End of September | 2024

A roundup of mundane magic, links I loved, and books I finished

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Today's post has a bit of a reflection, followed by the end-of-the-month roundup of mundane magic moments, links I loved, and books I finished. The sections are clearly marked, so feel free to jump ahead.

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I’m writing to you from the end of a very difficult month. I feel like so many things are changing all at once, and so many of them in really painful ways. I’m so grateful for the response to my recent post where I wrote about some of these things; your comments made me feel less alone and were another beautiful thing helping to balance my internal scales.

There is still plenty to work through, but I am finally feeling a bit more capable of handling it all again.

As I was starting to write this post, I was trying to figure out what to do about the links section (which I’d begun to dread and had been ignoring all summer). I realized that, at some point, I started putting a lot of pressure on myself to “curate” links from my monthly reading here on Substack in order to make these posts “worthwhile” for you, and while I love being able to share the work of other writers and encourage you all to read it, this pressure ended up becoming a barrier to my reading here as well as my enjoyment.

After taking a break from sharing links altogether for a few months, and after experimenting with sharing a couple favourite writers rather than individual posts last month, I’ve decided to move forward by simply doing whatever feels right in any given month — a revolutionary concept, I know, but it seems that I need to relearn it regularly.

This month, that section looks like a handful of links from various publications. I hope you’ll find something that interests you!

And now, onto the magic.

✨️ Mundane Magics ✨️

• Quiet mornings. As many of you know, my five-year-old started kindergarten this month, which means that, at least some days, I’ve been able to wake while the house is still quiet and spend a moment outside to help steady myself for the day ahead. This hasn’t happened for most of the summer, and I missed it.

• The leaves! Autumn is my favourite season, and one of my favourite things about it is the leaves. I love the way they look and smell and sound. I love the way my three-year-old loves to crunch them on our way to get his sister from the bus. We have a few trees who are already dropping their leaves in earnest and many that will change more slowly over the rest of the season, and they just make me happy.

• Oren saying the alphabet with me. Our three-year-old has taken his time with speech, but he has recently greatly increased his vocabulary. He also really enjoys copying, so he’s been practicing letters alongside Sybil, and now whenever we walk to the bus, we usually start by going through the alphabet (or some of it, at least). I love the way kids pronounce things when they’re learning how to talk, and listening to him is an utter delight.

• My tattoo is healed! It's a bit different than my other tattoos, which is what I was hoping for this time, and I just love the way it fits on my wrist. (At some point I'll get a better picture of all of them.)

• Neighbours. I haven’t gotten to know many of the people on our street due to my anxiety and chronic illness keeping me from being outside much, but I met a few more of them this month, from walking down to get Sybil off the bus and from checking the mail at the right time, and I feel like I’m somehow a bit more cemented in the community now. We’re also lucky enough to have friends who live a few houses down across the street, and their older son who gets home earlier from school has started coming out to say hi to us before and after bus pickup, which the kids absolutely love. It makes the walk a bit less daunting.

• Meditation. I am not a pro at meditating — I get distracted really easily and frustrated at myself and my surroundings — BUT when I stick with it, it unfortunately does actually help me. (Sigh, I know.) I started meditating earlier this week with the help of a new app (of course) after realizing how bad my anxiety has been and, well, I was demonstrably more relaxed after, so I suppose I’ll have to keep at it. Alas.

Links I Loved

• A read-along directory by

  Simon Haisell
  , updated regularly and growing every month. As many of you know, I’ve been doing the War and Peace slow read over at
  Footnotes and Tangents
  all year, and I love this resource to help find more, because it’s been such a rewarding experience.

Endnotes August 2024 & Book Group Directory

• I loved this post from

  KateFox
  about caring for each other in neurodivergent-friendly spaces, but perhaps my favourite part is the word “neurome” which is just brilliant and makes me feel warm and cozy.

Caring for each other in the neurome

• If you’ve been following along with

  Sarah Shotts
  ’ campaign for Entwined and Ember (or, frankly, even if you haven’t) this list of resources about parenting and creativity might interest you:

Entwined Bibliography 🌿

• I haven’t been doing the best mentally or physically this month, so this piece by

  Louise Lucas
  about object impermanence and hope was a really great reminder that things won’t always be so hard, and it’s worth it to keep looking for joy.

In Search of the Northern Lights

• And last, but wholeheartedly not least, is this guest post by

  Sarah Teresa Cook
  over at
  Healing is My Special Interest
  on autism and skills regression, which I deeply needed. It was truly so validating and couldn’t have come at a better time.

The Body Responds

Books I Finished

• Darling Girl by Liz Michalski: A modern retelling of Peter Pan for adults (important CW: there is a brief rape¹ scene in this book; please take care). This was dark in ways I wasn't expecting but also a really interesting concept and one that I felt was generally well-executed. There was some good character growth, and I was satisfied with the ending. If you like dark fairy tales, you might enjoy this.

• Feral Self-Care: 100 Ways to Liberate and Celebrate Your Messy, Wild, and Untamed Self by Mandi Em: A nonfiction book. I thoroughly enjoyed this and found it to be accessible and full of a variety of interesting ideas. You might recall that I read a similar book last month, Goblin Mode: How to Get Cozy, Embrace Imperfection, and Thrive in the Muck by McKayla Coyle (which I also loved), and while these books are similar in aim and essence, I found that they each had a unique focus and plenty of different ideas, so I'd still recommend both.

• The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon: An epic fantasy with dragons, people of colour, and queer rep! Need I say more?? (Okay, twist my arm.) This book is long², but it is also SO worth it; if you’ve ever read a series or trilogy then I promise you are fully capable of finishing this book, so don’t panic. It’s split up into sections, and the first is the longest. There is a good deal of world-building up front, and it takes a bit to get oriented and learn all the characters, but the way it all comes together is so. good. And, if you need a little help keeping track of everything, there are two maps and a character list included. *Do look up the pronunciation of the characters’ names — I swear, it helps with the immersion. This is one of my favourite reads of the year, and I already bought the prequel, A Day of Fallen Night.

• Making Things: Finding Use, Meaning, and Satisfaction in Crafting Everyday Objects by Erin Boyle and Rose Pearlman: A nonfiction book that's great for learning a variety of making techniques without being too precious about materials and tools. I knew a lot of the basics the authors shared about how to do the crafts, but I wouldn’t have thought to use certain materials, or to use the techniques in the way they did for some of the projects included in the book. If you don’t have much crafting experience and want to try making something useful out of materials you likely already have or could easily source, then I definitely recommend it.

• Emotional Labor: The Invisible Work Shaping Our Lives and How to Claim Our Power by Rose Hackman: A nonfiction work that really delves into emotional labour — who performs it, how, and why. I appreciate the research that clearly went into this book. It’s a bit dense because it’s full of important information that I believe everyone would benefit from understanding.

• The Safe-Keeper's Secret by Sharon Shinn: A YA fantasy with a really interesting magic system. This was a reread for me, though I didn’t remember much about it outside of how the magic vocations generally worked. I definitely still enjoyed it this time around, apart from the (in my opinion) creepy aspect of the romance between two of the characters — which thankfully was minimal and not really at play until the end of the book, so it didn’t get in the way of my enjoying the rest. This works as a standalone, but there are two other books in the same world, The Truth-Teller’s Tale and The Dream-Maker’s Magic (which I also read as a teenager and only vaguely remember) so I’m looking forward to finishing those again as well.

• The Princess Bride by William Goldman: A disappointment. A fantasy. Yes, like the movie. But also, no, not like the movie. Let me explain — no, there is too much. Let me sum up. The Princess Bride has been one of my favourite movies for most of my life, so I had reasonably high hopes for the book which were, unfortunately, violently dashed. Everything good about the Princess Bride is in the movie. I don’t know exactly who was responsible for the vast differences between the two, but they somehow managed to remove a great deal of misogyny, fatphobia, ableism, and racial slurs that were in the book in order to create a masterpiece on the screen. Goldman’s running gimmick of how he “abridged” the book by fictitious author S. Morganstern seems, ironically, to essentially be what actually happened when they created the movie — they took out everything unnecessary and made it enjoyable. The only reason I’m sharing this here is to beg you to not waste your time on this book if you enjoy the movie³.

Lots of ups and downs this month; I hope you’ve been able to connect with hope and joy and beauty as much as any difficult things you may be going through. And as always, feel free to share if this resonated with you.

1. I debated censoring this word, and I’m still not sure if I got it right. It’s an uncomfortable topic because the reality of it is horrific, and I don’t want to negate that whether by censoring the word or by spelling it out. If you have thoughts about this either way, I’d love to hear them!

2. It is also deceptive in its length, because of the way it was printed. I lost the video that explained this, but basically, the word count is equivalent to or less than many (very popular) books that are physically smaller. It looks intimidating, but it’s not insurmountable, I promise.

3. I feel like this might come across as mean or satirical, but it’s not meant to be either. While I normally only share books here that I enjoyed, it feels like this should be a PSA for everyone, because while the movie has aged remarkably well, I can assure you that the book has not.