Category Archives: First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day: Vandermeer Appreciation Month

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In October I read almost all of Jeff Vandermeer's novels.

I read the Ambergris trilogy:

  • The City Of Saints and Madmen (re-read) - still an incredibly good evocation of place and environment. The city Vandermeer creates in these loosely connected stories is such a full on experience.  You can feel the menacing dampness and the uneasy sense that the mushrooms have more control than anyone realizes.
  • Shriek (first read) - probably my least favorite of his novels, this felt like an extended character introduction that wasn't really needed for the series. Non of the characters really had a goal other than revealing more information about the city.
  • Finch (first read) - now we get a detective story in the fungus-city. Duncan Shriek (from the second book) gets a role that makes sense here, so I guess that made the second book worth it, but this was still a much better book. Finch (the detective) actually has a goal that's not "look at this weird city!" A good finish to the series.

I read the Southern Reach trilogy (and the newly published fourth book) and enjoyed this more than I remembered, these are better books than I had previously given them credit for.

  • Annihilation (re-read)
  • Authority (re-read)
  • Acceptance (re-read)
  • Absolution (first read) - still in the middle of this.

I didn't re-read the Borne series, but I think those books are still my favorite Vandermeer.

Lastly, I read his stand alone book from 2021 that I bought but never actually read before

  • Hummingbird Salamander (first read) - more detective, less fungus. I feel like this book was missing Vandermeer's strength, which is overwhelming the reader with environment (the city in Ambergris, Area X in the Southern Reach novels, the Lab in the Borne series...) and that just wasn't here.  He still writes a good thriller with environmental themes, but this didn't get me as much as the others.

It's always fun to just plow through a bunch of novels on a theme, and I've found a particular joy in re-reading a bunch of novels and series this year.

What did you read this month?

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day – ZZZZZZZZZ

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The theme of my book purchases this month was apparently translated authors from eastern Europe.  I bought two new books:

  • Herscht 07769 by Lazlo Krasznahorkai - After Satantango and Seiobo There Below, I will read any Krasznahorkai that I come across.  I wasn't aware of this book, but came across it in the bookstore, and now it's mine!
  • The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk - I really enjoyed Flights and Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead, so here's another case where I bought this based on the author without much sense of what this book is about.  Kind of cool to have a signed edition from a Nobel Prize winner, though.

My reading slowed down a bit in September, as classes kicked into high gear, but I did read Pnin and it rated very high on the "quiet chuckles to myself per chapter" metric.  Thoroughly enjoyed it, even though reading Nabokov always gives me trust issues with every one of his narrators.

I also read The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera, which won a couple of sci-fi/fantasy awards this year for debut novel.  It was an interesting story, set in south Asia (but an alternate world overlaid on top of it).  Having read this and Rakesfall from Chandrasekera, I find his projects interesting, and I could see him writing something in the future that really puts it all together and blows me away.  These two books didn't quite get there for me, but still worth a look if like this kind of cultural sci-fi/fantasy hybrid genre.

How many z's are in the last name of the authors of the books you read or bought in the last month?

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day: Inconsistency

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At the end of 2017, I read Autumn by Ali Smith and really enjoyed it.  It was the first book of a planned quartet named after each season, and I made a mental note to keep an eye out for the other books in the series.

A few years later, I was in a bookshop in White Bear Lake and I saw they had multiples of the other books in the series - I hadn't gotten around to keeping up with the books, so I had still only read one book and bought another, so I picked up two books from the store and then eventually realized that at this point I had two copies of Winter and no copies of Spring. Understandably, this did not inspire me to finish reading this set of books.

So now it's 2024, and I'm trying to read the books on my shelf, but I still have an incomplete mish-mash of books from this series.  But!  I was in Half-Price Books and Spring was on the shelves, but it was the hardcover, and my other three books were paperback.  The header image gives away my decision, but I did have to take a moment and think about whether the matching set was important, or was a complete set enough for me?

So far, this set hasn't been too off-putting, so I'm happy with my decision.  Now I just have to get around to reading these.

I read one of the books that I bought last month, and bought two more books this month:

Spring by Ali Smith - see above
Pnin by Vladmir Nabokov - see below

I also read two books that have been on my shelves for a while, so it's another month where small progress is being made toward having read most books in my house.

One of those books was The Remembered Part by Rodrigo Fresan.  See the picture above and explain to me why the publisher didn't keep books 2 and 3 of this trilogy consistent in design?  It's fine. I'm trying not to be bothered by it.

Reading this book was an experience.  800 pages that all take place in the mind of the character as they think about literature and life and culture.  It's not an exciting read, and it takes some time to accept the fact that although there are recurring events, there is no plot and there are no answers coming.  Fresan is incredible at keeping countless plates spinning as we cartwheel through the mental carnival of the narrator, and as I got closer and closer to the end I realized that I was going to miss sitting down and spending 30 or 40 pages in the head of the narrator every day.

The book is nominally about memory, but it's also about Dracula and 2001: A Space Odyssey and about fatherhood.  I really enjoyed it, but I am positive that this is a book that is impossible to recommend.  Read the whole trilogy if you want almost 2000 pages of rumination.

For about 200 pages in the middle of the book Fresan goes on a digression about Nabokov, the narrator's favorite writer.  I remember reading an excerpt of Pnin in an issue of The New Yorker that was in my landlady's house way back in grad school and liking it, so inspired a little bit by Fresan, I bought that book as well, and since I'm missing that dense, fully crafted style of The Remembered Part, maybe I can get a shorter shot of it from Nabokov.

What have you read?  What are you about to read?  What book series do you have that don't quite make up a matched set of consistent design or format?

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day: Progress?

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I recently re-discovered my abandoned StoryGraph account, which has been dormant for about two and a half years.  Out of curiosity, I went through the 84 books that I had on my "to-read" list in January of 2021 to see how many I ended up reading since then.  Of the 120 books I have read in the last 30 months, 21 were on that list.  And that feels about right, for every 4 books that I make note of thinking "hey, I might enjoy reading that" I read one of them.  For every 6 books that I actually pick up to read, one of them is something that I've thought about reading before. Most of my reads end up being me grabbing something off a shelf at the library or bookstore that catches my eye in the moment.

Speaking of bookstores, I bought two novels this month at our local bookshop (it was my wife's birthday, so she got a gift card, and that meant that we both ended up in the bookstore and one thing led to another ... and then it turned out that her card only worked for online purchases, so we had to come back later to pick up her book and one thing led to another again ...)

  • Either/Or by Elif Batuman - I really liked The Idiot, so I'm hoping this is also good.
  • It Lasts Forever, and Then It's Over by Anne de Marcken - I saw this book somewhere and it seemed like it was made for me.

I also read three books that had previously been languishing unread on the bookshelves of my house.  I say "on the bookshelves" but most of my recent book purchases are stacked very neatly on our dresser in the bedroom, only books already read get the privilege of being shelved. Anyway, all told, I came out of the month with a net of one less book in my house that I haven't read.  At this rate, I'll have read everything in the house in just a couple of decades or so.

What are you reading?

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day: X

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My family is often teasing me about my penchant for books that are "a surreal puzzle box". (A phrase from a cover blurb on some book I bought that has caught the family's collective imagination). And, if you had to assign one letter to embody that idea, it would have to be X, right? The classic algebraic unknown.

So, it tickled me that I read two different books with that letter as the focus of their title this week. Both were intricate structures and worth reading in my humble estimation.

The Story of X by Sarah Rose Etter - X is the narrator, the unknown is the self and the self is a woman. Sometimes horrifying, sometimes infuriating, sometimes loving and ecstatic.

Biography of X - by Catherine Lacey - X is an artist, the recently deceased spouse of the narrator, the unknown is the other, the other is society. This is an incredibly intricate and layered book, complex and ambitious.

As it is July 1, it has now been exactly 15 years since I finished my PhD research, stopped working 70 hours a week in the lab and started my reading spreadsheet. Time for some book facts!

1,021 books read (not counting re-reads) - 68 books/year

642 books of fiction (novels, novellas, graphic novels)
219 collections (comics, short stories, poetry)
160 non-fiction books

682 physical books (67%)
173 audiobooks
166 e-books

431 women or non-binary authored books (43%)
144 translated works

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day: Adaptations

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Been a while since we had an FMBD post. As I washed my beard on Saturday I found myself wondering whether The Boss’ POTUS biography journey has made it into the hirsute Chief Executive era.

We’ve had some CoC chatter about the new Dune film adaptation. I’ve been watching & enjoying Foundation on Apple TV+, but I’m not familiar with Asimov’s series. The same was true for The Expanse (final season drops on Prime in December) and James A. Corey’s novels. I’ve been meaning to start reading those.

What previously-unadapted* novel or series would you like to see get the (home) cinema treatment? On my film list are: Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We, J. M. G. Le Clézio’s Désert, & Vonnegut’s Player Piano. Eugene Vodolazkin‘s Laurus, Richard Ford’s Canada, & Richard Powers’ The Overstory all seem ripe for a high-quality miniseries treatment.

My current read is Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Committed, which is a follow-up to The Sympathizer.

* We can hold ourselves to English-language adaptations.

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day: Half-Baked or Otherwise

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Lucy Ellmann - author of the fantastic Ducks, Newburyport has an essay collection coming out.

Her publisher live-tweeted one of her essays in which she lists things which are "crap". 257 tweets, and it's fun to find the thing that makes you say "now, hold on."

Anyway, that's as much as I got for reading intro this month. Half-baked crap I tell ya.

What are you reading?

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day – Pretty Good

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It's been quite a while since I've read a book that blew me away. I think the best book I've read this year has been The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald which was a beautiful little book of stubborn characters that I loved. But I read that book back in February, and it's been hard sledding since then for really exciting reading experiences.

Continue reading First Monday Book Day – Pretty Good →

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day – All Unhappy Families

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I started reading Anna Karenina.

I wasn't really planning on it, but Becca Rothfeld invited people to tackle a big long book and have a discussion group with her. Well, I find Rothfeld to be interesting and someone that has a different perspective. A big novel? A group of interesting thoughtful readers? Sign me up!

And then they chose Anna Karenina.

I read the first 10 pages in high school and never really had any inclination to go back to it, but I had recently read that George Saunders book about Russian short stories. And I had enjoyed The Master and Margarita and The Idiot in recent years, so maybe Russian literature could be my thing.

I'm not sure it's my thing.  I'm 550 pages in, I've got 250 to go, and it's a little bit of a slog for me.  The reading group is not quite as interesting of a group as I had hoped (there are some true literature snobs in there - George Saunders is not a serious enough writer for some in this group).  So now I will finish the book this month. There are parts of it that are really really good. I liked the observation someone made about how Tolstoy is pre-Freudian so he could not care less about anyone's backstory or childhood. That tickled me a bit.

Alright, what literature classics have you been accidentally roped into agreeing to read this month? Share it all below.

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day: Ghost Story

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I actually had a long solo drive this past weekend for the first time in a long time. Took the opportunity to listen to the first 5 hours of the audio book of The Upstairs House by Julia Fine.

The narrator in the book has a new baby and an unfinished dissertation on children's literature. She is very ambivalent about both of those things. The result is that Margaret Wise Brown's ghost (author of Goodnight Moon and Runaway Bunny) has moved in upstairs.

There's just a touch of horror, and I'm not exactly sure where the story is going in the final third. I'm almost reminded of Victor LaValle's The Changeling, which is maybe my favorite horror fantasy novel, so that's a good sign.