Issue 121: My Brain on Books

Journal pages, quotes, and thoughts from Nova Scotia House by Charlie Porter

I picked up Nova Scotia House by Charlie Porter after a recommendation from my friend

Charlee Brooks

—who has never steered me wrong—and when I saw that

Nic Marna

and

billie black

had also read and loved it, I moved it to the top of my stack. I had a feeling it would be good, but I didn’t expect it to hit me the way it did. I found myself emotionally caught off guard—in part because the book is so rooted in love and care, even in the face of grief and loss. Before I knew it, I was journaling through it in real time—trying to hold onto something I knew was precious — both in subject and in form.

I scribbled on a loose scrap of paper mid-read and later taped it into my notebook like evidence: something had already begun. This post isn’t a review—it’s a record of that unfolding. A behind-the-scenes look at my brain on books.

May 5, 2025

The life-giving properties of a good relationship. How it continues to feed and nourish you even after for whatever reason it is over. Allowing yourself to be loved and taken care of... To turn the page on things that do not make sense.

What it must feel like to be in a relationship with a person who is not well and dying. Trying to be present, be OK... but still every joke, every line, everything you exchange carries so much meaning.

That was the first note. No journal nearby, so I wrote it on a random sheet of paper. I didn’t know yet how much the book would come to mean to me—but I already needed to write.

Undated, May 2025

It’s been a few days since I read this book and it really stayed with me. It was obviously so sad to follow such a doomed love story but at the same time, it was fascinating to read about the love and care people have needed to invest into creating a life of meaning and community despite disease, despite lack of care and concern from governments and others, despite prejudice.

That grief and care braided together—that’s what stayed with me.

This book has made me think a lot about friendship and chosen family, about the community we create for ourselves. It’s also given me a lot to think about whether I feel I have enough of THAT in my life right now. Are we in community with people enough? Are we isolated more than we actually think we are?

It’s the kind of book that makes you take inventory of your own life—not in a performative, "I’m going to change everything" way, but in a reflective, heart-check sort of way.

There’s a passage in the book I had to copy out:

Michael had met an architect in America who was thinking about the lives us queers lived, how our queerness was spatial, that we didn’t want to live in a fucking home for straight people. We needed a different way of being. It was a different use of space, different priorities, what mattered was sharing, community. It’s what we try and do in this space now, my dear Johnny.

That hit me so hard.

May 12, 2025

I ordered a copy of the book for Chris. It really made me think of our time at Sewanee, so together, so creative. My distinct memory of that time was that we were really encouraging each other to make work and share it with the world.

That time of mutual adoration, of creative bravery—it felt like its own kind of queer space. Even though we didn’t have that language for it then.

He now runs a design studio with his husband, I think, and DJs and puts on events and invites creative people to share their story and their craft at these magical dinners. I feel so proud of him for staying the course and feel so sad that for a while I let the desire to grow up take me off my own path—but cannot help but celebrate the fact that I am back on track, doing what my younger self was so intuitively drawn to.

Yes. That.

Themes That Emerged

This is the list I jotted down after reflecting on all my notes. Not exhaustive, but the ones that felt most alive to me:

• True love

• Freedom within committed relationships

• Doomed love

• Love in the good times and the bad, in sickness and in health

• The HIV/AIDS crisis

• Queer love

• Queer spaces

• Chosen family, intentional community

• Friendship

May 13, 2025

This journal entry was a little different. It was a list.

Jerry’s Favorite Music:
– Menergy
– I’m So Hot for You
– Love Pains
– So Many Men
– Megatron Man
– Handsome Man
– Right on Target
– I’m a Man
– I’m Coming Out
– Telling You
– Body Strong

I’ve been slowly listening through this playlist on walks and errands. It’s a surprisingly moving way to stay in the world of the book without re-reading it. A portable kind of memory.

I also copied a few passages into my commonplace book. I’ve started thinking of this notebook as my “Rumi Journal”—a place to collect ideas and language I hope will mean something to her one day. Quotes she might stumble across when she’s feeling lost, or bored, or heartbroken. Here are a few I saved for her:

I was in a field of happiness, I was terrified, I hid my terror, Jerry knew I was terrified, Jerry knew I was hiding it, he was the same. It was unbearable, that these could exist together, happiness and the terror.

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If the edges are tidy you don't need to care about the rest, said Jerry.¹

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If I needed money, I washed dishes. And that way I learned how people lived and how people survived, what they lived through, what they would accept, how you could be.

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Settled down, the total opposite of my life with Jerry. He ignited me, he gave me the world.

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We live with our wounds. They never close.

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We don’t know what we are doing but we know why we want to try.

This is my full post on how I approach my commonplace journal:

Issue 107: Commonplace journaling for mere mortals

After all that—notes, quotes, playlists—I logged the book in my reading log. Just the title and the author, neat at the bottom of the page. For anyone curious about book journaling or note-taking, I truly believe an analogue reading log is one of the most manageable, deceptively simple, and surprisingly emotional practices you can keep.

Just writing down the title and author—at the very bottom of that page—caught me off guard. I burst into tears. I think it was my brain registering that my time with the book (for now) was over… and my heart just couldn’t take it.

A sure sign I had loved it.

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🤓 Questions for you:

• How do you journal about the books you read?

• What’s the last quote you saved—just for yourself or maybe for someone you love?

• Have you ever known you loved a book because it made you reach for your journal?

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1. I laughed out loud. We really do need to do some yard work and I will definitely be testing this tip.