Plot Points #60 💌

Holiday spirit, suffering well, reproductive rights, and terrible titles

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Readers, IT IS TIME 🎄.

The fall decor has come down and tomorrow night the Christmas tree goes up. We’ve already watched The Grinch about ten times in the last two weeks and I’ve burnt half the Christmas Cabin candle Pierce got me for our anniversary. We can hold off my holiday spirit the kids no longer.

The question now is what to do about the exterior decor. If you remember, this 👇🏻 is our house now, which is a far cry from the white columned 1960s ranch we moved from in April. This house was made for Halloween and we celebrated with gusto. But Christmas?

The red door is a solid start and our yard is just begging to be filled with all the light-up nativity scenes, Santas, and snowmen you can imagine. (Which we don’t have.) Should I hang poinsettias from the balcony? Lay garland across the porch and hang wreaths in the windows? Put icicles all over the eaves? I want to use what we already have, but I didn’t know we’d be in this house last Christmas and I’m feeling a bit—shall we say—lustful for a trip to Hobby Lobby. (Alas, I shall refrain.)

‘Tis the damn season.

Happy weekend, folks! Thanks for spending some of your time with me today.

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Word of the Week ✍🏻

Agathokakological: (adj.) Composed of both good and evil.

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Point #1: “The God I believe in is sitting in this shit with me, staring up at the stars.”

Claire Swinarski

is giving us a WORD this week. Although I am not Catholic, I have learned so much about the history of our shared faith from Claire and this post on how the Church has taught her to suffer well is a beautiful gift to us all.

Point #2: They can’t all be A Court of Thorns and Roses.

I giggled my way through this essay about the trend of fantasy titles to be some variation of A [Magical Place] of [Something Dark and Sinister] and [Something Sexy]. We see this every time a hugely successful series is published, like Harry Potter or The Hunger Games. The copycats come out in droves. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I know, but if I have to read another romantasy about a half-Fae woman who falls in love with a hot, morally grey prince who helps her discover her powers, I might just give up on this genre altogether.

Point #3: Lucy gets to watch The Holiday for the first time today!

This fun piece from

JP Clark

—who grew up where the movie was shot—celebrates both the magic of the film while also killing my dream of one day moving to Rosehill Cottage. It’s fine. Everything’s fine.

Point #4: Give us real reproductive rights.

I so admire

Caitlin Estes

’ work as a Fertility Care practitioner and advocate, and her latest piece on a vision for new reproductive rights that will actually serve women and girls is a must-read. What a better world this would be if we were given the tools to understand our bodies—and celebrate them!—from the beginning.

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Receipts from a No-Buy Year 🧾

NOTE TO SELF.

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Reading in The Nook 📚

I finished One Dark Window and am now halfway through its sequel, Two Twisted Crowns. Since it has multiple POVs instead of just two it’s not quite as strong as the previous novel, but I’m still intrigued by the gothic history of the Nightmare and eager to find out where he will lead our heroine. Such a fun duology!

I’m also working on Ashley Poston’s A Novel Love Story, which has a nice premise but is just meh so far. I read her other novel The Dead Romantics last year and felt the same way about it, so if this one doesn’t capture me I’ll have to take Poston off my TBR list. It’s too bad, though, because she has such unique story ideas!

Switching over to nonfiction, I’m preparing myself to delve into The Boy Who Followed His Father into Auschwitz by Jeremy Dronfield. I’ve read many a book about the Holocaust since my first reading of Anne Frank’s diary at eleven years old, but this is one I’m looking forward to with great anticipation. I’ve heard it’s a powerful story, but that it also contains some of the most graphic depictions of Nazi brutality, so I might need to take it slowly.

What are you reading right now? 👇🏻

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“Autumn is my season, dear. It is, after all, a season of the soul.”

—Virginia Woolf—

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