2022 Reading Challenge

Book 15:

The Gentle Giant: The Autobiography of Yusef Lateef by Yusef Lateef & Herb Boyd (Morton Books, 2005)

Despite being 355 pages this was actually an incredibly fast read. The text is pretty large and a large portion of the book consists of a detailed discography. However, the autobiography itself is fantastic with lots of interesting anecdotes. I thought I knew quite a lot about Lateef before reading this but I was pleasantly surprised to have been proven wrong! A very interesting musician indeed!

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Book 24: The Pickwick Papers - Charles Dickens

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It’s taken me a good few weeks to get through but it’s been worth it. For my first Dickens I figured I’d go with the first Dickens. It’s very funny and despite being nearly 200 years old the characters are surprisingly familiar (Mr Jingles has to be Russell Brand’s forbear)!
The nature of a novel made up of what were originally written and published as monthly instalments, does at times lead to a somewhat disjointed overall narrative but it’s forgivable and in many ways made it manageable for this modern reader, especially when tackling the old English used.
Looking forward to more Dickens for sure.
 
Book 16:

Jazz: A Guide To The History And Development Of Jazz And Jazz Musicians by Arrigo Pollilo & Edited by Neil Ardley (Paul Hamlyn, 1969)

Although this is a pocketbook it still packs a punch with a fantastic overview. The most interesting bit for me personally is the section on British jazz which is often overlooked. The book itself is split over 160 pages, with sections on the history of jazz, the key players, British Jazz, European Jazz, and a glossary of jazz terms and sub-genres. Interestingly this has the added bonus of being signed by trumpeter Howard McGhee!

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Book 15

Wake - The Hidden History of Women-led Slave Revolts by Rebecca Hill & Hugo Martínez
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A compelling read that is part history and part memoir of the historian. This book looks at the atrocities of slavery and the slave trade itself but also the insidiousness of erasure from history and difficulty and impossibility faced in trying to bring stories back into the light. Despite the graphic novel format this is by no means light or easy reading and yet, despite the heavy subject matter the writing and illustrations are at times poetic.
 
On to book 7. I bought these three yesterday, not sure which one I'll start with. My local store didn't have Knausgaard's My Struggle Book 6, so I will have to pick that up later this summer. They didn't have Murakami's Kafka on the Shore either, but my wife picked up 1Q84, so maybe I'll read that after she's done.

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Book 25: The Paper Palace - Miranda Cowley Heller

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As much as I love tackling the classics, I'm always left yearning something more contemporary after finishing one so being as this one seems to be getting plenty of plaudits, I figured I'd give it a try.
It was alright, a bit of pulp which I have plenty of time for every now and again. A story of complex relationships told over a non-linear timeline with a little dark and secret history between characters to add to the mix. It's nicely written although the flipping from present to past works better for me when either period is given more than a few pages to breathe and certainly the first act was a bit of a struggle in that respect.
That the author is a former SVP and head of drama at HBO comes as no surprise, this is crying out to be Nicole Kidman's next vehicle on [insert streaming service here] with plentiful sex scenes, pithy dialogue and a slightly ambiguous ending. All told, a decent quick read.
 
Book #9

Wallace Stroby "Gone 'Til November" (2009 Minautaur; 2011 paperback edition)

Impressions: Snappy read and well-crafted story set in Florida with a bit of a cliché setting for the end scene.

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Next up, going back to Pelecanos for the second volume of the Nick Stefanos trilogy.

George Pelecanos "Nick's Trip"

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Book 26: Bring up the Bodies - Hilary Mantel

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Wolf Hall was one of my surprise favourite reads of last year as I don’t typically go for historic fiction. This second of the trilogy is equally wonderful, perhaps more so as I’m now familiar with Mantel’s writing style and her characterisations of the main players.
These books are fictionalised portrayals of Thomas Cromwell, a born in the gutter ne’er do well who overcomes adversity to become Henry VIII’s most loyal aide.
These could easily be interpreted as one man’s efforts to get another man laid but the efforts that man goes to affect the church, politics and a whole nation which at the time was struggling to feed its own people.
Having spent the first book paving the way for Anne Boleyn to become Henry’s second wife, Cromwell gets to work annulling the marriage and taking down the men who had mocked his former mentor, Thomas Wolsey following his downfall. The machinations of master strategist Cromwell make for riveting storytelling under Mantel’s pen.
These are books to savour so I don’t intend to tackle the finale right away but I really am looking forward it.
 
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Book 16

Star Wars - Myths & Fables by George Mann
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The cover and interior art by Grant Griffin stole my attention and the concept seemed kind of fun so I grabbed this from the library and have been reading it on my lunch breaks at work over the past couple of weeks. I didn't love this one, but it was an enjoyable enough read. Perhaps I set some unrealistic expectations for myself. It definitely captures a classic storybook myth style with its tales and is something I think would be fun to read with my oldest in another year or three, but something rubbed a bit wrong along the way - a subtle slight dislike for something in the writing but I can't fully put my finger on it. I don't tend to do rated reviews here but in the case of this one, I'd give the art and overall book design a solid 5/5 and the writing about a 3/5.
 
ranbalam said:
On to book 7. I bought these three yesterday, not sure which one I'll start with. My local store didn't have Knausgaard's My Struggle Book 6, so I will have to pick that up later this summer. They didn't have Murakami's Kafka on the Shore either, but my wife picked up 1Q84, so maybe I'll read that after she's done.

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Of the three, I chose Station Eleven for my Book 7 and read that one pretty quickly. I enjoyed it quite a bit...and it wasn't at all what I thought it was going to be. I'll probably watch the HBO series now.

I started Paul Simon - The Life for my Book 8 yesterday...I can already tell I'm going to love this one.
 
Book 23 - The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
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I liked this one, but I didn't love it. I really enjoyed the writing style, especially the repetition of different elements of the story. I think it was interesting after I finished the book to read some of the author Q&A in the back which gave a bit more context. I probably just needed to do a bit more research on Indian history at this time period to get the most out of this one.

My next read will either be Rainbow Milk by Paul Mendez or Cantoras by Carolina de Robertis depending on which one comes in from the library first.
 
Sorry for the massive info dump (I'll try to get more regular about posting as I finish), but here's my reading journey for the last month or so:

Book 10: Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
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Great book, has been on my to-read list for a sinfully long time. I generally like midcentury American writing, especially from expats in Europe, so this was right up my alley. The story concerns a closeted American living in France, and the relationship that develops between himself and an Italian bartender while his fiancee is out of town. It was remarkable to read such an explicitly queer novel; I was expecting subtext and insinuations. Baldwin's excellent with words, and despite being such an insular novel with little incident, it really flew by.

Book 11: Uzumaki by Junji Ito
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I've been an Ito fan for a little bit, mainly enjoying his short stories; the premises are always semi-mundane and sometime cartoonishly preposterous, but get under your skin nonetheless, and the art is Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark-level creepy. A friend lent me this novel, and it's been sitting on my shelf for months; after a bike ride together I resolved to knock it out.

And hey, it's freaking creepy! The premise is that an isolated Japanese town is cursed by the shape of a spiral. This curse manifests in different ways, and the book is basically a series of short stories about some spiral-related horror befalling a person or group of people. The main character and her boyfriend (especially the boyfriend) realize something is wrong with the town, and eventually (after a lot of truly fucked-up occurrences) decide to try and leave. One example of a silly-on-its-face story that really got to me was the snail: a perennially late classmate begins to become even slower and develops a spiral rash on his back. The rash hardens into a shell, and the student eventually turns into a giant snail. The body horror is unsettling, and as the town becomes more isolated and dangerous, people resort to cooking and eating snail people; at one point a group of survivors keep a slowly-transforming friend on a rope and openly discuss plans to eat him once he's all snail.

Good read, really creepy; found myself reading it quickly in order to not have to live with such abject dread.

Book 12: Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion
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Love me some Joan; this is one of the few collections I haven't read. This was for a book club, and I was only halfway through when we met, then finished afterwards. The topic of Didion's political stances came up, as she wrote for the National Review, a pretty conservative publication. So then reading the rest of the title essay, as well as the other essays obliquely criticizing the political turmoil and searching of the 60s, felt interesting. Her writing is always a pleasure, and I really appreciate the way she's able to report without editorializing, yet makes her perspective abundantly clear.

Book 13: Rumi's Gold, Translated by Haleh Liza Gafori
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I'm not much of a poetry person, so this was a departure for me. Rumi was a 13th-century poet from what is now Afghanistan. These poems were introspective and heartfelt; it may have been the translation, but I thought they were remarkably conversant as well as relatably contemporary in subject matter and approach. I've just cracked it every now and then and chewed on a few poems; not the worst way to spend some time.

Book 14: The Claw of the Conciliator by Gene Wolfe
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Part 2 of The Book of the New Sun, I really enjoyed rereading this one. Of the 4 books, this was the one I was most confused by on initial reading; a lot is revealed in a very oblique way, and a lot about the world and the larger plot is explained, mainly in the form of questions or occurrences the narrator doesn't understand and can barely describe. Again, Wolfe's writing is rewarding and humorous; he manages to both create and describe a world in a way that's utterly alien.

And currently, I'm a little over halfway through Anthony Doerr's Cloud Cuckoo Land. So far my feeling is that it isn't bad (it's immensely readable), but it's also missing something for me. I'm trying to keep an open mind, but I'd say my major problem is that, while reviewers describe the book as weaving disparate stories/timelines together in a whole that transcends its parts, I'm still just seeing a book that jumps between three or four unrelated stories with thin thematic ties, and that each story would be immensely shorter if the structure didn't necessitate "ok now we're back in Constantinople, and let me remind you what was happening there when we last left..."
 
I'm up to five read this year. The most recent finished being The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion which was a romantic comedy. The main character was like a fit martial arts version of Sheldon from Big Bang Theory. I saw it on a beach read list and figured I dig romantic comedy movies. It was enjoyable. Quick too, read it in less than a week. I have just started The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep which has been a lot for fun so far.
 
Novel No 7 Dostoevsky „Demons“ from 1873

I've already read this novel in late April/ start of May, but haven't come around to post about it. It was published in 1873, and gave inspiration to many philosophers, especially to Friedrich Nietzsche, who had read the book shortly after its publication.

The novel reminds me a bit of a theatre piece as Dostoevsky presents about 25 people and develops their relations in nearly 900 pages. As in his other novels (I had read „The Karamazov Brothers“, „The Idiot“ and „Crime and Punishment“ before) he's excellent in showing psychological motivation behind his cast's doings.

The plot has reminded me a little bit of Turgenjev's „Fathers and Sons“ that I had read before. In a similiar way Dostoevsky contrasts the generation of the parents and the sons. The two main characters are Nikolaj Stawrogin and Pjotr Stepanovic. On a different level, both can be considered as demons. Pjotr plans to bring about a revoluton in society and forms some kind of terror cell. He adores Nikolaj, whose ideas and behavior have inspired several characters in the novel in different ways, and wants him to be a big leader. Nikolaj though is very much troubled by his own past and his sadistic behavior towards women. On another level, both sons had been neglected by their parents, they had spent a big time of their upbringing abroad, and so the novel also shows the bad results broken families can bring about.

The lecture was exciting and affords devotion due to the many characters. I can recommend it when having a week or two off.



Novel No 8 Mieko Kawakami „Heaven“ from 2009

This short novel by female Japanese writer Mieko Kawakami is about a male and female teenager, who get bullied in school. They form a friendship and meet at a secret place, still it's hard for them to keep it up. The novel describes the very brutal ways in which kids can hurt other kids in quite explicit descriptions. I know so many people, who had been bullied in school, no matter whether in Germany, Russia, Canada or Greece, and how much damage this caused for their lives. The book offers an interesting perspective and is worth reading.

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Novel No 9 Arezu Weitholz „Beinahe Alaska“ (Nearly Alaska) from 2020

Arezu Weitholz is is a German journalist and poemwriter, who also writes songs with several German singers. The short novel is about a female photographer, who is without a partner, kids and who has lost her parents recently. She decides to go on a cruise that is heading towards Alaska. The novel shows her inner conflicts, especially with the other tourists, whose behavior often is driven by superficial small talk. It's an interesting study about social behavior.

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ranbalam said:
I started Paul Simon - The Life for my Book 8 yesterday...I can already tell I'm going to love this one.
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I finished Paul Simon - The Life by Robert Hilburn today, and it was fantastic. Highly recommended.

I plan to start War and Peace for my Book 9 next. The timing is good; I'm still off work for a few more days with Covid quarantine, then in two weeks I'm on an actual vacation.
 
Book 15: Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr
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As I hinted at previously, this one didn't quite click for me. I'm ready to admit that I'm rather picky with my books, and there are plenty of novels I read which I find perfectly competent, even well-written, but still walk away underwhelmed. This was certainly one.

This book takes ~5 different stories/characters over three different time periods, and focuses on how a fictional book titled Cloud Cuckoo Land, written by Diogenes, finds its way into the lives of people living in (and marching to lay siege upon) Constantinople in the 1300s, an aged Greek librarian and a young eco-terrorist with (infuriatingly genericized) mental health issues in 2020, and a young woman in the 22nd century living on a generation ship transporting humanity's last hope to the nearest hospitable planet.

Let me be frank: I felt like I was reading three different (kind of five or six) novellas, snipped and pasted together. Beyond the connecting thread of the fictional novel and the overarching (kinda treacly) theme of "reading brings us together" and some distant (but more geographic than emotional) character connections, the stories are really separate from one another. It felt like I was reading small, incomplete pieces but the interlocking nature of some pieces implied a larger puzzle to understand, when in reality it's just some scraps.

Geez, I sound harsh. It was a quick read, but I found myself pushing through the last 200 pages.
 
Book 24 - Axiom's End - Lindsay Ellis
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I started this one waaaay back in January and it took me until now to finish. That wasn't really the book's fault, I tend to prefer character-driven stories and this one was a lot of plot so I started to get a little bored. It started to pick up in the middle when character development was happening, but it kind of lost me at the end. It kind of read a lot like Hank Green's books so if you like those you could probably also get into this. I own the second book as well but I'm not sure yet if I want to read it or pass them both along to someone who will get more out of them.

Though they get bonus points for their covers, I think this art style is cool and unique among book covers I've seen lately.

Book 25 - Detransition, Baby - Torrey Peters
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On the other hand, this one was more of a character study about these three people who are trying to see if they can make a family. This one was pretty open-ended and none of the characters were super likable but I enjoyed it. I switched to the audiobook partway through for a bit and the narrator was good as well.
 
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