Monday Miscellany: A stout little gay fellow named Hank

Notes from May 25 - 31

Jun 01, 2026

Rabbit rabbit! Is there anything more satisfying and clean-slatey than a new month that starts on a Monday? What a perfect day for goal-setting and list-making.

Because the demolition crew returned to do a bit more work on our house this morning,1 I had to make myself scarce, aka go read a book on the patio at the coffee shop, then do some journaling on the outdoor balcony at the library,2 and then get a wrap from Trader Joe’s and eat it on my strollway bench. It’s hard work, but somebody’s gotta do it.

A very speckled dog walked by while I was sitting here writing, and later a red-shouldered hawk landed on a branch overlooking the creek, where it stayed and kept me company for a solid several minutes. Both of those things feel like good omens, don’t you think? I hope your week is off to a solid start too!

The week in books

Today’s accidental reading theme is Novels Being Released June 2nd. 🎉

To start, we have been blessed with another one from Daniel Lavery! His newest, Meeting New People,3 is about Barbara, a divorcée in her late fifties who lives alone and has just been dumped by her best friend, Susan. She’s a bit blindsided. First of all, what is she supposed to do with the nice dinner she had thoughtfully cooked for the two of them, which now sits untouched in the kitchen after Susan has run through her well-rehearsed list of parting grievances and stormed out? How should she react to these complaints against her character? And most important, who’s going to be her best friend now?? Pondering these questions, Barbara embarks on a journey of improving herself, fixing her relationship with her grown son, and finding a new bestie, and what a ride it is.

By nature, she’s a little crotchety and set in her ways, preferring things just so.

“If I’m going to be a crank, it’s better to be honest about it and look for the kind of person who wants to be a crank with me.”

She knows a lot about food and cooking,

“The key to a good celery salad is to trim the hell out of it. Keep as many of the leaves you can, but be ruthless about brown spots and laciness. Any celery leaf that is not scrupulously perfect has to go. Get rid of the tops and tails, as well as most of the outer stalks, anything that is even slightly too thick or too coarse. Pair whatever stalks have survived the culling with a good, sharp knife, or use a vegetable peeler if you’ve got one. There should not be a single thread left. Celery is a perfectly good vegetable, but if you don’t peel it first, you might as well dump dental floss into your salad.”

and she has strong opinions about everything from religious leaders

“I don’t know when that happened, but in my admittedly limited experience, most Episcopalian pastors are lesbians now, or else a stout little gay fellow named Hank, all of them as peaceful and unobtrusive and harmless as bathtime.”

to age gaps in friendships, to how to properly spend a day off.

“You don’t always have to be productive; you just have to feel productive enough that the anxious part of your brain that asks, ‘Am I being productive?’ is quiet and satisfied for a few hours.”

The best part about this book is the voice, which Lavery simply nails; being in Barbara’s head for these almost three hundred pages is an absolute delight. You won’t find high-stakes plot or exciting twists here, but if a complicated character’s rich inner life, written in smart, stylish, wryly funny prose is your thing, run don’t walk.

Also releasing tomorrow is Hunger & Thirst by one of my favorite writers, Claire Fuller.4 I was intrigued to see this one marketed as horror, since Fuller usually stays more in the “literary fiction about complex families” zone, but ultimately I don’t think it falls that far afield of her previous novels, most of which include mysterious, psychological, or gothic elements. The main character here is Ursula, a young woman who grew up in foster care and is now a teenager, recently set up with a new job in the mail room of an art school. She quickly befriends her coworker Sue and shortly afterward moves into an abandoned house to squat with Sue’s boyfriend Vince. The thing is, the house might be haunted. Or at best, the vibes are terribly off. Whatever the case, something isn’t right, and as the atmosphere of dread slowly builds, we learn more about Ursula’s past, details that both add context to the unease she’s feeling and raise questions about the reliability of her experiences. It’s a really slow burn and the terror is subtle, which might make some readers push back against the “horror” categorization. The pace drags a bit toward the middle, and there are no easy answers at the end. But overall I think Fuller achieves her goal, which is not only to create a sinister sense of tension, but also to expose and examine the dark side of female friendship, adoption, family, and longing.

Right now and upcoming

My book club is meeting on Wednesday to discuss that one book everyone’s been talking about lately, and though I just started it this morning, I’ll probably be finished by tomorrow (if nothing else, it’s a page-turner)! Next up, I have a few library loans that I need to knock out before their due dates.

What are you reading right now?

The week on screen

We’re still pretty early in season 1, but Jordan and I started Nobody Wants This recently and it has been such a bright spot during these weeks of construction chaos at home. Comforting, warm, funny, well-acted, and just so easy to watch. A true retreat for the brain, which is exactly what I want and need right now.

Haiku round-up

This poetic form, containing seventeen syllables in a five-seven-five pattern, originated in Japan and traditionally includes thematic reference to the seasons. Mine vary in topic, but I’ve been writing one each day since the beginning of 2024 as an exercise in structured creativity. Here are this week’s poems:

Monday, May 25