Tag Archives: books

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day: Ali Smith

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I did it.  I read the full Seasonal Quartet by Ali Smith last month.  And then I realized that I enjoyed her writing so much, that I read a bunch of her other books too.  She is a writer that is perfectly in my sweet spot of wordplay and art and invention.  I read 7 of her novels in March, and I truly enjoyed every single one.

Ali Smith books read last month with my star ratings: Not a bad one in the bunch.

  • Autumn (5 out of 5)
  • Winter (4.5 out of 5)
  • Spring (5 out of 5)
  • Summer (4.5 out of 5)
  • Gliff (4 out of 5)
  • Companion Piece (4.5 out of 5)
  • How to be Both (5 out of 5)

I have to compliment my past self for deciding to keep buying books by authors that I enjoy even though I don't always read them right away.  In the past year I've done a deep dive into Jeff Vandermeer (October), N. K. Jemisin (January) and now Ali Smith (March) just because I had a bunch of their books un-read on my bookshelf.  I got to revisit the books of theirs that I liked in the past and add on more reading experiences.  It's a good way to do it.

Not sure that I have a real goal in mind for reading in April.  It's the end of the semester, so I'll probably just end up reading whatever comes across my path without a real plan.

Currently, I'm reading Worry by Alexandra Tanner - I just started it, but it's supposed to be witty and fun.

Which author would you dedicate a month or two of your reading to if you had the chance?

Books Read in March:

"You Dreamed of Empires" was a real trip of a book - the meeting of Moctezuma and Cortes imagined through a hazy mushroom trip.  I've read two books of Enrigue's (both translated by Natasha Wimmer) and both have been surreal and captivating.

Also, Natasha Wimmer is becoming a must-read translator for me, her hits/misses ratio is spectacular. She's done Bolaño, Enrigue, Nona Fernández - all great.  I see that she has also tranlated a Fresán book, which I now pretty much have to read.

I did not enjoy my first experience reading Kathy Acker.  No more of that for me, thanks.

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day: Seasonal

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I've mentioned before that I have been on a very slowly progressing odyssey to acquire the entire Seasonal Quartet by Ali Smith.  To recap: in 2017 I read Autumn and loved it.  I noted that she was writing additional books as follow ups to that and resolved to read those other books as well.

Time passed.

In 2019, I bought Winter, the second book in the series, I noted that Spring was coming later that year and that Summer would be out shortly after that.  I resolved to read all three books once they were out and available.

Time passed.

In 2021, I was in a bookshop in White Bear Lake and noticed that they had all four books of the Seasonal Quartet available.  Being unprepared, I misremembered my previous purchases and bought Winter and Summer. Upon returning home I discovered that I now had two copies of Winter and zero copies of Spring. I resolved to buy the missing book and start reading the series.

Time passed.

In 2024, I was in a used bookshop and found a copy of Spring! The series, now complete, I just needed to set aside some time to read all four books. In September, I posted, "Now I just have to get around to reading these."

Between September and now, I listened to a podcast episode of Across the Pond with an interview of Ali Smith about her new book, Gliff, It is a wonderful interview and it reminded me of everything I loved about Autumn and so I resolved two things.

  1. March of 2025 would be the month that I read the entire Seasonal Quartet (I started re-reading Autumn on March 1, and I still love it)
  2. I went out and bought Gliff, and I resolved to read that one and its companion novel Glyph when that one comes out, I'll just have to keep an eye out for it, hopefully it takes less than 8 years to follow through on this one.

All the books I read in February:

 

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day: Inheritance

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Spent most of January reading N.K. Jemisin's Inheritance trilogy.

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms - This was a re-read, but it was still really good. I still remembered so many of these characters even after 8 years between readings. Jemisin does a really great job in this series of writing gods that are almost human, but not quite.

The Broken Kingdoms - I was pretty pleased that this didn't just pick up where the first book left off.  Another cool expansion of the idea of gods and humans interacting, but not quite as amazing as book 1.

The Kingdom of Gods - I don't know what I think of this at this point.  In the moment of reading it, I felt like so much of the plot depended on new rules that the reader had no way of anticipating, but the farther I get from it, the more I appreciate it as a conclusion of the trilogy.  Not a book to read on its own, I guess, but one that fits the overall arc of the three books.

The Awakened Kingdom - (novella) - a fun little conclusion, but nowhere near the weight of the first three books.  It was fine.

Jemisin is really good in the longer novel-length stories.  I read her short story collection, How Long Till Black Future Month?, and the best stories read like short treatments of longer novels (and in multiple cases - they are exactly that - the plot of Broken Earth is there in one story, the plot of the Dreamblood books in another, and she keeps coming back to the ideas in the Great Cities series across multiple stories. I haven't yet regretted picking up a Jemisin novel, and this month did nothing to change that.

All the books I read in January:

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So, which N.K. Jemisin series are you going to start in February?

Alternate question: What are you reading?

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day: Gift

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I ordered two books, but got three because the publisher lost my order, then realized that they never sent it, and sent a third book as an apology.

As we enter gift-giving season, what's the book you're giving your friends/ family?   Alternatively, what's the book you're dropping hints about wanting someone else to buy for you?

For my mom's birthday (this past weekend), I got her Ædnan by Linnea Axelsson, because she loves winter and Scandinavia and indigenous stories, so this seemed like a slam dunk.

I'm excited to read the fifth Stormlight book that comes out this week, and I'd like to get to the new James S. A. Corey series at some point as well (The Mercy of Gods came out in August, but I haven't got to it yet), so those would probably make good gifts for me.

 

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: 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.

First Monday Book Day

Always Look a Gift Book in the Pages?

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All right, all right, so I won't win any awards here for best post title. But it's a new year and we're going to have a first book Monday on the first Monday of the first month, gosh darn it!

So did you give books as holiday gifts? Did you get any books?

I got Braiding Sweetgrass, which I read last year and adored. So why get a book I already read? Because it was that good. And because there's a special new hardcover edition with a new introduction and--gasp!--deckled edges. *Swoon*

The other book I received couldn't be more different, though it's still a work of nonfiction: HRH: So Many Thoughts on Royal Style by Elizabeth Holmes. I've followed Ms. Holmes's IG account for a while, and I'm a fan of the way she does close readings of the sartorial choices of the royals. I haven't started this one yet, but I feel like it'll be a nice distraction when I'm ready to dive in.

How bookish were your holidays?

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Post On A Tuesday – Minnesota Authors

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It just so happens that I am finishing my third consecutive book by a Minnesota author. It wasn't intentional, and one of them doesn't even really count, but it gave me the idea for this topic. Still, discuss whatever you want for books... this is largely just a place holder for the content that comes in the LTEs.

Briefly, my MN Books:

The Girl Who Drank The Moon - Kelly Barnhill - Young Adult fantasy literature. Newberry medal winner. It was good. Very lyrical in its language, which was quite enjoyable. That said, Aquinas read it and put his finger squarely on the problem: there isn't really a climax. The book is all build and rising tension, and then it reaches the climax, and it just sort of happens, without taking any real time or space or challenge. That aside, I highly recommend this one, because the build and rising tension and world building and lyrical writing is all fantastic.

Sharks In The Time Of Saviors - By Kawai Strong Washburn - I found this book because Kawai and I used to be in a writer's group together back in D.C. Apparently he started working on this novel shortly after leaving that group, so I never got to see any of the first work for it, but I read a lot of his other stuff, and it was really good writing. His descriptions are excellent, and really bring a world alive. He moved to MN a few years ago, after having lived in CA, and before that D.C., and Hawaii before that. This book is really a Hawaii book, not a Minnesota book, but I'm calling him a MN author now, because I can. Anyway, check this one out. It's a bit of magical realism, heavy on the realism, and about halfway through the book switches in a way I did not see coming, and that I resented a bit at first, but, ultimately came to peace with. Which, I think, was kind of the point. A very very worthy read.

The Master Butcher's Singing Club - Louis Erdrich - I've read a few Erdrich novels over the years, though I rarely know much about them before I pick them up. The strength of her reputation is enough to convince me to give them a chance. This was one I picked up for 25 cents at a library sale or something like that, and it sat on my nightstand for maybe a year before I decided to give it a go. I'm so glad I did. It's historical fiction (naturally), set in North Dakota post-WWI, and follows the lives of a German immigrant and another woman who was from the town where this is set. What strikes me is how much reading this book has been like getting to know real people. The characters are so fully human, so well-rounded, that as I'm writing this it is just now occurring to me that they are fictitious, because they occupy a space in my brain where they seem so real. I don't know that I've had that experience in reading for a while... too many science fiction/fantasy settings that prevent that, or authors who maybe aren't quite at the level that Erdrich is? Either way... wow.

Alright, other MN authors? What are you reading? What are you looking forward to? So on and so forth. Books, go now: