The supper passed at first like most Parisian suppers, in silence, followed by a noise of words which could not be distinguished, then with pleasantries of which most were insipid, with false news, with bad reasoning, a little politics, and much evil speaking; they also discussed new books.
- Voltaire, describing social-network vibes 264 years ago, in Candide
my summer reading project is to finally get to a few of the 19th-century English classics on my shelf. just finished The Tenant of Wildfell Hall; next up: Middlemarch 📚
happy Public Domain Day 2023! time for a Sherlock Holmes/Hercule Poirot/Hardy Boys crossover? I haven’t used Serial Reader for a while, but they already have a bunch of the newly-released works available 📚
just signed up for my friend’s new email newsletter: Lauren O. Reads & Writes. don’t subscribe, too, and definitely don’t enter to win a free book (you’ll hurt my chances) 📚
finished reading The Grieving Brain by Mary-Frances O’Connor 📚 it was interesting to read a book backed by science that supports & explains much of what we’ve learned elsewhere about grief. thinking of grieving as a special kind of learning is a key point
finished Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks and I feel the zealousness of a convert. I read the ebook via the library (hail Libby), and ordered a copy to own this afternoon 📚
really enjoyed The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey, another ToB ‘22 book. a genre-spanning story, it starts from a wild premise & then uses it to dig in to some cool & interesting questions. it was a page-turner; I raced through it 📚
finished Libertie, by Kaitlyn Greenidge, a ToB ‘22 contender. excellent writing and fascinating historical setting (and characters) made up for a story that dragged a bit for me in the last third 📚
I loved Lost & Found: A Memoir, by Kathryn Schulz. I considered this a “grief book”, and it is, but it’s also a love story, and a memoir, and a philosophy of life, as well. her wonderful, clever, & evocative writing shine in a smart structure that I really liked 📚
finished These Precious Days by Ann Patchett 📚 I really enjoyed spending time with these essays from a warm, charming storyteller. haven’t read any of her novels yet, but plan to now. (also glad to own the hardback, with its front-and-back covers)
finished a reread of Anna Burns’ Milkman 📚 I’m still sure some people won’t be into the style, but my god I love this book. quintessential, even, if that’s not too high-flying of that ‘over-the-water’ language
finished Susanna Clark’s Piranesi 📚 what an amazing work of fiction, and what a sui generis world she’s created. its utter bizarreness took me a little while to get into, but it became a page-turner soon enough. a masterpiece
those last couple of books are thanks to my new alternating podcast-for-a-couple-weeks, audiobook-for-a-couple-weeks plan, which is working out great. the nonfiction book (Lafayette) was easier & faster to “binge” through than the short stories (Cleaning Women)
finished Sarah Vowell’s Lafayette in the Somewhat United States, read by the author (plus guest stars), whose style I’ve liked since I first heard her on This American Life. really enjoyed this light, fun dive into some history I didn’t know much about 📚
finished Lucia Berlin’s A Manual for Cleaning Women. her stories have an unusual (to me) level of autobiography to them, and many of these are almost just character sketches, rather than full stories. the writing is fantastic, and this collection was really good 📚
finished Joanne Cacciatore’s Bearing the Unbearable, a beautiful book. ideas about “stretching & strengthening the grief-bearing muscles”, plus kindness projects, stood out. if nothing else, the title encapsulates the experience about as perfectly as anything I’ve heard 📚
I did it: I finished Bruce Tate’s Seven Languages in Seven Weeks. I even took a good-faith stab at the exercises. it would have taken me a damn sight longer than seven weeks, even if I hadn’t set it aside for long periods. an interesting survey of languages and ideas 📚
The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee is really good; I recommend it. 📚 Al Franken also has a good interview with the author on his podcast, which introduces the main ideas of the book. find it wherever you get your podcasts (or on YouTube)
a truly excellent judgement in today’s ToB matchup of James McBride’s Deacon King Kong v. Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown, one where the judge’s opinion is nearly as thoughtful, poignant, and beautiful as the books being discussed:
Reading this book was like getting to see the world in X-ray, where the underlying structure of so many things I’ve spent my life thinking about—human, historical, national—were suddenly at long last made visible.
ahhh, this week’s ToB matches have been back to their usual good level. yesterday saw Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown (which I really liked) knock out Quan Barry’s We Ride Upon Sticks (which I plan to read soon). today’s matchup was a thoughtful judgement of Percival Everett’s Telephone v. Mieko Kawakami’s Breasts and Eggs. I haven’t read either – and don’t plan to – yet I still enjoyed the discussion.
Catching up on a couple of ToB match days, starting with Rumaan Alam’s Leave the World Behind v. Kawai Strong Washburn’s Sharks in the Time of Saviors on Thursday. I read & liked Sharks a lot when I read it for Camp ToB last summer (which it won, thus earning its spot here in the main tournament).
And I don’t say this often, but I started and immediately stopped reading Leave the World Behind. The tone and style were just very very not my thing. Book people talk sometimes about disliking a title so much they want to throw it across the room, and, well, now I know what they mean. But that’s the one that won this round, and so there’s a chance someone will tear it apart in its next matchup.
Though maybe, I learned after reading the snarky, condescending judgement in Friday’s quarterfinal matchup of James McBride’s Deacon King Kong v. Bryan Washington’s Memorial, I wouldn’t enjoy that so much, after all. This judge apparently didn’t care much for either book, which made for a pretty dreary round. The Commentariat had a lot strong opinions, on both sides, of his final criteria:
I think it’s unlikely that these two books will be much read, loved, or discussed in a hundred years… 1920 produced one indispensable masterpiece, Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, and hopefully whichever title takes this year’s Rooster incarnates even a fraction of that book’s invigorating brilliance and enduring virtuosity.
I suppose, as a tie-breaker, such a consideration might be valid, though I tend to agree with those who argued that one’s own reading experience – right now, in the present – is worth more than what imagined future generations will enjoy or be moved by or be inspired by. Not to mention the dubious logic of cherrypicking one masterpiece from a hundred years ago to compare, really, any modern book to. Anyway, it didn’t actually break his tie, as he deems both well below that measure. So I guess he just thought that was clever, or was showing off (as one Commentariat member succinctly put it, “Wow. MFA much?”), or just did it for the lulz.
The good part is that I’m convinced about Deacon King Kong; it’s added to my TBR list. To be clear, that’s thanks to all the folks who really loved it, not this judge finally, grudgingly picked it as the winner. Not the best matchday ever, but I’ll be here for the next one on Monday.
happy Monday, because the ToB is back today: Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain v. Percival Everett’s Telephone 📚 I’m just happy I didn’t read either of these miserable-sounding books. Telephone was published in 3 different versions! Monstrous! I’d have been so mad if I’d read one.
the first week of ToB ended yesterday with another excellent match: Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown v. Raven Leilani’s Luster 📚 I happened to have read both of these; if I had to pick one to advance, I would have picked the same, but they were both fantastic
today’s ToB: Lydia Millet’s A Children’s Bible v. Bryan Washington’s Memorial. 📚 Extra eciting because I’d actually read one of these (A Children’s Bible), which I really enjoyed. its competitor sounds like a well-written and touching book of the type that I’m just not that interested in.
The judgement featured another of my favorite parts of this event: a recognition of similarities between books that on the surface don’t seem remotely similar:
That is why I was so surprised to find, from the first page, how many thematic and stylistic similarities Memorial shares with A Children’s Bible. It, too, is a story of estranged parents and children, told in short, breathing beats…
It’s the natural human impulse to look for patterns, spurred by these oddly (randomly?) paired novels, from which each judge has to pick a “winner”. It’s so crazy, it just [does] work.
first match of the opening round of the Tournament of Books (ToB): James McBride’s Deacon King Kong vs. Agustina Bazterrica’s Tender Is the Flesh. 📚 As is the case with most of the books in the tournament, I haven’t read either of these. Yet that reduces my enjoyment of each day’s rounds not a bit. One main thing I get from the ToB is high-quality additions to my to-be-read (TBR) list. Today, Deacon King Kong (spoiler alert: today’s “winner”) moved a step closer to my list, while Tender is the Flesh earned a permanent ban, a book that is clearly Not For Me, Thank You.
And then the other thing I get from the ToB shone through: the book-clubby beauty of the whole goofy event. I’d read the judge’s well-considered and well-written judgement, which went a long way toward convincing me that a dystopian story of a society that purposefully adopts cannibalism didn’t sound great. And then the very first comment (one of the still-astounding things about the ToB is that the comments are actually good(!)) laid out a case that made me see: well, okay, there’s some merit and some interesting themes to this book. It’s still firmly Not For Me, Thank You, but I got exposure to and a much better appreciation of this book because of this wonderful event.
And I’m glad to see Deacon King Kong advance. It sounds much better to me now than the blurb (or the hideous cover art) led me to think at first, but I’m not sure. Now there will be at least one more head-to-head ToB judgement, and more discussion, to help me to decide.
happy Black History Month! I’m going to only read books by Black authors this month. started the graphic novel The Black Panther Party yesterday (+1 for library ebooks!); others on top of my TBR pile: Leave the World Behind, The Vanishing Half, The Sum of Us 📚
new post: Reading Goals, in which I declare victory on the common “I should read more” resolution
Like many, I’ve long wanted to read more. Even my love of browsing bookstores was getting cramped by the guilty knowledge that I had more books waiting patiently on shelves at home than I would ever get to. But now, at the end of this year, I feel I can claim victory. I did it: I read more.
One boost was the daily reading habit I started last year, which has been great. I set a fifteen minute timer, and don’t allow myself to read that particular book outside the daily dose. This keeps me from cheating and going longer, which I think helps me keep the habit: I know it’s only ever “just” 15 minutes, and done. By a quick review of my Goodreads list, I got through some seventeen books this way in 2020. (Granted, some of those were the shortest and fastest reads – comics and graphic novels. No apologies.)
Being locked down due to the pandemic probably didn’t hurt the amount I was able to sit and read, although switching to full-time remote work did cut down on commute audiobook time.
Book clubs definitely helped. The computer book club I ran (until I stepped down in October) prompted me to get through five books, and the Tournament of Books’ virtual Camp ToB was a fun way to go through six really enjoyable reads that I wouldn’t have picked up on my own. I struggle with book clubs sometimes, resenting the obligation of having to read something, but it’s fun in small doses (and the ToB online community is a surprisingly good one).
I had also set an ambitious Goodreads reading goal for this year: 50 books. And I made it! As mentioned, some of those were quickies, but some were not, e.g., Emma (476 pages), Madame Bovary (411), The Paying Guests (564), and that’s not even getting into those computer books, like Coders at Work (632).
But I’ve decided that the numbers of books, and their page-counts don’t matter. Is this because I participated in a writers’ novel swap group, and so read several full-length novels without even getting credit for them in my Goodreads count? Yes.
Errr, no. No, that’s not it, really. As I said to start, I’ve wanted to read more, and to my own surprise, I’m actually doing it. I enjoy it, and I’m actually prioritizing doing it, and it’s happening. Having a quantifiable goal in Goodreads, and a tracking app that makes a satisfying ding! when I read each day, and following along with a book club, those are all things that helped me build the habit of reading back into my life. I’ll continue with those practices as far as they’re still fun, but the reading is the thing.
P.S. Gretchen Rubin has announced regular, daily reading as her “Happier” podcast’s 2021 goal. Last year they encouraged listeners to walk 20 minutes in ’20; this year their suggestion is to read for 21 minutes in ’21. See her blog post for details, hints, and tips. Maybe I’ll up my daily timer…
finished Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My Troubles Began, by Art Spiegelman 📚
finished Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard today 📚 what a staggering work. lyrically written, much of it more like poetry than prose, her view of nature probing its ruthless violence as much as its unbelievable beauty. I’ll be rereading this for sure. maybe annually
that copy of The City We Became that I ordered the other day from Austin’s beloved BookPeople came today. flipping through, I discovered that it’s a signed copy! there’s something that will never happen when you shop from Amazon 📚
just ordered the first book for this summer’s Camp TOB: The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin. I haven’t done a group book club like this before; little worried that time pressure will make it less fun. but going to give it a shot & read some books I otherwise wouldn’t! 📚
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