I was sitting on the steps of our back patio, watching my oldest son take something apart. (He is always taking something apart.) While he worked, he told me:

He is, in all his four-year-old wisdom, right about experiments.

Anchor Texts was an experiment, and it didn’t turn out the way I thought it would—or rather, I, the facilitator, am feeling a different pull than I thought I would.

After reading three of Ann Petry’s novels and playing with how to share my love of close reading and classic literature within The Eclectic Reader, I am ending my experiment. Here are a few takeaways, and a preview of what’s next for my newsletter since this opens a bit of space.

I was thrilled to discover a small group of readers interested in an author deep dive, and I found the quarterly schedule to be quite doable. Quarterly content is also, however, forgettable. I loved connecting each Ann Petry book with JSTOR-sourced articles and placing it in conversation with other novels. This is how I’ve always read books, how I’ve always taught reading, and how I will continue to share books in my newsletter, interconnected with a web of context and comparisons. Though I liked putting resources together, I missed having conversation partners during each readalong. I also found it hard to put energy into growing the Eclectic Reader community while finding my IRL community—I could do the thing or promote the thing or make friends in my town, and it turned out that I didn’t have capacity for doing all of the above, not in the way I wanted. Putting Anchor Texts together in a way that would satisfy my overachieving instinct and increase revenue was simply not available to me, in my current life phase, with very limited energy (see: toddlers).

In the last few months, while I spent more time with my hands in the dirt instead of typing on my keyboard, I finally reached a point of clarity for the direction of The Eclectic Reader, and I knew I would have to cut Anchor Texts in order to make it happen. I’m still going to read Ann Petry’s short story collection this summer, and I’ll leave the Discord group open for the summer so we can check in.

The Anchor Text ethos will still appear in the newsletter via: in depth podcast-form book reviews, more book pairings, and off-the-beaten-path classics and backlist book recommendations for readers who want a little English Lit class, a little entertainment.

More to come after a summer of planting…

The Sunday Collection

• Like every other romance-loving girlie, I got hooked on Off Campus. compared it to the CW shows of the early 00s, and she was spot on. I started watching the first episode, thinking it would be cheesy, bad TV to have on in the background while I worked on newsletters, but it’s actually cheesy-good. You know what I mean? I found the hockey bros to be completely charming, and the drama felt nostalgic—like CW shows, sure, but also like the heightened days of college relationships.

• If you want to spice up your hot dog, brat, or burger bar this summer—or you want something unexpected to add to your chicken (or tuna!) salad, go pick up some pickle salsa from Aldi. Just trust me.

• I am utterly delighted by Theo's current favorite songs. He sings them all the time, and he’s really got a knack for lyrics (I need to watch what I play in the car pretty carefully these days!). Right now, he’s belting Uptown Girl by Billy Joel and That’s the Way It Is by Celine Dion. I asked my husband where on earth Theo heard Celine Dion, and he said they listen to female power ballads on the way to play school sometimes, to give the kid a good dose of culture. Rock on, guys.

• When we aren’t listening to the oldies, we’re enjoying The Mercy Watson series by Kate DiCamillo on audio. I downloaded all six books on a whim, and they’ve come in handy for longer car rides. Theo, like Mercy, loves hot toast with a great deal of butter on it—a new running joke in our house.

• We watched Suffs via PBS Great Performances on YouTube, breaking up the musical into several viewing sessions. It was both inspiring (we can learn so much from history!) and a bit sad (oof, have we learned nothing from history?). I highly recommend it for musical theater and/or history buffs alike.

Anticipated June Book Releases

• Whistler by Ann Patchett (Read, enjoyed, did not love as much as Tom Lake)

• Land by Maggie O’Farrell

• The Missed Connection by Tia Williams

• Pool House by Mary H.K. Choi

• The Daffodil Days by Helen Bain

• The Unicorn Hunters by Katherine Arden

• The Children by Melissa Albert

• Heather by Caitlin Mullen

• Scandal of the Summer by Alexandra Vasti

• Puck by Samantha Allen

• Game of Rogues by Julie Anne Long

• The Summer Girlfriend by Kristina Forest

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