July 2024 books read

  • The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath – graphic novel by I. N. J. Culbard based on the H. P. Lovecraft novella, 2020; plus the original novella, posthumously published in 1943. I liked the Moebius-like illustrations, and realized I never had read the book – there’s so much Lovecraft! Interestingly weird but long.
  • The Invisible Hour – Alice Hoffman, 2023. A friend mentioned that it was set in Western Massachusetts, and I’d enjoyed the other Hoffmans I read a long time ago. This was good-not-great, but did prompt me to suggest The Scarlet Letter for a future Great Books choice.
  • Summer – Ali Smith, 2020. The last of her season quartet, for the Second Monday book group. Quotes TBD.
  • Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body – Neil Shubin, 2009. Nature/Enviro. Quotes TBD.
  • The Leopard – Giuseppe Lampedusa, 1958. For Great Books – quotes pulled, TBD – and also for the Mass Center for the Book July challenge, “A book by an author born outside of the United States.” My one-sentence submission, which doesn’t do it justice, was: “A wonderfully vivid and thought-provoking novel of the Risorgimento in Sicily.”
  • Moby-Dick; or, The Whale – Herman Melville, 1851. Re-read for the Amherst slow read group, and therefore I enjoyed a book that I love so, so much more! Quotes pulled and merged with the ones from Great Books in 2018, TBD.
  • In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife – Sebastian Junger, 2024. I listened to his interview on Sean Illing’s podcast (The Gray Area) and gulped it down as soon as my turn came on Overdrive. I don’t buy the afterlife speculations, personally, but it’s an incredibly compelling story, and I’ve always enjoyed Junger’s writing.
  • Chaser: Unlocking the Genius of the Dog Who Knows a Thousand Words – John W. Pilley with Hilary Hinzmann, 2013. Jonathan brought this home from his volunteer gig sorting donated books for the League of Women Voters, correctly assuming that I would love it. I already knew the basics of Chaser’s story – that she knew a thousand toys by name and could infer that a new word would refer to the one she hadn’t seen before – but the details were wonderful.
  • The Woodrow Wilson Dime – Jack Finney, 1968. Not his greatest, belaboring the “getting tired of spouse, looking for novelty” subplot he often uses, but the alternate timeline is fun.
  • The Bear Who Wasn’t – Frank Tashlin, 1946. New York Review Children’s Collection reprint, and they have great taste. A bear emerges from hibernation into the factory that was built over his cave, and nobody believes he’s a bear. The illustrations are much more interesting than the text – most of them are embedded here, but my favorites are missing.
  • The Book That Made Me – ed. Judith Ridge, 2016. I’m a sucker for anything in this genre (collections of essays about books). Not a particularly well-done version, as a number of the contributors didn’t stick to the brief, but fascinating because it’s Australian and many of the books recommended are unfamiliar to me. Lots more for the infinite TBR pile!

Skimmed

  • Utopia Parkway: The Life and Work of Joseph Cornell – Deborah Solomon, 1997. I only intended to dip into this briefly (I needed to look up a citation for my mother’s essays), but it was so interesting I checked it out and kept it around for months. I read at least half; it’s a very good biography and a fascinating analysis of the ways Cornell became a key part of the New York arts scene.
  • World as Lover, World as Self – Joanna Macy, 1991. I liked a couple of the quotes, which I’ve found collected online, as well as the breathing through exercise, the Great Ball of Merit, and the idea of being “in league” with “the stones and the beasts of the field, and the sun that rises and the stars revolving in the sky” (adapted from Job 5:23). I learned about the Sarvodaya movement and was reminded of The Council of All Beings – I probably heard about that through a Whole Earth publication, and I would love to participate in one someday.

Short story

  • Sally Rooney’s “Opening Theory” in The New Yorker‘s Fiction issue really grabbed me – it works on so many levels! – a bit to my surprise, since I kinda hated Ordinary People.