HEYDAY, n. This word has kind of a funny origin story. I guess people used to yell “heyda!” in the way we might yell “hurrah” or “hooray” or however you want to spell it. (Calloo, callay.) And the joyful exclamation “heyda” eventually started to sound like “heyday,” even though the word “day” is unrelated.
Somewhere in the middle of the 18th century, people started using “heyday” as a noun to mean a period of success, the height of something, the moment of glory, as in “In their heyday, the band went platinum four times,” etc., etc. The Online Etymology Dictionary notes that this might have originated from people thinking the word was “high-day.”
Anyway, 2020 has started with more low days than high days for me, and also for the world, which is variously on fire and the brink of war, so thus far I have not had cause to whoop “heyda” or talk about the “heyday” of anything, but I hope that is not the case for you!
2020 READING GOALS
Usually I like this moment of goal-setting and spreadsheet-making very much, because I am exactly that kind of nerd. But this year, overwhelmed with options for tracking my reading in apps and social media, I have been feeling contrary about it. I do the GoodReads challenge every year, but I hate that setting a number of books I plan to read discourages me from reading very long books. The GoodReads challenge also encourages me to finish books even when I’m not enjoying them, and sometimes so does the fact that I write this newsletter, which is silly, because ostensibly I do both of those things (the challenge and the newsletter) for my own pleasure. So my first and most important reading resolution of 2020 is to abandon any book that’s not doing it for me, regardless of how far into I am and how many pages are left.
My other reading goals are
To continue reading diversely and especially to read more romance by women of color
To seek out more f/f romance (or speculative fiction starring queer women)
To read some non-fiction
To read something in Spanish—I just bought Yuri Herrera’s Señales que precederán al fin del mundo, but might read it alongside an English translation. No shame! (done)
To read something in Italian—this goal is nuts because I’m not good at Italian, but it’s 2020 now and I’m gonna be a completely different person who’s way better at everything. That’s possible, right? (done)
To read at least a few of the 30+ print books gathering dust in my home
To read these books specifically:
If you have reading goals you want to tell me about, I would love to hear them! You can reply to this email or you can find me on twitter.
No Capital-R Romance this week. My frail and mortal body is full of snot and it’s been keeping me from accomplishing much. But at least there’s still small-r romance to cheer me up.
Heated Rivalry (gay m/bi m, both cis, contemporary) and Game Changer (m/m, both gay and cis, contemporary) by Rachel Reid. Okay, Game Changer is a good romance novel but I’m gonna talk about Heated Rivalry because rivals-to-lovers is my candy. This book is about two hockey players on opposing teams who meet in secret to have hate sex after their games, and they keep doing it for years until it’s not hate sex anymore. Then they have to grapple with accidentally falling in love. They are both very oblivious and stubborn about their feelings and I love them for it. The moment where they realize they like each other involves no actual conversation about their feelings, and it made me bite my fist to keep from yelling. In addition to being an unputdownable read, if you’re a romance writer, this book is such a masterclass in plotting and pacing. Content warnings: homophobia (including slurs, violence, the fear of getting outed—in both books), an abusive father (in Heated Rivalry), a mother who committed suicide (also in Heated Rivalry).
In things I read this week that are neither Romance nor romance, this New Yorker profile of an art thief in Paris is amazing, and on the same subject with but a distinctly American flavor, here’s The Atlantic on a crew of jewel thieves in Florida.
John Paul Brammer wrote this amazing non-review of Cats and I love it. (I love everything he writes and also every review of Cats.) Especially this:
What you want is what got us in this mess: a late capitalist nightmare world where if enough racists say they didn’t like it when the Asian lady flew a spaceship, she’ll be all but edited out in the sequel. What you want is to be spoon-fed cute baby characters so you can post cute baby GIFs of them while the three corporations that own every aspect of your pretend life suck the blood out of your veins so some dude in golf shorts can buy his third yacht. “And what do I want?” the humanoid roaches of CATS ask in unison. “Your screams.”
Claw my eyes out, why don’t you.
It’s been more than a week since I read Drew Magary’s harrowing personal essay The Night the Lights Went Out about surviving a brain hemorrhage, but I have thought about it a lot. My 2019 health troubles were not brain-related, but there is something so terrifying about the realization that your body can just… stop working any ol time. Maybe you’ll live through it. Maybe you won’t! (And yes, I realize that what qualifies as a revelation for me is a clueless, obvious thing only “realized” by able-bodied people who’ve enjoyed the privilege of lifelong good health. But still though. Getting a clue sucks, y’all.)
Anyway, it’s an incredible essay. We’re all gonna die some day. Tell your people you love them. Only finish reading books you really like.
