Hello, scribblers and scribblees. Welcome the fourth edition of Damned Scribblings. This is a long one (for me, at least) so buckle up. As always, please expect typos and unapologetic cussing below...

For most of 2025, when people have asked me what I'm working on, my standard response has been "I am cogitating my next book," which, if you ask me, is a positive spin on a fairly awful year. It also happens to be true. I have, in fact, spent most of this year contemplating several projects, but one in particular rose to the top this fall. The drafting thereof is now well underway. It is but a wee baby book at the moment and too fragile to discuss in detail, but please know that I have already made what can only be described as a detailed murder board to go with it. I am really swinging for the fences with this one. It's big and ambitious and, therefore, terrifying to write, but since it's a story I desperately want to tell, I'm giving it a shot. Like Ishmael in Moby Dick, "I am in earnest; and I will try."

In the meantime, please enjoy this ridiculous stack of scholarly articles, reference books, and notebooks related to my work-in-progress. You can take the librarian (me) out of the library, but you can't take the librarian (also me) out of the librarian (quite me).

Have you ever re-read a book you loved in your youth only to discover that it did not stand up to the test of time? Or have you picked up a book you loathed decades ago only to discover it's actually amazing and you now love it? I've had both experiences over the past year, and it has me thinking about how we approach books and talk about them.

I suspect that visual media has  messed with our perception of fiction. When we watch TV or sit in a movie theater, it's a fairly passive experience. Which is fine! TV and movies excel at visual storytelling. But the thing about books is that they are not TV or movies. They are not passive. They are an interactive art form. As a matter of fact, I would argue that of all forms of art, fiction requires the most audience participation. The reader takes the author's words and recreates not just the sensory journey of the story, but also the emotional arc of the book. Fiction is a full mind and body experience. Hence, it takes one to write a book (the author) and two to read it (the author and the reader).

Think of the books you have re-read. Some of them aren't as moving as you remembered them. Others you appreciate so much more than you did when you first encountered them. Those books haven't changed. You are the one who has changed. You have more life experience under your belt. Your worldview has shifted over time. What you bring to the literary table matters. Your point of view affects how you perceive the work. This is why some people rave about a book, while other people think it sucks. This is why some people take offense at certain components of a story, while others breeze right past them without a second thought. I've actually had readers tell me how much they appreciated a particular theme or idea in one of my books when, in fact, I definitely did not put said theme or idea therein, at least not intentionally. (Thank you to all the readers who think I am smarter than I am.)

It all makes me more deeply consider what it is that I, as a reader, bring to a book and how I evaluate my reading experience with a particular work. As an author of good intent, I find myself infinitely charitable with other writers. We're all out here doing our best. If I'm not digging a book, maybe the book isn't flawed; maybe it's simply not for me.

And maybe it will be for me somewhere down the road.

Speaking of books that I didn't like in my youth but now love in my middle age, let's talk about ...

... Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. 

I began my Austen Reading Journey in my early teens, starting with Pride and Prejudice. I can't remember which of Austen's works I read prior to picking up Mansfield Park, but when I did get to it, I was bitterly disappointed. It felt like trying to slog though a book wherein Jane Bennet was the main character. As far as my  14-year-old judgmental ass was concerned, Fanny was a pathetic bore who couldn't hold her own. 

Reading Mansfield Park at age 51 has been quite a different experience. 

I love this book. Love it. Looooooooove it.

I decided to pick it up again after reading a shortened version of Lauren Groff's introduction to a new edition of Mansfield Park in The New York Times. Groff very convincingly argues on behalf of the book's merits, specifically in regards to Fanny's moral compass. So I decided to give it another go.

My first thought as I dived back in was that I could eat the incisive, biting tone with a spoon. Gads, I relish the way Austen can set fire to a character in a single sentence. What a gift! But as I kept reading, I found myself wondering about the author's intent. What was she trying to say with this book? What gnarly human conundrum was she working through? I think Groff was onto something when she discussed the morality angle. 

To my mind, it's a book about hypocrisy more than anything. Here's Edmund, wringing his hands because his father surely wouldn't approve of the play they're putting on at Mansfield Park, yet where is Sir Thomas at this very moment? In Antigua, managing his plantation. Edmund plans to take holy orders, but his moralistic prosing rings empty when we consider the fact that his awful family's fortune comes from the slave trade. He decides to go along with the theatrical plan anyway because he believes himself to be in love with Mary Crawford. Meanwhile, he ignores poor Fanny, the only character with Actual Principles (TM) in the entire book.

It's Mary and Henry Crawford who really make the story sing, though. Perhaps they are shallow creatures, but they're honest in their own way, and I suspect Austen actually wants us to like them better than Edmund and his ilk. They are, after all, the only characters who really see Fanny and care about her, even if Fanny takes exception to their worldly ways. If the Crawfords are hypocritical, at least they don't try to hide it behind some misguided sense of moral superiority.

Note the word I am not using to describe Mansfield Park: Romance. Because a romance this book is not. If you're looking for social commentary, you've come to the right place. If you're looking for a hand flex, perhaps it's best to move on. As a teen, I wanted a love story, so Mansfield Park was not a book fourteen-year-old Megan could have understood, much less appreciated. But throw in nearly three decades of reading and living? I am now a very receptive audience.

I suspect no one can ever really know what Austen was getting at with this book, but maybe that's true of every author and every reader and every book. I know Mansfield Park is one I'll revisit; maybe at age 81, I'll love Austen's most acerbic book even more.

This is my last newsletter of 2025, so I wish you all a very happy new year. (I mean, 2026 can only possibly be better than 2025, right? Right??) In the meantime, please enjoy my Grandma Rosemary's Christmas angels (pictured above) which I treasure. 

Thank you for allowing me into your inboxes. I'll see you in the new year!

Cheers,

Megan