Plot Points #82 💌
Summer breaks, 100 practical skills, heirlooms, and mama songs
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 everyone and happy (almost) June!
First, an announcement:
I will be taking a summer break from Substack from June 1st to August 1st. The only posts you’ll see here during that time will be the scheduled release of new The Bluestockings chapters each Tuesday, and I’m going to do my best to stay off Notes entirely. We have a pretty quiet summer ahead, and it is my intention to spend that time away from screens as much as possible. We are teaching Theo to swim and ride a bike, growing beautiful things in the garden, and enjoying the time-honored tradition of battling it out to see who can become the ultimate Harry Potter Monopoly champion. (At the moment, Lucy is in the lead. She is absolutely ruthless 🤣.) As such, this will be my final Plot Points for the next two months and all paid subscriptions will be on pause during this time.
I hope you all have a beautiful, joy-filled summer! Thank you for spending some of your time with me here.
Grace + peace,
Wendi
Word of the Week ✍🏻
Preponderant: (adj.) superior in weight or influence.
Point #1: “Blessed are the mothers…”
This is the sort of Substack content I live for: an imagined meeting of mothers in heaven—from Susanna Wesley and Hagar to Anne Bradstreet and Sojourner Truth—that reads like poetry, both lyrical and poignant. Try and read it without crying. I dare you.
Point #2: I want an heirloom quality life.
A life worth sharing takes time, attention, and skill. If mothers are, as
so beautifully writes in this piece, the “beating heart of families,” then I pray our children will go back and forth from this home over the years nourished and satisfied by what is on offer. After all, “What will our children have if everything we hand them is designed to be discarded?”Point #3: “I was never taught that…”
But it’s never too late, or too early, to get started.
Point #4: My links have a strong maternal theme this week.
Did I sob while watching Benson Boone’s latest music video? MIND YOUR BUSINESS.
Reading in The Nook 📚
This was an excellent reading week! I finished three books: rom-com You Between the Lines by Katie Naymon, YA werewolf romance Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater, and YA ghost mystery After Life by Gayle Forman.
You Between the Lines was the best romance I’ve read in a long time. It’s a second-chance, enemies-to-lovers story about two rival writers who enroll in the same MFA program. I could tell the author has an MFA of her own because the writing was just that good. It was a smart, sexy book with lots of tension, nerdy bookish stuff, and delightful side characters to boot. Plus, the sex scenes managed to be sensual, restrained, and actually beneficial to the narrative. Imagine!
Shiver was a Goodwill find. I’ve heard a lot of rave reviews about Stiefvater’s other, newer books, but this Twilight-era werewolf romance was unique and fresh, even now. I won’t read the rest of the series because it just isn’t my cup of tea, but I’d still recommend it for readers interested in fantasy romance.
After Life was a novel I picked up on our recent trip to Amelia Island, and it was such a beautiful story! The protagonist, seventeen-year-old Amber, arrives home after school one day to find out she’s actually been dead for seven years. What follows is a series of unexpected discoveries about the people she thought she knew, the life she thought she wanted, and the wild, wonderful ways the future can still surprise us. Highly recommend!
What’s on your reading list this summer? 👇🏻
“Happiness consists in the attainment of our desires, and in our having only right desires.”
—Augustine of Hippo—
Follow along as we read my latest novel, The Bluestockings!
Prologue | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14
Thanks so much for the mention. ✨