One Christmas—one which I will place after the birth of our first child because I didn’t make all my cards by hand with thousands of tiny hand-painted hole-punches and a glue stick, but before the birth of our second, because I wasn’t yet sending around a cynical Family Christmas Letter–I bought a bunch of very pretty Christmas cards that turned out not to be Blank Inside. “Especially at Christmas, it’s always nice to think of you,” the cards read. Before they had been translated from the original language, the sentiment might have brought a tear to my eye. Unless it was Russian—then I wouldn’t have understood, since Ashley Alley only ever taught me to say “one of my breasts hurts.” One hopes—okay, I am the one hoping this—that being understood all the time isn’t the most important thing. For instance, I spent a very long time trying to memorize John 3:16 in Spanish one time from the Gideon Bible in my hotel room, and everyone thought I was talking about using an airplane seat to polish my spittoon. Unless I’m confusing several other useful Spanish phrases. Apologies to Jill, Billy, Samia, Anne, and any other Spanish language mentors I may be leaving out.

English is my Muttersprache, and even in this I think I tend to wander a bit, which is why I was so relieved to hear from a wise and reliable person that the author Stephen King–whose writing on writing, my reliable anonymous source and I agreed, is much less scary than his novels–has promised being misunderstood is okay. It is also a fine segue to the next thing I wanted to discuss, which is the book I haven’t quite finished reading, The Accursed, by Joyce Carol Oates. Stephen King reviewed it for The New York Times, but I will have a different emphasis, and a more curated readership.

I suppose I could have waited until I was finished with it to review this book, but I’m anxious to be known as a person who has a book in the hand that does not have a drink in it, or in the hand that is not putting the drink down for a moment, on a coaster, and tousling a child’s hair to soothe that child, or, more likely, to replace an unruly lock. There—now that I’ve used a word like lock, you will know that I am not making up the thing about reading a book. On second thought, I don’t think I’m going to write an entire review. You can read Stephen King’s review, if you enjoy spoilers, but I think I’d prefer you were surprised. Here is a taste: Woodrow Wilson has a stomach pump and despises Grover Cleveland, whose wife is a glamor puss! Anyone might be a vampire. Upton Sinclair is trying to join forces with Jack London. Why? Talk about a meat-eater! If you have finished this book, shhh! Alles hat ein Ende, nur die Wurst hat zwei.