fault, a lot of them were.