2022 Reading Challenge

Indymisanthrope said:
I'm stalled out on David Burr Gerrard's The Epiphany Machine.

I really hate giving up on a book once I've started it, in the hopes that I might find some redeeming quality in it by the end. But what ends up happening is that I avoid the book for days at a time. I'm still "reading it," but my progress toward my goal slows to a crawl. This is two thumbs-down selections in a row for me. Do you all find it similarly difficult to close a book and put it down forever without finishing it, without giving yourself that closure? How much of a chance do you give it before you make that choice?
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Generally, if I stop a book part way through it tends to lead to a prolonged period of not reading at all so I've been trying really hard not to do that these past few years. I've got lucky too as almost everything I've read, I've enjoyed with only a very few exceptions. I was really tempted with Infinite Jest but I'm glad I didn't because it wasn't until about half way through that I really started enjoying it but I'd already dedicated about 10 days to it by then.
 
Indymisanthrope said:
Do you all find it similarly difficult to close a book and put it down forever without finishing it, without giving yourself that closure? How much of a chance do you give it before you make that choice?
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I've started quite a few books and not finished them over the years, but none lately. A lot of times it's not the book's fault, it's that the timing of my book choice is poor. Now I try to alternate fiction and non-fiction, and try to alternate the types of each I read as well.

One from recent memory (a couple years ago) that I stopped cold was David Byrne - How Music Works. I thought this would be up my alley but found my mind wandering while reading or just trying to get more pages read...that's not really reading for enjoyment at that point. Maybe I'll pick it up again and give it another chance but at this point I'm avoiding it.
 
Indymisanthrope said:
I'm stalled out on David Burr Gerrard's The Epiphany Machine.

I really hate giving up on a book once I've started it, in the hopes that I might find some redeeming quality in it by the end. But what ends up happening is that I avoid the book for days at a time. I'm still "reading it," but my progress toward my goal slows to a crawl. This is two thumbs-down selections in a row for me. Do you all find it similarly difficult to close a book and put it down forever without finishing it, without giving yourself that closure? How much of a chance do you give it before you make that choice?
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I've been in the position a few times where other things have gotten in the way of me reading so I stop halfway through without going back to it. This tended to happen during my university studies when projects and deadlines got in the way. In recent years I made a point of revisiting some of them, with a few more in my read pile. These include:

- Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Temple by Matthew Reilly
- The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (This is one that I plan on reading, I got a few chapters in last time and didnt get chance to finish)
 
Book 12: The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

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Such an amazing book, simply blew me away. This should be required reading for all secondary school kids so we could all have a better understanding of the frailty of our mental health and that of those around us.
Plath perfectly describes the finest of lines between perceived normalcy and insanity, how easily and almost indecipherably one can cross from one side to the other and how it affects her and those around her. One only hopes the treatment of such illnesses has improved since this was written.
I'd often heard of this book as being depressing. I didn't find it depressing, I found it to be eye-opening, real, sad at times, tragic even but it really felt like essential reading, I wish I'd read it much sooner.
 
Indymisanthrope said:
I'm stalled out on David Burr Gerrard's The Epiphany Machine.

I really hate giving up on a book once I've started it, in the hopes that I might find some redeeming quality in it by the end. But what ends up happening is that I avoid the book for days at a time. I'm still "reading it," but my progress toward my goal slows to a crawl. This is two thumbs-down selections in a row for me. Do you all find it similarly difficult to close a book and put it down forever without finishing it, without giving yourself that closure? How much of a chance do you give it before you make that choice?
Click to expand...

No regrets. If I can't connect with something I'm reading, I put it down and move on.

You know I've deep diving into noir/detective novels since the start of the pandemic. I enjoy the simple distraction they provide from the heavy technical reading I do every day. Anyway, along the way I started a well-regarded Joseph Wambaugh novel written in the 80's and he dropped a few N-bombs that didn't feel like they were coming from the point of view of the characters - at least I couldn't tell and the context made me uncomfortable. Add to that the fact that I didn't enjoy his writing. A lot of oblique sarcastic comments that made it difficult to follow what he was actually trying to convey. So I just dropped it and moved on. It happens here and there that I end up picking the wrong book for me. There's no shame in putting it down. We only have so much time after all. Might as well devote it to things you like.
 
Book 8:

Jazz: A Student's and Teacher's Guide by Graham Collier (Cambridge University Press, 1978)

This was a really quick read. Graham Collier was a British bassist responsible for some of the greatest albums and compositions to come out of the country but was also responsible for writing several books. He had a keen interest in musical education and wrote a few books that acted as handbooks for jazz teachers and students, with this being one of them. It's worth noting that he also recorded a couple of albums that were to be specifically listened to in conjunction with these books, with this one ("Jazz") referencing certain tracks as examples of points raised. Back to the book. It can be broken down as a series of sections with the first highlighting 5 key musicians (biographically and within the wider context), the next looking at principles of jazz, then more technical aspects, and finally a substantial appendix. Each chapter ends with a list of suggested reading, suggested listening, details to discuss with the student, and finally, a musical exercise that incorporates the lessons learnt. It was certainly an interesting read but as a non-musician, a large portion of the technical elements went over my head, especially the musical notations.

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Book 2: The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman

So I'm super far behind (I'm in the middle of two other books right now), but this was enjoyable read on an out of town trip and I read 95% on the plane and downtime there.

A nice analysis of the decade and what was important without falling into the trap of nostalgia. Gives a true flavor of what the decade was like and providing context for those living in our modern world. The definition of the 90s as basically being from Niravana's Nevermind to 9/11 does accord with my thoughts of the decade.
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Book 5: Billy Summers by Stephen King

Full disclosure: I listened to the audiobook and didn't finish; I'm calling it after about 2-3 weeks of not listening. I quit about 3/4 of the way through though, so I feel I gave it a fair shake.

I was enjoying the setup at first; it felt like King writing some sort of Lee Childs type novel (even though I've never read any Childs). Billy Summers is an army vet, ex-sniper, who makes his bones as a hired killer (bad guys only, of course). He pretends to be slow-witted so his bosses underestimate him, but is really a smart, sensitive guy with the soul of (you guessed it) an author. Hired for One Last Job, he has to live in a small town incognito (shades of 11/22/63) while he waits for the moment he'll have to kill an inmate in transit to the courthouse. In true King fashion, the small town is charming and Billy ingratiates himself with the locals just in time to have to split town and break their hearts.

Smelling a setup, Billy completes the job but goes into hiding (kinda unclear why he does the job, as he's aware things are pear-shaped pretty early on). This is where the book really stalls out for me; Billy's basically detached from the plot that's been building this whole time, and he starts to focus on his book. Unfortunately his book is probably the least interesting thing (to me) about Billy. Between writing sessions, Billy takes a young woman under his wing, and while I think the story is trying to extend Billy's humanity from living in the small town to how he helps this woman, she's really thinly drawn and basically defined by her trauma.

I wikipedia'd the ending, and indeed Billy tracks down the people who set him up and kills them. I think it'd be interesting if King pumped out like twelve of these, but I have a feeling this is a one-and-done thing. I don't know what to make of this era of King in general; he seems less interested in horror, and while he pins thriller/action/mystery elements in his stories, it sometimes feels like he'd rather write about going fishing in a small town where everyone knows your name. Also it seems Donald Trump has broken the man's brain because he comes up a lot.
 
Book 9:

The Importance of Being Eric Dolphy by Raymond Horricks (D J Costello, 1988)

Another quick read, this one only took me a couple of days to read. It's a relatively short biography but really interesting. Horricks was in contact with Dolphy's parents and had also seen him perform live a few times as well, at one point being at the front row just inches from Dolphy playing in full swing. He clearly has a passion for the avant-garde moment and Dolphy's music in particular. At the end of the book there is an additional section by Ken Rattenbury where he transcribed 3 of Dolphy's performances and provided a write-up. There is also a discography of Dolphy's work by Tom Middleton.

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Book 5: The Family Romanov - Candace Fleming

Historical non-fiction. Not gonna lie, while the history is interesting, this book was really hard to get through. It was written in quite possibly the most boring manner. I wouldn't recommend it.

Book 6: October Mourning - Leslea Newman

This is a collection of poetry about Matthew Shepard. It's one of the most beautiful, heartbreaking things I've ever read. It explores what happened that night through the perspectives of not just Matthew, but of the moon, the fence post, the girlfriends of the murderers, the police officers, the road, etc. Leslea Newman is a member of the LGBTQ community who actually was scheduled to be a guest speaker at his university; this was pre-scheduled, before the murder occurred. She chose to still show up in Wyoming and speak to the students, despite the horrific thing that had just happened. She carried the weight of this even with her for decades before she finally wrote about it. I highly recommend this, regardless if you are a poetry person or not. It's gorgeous.

Book 7: The Long Way Down - Jason Reynolds

Another poetry book, but this is a fictional pose poetry story. The entire story takes place over the course of a minute. The main character's brother has just been shot and killed. He decides to take revenge on the killer. On the elevator ride down from his apartment, he encounters several ghosts from his past. These are also victims of gun violence and gang culture. They tell him what his life will become if he takes this path. It's a really interesting story and it shows how crazy grief can drive you. It's a modern spin on the old 'eye for an eye' tale.
 
Book 4

The Archandroid by Alyssa Favreau
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Okay, so I know I said the last one was my favourite I've read in the 33 1/3 series before but I'm going to have to say it again and say it louder for this one - this is fantastic! A thoroughly rich and detailed analysis of the album that is full of academic goodness without ever once becoming dry and always remaining rooted in joy and the very obvious fandom of the author. In examining the album Alyssa Favreau touches on her own personal experiences, Janelle Monáe's entire career, Afrofuturism, Black Lives Matter, Sun Ra, Star Wars, joyful queerness, art collectives and collaboration, speculative fiction, the concept album, time travel, pop music trends and oh so much more. A very engaged, engaging and entertaining read.
 
Book #5

Sara Blaedel "The Midnight Witness" (2019 Grand Central Publishing, originally published in Denmark in 2004)

Impressions: Well constructed narrative even if one of the major plot twists was very predictable - it's annoying when a twist is so obvious to you and yet the main characters fail to see it. Lots of strong female main characters in this one, which is refreshing for this genre.

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Up next is a Michael Connelly, #5 in the Bosch series, "Trunk Music". These have been a special guilty pleasure of mine, within the general guilty pleasure of reading these types of books in the first place.

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It's been a while since I checked in on this one. Some of you guys are prolific readers, and I've got a growing list of books, which will take me forever to get through. I appreciate it!

As I write this, I realize I've been all over the map:

#4: Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner. The first book I've read of Stegner's and I really loved it. As a Pulitzer winner, not exactly below the radar, but I'd never gotten around to it. It's really two stories: told by an aging historian who is reckoning with health issues and a world changing around him as he researches and recreates his grandmother and grandfather's life settling (mining/irrigating) the western part of the US in the mid-late 19th century. An epic story.

#5: How to Be Perfect by Michael Schur. I needed a change of pace, so why not turn to a quasi-philosophy book by a TV writer? If you don't know him, he created a TV show called The Good Place, and a lot of this dovetails into the findings of that show... from Aristotle to Kant in a jokey/practical kind of way.

#6: Devil House by John Darnielle. The first book I've read by John Darnielle. It follows a true crime writer who is trying to recreate a murder in a town outside of San Fran... but that's a gross simplification. Kind of hard to explain, this book covers a lot of ground. It's well written, but honestly, I'm not sure how I feel about it.

#7: When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut. I went into this one blind after a recommendation from my uncle. Wow. The crux, without giving too much away, is a blend of non-fiction and fiction examining some of humankind's greatest scientific and mathematic discoveries and the reverberations that come as a result. I liked this one quite a bit. It's the type of book that I'll be thinking about for a long time.
 
LeSamourai said:
I'm about to start this one, although it's one of those cases where the original title (A Terrible Verdure) is completely different from the translation.
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Oh wow, I had no idea. That's really interesting. I wonder how much that would've changed my feelings about the book. "When We Cease to Understand the World" definitely gave me some preconceptions...
 
I thought I'd jump on the Murakami train with all of you.

Book 11: The Elephant Vanishes - Haruki Murakami

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I've never read Murakami's short stories before, and I will definitely go back for more. I've heard criticism that a lot of his writing feels the same and that is definitely true, but I think the repetition throughout the stories in this book really added to it. If you couldn't tell by now, I am a fan of Japanese style quirky surrealism and I liked this very much.

The next book on my list is Station Eleven which I have been meaning to pick up for a while, plus I saw that they made it into a tv show (has anyone seen it? is it good?)
 
WhiteDahlias said:
I thought I'd jump on the Murakami train with all of you.

Book 11: The Elephant Vanishes - Haruki Murakami

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I've never read Murakami's short stories before, and I will definitely go back for more. I've heard criticism that a lot of his writing feels the same and that is definitely true, but I think the repetition throughout the stories in this book really added to it. If you couldn't tell by now, I am a fan of Japanese style quirky surrealism and I liked this very much.

The next book on my list is Station Eleven which I have been meaning to pick up for a while, plus I saw that they made it into a tv show (has anyone seen it? is it good?)
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I will have to look out for this one. I have read 2 Murakami's this year having not read any before, and I really enjoy his style.
 
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