Category Archives: First Monday Book Day

Monday Book Day: Re-Reads

December 14, 2015 Daneekas Ghost 80 Comments

Apologies for missing the first Monday.

I finished the Great Vonnegut (Re)-Read of 2015 by finishing his last novel, Timequake, right at the end of November. When I decided to read all of Vonnegut's novels, Timequake was the one that I was most interested in re-reading. I read it in 1997 when it was first published and I was in 10th grade. And I don't think I got it. I had always been perplexed when people have good things to say about the book because I thought it was my least favorite book of his. So, I was very interested in what my reaction would be to it this time around, moreso than any of the other books. (One nice thing about that being that it served as a very nice motivator to keep the project going, I had to get to Timequake to see how it had changed for me).

This time around, I loved it. I'm not going to argue that it's a great novel. It's half of a novel at best. But if you spend time with Vonnegut, especially post-Breakfast of Champions Vonnegut, this book is a near perfect epilogue to his career. Through this whole year I got the perspective that I was missing back in 1997. The payoff to the project was pretty good.

This summer, I got in a friendly argument with my Dad about re-reading books. He refuses to do it, using the "there's too many books I haven't read out there and not nearly enough time to read them all" argument. He could not understand why I would choose to re-read all of Vonnegut's novels or start The Wheel of Time over from the beginning when the final three books started coming out. So I went back and looked through my reading spreadsheets and found that I really don't re-read very much. I feel like that's the majority opinion, most people feel like they don't read enough and so why spend time reading something again? But the effect of my Vonnegut re-read is making me question that a little bit. There are books that I've said I'd like to go back and spend some more time with (2666 is the one that leaps to mind), but I don't know that I ever would have. Now I'm reconsidering a little bit. Maybe that will be a project for a future year. Re-read one book per month that I've wanted to revisit? Could be interesting.

So, do you ever re-read? Never re-read? What books would you revisit if the feeling struck you?

First Monday Book Day

First Monday: Winter Reading List

November 2, 2015 Daneekas Ghost 85 Comments

There was mention of, and support for, a winter reading list recommendation last month.

So here's what we'll do. Recommend a book or two below. At some point, I'll go through and collect all the books, organize by genre (in a very general sense: non-fiction, story collection, graphic novel, etc.) and provide some links in next month's post. That way I've got something to write about for two months instead of just one. Everybody wins!

I'll recommend a couple books, some I've read, and some I'm hoping to get to this winter.

The Dead Mountaineer's Inn by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky.

This is one that I haven't got to yet, but sounds interesting. The Strugatskys are best known for science fiction, but here they tackle the mystery genre (an isolated ski resort, a dead body, a quirky list of suspects... you get it).

Today I am a Book by xTx.

I read this story collection back in August and really enjoyed it. It was the first thing I've really read by xTx and I am in love with her language. The stories were short, the sentences direct, but every time there was something moving just beneath the story. It's the kind of thing that really gets me, every time.

Haints Stay by Colin Winnette.

I can't be recommending books and pass up an opportunity to recommend Winnette, who may well be my favorite author right now. This is a bizarre book. It's an "acid western" that's got murderous transgender cowboys, cannibals, a sharpshooting foster mother out for revenge... everything, really. I read it in about 4 hours.

So, what's on your winter reading list? Or do you have a book that's perfect for someone else's list? Drop them in the LTE's.

How's Infinite Jest going? Everybody found a copy? Initial thoughts?

First Monday Book Day

Infinite Monday

October 5, 2015 Pepper 60 Comments

It seems somehow fitting that a number of us are attempting to read Infinite Jest just as the regular baseball season ends. With the Twins done for the year, we all have oodles of spare time on our hands, right?

Okay, okay, I jest.* I have to confess I don't yet have the book in my hands, but writing this post prompted me to at least order it. I don't know how useful background information is going to be, but I thought I'd at least hit a few main points.

Wallace lived from 1962-2008.** He was born in Ithaca, New York, and spent much of his childhood in Urbana, Illinois. During this time, he became a regionally ranked tennis player. He attended Amherst college and majored in English and philosophy. He went on to get a MFA*** in creative writing from the University of Arizona. His first novel, The Broom of the System, was published in 1987, while he was still in graduate school. Starting in 2002, he taught at Pomona College in Claremont, California.

Wallace began writing Infinite Jest in 1991. "I wanted to do something sad," he said in a 1996 interview**** given shortly after the book was published. "I'd done some funny stuff and some heavy, intellectual stuff, but I'd never done anything sad. And I wanted it not to have a single main character. The other banality would be: I wanted to do something real American, about what it's like to live in America around the millennium."*****

According to Ryan Compton's "Infinite Jest by the Numbers," Wallace used a vocabulary of 20,584 unique words to write the 577,608-word novel.

A quick search revealed that the Internet has no shortage of resources about either DFW or this book. I'm not sure how much I want to delve into these--part of me just wants to encounter the book on its own terms and see where that gets me. But if you're curious (or if I change my mind), here are a few that seem particularly informative.

The Howling Fantods: I have no idea what a fantod is, but this site boasts the following subheader "David Foster Wallace News and Resources Since March 97." The link I provided here will bring you specifically to the Infinite Jest section of the site.

Infinite Jest Wiki: This includes an index for the book along with explanations of key terms

And Like But So: A Character Guide to Infinite Jest: I have a terrible habit of reading only the first couple letters of a character's name and then skipping over the rest. In a novel with a lot of characters, this could pose a problem for me, so this site may be just what I need.

1997 Interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air

*Ouch. That's bad, even for me.
**I'm trying to figure out whether I should mention his death was due to suicide. I don't want it to overshadow everything else, so I guess I'll just acknowledge it here.
***an MFA(?)
****Did you have any idea Salon has been around that long? I'm pretty sure the first I heard of it was in 2000.
*****He apparently also had a thing for footnotes.

First Monday Book Day

Monday Book Day: Sci-Fi and Fantasy Awards

September 14, 2015 Daneekas Ghost 34 Comments

The Hugo awards were passed out this month (or, in most cases, not passed out). And tradition dictates that this is the time that I put together a little online reading list of short fiction based on the various sci-fi award nominees out there.

Hugo Award Nominees and Winners

Nebula Award Nominees

Locus Award Nominees

World Fantasy Award Nominees

Sturgeon Award Nominees

Those represent 12 short fiction awards (two have yet to be handed out, and two were not awarded this year), and 60 different nominated works. My favorites listed below with links where the stories are available online.

NOVELLA (17,500 to 40,000 words)

The Mothers of Voorhisville by Mary Rickert - A whole group of mothers are all pregnant at the same time, and something is very wrong with their children. Or maybe the children are fine and there's something very wrong with the mothers. (Nominated for Nebula and World Fantasy)

We Are All Completely Fine by Daryl Gregory - A support group for the survivors of supernatural violence comes together and tells their stories while realizing their stories aren't over. Not available for free online. (Nominated for Nebula, World Fantasy, Locus, and Sturgeon)

The Regular by Ken Liu - A cyborg detective is enlisted to solve a murder. The anthology this is from (Upgraded) can be got for free in some places (I got it from the publisher but it seems that offer has expired?), or you can purchase it for a few dollars. (Nominated for Nebula, Sturgeon and Locus)

The Lightning Tree by Patrick Rothfuss - I love a good trickster story, and this is that story. Set in the world of the Kingkiller Chronicles, but I wasn't familiar with that and still very much enjoyed it. Unfortunately, another that's not freely available online. (Nominated for Locus)

The Man Who Sold the Moon by Cory Doctorow (Sturgeon Award winner) and Yesterday's Kin by Nancy Kress (Locus and Nebula Award winner) weren't my favorites and they weren't available freely online, so I'll just mention them here.

NOVELLETTE (7,500 to 17,500 words)

The Magician and Laplace's Demon by Tom Crosshill - Can magic exist in a world with AI and total surveillance? (Nominated for Nebula)

A Guide to the Fruits of Hawaii by Alaya Dawn Johnson - Vampires have humans in concentration camps, and one of the human workers in those camps is caught up in the intrigues of the overlords. (Nebula Award Winner)

The Devil in America by Kai Ashante Wilson - Shapeshifters in the antebellum South. (Nominated for Nebula and World Fantasy)

Tough Times All Over by Joe Abercrombie - A package makes its way through the city in the hands of various underground characters. Excerpt here. (Locus Award Winner)

A Year and a Day in Old Theradane by Scott Lynch - A crime caper with witches and wizards. (Nominated for Locus)

SHORT STORY (under 7,500 words)

Jackalope Wives by Ursula Vernon - My favorite story of the year. Native American myth and magic woven into a great story (Nebula Award winner)

Herd Immunity by Tananarive Due - In a plague apocalypse, how can the narrator find a connection with anyone? (Nominated for Sturgeon)

When it Ends, He Catches Her by Eugie Foster - A zombie apocalypse story that's somehow wistful. (Nominated for Nebula and Sturgeon)

Ogres of East Africa by Sofia Samatar - Samatar is quickly becoming one of my favorite writers, this is in an anthology, so not available freely online, but it's very good. (Nominated for Locus)

The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family by Usman Malik (nominated for Nebula)

I Can See Right Through You by Kelly Link (nominated for World Fantasy)

First Monday Book Day

August 3, 2015 Daneekas Ghost 24 Comments

Reading related thoughts:

The Vonnegut re-read has now entered the post-Breakfast of Champions stage where I've read less of the books and they seem to be less well known. I find that I'm more excited to read (or re-read) these.
Read Slapstick in July and it was pretty good. The theme of the secondary family has been more obvious as I read all of these novels back to back and I think this is the biggest example of that theme in his work. I wouldn't put this up there among the best Vonnegut, but I enjoyed it just fine.
Jailbird and Deadeye Dick are up this month. I honestly can't remember if I have ever read Jailbird before, so that will be interesting.
In previous editions of FMBD, I know I've talked about my enjoyment of Two Dollar Radio as an independent publishing house. Well, I got Haints Stay by Colin Winnette from them this month and I tore through it in about 12 hours. It's an "acid western" about two brothers (one who is transgender) that are bounty hunters who find that a boy has appeared in their campsite.It's a violent thing and Winnette is always writes in an unrelenting style (a style that I've loved in everything I've read of his) and I felt like this was my favorite book of his that I've read. It was definitely my favorite July read.

I had heard good things about Wesley Chu's Tao series, so I read that this month as well. From the first book (Lives of Tao - Chu's debut) to the third, you can see him improve as a writer and the whole series is an interesting setup (aliens have been inhabiting select humans since the dawn of history and controlling the development of human civilization). I would say it was reasonably good sci-fi, and worth checking out, but nothing that was groundbreaking.
Next month is the now-somewhat-annual Science Fiction/Fantasy Short Fiction Award post - this year not quite so focused on the Hugo Award, but there's plenty of good stuff to link to and discuss. So mark your calendars?

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day: July

July 7, 2015 Daneekas Ghost 56 Comments

Talking to Ourselves by Andres Neuman is a short novel from the Argentinian author that I read last month. I had read the first novel of his to be translated (Traveler of the Century) a few years ago and that was a huge 600 page novel of ideas. This book is very much the opposite of that, it is short and immediate and has a significant impact.

There are three narrators; Lito, the child, Elena, the mother, and Mario, the father who is dying of cancer, but hiding that fact from his son. All three of the characters are hiding things but the father's illness and approaching death shadows the book throughout. Father and son embark on a cross country trip that for the father is a last chance to create a memory, and for Lito is his first chance to truly enter his father's adult world. All three narrative arcs continue to dance around each other always approaching, but never do they actually connect and find common ground.

It's a book about family and grief and illness. Each of the three narrators is so fully realized and observed by Neuman that the book comes together very well. Neuman has become one of those authors that I will follow and read whatever comes out from him next (a story collection is coming in October, I hear - consider me excited).

That was one of my favorite books I've read in the first half of the year. Hopefully, you all have had similarly great reading experiences this month and we can while away the next few days discussing them.

First Monday Book Day

First Monday (Observed) Book Day

June 8, 2015 Daneekas Ghost 33 Comments

Don't know if there are any William Gibson fans here, but I read his latest book, The Peripheral, this month and thought it was very good. The world building was fantastic, and although I was a little let down by a very tidy ending, I would still rank it among my favorite sci-fi books from the last year or so.

I read Cat's Cradle and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater this month in my Vonnegut re-read project. Cat's Cradle is still pretty great, although it's funny how much I remembered the post-apocalyptic parts of the book considering how little of that there actually is. Mr. Rosewater was not my favorite of his, but it was one of the novels I hadn't read before, so the completist in me is happy to have read it.

I finished The Last Policeman series (The Last Policeman, Countdown City, World of Trouble). Easy books to read, and I liked the setup for the mysteries (society is breaking down as an asteroid will destroy the Earth very soon).

I also finally got around to reading Citizen by Claudia Rankine. It's a powerful book. I was looking for where others posted their thoughts (I know Pepper and CH have read it as well), but didn't immediately find it. It's very much worth a read.

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day: Silkpunk

May 4, 2015 Daneekas Ghost 100 Comments

One of the things that I enjoy about following a lot of the science fiction and fantasy awards is that you get to read great short stories by authors that are getting their first exposure, before they publish a novel. That's how I was introduced to Ken Liu, through his short story "The Paper Menagerie" which was really good. Since then, Liu has been really prolific in the short fiction realm, consistently writing really good stories (a collection of his short fiction is coming out later this year, and I'll probably buy it, even though I've read most of its contents already).

All of this is to say that I was very excited to read his debut novel "The Grace of Kings". It's a fantasy epic that has some steampunk tendencies and a pretty clear basis in Chinese/Asian folklore. This combination has spawned the term "silkpunk" which Liu has talked about here and there (this podcast was a really interesting - and spoiler free - look at the book and the author's approach and viewpoint on fantasy).

I loved the book. It wasn't standard fantasy based around a hero's journey, but jumped right in with a large cast and pulled everything together. It read like the recounting of a legend where various stories were all cast and recast with the same set of characters. It really played to my enjoyment of his short stories, but at the same time it was cohesive. It's long (around 700-800 pages), but it felt like it earned that length - the scope is enormous.

It's the first book in a trilogy, but I think it stands perfectly well on its own. All in all, one of my favorites that I've read this year.

Some short things I read last month:

Reading "Labyrinth" by Amelia Gray and then reading this short piece about the editing process for the story was pretty interesting. Some of the things seem petty and weird, but I find the thought process of an author revising a story that's "finished" really interesting.

Grunion Run by Juliet Escoria. This was my favorite story from her collection, Black Cloud. I read the entire collecion this month in about two sittings. It was good, all the stories were about this short and they all tackled influences (positive and negative) and things that pull at you long after you think you've moved past them. Every story in the collection has a companion video. Here's the one for Grunion Run, and it's weird (and maybe NSFW - language).

Ciaran Berry - For the Birds. I'm not quite finished with Berry's collection, but this poem is one of the many so far that has caught me up in the mix of rustic image and historic allusion. Here's the author reading the poem:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul8Zb2LCJQY

First Monday Book Day

How Not to Read a Book

April 8, 2015 Pepper 67 Comments

In bullet points:

notice Redeployment by Phil Klay has won the National Book Award and decide it’s really something you should read even though you tell yourself you’re not someone who likes books about war
request it from library only to have it ready for pickup months later when you’re already in the middle of another book
not to mention it's the busiest time of the year at work and you’re trying to do at least a little work most evenings
don’t start reading until the day before it’s due
find out that this is one of those books that grabs you by the throat and doesn’t let go
keep reading
receive overdue notice from the library
check library website; see that there are 57 copies and 31 requests, so if you returned it you could probably get it again pretty soon
fear loss of momentum; keep reading
find this Q&A and become even more obsessed with finishing the book
pull out the book while standing on a crowded bus (because this is your only chance to read all day); a guy notices you, stands up, and gestures for you to take his seat; wonder if he is a vet
feel grateful because it really is much easier to read while not trying to avoid falling over every time the bus makes a turn; finish a story about a guy who really wants to find a whore; wonder if the guy would have still given you his seat if he knew it was for that

So what are you reading?

WGOM

Category Archives: First Monday Book Day

Monday Book Day: Re-Reads

First Monday: Winter Reading List

Infinite Monday

Monday Book Day: Sci-Fi and Fantasy Awards

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day: July

First Monday (Observed) Book Day

First Monday Book Day: Silkpunk

How Not to Read a Book

Remodeled basement. Same half-baked taste.