Magpie Books Longview

**Word of the Day: GARDYLOO**

An old Scottish warning yelled before tossing waste out an upstairs window.

Basically: **“LOOK OUT BELOW!”** but grosser.

📚 **Pair it with:** *Pipe Dreams* by Chelsea Wald — a surprisingly fascinating look at toilets, sanitation, and what happens after we flush.

It’s Banned Books Week, which means it’s time for our annual reminder that nobody is forcing you to read a book you don’t like.

You can close it. You can return it. You can complain about it all the way home.

What you don’t get to do is decide nobody else should be allowed to read it.

Libraries and bookstores should contain ideas that challenge us, annoy us, make us uncomfortable and occasionally make us wonder what the hell we just read.

That’s kind of the point.

Read banned books!

Word of the Day: MUBBLE-FUBBLES
(noun)

A state of sadness or low spirits.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me today. I’ve got the mubble-fubbles.”

Sounds considerably more manageable when you call it that.

September 23 was Native American Day.

Native history isn’t just history. Native nations, cultures, languages, and stories are alive, and Indigenous people are still here.

📚 **Recommended reading: *Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee* by Dee Brown** — a history of the American West centered on the experiences of Native peoples during U.S. expansion.

Word of the Day: Omphaloskepsis
noun — Contemplation of one’s belly button.

Finally, a hobby with no startup costs.

Word of the Day: Crapulous
adjective — Feeling ill from eating or drinking too much.

The Victorians really gave us crapulous and we just stopped using it?

Word of the Day: Zugzwang
noun — A situation where you have to make a move, but every possible move makes things worse.

Originally chess. Frequently life.

📚 MAGPIE RECOMMENDS: The Crane Husband by Kelly Barnhill

A mother brings home a new lover. He’s a crane. An actual crane.

Part fairy tale, part horror, this short, strange novel is about family, art, abuse, and a teenage girl trying to hold everything together as her home becomes increasingly dangerous.

Dark, unsettling, and beautifully written.

📚 MAGPIE RECOMMENDS: North Woods by Daniel Mason

One house. Centuries of people passing through it.

Love, murder, ghosts, obsession, and the natural world weave together as the same patch of land quietly witnesses generations come and go.

Today is Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year. It is a day of atonement, but atonement is more than saying you’re sorry. It means looking at the harm that has been done, owning your part in it, making amends where you can, and actually doing something differently.

Anne Frank wrote, “What is done cannot be undone, but one can prevent it happening again.” I keep coming back to that. We are very good at looking backward and saying “never again.” We build memorials, read the books, and shake our heads at the horrors of history. The harder part is recognizing injustice while it is happening and deciding what we are willing to do about it.

Remembering the past means nothing if we refuse to learn from it.

For Yom Kippur, we recommend The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. Read it not just as history, but as a reminder that history was once somebody’s present.

G’mar chatimah tovah to those observing.