Plot Points #79 💌
Inconvenience, hospitality, romance novels, and an American pope
Plot Points is a weekly newsletter where I share my favorite books, links, words, and more. If you enjoy what you find here, please consider subscribing or buying me a coffee.
Hi friends and happy Friday!
First off…an AMERICAN pope? 🇺🇸 What the what? I didn’t even know there were American cardinals, tbh.
Even though I’m not Catholic, I watched and listened to the announcements yesterday with a tender feeling of excitement for my Catholic peers and readers. I hope my fellow Protestants will be generous towards our Catholic siblings as they celebrate and process the news because this is the leader of their global church and he will have a great impact over their futures in the years to come. My prayer is that Pope Leo XIV will serve with wisdom, charity, and an abundance of grace in a role that is doubtless a little terrifying. May God bless and keep him.1
In other news, I finally made the switch to the Light Phone! *cue angels singing* It’s the best choice I’ve made in a long while, and I wrote in more detail about this not-so-dumb phone here if you’re curious.
I hope you all have a lovely Mother’s Day weekend 🌸. Thanks for spending some of your time with me today.
Wendi
Word of the Week ✍🏻
Charnel: (n.) pertaining to a place of burial.
Point #1: Romance novels are not *quite* the same as porn.
And, yes, this is coming from an author who is absolutely sick to death of the publishing industry’s predatory marketing schemes and celebration of any kind of sex, no matter how degrading, as long as the very low bar of “consent” has been reached 🙄. Porn harms actual human beings, so
is correct here about it being a false equivalency. I appreciated her consideration of the importance of female pleasure while also understanding how explicit scenes can lead to lust, maladaptive coping mechanisms, and confusion about healthy relationships. It’s so important for us to consider the larger narrative of a story and what it is trying to accomplish. Lots to think about here!Point #2: “A good life is inconvenient.”
Our tolerance for the things that make us human—the relational and material mess that cultivates deeper virtues in our lives—is becoming more limited by the day. How much more are we willing to sacrifice for the sake of convenience? I couldn’t applaud
enough for this incredible piece.Point #3: Yes, I would like to live in Pemberley, please and thanks.
Here are some lovely ideas on how to bring the romance of the English countryside into your home, no matter where you live. Come for the words, but stay for the gorgeous photography.
Point #4: And while you’re thinking about that…
Here are seventeen ways you can be hospitable that don’t require a perfectly tidy house. (Recovering perfectionists, unite!)
Reading in The Nook 📚
I’m still working my way through Eric Metaxes’ stunning biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (I can see why it sold a million copies), but the cognitive dissonance between Metaxes’ personal idolatry of Trump and the searing takedown he offers of the German Church’s capitulation to Hitler is pretty wild. My brother in Christ, please get some self-awareness.
Anywho…
I was really excited to get my hands on this dystopian novel called Red Rising by Pierce Brown, which is basically the Hunger Games on Mars. It looks fantastic and it has been around for about ten years now, so I’m way behind on this trilogy fandom. Either way, a little science fiction is a perfect break from the historical stuff I’ve been reading lately.
What’s on your TBR this week? 👇🏻
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“Books are embalmed minds.”
—Gotthold Lessing—
Follow along as we read my latest novel, The Bluestockings!
Prologue | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12
He looks like the sweetest old grandpa of a man.