Plot Points #68 💌
The plague, going offline, and Benson Boone's extraordinary flips
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Hi everyone! Happy Friday to you guys.
I’m just going to say it: I can’t wait for my iPhone to give up the ghost.
I don’t even have social media or Safari on my phone, and I still find myself picking it up to just scroll through Spotify or the news or Goodreads. I was listening to a mixed CD(!) in my car the other day, and tried to change the song on my phone more than once. Jesus, save me from this digital overlord 🤦🏼♀️.
After we do taxes, and if all signs point to yes, I’m just going to cut the cord and buy a Light Phone. Not sure which model yet, but the immediate calming effect I experience just by looking at it tells me it’s the right way to go.
Anyway, we’re all still trying to nurse our way back to health after the flu made its way through our house this past week. Only Pierce was spared its agonizing effects. I have never been as sick as I was last Sunday, and he held down the fort for all of us while I could barely get out of bed, God bless him. Is the flu exceptionally rampant this year, or is it just me? Thank the Lord for our local CSA boxes with all their fresh produce and homemade bread. My body is begging me to eat some greens and heal.
I pray you all stay well this weekend! Spring can’t some soon enough.
Grace + peace,
Wendi
Read The Bluestockings with me!
We’re just beginning the community read of my latest novel here in serial format, so catch up the Prologue and Chapter One right over here 👇🏻. If you like books about books, snarky Southern ladies, and coming-of-age mysteries, you’re in for a treat:
Word of the Week ✍🏻
Mawkish: (adj.) foolishly or weakly sentimental.
Point #1: The zipper is stuck.
Sometimes the smallest phrases hit like a punch in the gut.
Point #2: The flip! The fashion! The falsetto!
Love how this kid (ugh, he’s 22, I’m OLD) just came out of nowhere a couple of years ago, like, “I guess I can sing” 🤷🏻♂️. Okay, Freddy Mercury.
Point #3: “It feels like reclaiming ownership for my life that I'd somehow lost.”
This post’s dreamy assumption that we are nearing the end of our extremely online era is one of many I’ve read in recent months. Tommy Dixon points out that “people are hungry to experience life for themselves” after spending so much of it in a digital universe, and he poses important questions about what the end might look like for us. Whether or not he’s right is irrelevant; the dream is the point.
Point #4: When they tell you who they are, believe them.
Democracy is not dead just because they want it to be. We have work to do.
Reading in The Nook 📚
Theo and I finished reading The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe last week before the plague hit, and now we’re tiptoeing into Prince Caspian. Highlights from the first of the Narnia series were Aslan’s breaking the Stone Table (“Wait, he’s ALIVE?!”), Edmund becoming Just, and Giant Rumblebuffin. Where was his cameo in the film??? I hope Greta gives him his flowers, honestly.
Other than that, reading has been scant this week. I hope to pick up with Prince Caspian and the stack of novels on my nightstand soon.
What are you reading right now? 👇🏻
(All Bookshop.org links are affiliates. Thank you for supporting The Nook!)
“A well-governed appetite is a great part of liberty.”
—Seneca—
I think the flu really is that bad this year. It wiped out our whole co-op and multiple families were down a week plus. We’re still working our way through it, but everyone has said it’s vicious.
"Democracy is not dead just because they want it to be. We have work to do."
Ready to do that work alongside you, Wendi!