Endnotes #9: Mimi's world
Slow read update • March book groups
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Endnotes | Issue #9: Mimi’s world
Hello all
One morning, I unsettle from my sleep, sensing something shift in the black before me. I have been walking in a place I once knew, through rooms that did not exist, to meet strangers who never were. My dream leaves me adrift, uncertain of what I am. But it is morning, and a little hand hunts me out. Finds my nose. Squeezes it. 'My daddy,' she says.
Mariam Louise. A year ago she had no words. A year before, neither did I for her, not so long from her mother's womb, eyes finding focus, head still heavy in my hand. Now, each day she makes herself a little better understood. Words, words, they are never just words.
Somewhere in this winter, she picks up the possessive. She waves it like a wand and sees its magic done. My spoon, my bag, my cup. We must explain to her that not everything belongs to Mimi. But she looks incredulous. We feel foolish. It’s her world now.
She has the measure of it. Its power. She'll introduce me at a party. I turn up and she patters over to drum my chest and beam: 'My daddy!' Here he is, have you met him? He can tuck me up and make me fly, I show him the sheep in all the books. He is happy to have me, to tell him who he is.
There was some other man, who walked in places here before, through rooms that did not exist to meet strangers that never were. He seemed so sure; so riddled with doubt, and perplexed. Struck dumb and frozen in the past; waiting to be called. Waiting to be named.
In Alice Through The Looking-Glass, she wanders through ‘the wood where things have no name’. She forgets herself and befriends a fawn, neither knowing who they are or what to fear. When they are reunited with their nouns, they are delighted, then alarmed. ‘I’m a Fawn!’ the creature cries. ‘And, dear me! you’re a human child!’
Before Mimi, I thought I knew the world of words. I thought I knew their power. But I think now I was just waiting for her to exist herself, stretch out hand and pointed finger, triumphant: my shoes, my hat, my coat. Let’s go.
Outside, the sky is blue, the moon is in the trees. We’re going now, slow and steady. Car and bus. Cat and dog. Naming with each step. Naming Mimi’s world.
This is Endnotes, the monthly newsletter from Footnotes and Tangents. You can choose which emails to receive in the notifications list in your subscription settings.
Our slow reads
This month, we fleshed out the Footnotes and Tangents Library with the vital help of our resident librarian,
. This is your go-to place for resources to supplement your slow reads. I am especially pleased with our list of interviews with Hilary Mantel.In May, we will begin her haunted masterpiece, A Place of Greater Safety, on the life and times of the revolutionaries of Paris. In the next couple of months, we will put together resources to help you find your way through that book. Join us, from 5 May here:
We are currently reading:
We’re coming to the end of The Siege of Krishnapur. When it is finished, I will add it to the completed book guides for anyone who would like ‘read along’ at a later date.
Finally, I have set up a Footnotes and Tangents bookshop over at Bookshop.org. It will have shelves dedicated to each of the slow reads, plus my current reads and recommendations. If you choose to buy a book there, you’ll be supporting Footnotes and Tangents, as well as a platform that champions independent booksellers worldwide.
March Book Groups
As usual, in our library of further reading resources, you can find the Substack Book Group Directory. I update this list monthly. If you run a book group or book club on Substack, get in touch so I can add yours to the list.
And here is a list of some of the books people will be reading in March:
- : Back After This by Linda Holmes
The Austen Connection Read-Along with
: Sense and Sensibility by Jane AustenThe Big Read with
: Range by David EpsteinThe Book Club for Busy Readers with
: The Things They Carried by Tim O’BrienBreccia with
: Weathering Book by Ruth Allen (Starts 20 March, runs for 9 weeks)The Burning Archive Slow Read with
: The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk (Feb - Sep)Byronicaly: The Dostoevsky Year with
: Notes from Underground by Fyodor DostoevskyCambridge Ladies' Dining Society with
: Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner (Feb - Apr)Cams Campbell Reads with
: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (May 2024 – Feb)- : Chasing Fog by Laura Pashby (all year)
Close Reads HQ with
, , : A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (Jan-Mar)Closely Reading with
: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (Jan - Mar)- : The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
Creative, Inspired, Happy with
: Bird by Bird by Anne LamottThe Creative Kingdom Book Club with
: Seeking Wisdom: A Spiritual Path to Creative Connection by Julia Cameron- : Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett (all 2025)
Deep Reads Book Club with
: Homer’s The Iliad (Jan - June)Dostoevsky book club «Theta-Delta» with
: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (all 2025)Elizabeth Goudge Bookclub with
: The Castle on the HillEmily’s Walking Book Club with
: Human Voices by Penelope FitzgeraldFrizzLit with
: Dorothy Parker Book Club: The Portable Dorothy Parker / E.M. Forester Book Club: A Room With a ViewGenius & Ink with
: Dante’s The Divine Comedy (all 2025)The Gentle Book Club with
: Breaking Waves by Emma SimpsonGuerilla Readers with
: Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism by Rachel MaddowThe Hannah Reads Book Club with
: In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (Feb - Mar)The Kindred Spirits Bookclub with
: Anne of Green Gables books (all 2025)- : Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber (continued)
Paper Knife with
: A Year of Reading Kafka- : Chaucer Reading Challenge (continued)
Pomus Aureus with
: One, No One and a Hundred Thousand by Luigi Pirandello (Feb - Apr)Read the Classics with
: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (all 2025) / Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita LoosReading Revisited with
& : That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis (Feb - Mar)Receipt from the Bookshop with
: Help Wanted by Adelle WaldmanThe Sixty-Minute Book Club with
: Story of your Life by Ted ChiangSleuth Hero Alien with
: The Nameless Restaurant: a cozy cooking fantasy by Tao Wong- & : War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (all 2025) / Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
- : Cities in Flight by James Blish
To All My Darlings with
: Miss MacIntosh, My Darling by Marguerite Young (all 2025)Virginia Woolf Reading Group with
: To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (Feb - Mar)Well-Read Weekend with
: Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë
Thank you
And that’s all from me. Many thanks for subscribing to Footnotes and Tangents and joining our slow reads. And I’ll be back next month with more Endnotes.
Until then, take care and happy reading.
Simon
Thank you to Mimi for letting us experience the joy of all the newness in her world as she starts to explore language, and to you Simon for sharing her through you own love filled eyes and heart. Language is such a magical process and those connections & associations we make shape so much of who we perceived ourself to be 💕
This was such a beautifully written reflection, Simon. The way you capture the evolution of language and identity through Mimi’s eyes is deeply moving. What a wonderful reminder of how much words shape our understanding of ourselves and the spaces we inhabit.