November 2023 #MARM Margaret Atwood Reading Month (Week Five): November 29-30

One final bit of MARMing remains for us, MARMers.

And I bet many of you are wishing that it actually IS the end of November, as so many of you have more items on your to-do lists right now than you have books on your shelves.

I’m wishing it was the end of November, too, because then everything would have happened as planned but, then, often things don’t.

But here’s who made things happen for MARM and what Margaret Atwood they read (in publication order), for those who read to celebrate MARM (maybe others commented, watched, had cake, too):

The Edible Woman, Bill via The Australian Legend (currently the third-most popular MARM selection in our cosy group)
Bodily Harm, Rebecca via Bookish Beck
The Handmaid’s Tale via Nancy Elin
The Labrador Fiasco via Whispering Gums
Writing with Intent via Kaggsys Bookish Ramblings
Stone Mattress, Rebecca via Bookish Beck (A first for this collection, during MARM, maybe?)
Hag-Seed via Madame Bibilophile Recommends
Burning Questions, Naomi via Consumed by Ink.

Thanks, also, to Mme B and Bill for selecting numbers for my reading from The Tent, to Naomi for continuing the tradition of Fun Facts, to Paula @ Book Jotter for sharing news of it, and to Bill for first reading Yevgeny Zamyatin’s classic dystopian novel We and, then, reading Margaret Atwood’s introduction to a recent reissue (which he says was my idea).

Thanks, also, to those who watched the videos—particularly that CBC interview that threw me for such a loop and raised so many questions about how to engage with stories and authors.

And thank you to everyone who left a comment and to those who participated behind the scenes and unobserved (I was once a lurker too, but I do hope you’ll feel welcome to join more visibly).

Is anyone else still reading from November? Whether in a MARM-way or any other?

MARM 2023 PLANS

Each week I’ll share links to some online sources, so that anyone with a few minutes can join in the celebrations. Some poetry and flash fiction, some interviews and reviews, some fresh reads and rereads: mostly reading with a little viewing and, in particular, short stories.

Launch (November 1)
Dancing Girls, “Rape Fantasies” (November 3)
Week Two: Update and Check-In (November 8)
Dancing Girls, “Hair Jewellery” (November 10)
Old Babes in the Wood, “First Aid” (November 12)
Week Three: Update and Check-In (November 15)
Dancing Girls, “A Travel Piece” (November 17)
Margaret Atwood’s 84^th Birthday (November 18)
Old Babes in the Wood, “Two Scorched Men” (November 19)
Week Four: Update and Check-In (November 21)
Dancing Girls, “The Resplendent Quetzal” (November 24)
Old Babes in the Wood, “Morte de Smudgie” (November 26)
Wrap-Up (November 29-30)

I had hoped to reread The Edible Woman again, but stalled in mid-November, so had to resume recently; we have just had drinks at the Park Plaza and climbed a wall in someone’s garden. (Hello, The Handmaid’s Tale called and it wants its wall back.)

I’d also hoped to reread Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We, which I read in a half-credit elective course in school, but I’d reserved that for November’s second-half reading, so I just began rereading it this week.

My original copy is a Dutton pocketbook, second-hand, from 1952; it’s got a solid introduction, but I never read those back then—I wanted to get to the story. (Then, for a time, I did read introductions because I wanted to know things, but they contained spoilers, so I stopped again, because those weren’t the things I wanted to know.) I borrowed a library copy of We specifically to read Margaret Atwood’s introduction, though, which is how it squirmed into MARM.

Both novels have short chapters, so it’s easy to read “just one more”; with both, I’ve forgotten more than I remember. I’m a little more than a third into each book and I think I’ll finish easily before the end of the year (although I haven’t decided how/whether I’ll post about them…2024’s reading is looking very tempting too).

So, in this way, I feel as though I am reading in the past. (For other November reading, I know I’ve got a bookmark in eleventy-million novellas, all in a stack on a shelf I’ve not touched since mid-November, so I need to revisit and figure how best to summarise what I actually finished…and what I’ll save for another time.)

In another way, I feel as though I am reading in future. I’ve got a small stack of possibilities for Bill’s Generation 0: Australian Women Writers week, January 14-21; he has already read Olive Schreiner for this and I have started reading, tentatively, a bulky Charlotte Smith novel with that in mind. (Once you start thinking about what classic novels might have been read by 19^th– and 20^th-century women novelists, and influenced their work, the list grows quickly.)

In the present, I am rereading L. Frank Baum’s The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. This was something I’d wanted to enjoy last year, over the holidays, and now I’m through Boyhood and reading about Manhood (Old Age is only a few pages, which says a lot about 1902). It’s a curious mix, but Santa with Zamyatin and Atwood isn’t unusual for me.

Five MARMs were completed before 2023, the sixth is now complete (but, if anyone’s late, just let me know and, similarly, if I’ve overlooked anyone, please let me know that too), and here’s to the seventh.

Cheers!