2023 Reading Challenge

[jamieanderson1968]

Just finish book 18
Daniel Weizmann / The Last Songbird (2023). Billed as neo-noir, set in Los Angeles now. I guess it loosely fits that bill. More about a person obsessed with another musician. Enjoyable though tried a little to hard to lean on the neo-noir. More rain fell in LA in this book over a few weeks than probably has fallen there in years.

 

[Selaws]

Book 14: Show Me the Bodies: How We Let Grenfell Happen by Peter Apps (Oneworld Publications, 2022)

I'm sure most of you will know of Grenfell (certainly the Brits amongst us should) and the first that destroyed the building in 2017. Since then there has been a constant barrage of finger pointing, back stabbing, and illegal activities amongst the people that are to blame. It's sickening and a blight on the memories of the 72 people that lost their lives. This book by Peter Apps (Deputy Editor at Inside Housing) compiles years of research into this book, with each chapter being a time related to the tragedy. It follows the moments of the people in the tower during the fire, but also the history leading up to it, the various channels that signed it off, constructed it, approve or denied legislation, etc.

In the nicest way possible this is a horrible read but im glad I read it. The content is so terribly saddening, sickening, and infuriating but I think everyone in the industry (Contractors, Architects, Fire Engineers, Suppliers, Politicians, etc) should read this.

 

[avecigrec]

Book 14
From A Certain Point Of View: The Empire Strikes Back by Various


I very much enjoy these deeper looks into the lives of bit characters and brief moments from the main story. I think my first experience with this kind of storytelling was in a Dragonlance anthology more than half a lifetime ago. This being my favourite Star Wars film, I was quite excited to dig in! As with any anthology of this type, there is a solid mix here of stories I loved, stories that were varying degrees of good, and stories that just didn't excite me all that much - although nothing stood out as truly bad or awful. I think I enjoyed Star Wars: From A Certain Point Of View more consistently as a whole, but this one definitely had a couple of my favourite stories in the series!

 

[ayayrawn]

3. The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie - Been looking for some fantasy that scratches the ASoIaF itch for ages and had this recommended to me. Unfortunately didn't quite do it. Just not as well written or enjoyable to follow. Didn't hate it, but meh.

4. The Complete Stories of Beatrix Potter - Cute.

5. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton - Been listening to this on audiobook for a while, and finally finished. Great stuff. Pretty much 1:1 with the movie, so if you love one, you'll love the other.

6. Stay True by Hua Hsu - This broke my heart and really got to me. It's a memoir about a friend the author connected with in college over music and their identities who was murdered in a car jacking. I also lost a friend to similarly senseless circumstances last year, and really connected with it. Beautifully and vulnerably told. I recommend.

In the middle of Emma by Austen right now. Her stuff is always so pleasant and fun.

Got in kind of a reading rut in the middle of Emma, but I've since gotten back on track. Got into some poetry too!

7. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Owned this and had been meaning to red for years, and finally did. Pretty good, structurally simple, but misleadingly dense. A really sad one, but didn't crush me like some folks said it would. Almost more optimistic in a unique way.

8. The Essential Emily Dickinson. Not much to say, bunch of classics in here.

9. Selected Poems by WIlliam Carlos WIlliams - loved this. Some really evocative stuff.

10. The WIld Iris by Louise Gluck. a pulitizer winning poetry collection from the early 90s. Really really gorgeous. Noticed that Gluck won the Nobel a couple years ago as well, so I should dig into her more.

11. Night Sky With Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong. Another pretty great collection. Haunting.

12. Run Towards the Danger by Sarah Polley. An essay collection by former child actress and recent oscar-winning screenwriter, that is VERY compelling, and beautifully written. SHe's had a lot of rough times over the years, but has come out on top. Really admire her.

13. One Piece vols. 101 & 102 - Again will be reading these til I die.

14. Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton. A stirring and moving graphic novel/memoir about how the author worked for two years in the oil sands in Alberta to pay off her student loans. It's about the trauma she experienced there and is both sympathetic and critical of the blue collar culture that is formed at these places. Highly recommend.

15. An Immense World by Ed Yong. ABout to finish this today. One of the best books of 2022 by the NYT. An in depth dive into animal senses and how we can try and make sense of how animals differently perceive the world around us. Very fascinating and written in a colloquial and fun way.

PHEW. Glad i;ve been able to get my reading on track. Not 100% sure what i'll read next. Been thinking of some Thomas Merton. I've been reading some books on Chopin for a book I'm writing, so may go ahead and finish those next. We'll see.

 

[ranbalam]

I took a little break after Reading Mad Men Carousel, I was trying to stall and read this one on my upcoming vacation but I decided to start it because I was ready for some fiction.

I'm about 40 pages in and like his writing style, it's unique, and hard for me to nail down so far.

 

[jamieanderson1968]

Finished of #19
The Peakcock and the Sparrow by I. S. Berry. Not bad. In the Graeme Greene wheelhouse. I just find it hard to read a book where the protagonist is a terrible person.

 

[jamieanderson1968]

Book # 20 just hit my doorstep in the last hour
Steve Turner - Mud Ride. Been looking forward to this one

 

[Selaws]

Book 15: Playing the Band: The Musical Life of Jon Hiseman by Martyn Hanson (Temple Music, 2010)

This was a behemoth of a book at 450 pages. Its an autobiography of Jon Hiseman, the legendary British drummer that started in jazz (with Mike Taylor, Jack Bruce, New Jazz Orchestra) and moved on to breaking the jazz-rock scene with Colosseum, Tempest, etc. He also built his own studio, Temple Studio, just down the road from where I now live. Its a fantastic read that dips into the life of his wife, Barbara Thompson, as well. Fantastic stuff.

 

[avecigrec]

Book 15
I Was a Punk Before You Were a Punk by Chris Walter


A firsthand look at the Winnipeg hardcore punk scene circa 1979-1983.

I'd read one other Chris Walter book about a decade before this, his biography of the band SNFU, which I'd picked up randomly from a shelf in the communal house I called home at the time. 48 hours later I'd devoured the whole thing. This one took me longer, because parenthood, but was just as engrossing. Chris pulls no punches in his anecdotes or language. I borrowed this one from my buddy, whose dad's band was much more important to the scene than I realized, and is prominently featured throughout (and is a BADASS!)

I'm now more inclined than ever to read more of Walter's stuff (published by his own GFY Press - "Lowbrow lit for the wild at heart") after having read this.

 

[jamieanderson1968]

Book 15
I Was a Punk Before You Were a Punk by Chris Walter
View attachment 175308

A firsthand look at the Winnipeg hardcore punk scene circa 1979-1983.

I'd read one other Chris Walter book about a decade before this, his biography of the band SNFU, which I'd picked up randomly from a shelf in the communal house I called home at the time. 48 hours later I'd devoured the whole thing. This one took me longer, because parenthood, but was just as engrossing. Chris pulls no punches in his anecdotes or language. I borrowed this one from my buddy, whose dad's band was much more important to the scene than I realized, and is prominently featured throughout (and is a BADASS!)

I'm now more inclined than ever to read more of Walter's stuff (published by his own GFY Press - "Lowbrow lit for the wild at heart") after having read this.

 

[avecigrec]

They also feature quite prominently!

 

[Selaws]

Book 16: Joe Harriott: Sketches From Life by Stella Muirhead (DLL Publishing, 2012)
Book 17: Joe Harriott Memorial: A Bio-Discography by Roger Cotterall & Barry Tepperman (Self-Published, 1974)

You could say that I've been on a Joe Harriott binge lately. Both of these publications are relatively short but incredibly detailed. I really wish both of them were 10 times longer.

 

[Bull Shannon]

(but wait there's more! I composed all these reviews before discovering I was bumping up against a character limit):

Book 14: The Tombs of Atuan, by Ursula K. Le Guin

Um...great!

It's taken me several books to warm up to Le Guin, but there is something so simple yet ineffable about her writing. I read A Wizard of Earthsea a few years back and didn't really connect with it. Tombs of Atuan, however, had me hooked from the beginning. Just a simple, effective fable; no notes.

Book 15: Hondo, by Louis L'Amour

I was in an antique store in central Oregon, and nearly every booth had Louis L'Amour paperbacks. I was staying at a friend's farm for a week, so I read this while sitting in an adirondack chair in the middle of a cow pasture. This is L'Amour's first book, which started as a short story, then was expanded into a movie, which was in turn adapted into a full novel by L'Amour.

This reads like a western movie from the 50s; maybe the headstrong female character was bold for her time, and maybe the depiction of the Apache nation was more nuanced than one would expect at the time. It has not aged well in the 70 years since. The plot boils down to "Hondo takes shelter at the ranch of a widowed mother, leaves, then decides to come back because a woman needs a man and a son needs a father." I'll have to see what the other L'Amour I bought is like (I also picked up an Elmore Leonard western which I'm eager to crack).

Book 16: Trust, by Hernan Diaz

Ran into the bookstore for the first time in a while and just pulled some stuff off the shelves. I think this was announced as winning the Pulitzer just a few days before (as well as Stay True, from a previous post in this thread. Read Stay True!). Here's my Goodreads review, but I'll sum it up as the kind of book which promises to upend your expectations and then repeatedly telegraphs its twist. It's not bad, and I'd be curious what others got out of it; I'm open to whatever deeper thematic ideas might be at play, but the story on its face felt really simple and I wonder if much is there once you strip the literary conceit of four conflicting novellas telling the same story - though it's less of a Rashomon than a Where'd You Go Bernadette?.

Book 17: On Blue's Waters, by Gene Wolfe

Back on my bullshit! For those counting we're on book one of The Book of the Short Sun, and the tenth of Wolfe's Solar Cycle. Written in the first person by the third-person author of the Book of the Long Sun, we once again find ourselves wondering who is writing the book, why, and how have they changed between the events they're describing and the writing of said events? It's all typical Gene Wolfe fare, so of course I'm gobbling it up; the prose is better than Long Sun's, so I fell into this one very easily. There's also a deep undercurrent of middle-aged mourning to it.

Book 18: Flow my Tears, The Policeman Said; by Philip K. Dick

I don't know, man. I've read a grip of Dick before; this didn't bring me anything new, while also introducing me to a parade of really unpleasant characters. The premise: a megafamous singer and tv star wakes up one day to find nobody knows who he is. Dick must've been in his "hanging out and doing drugs" phase because many of the scenes are discussions that sound like people hanging out and doing drugs.

Book 19: Just Kids, by Patti Smith

Read this one in the wake of seeing Smith speak/sing on book tour last December and in anticipation of seeing her perform with a band in August. This was a good counterpoint to Please Kill Me, which imo did her dirty; lots of interviews where dudes write her off or sum her up as being really cool for having boobs.

This memoir mainly revolves around Smith's romantic and artistic relationship with the artist/photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. You can feel her love for him deeply in the prose, and while Smith clearly loves poets/poetry, her manner of writing is so simply direct. The lack of sentimentality helps cut right to the feeling.

Picking up this book, I feared I'd feel jealousy for the life of the young artist, or regret that I pivoted away from a life like that; instead I found something so specific to the author's experience and so universal in its feeling that I felt no grudge or chagrin. Just beautiful.

 

[avecigrec]

Book 16
Star Wars: The High Republic - Cataclysm by Lydia Kang


I pick these ones up once they're released in paperback, but this one won't see that edition published until January and I didn't feel like waiting so thank you library! Other than a couple single issue comics set to release tomorrow, this wraps up my Phase Two reading for the High Republic. Great stuff. Very grim and at times gruesome but, most importantly, very well-paced and presented. I look forward to more Lydia Kang Star Wars.

 

[jamieanderson1968]

On to book 23. My target for this year is 26 books and I think I will hit that by Labour Day. I really am amazed at how well reading on the Kobo has regained my focus. No notifications or games to be distracted by, just reading.

David Hepworth / 1971 - Never a Dull Moment.

Music writer looks at the rock watershed year of 1971, month by month. A bit of hagiography, but a lot of shifts in popular music started in 1971 (importance of album sales vs singles, the growth of the megatour etc).

 

[avecigrec]

On to book 23. My target for this year is 26 books and I think I will hit that by Labour Day. I really am amazed at how well reading on the Kobo has regained my focus. No notifications or games to be distracted by, just reading.

David Hepworth / 1971 - Never a Dull Moment.

Music writer looks at the rock watershed year of 1971, month by month. A bit of hagiography, but a lot of shifts in popular music started in 1971 (importance of album sales vs singles, the growth of the megatour etc).
View attachment 176605

My favourite thing about my brief stint with the Sony e-reader a few years back (or over a decade now, jeez) was the lack of needing to physically turn pages, which made it a perfect companion for solo phở outings.

 

[Mr Moore]

June 2023

Book 25: The Agony and the Ecstasy - Irving Stone

Spanning the end of May and the start of June, my family and I had a week-long trip to Italy taking in Pisa, Florence and Rome. As with most of my travels, I like to take up a book that has some connection with the place I'm visiting so, I started with this, a historical biography of Michelangelo. Stone's writing really brings his lead to life and reveals Michelangelo to be so ahead of his time in his attitude to life, work, religion and of course, art. It also does a really good job for the layperson like me of describing the events around Florence, Rome, the rest of Italy and the world beyond at that period in history. A long book and it took me over half the month to complete but worth every minute. Being able to take in some of Michelangelo's works while reading this really helped the two feed into each other and heightened my appreciation for both the book and the art.

Book 26: Case Study - Graeme Macrae Burnet

This was a really fun read. A story told within a story through journals that depict a young woman who thinks a popular practitioner of 'Untherapy', is merely a charlatan and responsible for her sister's suicide. On the face of it, the premise sounds rather bleak but it's a tight little mystery with complex characters and a tidy depiction of '60s London and the anti-psychiatry counterculture.

Book 27: Go Tell It on the Mountain - James Baldwin

My second Baldwin and boy, was this a tough read at times. Utilising an almost Biblical verse structure on occasion, Baldwin's depiction of religion in the African American community is undoubtedly shocking but was rather ironically, preaching to the choir (haha) to a non-believer like myself. Baldwin does a stand-up job of highlighting the gross contradictions and hypocrisies of the ultra-faithful and how much of the good things in life they are prepared to set aside in favour of their faith.

Book 28: The Plot - Jean Hanff Korelitz

Following the above, I felt like I needed something a little lighter on the old grey cells. I plumped for this one which I bought a while back on a whim because the premise sounded intriguing. A down-on-his-luck writer takes up a teaching position to aspiring young writers. Entrusted with a ground-breaking plotline by a contemptible student who he learns years later has died while still unpublished, the teacher decides to steal the plot for himself and becomes an overnight literary sensation. Shortly after however, he receives his first message telling him that the sender knows him to be a thief, a plagiarist. And so the mystery begins. And, all told it was a pretty good, easy read. I suppose the only problem is that 'The Plot' (the one stolen from his student), as it is revealed piecemeal throughout the book, isn't actually that ground-breaking or even unusual. Add to this, the tormentor, the sender of the threatening messages, well, I guessed who it was within a few pages of them being introduced. Still, it was a competently written mystery with a fairly unconventional ending and was ultimately exactly what I was needing to cap the month off on a less taxing note.

 

[ranbalam]

Book 8

I've had this for a couple months, finally getting to it. I started it Thursday and am loving it already.

 

[ayayrawn]

Got in kind of a reading rut in the middle of Emma, but I've since gotten back on track. Got into some poetry too!

7. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Owned this and had been meaning to red for years, and finally did. Pretty good, structurally simple, but misleadingly dense. A really sad one, but didn't crush me like some folks said it would. Almost more optimistic in a unique way.

8. The Essential Emily Dickinson. Not much to say, bunch of classics in here.

9. Selected Poems by WIlliam Carlos WIlliams - loved this. Some really evocative stuff.

10. The WIld Iris by Louise Gluck. a pulitizer winning poetry collection from the early 90s. Really really gorgeous. Noticed that Gluck won the Nobel a couple years ago as well, so I should dig into her more.

11. Night Sky With Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong. Another pretty great collection. Haunting.

12. Run Towards the Danger by Sarah Polley. An essay collection by former child actress and recent oscar-winning screenwriter, that is VERY compelling, and beautifully written. SHe's had a lot of rough times over the years, but has come out on top. Really admire her.

13. One Piece vols. 101 & 102 - Again will be reading these til I die.

14. Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton. A stirring and moving graphic novel/memoir about how the author worked for two years in the oil sands in Alberta to pay off her student loans. It's about the trauma she experienced there and is both sympathetic and critical of the blue collar culture that is formed at these places. Highly recommend.

15. An Immense World by Ed Yong. ABout to finish this today. One of the best books of 2022 by the NYT. An in depth dive into animal senses and how we can try and make sense of how animals differently perceive the world around us. Very fascinating and written in a colloquial and fun way.

PHEW. Glad i;ve been able to get my reading on track. Not 100% sure what i'll read next. Been thinking of some Thomas Merton. I've been reading some books on Chopin for a book I'm writing, so may go ahead and finish those next. We'll see.

16. New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton. @Indymisanthrope I've been planning on the 7 Story Mountain for a while too, but decided on this essay collection. Very compelling! I don't even really consider myself catholic anymore, but I find his way of writing and perspective fascinating.

17. Wayward: Just Another Life to Live by Vashti Bunyan. Lovely, moving memoir from a folk legend (even if she hates the label). Recommend even if you don't know much about her music. She has a great story.

Currently reading through Flannery O'Connor's stories, which are great and very compelling. Looking at Count of Monte Cristo or Brothers Karamazov next as my big/multi-month read for this year.

 

[jamieanderson1968]

It took me a full. year. to read Claire North's The Pursuit of William Abbey. Kind of embarrassing, really. I don't get it; The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August was so good, but this one left me so cold that I had to put it down for months on end (and my compulsive side wouldn't let me start anything else in the meantime). I found myself catching up on lots of TV that I skipped in the new parent haze of 2020-2022. Anyway, it's over now.

This month I've read:

The Unreality of Memory, by Elisa Gabbert: this is a book of essays that came out in early 2020, and it's an incredible read in the aftermath of a pandemic. The first portion of the book focuses primarily on large-scale disasters, how we think about them, how we prepare for them, and how we react to them. It's a fascinating read in its own right, but contextualized with the knowledge that it was released right on the brink of a major global catastrophe makes it all the more interesting. This is the kind of book that is so full of interesting nuggets that you'll be referencing it in casual conversation for months after you've finished reading it. Very readable; highly recommend.

Old Man's War, by John Scalzi: Vacation read. Knocked it out in just over a day, and I can't remember the last time I did that. It's fine.

The Ninth Metal, by Benjamin Percy: So, I don't actually remember downloading this to my Kindle, but I had a vague memory that it was supposed to be a light sci-fi read, which it is. But I was not familiar with Benjamin Percy, so I had a lot fun reading this and occasionally thinking to myself, "Is this a comic book? This reads like the origin story for a superhero. Or a supervillain?" And then, it was. Another short and breezy one. I'll read the sequels.

Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke: y'all weren't kidding a couple of years ago, this is weird and great.

Upgrade, by Blake Crouch: Crouch delivers solid airport reads.

Not sure what's next, but Piranesi has me in the mood for something a little more literary than the low- to middlebrow sandbox I've been playing in.

Jon Scalzi books are great summer/vacation reads. You can finish off a book in one sitting. Love them for long plane flights