{After a decade, Ismitje gives up trying to recombine the phrase "So What Are You Reading" into new and cogent combinations.) A novella - and a very good, quite original one - to start the year: Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone's Hugo Award winning This is How You Lose the Time War. At heart, it's about two warriors (or maybe warrior-goddesses) in opposing armies fighting for their future win out, via battles both straightforward and non-traditional. They're the best of their respective sides, and they begin leaving letters for each other - first to boast, then because they are lonely, then because they fall in love. And the letters have to be very cleverly hidden in truly remarkable ways, because to be communicating with the enemy means their death. A fantastic start to 2023's reading; I hope the ending is as good as the beginning and middle sections. I checked it out from the library but have ordered a copy to re-read, and have Mrs. Ismitje read too.
Barely in under the 2022, but . . . From Fire By Water: My Journey to the Catholic Faith, an interesting conversion narrative by a guy whose politics strike me as rather ghastly, Sohrab Ahmari. It's not going to make it into my Autobiography class next fall, but it might work in the Religious Studies class on religious autobiography.
I was hesitant about this one: The version of public library (by Scottish author Ali Smith) I checked out from, well, my local public library has the whole title in lower case script, and when that is done unironically, I usually ken that the book is "too important" for the likes of me, that one has to be more literary minded and understand way more about literature than I do. And there's definitely elements of that here. For one thing, the organizational framework - an original short story from Smith followed by a testimonial from an author friend of hers about the role of public libraries in their lives/society - but the stories (sort of linked via some role for reading or books or language) have no real connection. I think the target audience would understand this better than I. For another, some of the stories are about great figures in literature or poetry with which I am less familiar than probably necessary for full appreciation. But I still enjoyed much of it, one story in particular. I did not know it was about a real person until the end; its subject is Scottish poet Olive Fraser. It ends with a few of her poems, and one of them blew me away especially because of what I had just learned about her in the story.
Moby-Dick, or The Whale - Herman Melville "What you take for the White Whale’s malice is only his awkwardness." I read almost all of this in December, but did not finish the last 30 pages until New Year's Day. So this goes on the 2023 list.
A Life of Jesus by the Catholic Japanese novelist Shusaku Endo, whose novel Silence I'll be teaching in a bit more than a month.
American Sirens: The Incredible Story of the Black Men Who Became America's First Paramedics, which tells about how "first responders" came to mean something other than untrained guys with stretchers and a big van, but rather well trained people who could actually help struggling people and in many, many cases save lives. Most interesting to me... this started in Pittsburgh, specifically the Hill District, in the late 60s, early 70s, well told by former paramedic Kevin Hazzard.
So I started two novels, both the product of the impulse borrowing session (I am about out of these books and will be more purposeful through May). The first is bright orange and called Processed Cheese, so you can probably guess the two reasons it caught my eye. I absolutely hated the twenty or so pages I read. Loathed the characters, didn't appreciate the humor, just ugh. Didn't want to spend any more time with it and that was that. And it's by an author in Stephen Wright who has a couple of books considered classics - but I think this one is intentionally abrasive in a way that will alienate as many people as it impresses (and I imagine there are some to whom both those things will apply). The other is a thriller called Two Nights in Lisbon by a guy who has (apparently) become one of the top thriller writers. I spent a month in Lisbon once upon a long time ago, so the title caught my eye. And it was definitely one of those propulsive thrillers that makes for the ideal airport book - and a fun escapist one here. Some political intrigue, a high profile serial rapist getting comeuppance, and a decent revenge story. No real mystery where it is headed but the journey was fun.
I am going to peruse some of our older threads, see who posted then and is still active on the site, and invite them back. Such as @Val1 for example. We know you still read Val!
Finished a collection of essays by Kameron Hurley called The Geek Feminist Revolution. I read a lot of sci fi and some fantasy too, and have enjoyed the genre for most of my life (whilst other genres come in and out of what I like to read). As representation in these genres of people and characters from across the panoply of humanity (and beyond) increased, it never bothered me - a good story being a good story - but it massively threatened a group of white male authors and readers. And lots of writers - women and queer and people of color and different nationalities and combinations thereof plus more - bore the ire of those who were threatened. Particularly people actively calling out the bullshit, including Kameron Hurley. And so her essays are particularly insightful. They're a mix of essays (some originally blog posts) about the business, about public appearances, about her day job, and my favorite which are about specific movies, books, authors, or the like. The most horrifying ones are about hate spewed hither and yon but most specifically on the internet.
Valiant Ambition by Nathaniel Philbrick. It's the second in a trilogy about the American Revolution. It deals with the relationship between Washington and Arnold. So far, so good.
Novelist as a Vocation, a series of essays that read is if they're transcribed lectures by a novelist whose novels I may actually read one day, Haruki Murakami.
Finished The Turn-Away Study, which was about 80% as depressing as I thought it would be. A lady from the neighborhood book club remembered my Ruth Bader Ginsburg Christmas tree topper from when I hosted in December, and lent me Dinners with Ruth by Nina Totenberg. I read the introduction and that was enough. Now I've started My Antonia by Willa Cather. "Alone, I should never have found the garden...and I felt very little interest in it when I got there. I wanted to walk straight on through the red grass and over the edge of the world, which could not be very far away." I lived out in western Kansas for two years, and I'm pretty sure that if you climb up on your roof and look off into the distance on a clear day, you can see the Earth curve. It's hard to explain why I love that never-ending flatness.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I haven't lived where they earth was flat for half my life, but having grown up in west-central Illinois, I dig it a lot more than most. Thomas Merton, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and the Protection of All Beings a 105 page book that is mostly letters exchanged between the two subjects, an author who is probably the most famous American Trappist monk in history who died relatively young, and another who is probably the most famous American bookstore owner who died a little more than a year ago just short of the age of 102. Interesting that pretty muchnall the Beat Generation read and appreciated the Catholic Merton, and Merton read and dug all the Beats. I managed to learn a half dozen things about this particular overlapping circle that I didn't know, which surprised me a bit given that they both are main teaching areas, so mad props to author Bill Morgan
That's Lubbock Texas in a nutshell. The problem is that you have to make sure the wind isn't a steady 30mph and gusting up to 60mph or you'll get blown all the way to Kansas or Oklahoma depending on which way it's blowing.
Finished the tenth of the Billy Boyle books, The White Ghost. Unlike the others in the series, this one is set in the Pacific Theater in a fun plot about a murder where a suspect is JFK, with subplots about Coast Watchers and the PT program. It's interesting to read a novel where JFK is decidedly not sympathetic.
I decided to bite the bullet and read the Rick Perlstein books. I went to the local library to grab Nixonland, but they didn't have it. They had The Invisible Bridge, so I checked it out. It said they had Reaganland, but that was only on CD. CD! The only CD player I have right now is in my Honda Fit! So.... I got Reaganland transferred over from the main library, and now I have 1800 pages of history to plow through. I'm about 200 in. Then I guess I'll get to Nixonland and Before the Storm soon. Should keep me busy for a few months.
Radical Hope: Ethics in the Age of Cultural Devastation, an interpretation of the last pre-reservation-era Crow chief Plenty Coups and his approach to leading his people into the future after their traditional way of life vanished. Jonathan Lear's book is one of the most interesting works by a philosopher I've read in quite awhile. A philosophy prof (who happens to be a Crow) at my college recommended it because it helps him think about the implications of climate change.
Finished Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. Now reading . . . And Call Me Conrad [This Immortal] by Roger Zelazny.
I dearly loved watching (and re-watching) "Band of Brothers," but the achievements and heroism of that company of soldiers neither made me ignorant of the complexity of our involvement in WW2 nor led me to think we were eternally better than other countries because that group was laudable. But according to Elizabeth Samet in Looking for the Good War: American Amnesia and the Violent Pursuit of Happiness the kind of hagiographic media such as "Band of Brothers" has effectively created a misguided belief in American Exceptionalism that has and continues to damage our approach to foreign policy and, especially, conflict. The opening chapter on how complex GI (and non-military citizens) views of the war were during the war years is illuminating but, for someone who has read a lot of history of the era, not surprising. So the novel part is how she parses popular coverage (news mags, tracking veteran deaths, "Saving Private Ryan," "Band of Brothers," much more) - excoriates it really - and considers it the logical culmination of our post-WW2 approach to the "retroactive goodness/morality/righteousness" of the war. Most of the examples come from the 90s and onward though. Ultimately, her thesis is that this is actively harmful to American approaches to the rest of the world, and that I don't see proven in the book. She proves we do it - idealize that past - but that it is the font of our missteps, hubris, and the like, that I don't see.
All About Me: My Remarkable Life in Show Business, a pretty funny, breezy memoir by giant of mid-to late 20th century comedy Mel Brooks.
Is this a Library of America collection? The title sounds like it, but the book is a different design.
The Life of Pi by Yann Martel. It's a book published in 2001. It was made into a film. Unusual story. It's a well regarded book.
I've been reading an autobiography chock full of so many anecdotes about being a sportsperson/advocate - the first female to be one really - that I wish it was a series of essays instead. It's Billie Jean King's All In. I know how much my mother's generation could have benefited from King's activism, which may have started in tennis but was important in helping with Title IX as well.