Category Archives: First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day

Agenbite of inwit

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After my projection into the lofty aither with Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, brennschluss was inevitable and I finally finished what was probably the toughest, chewiest piece of literature I have ever feasted on.

In the beginning, I was looking up all of the obscure references, phrases, and people and not making much progress.  The dude at the beer cave posited that the first twenty pages were intentionally written in such a manner as to keep people from reading any further.

In advance of the denouement of GR, I ordered another endurance read, Ulysses by James Joyce, and have just embarked on that journey.

Seriously, Dedalus.  I'm stony.  Hurry out to your school kip and bring us back some money.  Today the bards must drink and junket.  Ireland expects that every man this day will do his duty.

So, Citizens, what are you reading?

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day: Nothing Ventured

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This book has been sitting on my shelf for almost a year, silently rebuking me. I finally pulled it out two weeks ago, in anticipation of our spring break-go-look-at-socal-colleges road trip. I'm not very deep in (only ~120 pages), but I'm pretty impressed.

R. Scott Bakker is a canuckian and (gasp!) earned both a B.A. and an M.A. in Literature from Western Ontario. He also spent some time in a Ph.D. program in philosophy at Vandy. But apparently all that learnin' hasn't prevented him from creating something weird and wonderful. This is the first in an extensive, and lauded, series of swords-and-sorcery fantasy, but with a high degree of inventiveness and "literate"-ness. The first trilogy goes by the Prince of Nothing moniker (originally planned as a single book, then expanded and expanded as so often seems to happen).

I'm not far enough in to really know whether there are any compelling female characters; I've only "met" one named female so far in the narrative (teh Repository tells me that she will become prominent). So I'm a little nervous that things will decay into cliche, but hopeful that the hype will bear up. Certainly, the sophistication of the writing and storycraft is far ahead of anything that Robert Jordan achieved in The Wheel of Time, although it maybe lacks the swashbuckle of that epic series. This doesn't (yet) have the grit and realism of George R.R.R.R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones. I might put it in a class with Dune, actually, for the scope, vision, and pacing. I'm looking forward to getting in deep.

What are you reading?

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day: MN Book Awards Edition

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The Minnesota Book Awards took place last Saturday evening. It was amazing to be part of a gathering of nearly one thousand writers and other book people—I was struck by what a strong literary community our state has. I thought it might be fun to highlight a few of the winning books. For the full list, see here.  Continue reading First Monday Book Day: MN Book Awards Edition →

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day: It’s Not Just for Mondays Anymore

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Pepper posted a couple months ago  "I want to be a person who reads poetry, but the truth is that I'm not."  and I can kind of identify with that.  I like to occasionally pick up a poetry collection, but I find that it takes a different kind of appreciation than novels or even short stories.  In most collections I've read, there's two or three poems that stick out but I find it hard to take in the book as a whole.  When I read poetry I'm reminded of a quote from this article about people's responses to a live poetry reading.

We’re introduced to poetry as it relates to the concept of the rhyme at a young age. We all read and loved Shel Silverstein and Dr. Seuss and to us, that’s what poetry was. Then, when we encounter it later in high school or college, we learn that rhyming is bad and so are clichés. This new poetry is hard to understand, and we still love Shell Silverstein.

I like that idea and the thought behind it.

With all that said, this past month I read Brink a collection by Shannah Compton.  And while I think I still ran up against the same issues that I usually do when reading poetry, I enjoyed a lot of the poems and a lot of the lines within those poems.  My favorite was "Critical Animal Studies", in particular the last four lines.

Critical Animal Studies

Let us creep apart from them.
Let us be eternal cynics who despise
things like polo and expatriate accents.
Except, I will continue to say dishabille
as scantily as I envision it, whatever rules
we make, alluding again and again
to the porcelain lamp I flick on and off
in my elliptical dream. Let us welcome
the wounding of our structures, their division
into parcels of turned-away desire.
Then let us take down all the fences,
position the floodlights to capture
the glory of the dark procession
as our creatures stumble free.

Share what you've been reading this month below, or maybe share a poem you've enjoyed.

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day: Food for Thought

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Late last year I admitted to myself that I was in a reading rut. I'd been reading history almost exclusively for two years as I plowed my way through coursework. I had read a ton of great books, but had ceased enjoying them. I was overdue for a change of pace before I burnt myself out. So I wrote a Book of Face post asking for suggestions of good graphic novels or comic book series, thinking those were about as far removed from academic history as possible. I hadn't picked up a work in either genre since I read Persepolis in 2007 or so, and it seemed like time was ripe. I got a ton of good suggestions, made up a list, and started reading. Not everything I've read has been great, but one book emulsified a hilarious concept and captivating execution without breaking: Chew, Vol. 1: Taster's Choice, which collects the first five issues of the comic book series of the same name.

The premise of Chew is brilliant: Tony Chu is a detective, but not just any detective. Chu has a special power: he is a cibopath, a taste psychic. Give Chu something to eat and he knows, from soup to nuts, everything about it (provided the evidence is fresh enough). As you might expect, this rapidly becomes a source of great humor and (for unseasoned readers) more than a little queasiness.

Thanks to a deadly avian flu pandemic, chicken has been outlawed in Tony Chu's America. Because nothing tastes like chicken, a healthy black market for the real thing springs up. Chu quickly rises beyond his initial assignment, finding himself drafted into the FDA's special crimes unit, an agency with (near as I can tell), the combined powers of the FBI, DEA, and Homeland Security. The mystery Chu is investigating quickly goes pear-shaped when his brother (a chef) becomes entangled.

Sometimes great concepts only enjoy half-baked execution, but the world of Chew is consistently crisp. The artwork is effervescent, but smoothly shifts to a darker register when things get unsavory. Chu's partner is described as "the love child of Orson Welles and a grizzly bear," and displays infectious zest for his work.

I've read several other reviews of this book, and not one has mentioned the character names. A small thing, perhaps, but they amuse.

Like Malört, Chew might not be to every reader's taste. Some might find the humor cloying, or might find the premise too gut-churning to continue. To me, however, Chew is positively rib-tickling.

What books have you been devouring?

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Bookday: Baby It’s Cold In Space

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Mailing it in, kids. Yes, I read a book (almost two!).

Alastair Reynolds is best known for his Revelation Space space-operatic universe of books. I wasn't ready to invest myself in that fully, so I opted to dip my toe in instead with a paperback collection of short stories, Galactic North.

This was just right for my current attention span, and the techno-babble content was intriguing. Reynolds' Conjoiners reminded me vaguely of both the Borg and Joe Haldeman's Forever Peace. Lots of interesting themes. But the most striking part of this set of stories is their horror aspects. Make no mistake, Alastair Reynolds is an accomplished horror writer. One story ("Grafenwalder's Bestiary") was very Poe-esque in its vibe, for example (think: "Tell-Tale Heart").

So I scratched two itches at once, getting some worthy scifi juju and some righteous macabre wrapped in a single package.

What are you reading?

First Monday Book Day

Not First Monday Book Day: Maker-Breakers

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[copied and pasted from the Cuppa, per CH's pleadings]

also, and I know it's not First Monday, so I should probably save this for another three weeks for when I don't have a book post to offer, but I've seen this floating around the Bookface and it looks fun.

Books That Made You Who You Are ~
Instructions: In your status line, list 10 books that have stayed with you in some way. Don't take more than a few minutes and don't think too hard - they don't have to be ‘right’ or ‘great’ works, just the ones that have touched you.

Continue reading Not First Monday Book Day: Maker-Breakers →

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day: A Pox On Me

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I just finished a week off, for which I'm appropriately thankful. I can't wait to see what kind of mess the office is in.... Nah, I'm sure everything is fine. I work for the gubmint, after all.

Even with the week off, I didn't get much reading done. I blame HBO's free weekend, or something. Truth be told, I'm still trying to finish The Black Count (highly recommended).

But for the sake of this feature, I started something new last night: Jennifer Lee Carrell's The Speckled Monster: A Historical Tale of Battling Smallpox.

I'm only a chapter in, so it is a bit premature to be assessing. My main fear is that the author is trying to hard to story-ify the history. Whereas Tom Reiss's The Black Count manages to tell an engaging story while clearly maintaining a popular historian's quasi-scholarly edge, Carrell's book (or the first chapter, at least) swings much further into literary territory, striving to read more like a novel.

That said, others have praised her book for historical and medical accuracy. So, she's got that going for her. I'll see how far I get.

What are you reading?

First Monday Book Day

How do you read?

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ebook

Once upon a time, a book was, to quote my friend Merriam-Webster, "a set of printed sheets of paper that are held together inside a cover." Of course now we can read books on phones, tablet computers, or dedicated e-reading devices (Kindle, Nook, Kobo, etc.). I've recently been curious about how the nation reads--both how you prefer to read and how you actually read. If you use some kind of electronic contraption for reading, do  you use it for all of your reading or only some? Continue reading How do you read? →

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Reading Day: Links and Stories

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That's right, reading day. I haven't read a book in a two months. Having all of our books still packed makes it difficult to find the few I haven't yet read and more difficult still to contribute to DG's book exchange (see, still haven't forgotten).

Instead, I have been chipping away at the 3626 pages in Tor's short story bundle. 828 pages in and I discovered one thing: I detest short stories that are actually excerpts of books. Fortunately, after reading more about each book, I found that none of them interest me much. Still, it's frustrating to pulled into a story only to have it abruptly end. For the actual short stories, they have been mostly good. I'm not used to constantly having to figure out the world in which the story is set, so that has been a bit challenging. Not a bad thing, but different from what I am used to doing.

Along with many short stories is something else I have wanted to include here previously: links to longer-form writing on the web. Unfortunately, I don't read many in a month and the ones I do read I forget to save the link. Therefore, what follows is what I did remember to record over the past year along with some notes from each. Some of these are "long" in the twitter sense; you could read them in a few minutes. I just didn't want my list to be even shorter.

Continue reading First Monday Reading Day: Links and Stories →