{"id":26706,"date":"2020-08-18T13:23:02","date_gmt":"2020-08-18T18:23:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=26706"},"modified":"2020-08-17T16:24:24","modified_gmt":"2020-08-17T21:24:24","slug":"book-report-swimming-middle-river-by-leah-holbrook-sackett-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2020\/08\/18\/book-report-swimming-middle-river-by-leah-holbrook-sackett-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: Swimming Middle River<\/i> by Leah Holbrook Sackett (2020)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"BookI worked with Leah a bit fifteen or so years ago when she was Leah Holbrook and did some freelance copywriting for the interactive agency where I worked. I saw last week on LinkedIn that she had published a book, so of course I ordered it. Friends, if you publish a book or your kid releases a CD, I will buy it<\/em>. I will even get tickets to a musical if you’re in it, which fortunately does not happen terribly often, as tickets to Jesus Christ Superstar<\/em> for my whole family runs to almost two hundred bucks. I prefer the fifteen dollar books or CDs, thanks.<\/p>\n

At any rate, it’s a collection of short stories. The first is about a middle-aged man going back home to look for a loan from his grandfather, and he reminisces about preteen sex with his cousin and then in the past discovering that his by then maybe teen-aged cousin is also diddling said grandfather, and record needle scratches to a stop<\/em>….<\/p>\n

Oh, it’s literary<\/em> fiction.<\/p>\n

You know, I went to a single meeting of the Casinoport Writer’s Group at the Casinoport Community Center, it took mere minutes in the meeting before the assorted middle-aged women went on about pedophilia which squicked me right out. So I never went back, and I have avoided other adult writing groups. The lead story in the volume isn’t convincing me otherwise. <\/p>\n

So the stories kind of deal with that sort of thing: personal relationships\/sex, teen sex, kids of broken homes, and the like. So, literary<\/em>. Although I have written literary fiction in my time, they tend to have less sex in them (see “To a Good Home<\/a>” and “The Brooch<\/a>“).<\/p>\n

So the writing’s all right, but topically not my bag, baby. Nine stories over 126 pages, so a pretty quick read. And if you’re into literary fiction, perhaps you’ll get more out of it more than I did. Now, back to genre fiction for me.<\/p>\n

I’ve been kicking around the idea of putting out a collection of short stories, probably entitled To A Good Home<\/em> (which might be the best short story I have ever written). However, I am afraid I would sell fewer copies of it than I did The Courtship of Barbara Holt<\/a><\/em>, which is one, now that Charles Hill has passed.<\/p>\n

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I worked with Leah a bit fifteen or so years ago when she was Leah Holbrook and did some freelance copywriting for the interactive agency where I worked. I saw last week on LinkedIn that she had published a book, so of course I ordered it. Friends, if you publish a book or your kid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26706"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26708,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26706\/revisions\/26708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}