Tag: Reading

The Folio – What I Read Mid-March Through April 2024

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It’s All About the Transformation!

Oh, the twitchy weirdness of not blasting this out the second March ended. Of course, I’m the only weirdo policing the time boundaries of my own monthly book roundups. What can I say? I like the snap of “March Reads” better than the soggy “What I Read March Through Mid-April 2024.” 

But here we are, and this is how it’s going to be for a while and now I’m uniquely positioned as a mid-month book yammerer. 

Market niches, folks.

In the last five weeks or so, I’ve completed seven books.

Ahem.

I was set to roll out an unremarkable apologia, a grand harangue about life and reading and such.

Mad busy, that’s me.

A grand self-flogging, agonizing about feeling like a fraud for not being able to “keep up.” As if I’m somehow a slacker in the sacred arts of wordcraft and self-betterment.

I might have even gifted you this.

Then I’d pivot, launch a counter-offensive on myself, get all gooey about the bliss of slow reading and how my own calendar is stuffed to the gills and my body is drafting strike plans.

I had all sides of this covered and an abundance of gems like “my relationship with reading has evolved” and “joy of discovery.” Flowcharts, highfalutin words, and not a few huffs and puffs.

But there’s something to be said for not doing that.

Let’s just get to the books in some particular order or other:

These Precious Days by Ann Patchett

Ann Patchett excels at weaving tales loosely enough to let them breathe but tightly enough to make them work. Patchett’s explorations of love, loss, and friendship are patient, never slow. She once again pulls, surgically, from the everyday and it is glorious to look at how life squiggles under her microscope

I loved “Three Fathers” (which you can read here). There was a section about one of the fathers whose writing talent, perhaps, did not rise to the level of his eagerness, his effort, or his output. It was a good reminder to her (and me) that when we ask people to read our work, we ask them to give us their time. And time is a gift sometimes more precious than feedback.

I adored “A Talk to the Association of Graduate School Deans in the Humanities,” because it was about life in/of the Humanities. Bookstore Ownership! Theater Attendance! Staged readings of Our Town in the living room. Reading! Community! Oh, how I want all of that. Next, life, I suppose.

“Contrary to popular belief, love does not require understanding in order to thrive.” — Ann Patchett

The Best American Essays 2022, Alexander Chee Editor)

This collection is a child of the pandemic. Each essay, no matter the theme, has an undercurrent of wearing a path in the carpet from pacing back and forth. The collection prowls and lies in wait. 

As with any anthology, you will love some pieces more than others, but trust me, something will snag you, whether you’re reading as a fan or a scribe. Sublime craftsmanship. 

From Chee’s introduction on sense memories and writing: “Was the writing wet? Could you feel the rain, the blood, the tears?” 

Standouts for me were “Abusement,” “Ghosts,” and “China Brain.”

You’ve Got a Book in You by Elizabeth Sims

Every month I try to read a craft book or two. Sometimes I come across texts that are lush and gorgeous. Other times I come across things that are practical and fresh. This is more the latter, but there are dabs of the former.

I’m adding this to my I-only-need-to-lean-over-and-grab-it shelf. 

It’s full of solid advice without being simplistic, repetitive, or useless. 

It’s a reminder that we write because we love it. We may not love it all the time, but we need to commit to that love every time.

It’s “LET’S GOOOO!” across 280 pages.

This one hits at the right time. I think a year or so ago, when I thought all was well with my first novel, I’d have scoffed a little. Now I realize what a lifeline it is.

 I especially like her sections on stormwriting.

“Open it up, write deeper, write long, write relaxed, write loose. And never ever worry about your finished product in the midst of all this messy glory.” — Elizabeth Sims

The Witches are Coming by Lindy West

If you loved Shrill, you may very well love this, even though it covers some of the same territory. That’s probably the point, though. Have things really improved in the world since then? Nope.

I laughed and then didn’t – shouldn’t things be better? Especially if we can name them? Are we naming them correctly?

West is brilliant and the through-line in this book is similarly brilliant. She makes it look easy. It is not easy. That’s her gift. 

“So fine, if you insist. This is a witch hunt. We’re witches, and we’re hunting you.” — Lindy West

The Book of Fire by Christy Lefteri

I won this book in a Goodreads Giveaway, and wrote a longer review here, but for the purposes of this blog, here is a bit of that about this gorgeous book:

The novel is a study of grief, trauma, and guilt. The narrative unfolds in two timelines: one during the fire and the other weeks after. Third-person narration in one timeline adds an honest and heartbreaking layer of detachment. 

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk

This is an eco-murder mystery set in a Polish village. I almost quit after reading the first quarter. It’s…a little slow and I am feeling impatient these days. Thank goodness I didn’t quit. 

The crafting of language, especially as this is a translation – and a deft one – kept me riveted. 

Deep respect to translator Antonia Lloyd-Jones.

The main character’s devotion to Blake works nicely in this book that is a warning about the natural world getting revenge upon us all. 

This is apparently a movie or something, although the BBC could have done a hell of a series. Then PBS could have found a home for it nestled amongst its other weird and cozy mystery series.

It is a genre-busting tale told by a character in every sense of the word, where we recognize the cruelty of these men in how they treat her, an aging woman, and how they treat animals in the world around them. So please read this and can we talk about how older women in society are treated? THANK YOU!

Cut and Run by Ben Blacker and Ben Acker

ANY BOOK WITH AN UNWITTING ORGAN DONOR IS FUNNY, RIGHT?

Possibly not, but this one is. Available exclusively as an audiobook on Audible, it nails the art of snappy banter and clever meta-commentary. The cast is made up of the finest in the business. *Waves to Ed Begley Jr.*

What’s been moved to your “Finished” pile?

World Eater: My Favorite Books (and more!) of 2015

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WorldEater-My-Favorite

My time is a wild animal resisting domestication. A casualty of that has been my hard-to-shake belief that reading for pleasure was a luxury during this time and place of motherhood.

To sit still and travel, to be unavailable while fully visible, to ignore the now, to bathe in someone else’s imagination felt and feels decadent, and too often the to-dos make me feel unworthy of such extravagance.

When young, I would devour fiction, consuming worlds at a pace that sometimes meant the beauty of entire swaths of words was sacrificed to gobble plot and character.

But I grew up and responsibilities and goals took over, or were thrust upon me. Read for school. Build a resume for college. Learn for work. Keep reading for work.

When I taught, almost all reading was career-focused: either trade publications or young adult novels that I could share with the students, or whatever the texts I had to teach that year. Even summer was awash in reading for others.

Responsible reading.

Permissible reading.

Work.

I am not proud of this literary lapse.

I suppose it was the heady, panicked sacrifice of “me time,” and then the sacrifice of not sleeping well for years due to early motherhood. I had no focus or energy. Once the kids were asleep, if I sat down, I fell asleep. I could read short pieces in spare moments, but I had no time nor ability to retain any information from a longer piece. Fiction didn’t interest me as I could barely make sense of my own reality.

It was a fallow period.

No wonder I couldn’t write. I wasn’t nourishing myself as a reader, and I decided to stop that nonsense this year. I tiptoed back into it, starting with books I could justify as helping my career or my volunteer work, then I allowed myself to completely sink into books that had no practical application whatsoever other than nudging me in all the right places.

I still struggle to find time to read, mind you. But I insist on thirty minutes a day, minimum. No maximum. No excuses.

Here are some highlights of what I enjoyed reading this year:

  • Nora Ephron’s Crazy Salad and Scribble Scribble: Some Things About Women: A complaint on Goodreads is that this book is dated. I think that’s part of the fascination and charm for me, the ability to see certain parts of feminism in its second wave tween years. She wrote with a voice familiar to me, educated East Coast Jew who is highly amused by the whole rotten thing.
  • Erma Bombeck’s Family – the Ties that Bind and Gag and am in the throes of Forever, Erma (which I am in the final pages of): The later more easily fits into my “sometimes I only have five minutes to read” lifestyle, but both are warm and hilarious and better than almost any “mommy blog” out there.
  • The Second Coming by W.B. Yeats: I never thought I’d be one to read poetry on purpose. It seemed the stuff of English class and academia. What I fool I’ve been.
  • Geek Love: Years after it took the world by storm, I plowed through this book with curiosity and hunger and a bit of reader’s vertigo. Katherine Dunn made me feel wonderfully woozy, a feeling I’ve so far only had when I’ve read John Irving and Chaim Potak.
  • The Ocean at the End of the Lane: not a children’s tale, although a tale of childhood. Magical, lyrical, beautiful. I hated finishing it. I am fully on the Neil Gaiman fan-wagon.

There were other books, some better than others, all worthwhile. I long ago decided life is too short to finish reading a book for pleasure that isn’t. I fortunately had no books this year that I started and quit, although I am admittedly struggling to finish Damon Knight’s classic Creating Short Fiction.

I have more than 200 books on my to-read list. I cannot wait

Not books, but noteworthy:

  • The New Yorker: There is nothing else that murmurs “Lazy Sunday morning with perfectly balanced coffee” as this magazine does.
  • Writer’s Digest: pleasant and more often useful than not.
  • It takes a spectacular show for me not to fall asleep in front of the television. Jon Stewart kept me awake, informed, and impassioned. I mourn heavily the loss of him on my watch list. I do love the man and his team. He may be the reason we finally break down and get HBO.
  • Speaking of HBO, my husband and I are finally watching Season Five of Game of Thrones. We have to wait until it comes out on Amazon prime. It’s a rich show, but not too rich to binge upon. As the kids are enjoying two (!) nights at Grandma and Grandpa’s, we should be done with the whole season by the New Year. Then the wait begins anew.
  • I enjoy Shark Tank for the sheer Americanness of it all. The tackiness. The hopeful. The stories. The earnestness. The money. The math. The occasional “But I worked so hard!” The ingenuity.
  • I watch Walking Dead between my fingers.
  • I Doctor Who and I Star Trek and I Firefly whenever I see it on.
  • Archer makes me laugh without fail.

My movie list has films dating back over a decade.

I think I went to two movies in a theater this year, both children’s movies. Neither worth mentioning.

  • My family loved watching Inside Out and all the Harry Potter movies.
  • I loved: Unbroken, Departures, American Splendor, Imitation Game, Interstellar, The Theory of Everything, The Wolf of Wall Street, Bernie
  • I enjoyed: Wild, Guardians of the Galaxy, Cake, American Sniper, Edge of Tomorrow, Lucy, The Hundred-Foot Journey

Ultimately though, I enjoyed the act of once again being a pleasure-seeking world eater.