Plot Points #11 💌
Beach pics, CBT, Bluey, and content warnings
Hello and happy Friday!
Our trip to Tybee last weekend was amazing. Lucy and I had the best time spending three days on the beach eating pizza with the fam, and it was the first vacation I’ve taken in a few years where I had almost no trouble sleeping. Take that, OCD! There was lots of sarcasm, silly Tik Toks, and shark teeth, plus a beautiful sunset (complete with a double rainbow!) to send us off. Good vibes all around 🌊.
It is such a beautiful thing to watch Lucy make memories with the other women in her life, the women I’ve grown up with and watched grow up, too. She is surrounded by love and strong females, and I am thankful that this is her legacy.
Cheers to a wonderful weekend for you all! Thank you for being here.
Point #1: We are not just brains on a stick.
Our pastor uses that phrase a lot and it makes me giggle. It also makes me think about what it actually means to be a rational and emotional creature, and how the practice of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy—or C.B.T.—has given me the ability to embrace both on my mental health journey.
Point #2: Bluey isn’t just a kid’s cartoon. It’s the parenting show we didn’t know we needed.
A recent episode that hinted at infertility/unwanted childlessness left me in tears. This piece details how Bluey so beautifully captures the reality of life in families—the losses as well as the joys—and I couldn’t agree with it more.
Point #3: We were made for a Kingdom on Earth as it is in Heaven.
I loved this thoughtful piece on relinquishing the weight of cultural religion in favor of building real community, and a real Kingdom, with the people of God. It’s not anti-church so much as it’s a challenge to not be “Christians [who] are content with a Christ of religion. Like pagans, they look for happiness after death. They relinquish the earth, and thereby themselves and other people.”
Point #4: Little House on the Prairie is a little bit scandalous.
I’m enjoying this new podcast on the tangled story behind the Little House series and how it came to be, both in print and in our collective consciousness. The complexity between Laura Ingalls Wilder and her own daughter, Rose, was unfamiliar to me and it’s fascinating to learn how these beloved children’s books were crafted inside their own tumultuous relationship.
Reading In The Nook
I finished up The Ex Hex by Erin Sterling (a witchy romantic comedy perfect for fall) and It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover (Umm…the eff was that?) this past week. Both were highly readable for very different reasons, but I’m still trying to decide if they were actually good. As far as plots go, I’m curious to see how these narratives play out on the page in their sequels. Before I leave off, though, I feel the need to highlight a potential concern for those of you who might find your way to these books and others like them.
As a writer and reader, I fully expect a good book to encompass all sorts of ideas, morals, experiences, and perspectives that vary from my own. How boring would it be if we, as readers, were never challenged, surprised, or outraged? I don’t even mind explicit scenes as long as they’re important to the forward momentum of the narrative rather than poor attempts at shock value.
At this point, though, explicit sex in even the most innocuous-looking upmarket fiction has become the standard. And I’m not talking about a good sex scene between two characters with lots of chemistry; I’m talking about stuff that used to be reserved for erotica. Call me old-fashioned, but is it too much to ask that we not make regular ol’ rom-coms pornographic? Especially when they’re often being picked up by teenagers? It just feels kind of lazy, honestly. I’m probably shouting into the void, but I feel responsible to my readers because if this is a sensitive topic to you—either due to past trauma or because you’re simply trying to set up healthy boundaries for what media you consume—I encourage you to be mindful that many of most popular novels on social media and in bookstores contain multiple explicit scenes, some of them within the context of abusive or borderline-abusive relationships. As a result, I’m going to start including detailed content warnings here for any book which contains scenes or language that could be potentially upsetting to readers. I don’t think that’s censorship; I think it’s just good manners.
The Ex Hex contains a significant amount of adult language and a few explicit sex scenes between two characters who have a romantic past. The content is light-hearted in tone and intended to be fun. It Ends With Us is on a whole other level. The thread of graphic partner violence is woven throughout the entire book, with the most intense and upsetting content found in the last third of the story. It also includes multiple explicit sex scenes, as well as two attempted rapes. The author’s note in the back of the book is a crucial read if you choose to pick this up, as the story is deeply personal to her and explains why she included much of the content she did.
We each have our own limits, and you don’t ever have to justify or explain why a particular book would not be wise for you to add to your bookshelf. Reading is supposed to enlighten, delight, and add value to our lives, so please read well and take care of yourself!
“A well-read woman is a dangerous creature.”
―Lisa Kleypas—
Get My Latest Book: Bookshop | Amazon | B&N
Want help getting published in 2023? I got you.
Can’t afford a monthly subscription to The Nook but want to support my work? You can buy me a coffee instead.