Making Friends Can Be Murder by Kathleen West

Listen up, folks. There's a new Kathleen West novel in town.  This is her fourth book and my new favorite.  Before I get into the reasons I love it so, let's all have a moment of respectful silence to honor this author who writes novels while simultaneously teaching our nation's youth full time.   This is no easy feat. As we all know, I can barely get a paragraph on this blog consistently during the school year.  But this isn't time for regrets and recriminations about my lack of focus.  It's time for celebrating Making Friends Can Be Murder by Kathleen West.  

Now, let's get to the point of the matter.  Why do I like book #4 so much?  Using a bulleted list, I'll now provide my reasons.

Making Friends Can Be Murder...

* has a fun quirky PREMISE.  Women named Sarah Jones work to figure out who killed another woman named Sarah Jones, but there's other stuff happening they don't know about, so they sleuth along and get the job done together after a slew of twisty turns.

* is a PAGE TURNER.  How do some writers create books that grab hold and don't let go?  We may never know, but I read this book in 2 days.  When I wasn't reading it, I was thinking about when I could get back to reading it.  

*  is a MYSTERY with some ROMANCE on the side.  BONUS! I love romance and I don't care who knows it.

*  is refreshingly NON-AGEIST. Not only does the book feature strong, smart women characters, all the Sarah Joneses are different ages. Not super typical in books about women who are not in the same family.  The age differences make for some funny conversations and text threads, but the way they support one another is also absolutely endearing.

* is set in marvelous MINNEAPOLIS, one of our greatest American cities.  You know how Anne Tyler sets all her books in Baltimore, where she lives?  Well, come to find out, KC sets all her books in her home town of Minneapolis and references to key landmarks feature importantly throughout the book.  

There are other reasons I love the book, but we'll stop there because I don't like to spend a lot of time writing these blog posts, but if you feel like reading Making Friends Can Be Murder, you definitely should!  

 

The Museum of A and A

We’re having a heat wave here in America’s Heartland.  I don’t know about you, but extreme heat makes me both sleepy and short of breath. To avoid the tragedy of heat stroke, I’m visiting various museums in this vibrant and charming town of ours.

The City on the River exhibit at The Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology explores the culture of the people who lived at Angel Mounds in Southern Indiana from 1100 to 1450 or thereabouts.  No one is positive why these people left their busy city on the Ohio, but they did. Lucky for us, an IU professor was the principal archaeologist at Angel Mounds, so the museum has an impressive collection of artifacts. The museum took care to include Indigenous artists and historians of today in the curation of the exhibit. 

Between 2 and 3 thousand people lived in this city which was built using sophisticated geometric and astronomic principles. In addition to building mounds, the people grew crops and made a boatload of pottery.  They traded far and wide using river transport. 

To tell you the honest truth, I already knew a lot of the information in the exhibit because I’ve been teaching about this time in prehistoric Indiana for years now and have done quite a bit of my own research, but I predict that you, who may not know as much as I do, will learn a thing or two.  You should visit the museum if you feel like it. 

The Indoor Recess

 Break is rolling along nicely.  No complaints.  I'm doing a lot of walking, reading, writing, weeding, and watching of the Mets.  

Here's a short story I wrote at the Writer's Conference.  It needs more revision, but I'll just leave it here until it's ready to work with me again.  It's a fictionalized account of an indoor recess episode from the past.  We were supposed to write something with "tension and transformation."  I did my best and now I'm going to forget the rest. You should read it if you feel like it.

Indoor Recess

They speed walk across the room to nab the best materials, the prime locations.

I down the final section of my orange and put my lunch box back in my tote.  Why is this happening? 3rd day in a row.  It’s not even raining that hard right now.

Finn and Keesha fill solo cups with water. They will watercolor a bunch of pictures they’ll neglect to take home.  Brad and Cora and Sheldon nab the basket of popsicle sticks and masking tape so they can tape sticks together.  Emma and her posse huddle behind the iPad cart with UNO.  Chess, Mancala, Sorry. Set.  Let the games begin. 

Doesn’t take long for Gage to start growling and balling his fists.  Turns out he likes to play SORRY a different way than Leah and Marta do.  They’re standing firm and he’s fixing to escalate the growling, so I lure him away with poster board and fancy markers.

Henry reads Dog Man at his desk.  Should he be interacting more?  Anna complains about April rolling her eyes at her.  No patience with those 2.  Not getting sucked in this time.

Vance chases after Richard in a high speed game of tag. I put the kibosh on that right away. No thank you. We’re not running.    

It’s so loud.  Why does Ian scream?  Ellie’s ear is right next to his mouth.  

Can’t find the poem for this afternoon.  Xeroxed copies yesterday.  Put them down in a good place so I wouldn’t lose them.  Story of my life.  I run next door to grab a copy.  Surprise surprise Mandy’s classroom is quiet.  Kids speaking at normal volumes. Mandy is at her organized desk grading papers.  Getting stuff done.  Maybe if I kept my area cleaner I wouldn’t have these problems.

With a copy of the poem in hand I race to the copier. That one teacher is copying massive packets, hogging the machine as usual.  

I'll have to write the poem on a chart paper.  It won’t be as good.  I like them to have their own copies, but too bad for me.  Next time, be organized.  My head hurts a bit because of jaw clenching.  I sidle over to the teacher closet to grab a few ibuprofen.  On the shelf I see the noise cancelling headphones I use for emergencies. 

Not crazy about wearing these because I look like a freak, but I clamp them on my head.  5 minutes left.

I can barely hear the screams now.  These things are miracles. 

I start writing the poem with colorful markers.  I love this poem. 

If I give us all 5 extra minutes I can get this done. Ten more likely.  Maybe I can add stars and moons to jazz it up a bit.  This is actually looking quite nice. 

What is purple?

Time is purple

Just before night….

The Writing Conference 2025

 First off.  I'm sorry, BLOG.  I know I've ignored and discounted you yet again.  Please forgive me. You were never far from my thoughts.  I promise to do better. 

Now on to my topic of the day.  Lynda Barry came to Bloomington this week to teach a class and give a lecture for the IU Writing Conference.  I signed up at once.  Love her even more now if that's even possible. She made us draw pictures with our eyes closed and gave us some ideas for generating stories.  She said we were all a bunch of badasses.  High praise indeed. 

I've been going to afternoon classes about fiction, nonfiction and poetry  (Clink these links to find out more about my terrific teachers). 

 My cool classmates have also been a ton o' fun. Why do I avoid meeting new people? My isolationist personality proves to be a  mystery to us all time and time again. 

Speaking of mysteries, I'm writing a poem for my poetry homework this morning.  I don't write poems, but maybe I do now.  We may never know.  Poet Janan Alexandra read a Ross Gay poem. Ode to the Flute.  We wrote it down and then picked a line that stood out to us.  I chose the line "nothing was explained."  This is the poem I'm working on right now that starts with Ross Gay's line.

nothing is explained

in this cabinet of curiosities

you’re on your own, kid

who left this here?

this plastic frog atop the hot sauce bottle

can it be mine now?

baby stares at his dancing hand

does the hand also notice his baby?

is this poem good or bad?

rocks are hurled

answered with flash bang grenades

riddle me this Batman

It is what it is?

Is it what it is?

nothing is explained