Author: Jackie Pick

Jackie Pick is a former teacher and current writer living in the Chicago area. She is a contributing author to multiple anthologies, including Multiples Illuminated, So Glad They Told Me: Women Get Real about Motherhood, Here in the Middle, as well as the and the literary magazines The Sun and Selfish. She received Honorable Mention from the Mark Twain House and Museum for her entry in the Royal Nonesuch Humor Writing Competition. Jackie is a contributing writer at Humor Outcasts, and her essays have been featured on various online sites including McSweeney's, Belladonna Comedy, Mamalode, The HerStories Project, and Scary Mommy. A graduate of the University of Chicago and Northwestern University, Jackie is co-creator and co-writer of the award-winning short film Fixed Up, and a proud member of the 2017 Chicago cast of Listen To Your Mother.

July 2023 Reads

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Completing the Author-to-Reader Circuit

July was a banner month for reading, as you’ll note from the graphic. As you’ll also note from the graphic, I am quite the design expert.

One of my 2023 resolutions (bwahaha, remember those?) was to write more reviews of books. The rule I set for myself was to write a review for any book that I was still thinking about many hours after turning the last page.

Reviews require a different sort of engagement with a book. It’s academic and emotional. It is a way of helping complete the circuit of author-to-reader.

If you’d like to see full reviews, you can find them sprinkled throughout my Instagram or on Goodreads.

Here’s a taste of how I tend to review a book these days, based on some of the above, in case you’re one of those cautious people who don’t like to cannonball into reading something:

Project Hail Mary:

I know that technically, logically, practically, ethically, and legally I cannot marry a book. There would be too many issues with end-of-life decisions and paper cuts. Also, I’m already married.

BUT
My God. This book. It’s astonishing.
This is love.

Now, before you judge, let me make something clear. I don’t frequently fall in love with books. Maybe that takes away from my English major street cred. (There is no such thing.) Yes, I adore literature, but infatuations for me were often fleeting. I appreciate the classics, the ‘great passions’, the ‘true loves’ that English teachers dissect to their bare bones like a low-budget Alien Autopsy show (and with almost as much bullshit.) But they didn’t always resonate with me in a deeply personal way.

It also just felt kind of…moony. (Read the rest here)

Booze, Babe, and the Little Black Dress:

The greatest piece of advice I got was to read everything (I’ve amended that to “START reading everything. Stop as needed.”)

Let’s talk about _Booze, Babe, and the Little Black Dress: How Innovators of the Roaring 20s Created the Consumer Revolution._

This is not a book I’d ordinarily pick up and read, but getting this book as a #goodreads giveaway made it easy to start, and the writing and subject matter made it impossible to stop. (read the rest here)

What books astonished you in July? Do you write reviews?