Category: Monthly lists

• Crazy Rich Asians – Kevin Kwan, 2013. I like the trailer for the movie but still haven’t watched it, and I wasn’t planning on picking this up until I read an interview with Kwan. His description of the “fun and name-droppy” writing voice (“nothing like what he thought of as his ‘real’ writing voice”) coming first and making the novel possible intrigued me. I enjoyed the read but the extravagance got a little much and I wouldn’t go on to the sequels when the world is so full of things to read. (But if I were stuck in a B&B and that’s all there was… I would!)
• Most Secret – Nevil Shute, written 1942 but published 1945. Shute is one of the authors I love so much that I read and re-read everything of theirs, but this is one of his darkest novels and this may only be the third time I’ve read it. My favorite bit is the rabbit Geoffrey.
• In the Pleasure Groove: Love, Death, and Duran Duran. John Taylor, 2012. Very enjoyable! I was a DD fan early on and saw them at the Peppermint Lounge in July 1982 – it’s still one of the tightest live performances I remember. Taylor wishes he had stuck with his birth name, Nigel. Nice depiction of both youthful raw ambition and long-lasting friendships. Funny bits: his wife Gela, not interested or impressed by musicians, getting their names wrong – I wish I’d written down all the malapropisms (Bruce Springfield, Three Blind Mice for Third Eye Blind).
• Miss Hargreaves – Frank Baker, 1940. Recommended by Jonathan; it was so much fun to talk to him about this completely bizarre, often-delightful book. And then we got to enjoy the TV adaptation, which is completely different but also bizarrely good in its own way. The closest analogue to MH is probably The Brontës Went to Woolworths; no wonder Bloomsbury Publishing re-issued them both as part of The Bloomsbury Group (a misleading name!)
• The Fear Factor: How One Emotion Connects Altruists, Psychopaths, and Everyone In-Between – Abigail Marsh, 2017. Absolutely fascinating book about psychopaths and altruistic kidney donors, who are according to Marsh represent the ends of the spectrum of under-and-overactive amygdalas/ability to recognize fear in others. Her TED talk is great; the book is even better!
• The Life of the Fly; With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography – Jean-Henri Fabre (translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos), 1913 – For Nature & Enviro. Quotes marked, tbd
• Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia – Samuel Johnson, 1759 – For Great books; quotes marked, tbd
• The Quare Fellow (1954) & An Giall (The Hostage) (1958) – Brendan Behan – For Irish Writers; quotes marked, tbd
• How to Be an Anti-Racist – Ibram X. Kendi, 2019. Interesting and in-depth exploration of various kinds of racist ideas and their intersections, many of which Kendi shows himself believing and then rejecting; the autobiographical element was compelling and tied the whole thing together.
• Crystal Singer – Anne McCaffrey, 1982. Comfort re-read of an old favorite. The food descriptions are mostly great but get lazy; it’s a common mediocre SF fault (other genres as well?) to introduce something like Yarran beer, and then no matter who is speaking or what planet you’re on, everyone can only drink/request/talk about Yarran beer. Steakbean, pepper fruit, Alderbaran paste with Forellan biscuits, and milsi stalks all sound interesting – there’s not enough description to find a real-world cognate, but the names are evocative.

• White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism – Robin DiAngelo, 2018. I read this with an Amherst College group and got more out of the conversations than I did from the book. It is a useful book in many ways but critiques of how DiAngelo ends up centering whiteness aren’t wrong, plus most of her anecdotes end with “…and [person exhibiting racist behavior] left in a huff” which isn’t very helpful.
• A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers – Henry David Thoreau, 1849 – Quotes marked but lost
• Let the Great World Spin – Colum McCann, 2009. Quotes lost
• The Mayor of Casterbridge – Thomas Hardy, 1886. Quotes lost
• Maia – Richard Adams, 1984. Umpteenth comfort re-read. The mythology of Bekla is thoroughly a part of my inner landscape. This set me off on another Adams kick – more to come – and re-awakened an idea of writing an essay about how half his books are my favorites ever that I never get tired of (Watership Down, Maia, The Girl in a Swing) and the other half I could barely get through once (Shardik, The Plague Dogs, Traveller).
• Middlemarch – George Eliot, 1871. Re-read; quotes pulled, TBD.
• Flesh of Her Flesh: In Search of Goodness – Slavenka Drakulić, 2006. Drakulić got a kidney from a non-directed/”Good Samaritan” donor and went on a quest to interview such donors. Not a great book but an interesting one – she’s from Croatia and theorizes that people in socialist countries are less likely to do altruistic acts for strangers because that’s the role of the state.

• The Silence of the Lambs – Thomas Harris, 1988. Wow, I absolutely loved this, and then had to go back and re-watch the movie – which is great also but not as much of a masterpiece. I started Hannibal but haven’t finished as of late July.
• On the Origin of Species (1st ed.) – Charles Darwin, 1959 – quotes marked but lost in a Nook reset
• The Way of All Flesh – Samuel Butler, 1903 – ditto…
• The Burning of Bridget Cleary – Angela Bourke, 1999 – and again.
• A Reader’s Delight – Noel Perrin, 1988. I read the sequel about children’s books last month; this is the first collection of Perrin’s Washington Post reviews of neglected books, and I very much enjoyed it also. Unlike the other, most of these books I haven’t read, read long ago and don’t remember much about them (Period Piece by Gwen Raverat, A Fine and Private Place by Peter Beagle), or didn’t finish them (The Silver Stallion by James Branch Cabell, Islandia by August Tappan Wright – love the idea of it and have attempted it several times but never made it past the middle, The Three Royal Monkeys by Walter de la Mare). I’d love to read them all and started with All Hallow’s Eve (next in this list).
• All Hallow’s Eve – Charles Williams, 1945. A weird “spiritual thriller” set during the Blitz with some interesting characters and peculiar but vivid descriptions of art (painting) and its power.
• Watchmen – Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, 1987. Re-read as I started to watch the HBO series which was streaming for free on Juneteenth (I only got through the first four episodes before it went back to subscription, but it’s wonderful and I’ll borrow the DVDs to finish it). I loved this when I first read it (in the 90s? early 2000s?) but mostly remembered Dr. Manhattan; I got a lot more of it now. I hadn’t remembered the twist at the end about the smiley face! Coincidentally, the iconic original was created by Harvey Ball in Worcester, quite close to here.

• Something That May Shock and Discredit You – Daniel Lavery (as Daniel Mallory Ortberg), 2020. Kind of a weird mish-mosh – I enjoyed parts of it very much but wished there was more straight-ahead memoir. But what sticks in my mind the most is the analysis of “transmasc energy” as originally exemplified by William Shatner’s Kirk – partly because I’m re-watching the original Star Trek, but also because I love windows into subcultures I’m not part of.
• Cost Price – Dornford Yates, 1949. Sequel to Safe Custody with a lot more detail about the carved jewels, but burdened with tiresome late-Yates tropes, especially “woman who’s lower than hero’s social level but he magnanimously treats her well and so she’s head over heels for him.” The earlier book wasn’t in the Richard Chandos series, but this one features him and he drags that trope along – as well as too much focus on how ridiculously strong and naive he is. Ugh.
• The Brontës Went to Woolworths – Rachel Ferguson, 1931. Jonathan borrowed this through ILL and it sounded so bonkers that I read it as well before returning. What a strange, sometimes-delightful, sometimes infuriating book – it takes a long time to figure out what the heck is going on with this crazy family, and then once I did, actual ghosts turned up and broke the genre I thought it was in. Plus the protagonist ends up being quite mean. But it was fascinating and if I had a copy I might read it again – I think its strangeness would be a bracing shock all over again in a few years. I’ve certainly never read anything at all like it.
• Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen, 1811
• My First Summer in the Sierra – John Muir, 1911 – quotes pulled, tbd
• Hungry Hill: A Memoir – Carol O’Malley Gaunt, 2007 – Irish Writers book group selection, but I didn’t pull any quotes. I hadn’t finished it when we discussed it in April, and I went back to it out of sheer stubbornness, but I regret it. One of the worst books I’ve ever read and not even in an interesting way – sentence by sentence the writing is competent, and the topic could have been fascinating, but there’s no there there.
• A Child’s Delight – Noel Perrin, 1997. I’m a fan of Perrin, of books-about-books, and of children’s literature, so naturally I loved it. I’ve added a few titles to my to-read-someday list (The Planet of Junior Brown, I Go By Sea I Go By Land, Dogsbody, the stories of Laurence Housman) and loved all the essays about my already-favorites. My only minor disagreement is about the Magic Schoolbus books, which I think were over-hyped – but maybe I should give them another chance.
• Juno and the Paycock (1924) and The Plough and the Stars (1926) – Sean O’Casey, for Irish Writers book group. Not enough quotes to do a separate post; J&P was amusing, P&S hard to follow, but we agreed we’d really need to see them performed to get them. I knew these plays by title but didn’t know they were about the Irish revolution – I thought J&P was related to Leda and the swan… Words learned: “fistic” (related to boxing); “glad neck” blouse (deep V collar); “Shan Van Vok” – reference to “The Sean-Bhean bhocht,” a traditional song which also personifies Ireland.
• The Shining – Stephen King, 1977. Not my favorite King but I was drawn back to it by thinking about Jack Torrance’s writing. The description of his play sounds pretty terrible, and the idea that it’s going to make him his fortune seems rather quaint even in the 70s… Might not read this one again ever – in fact, I’m 55 (1/2!) and that’s probably a good resolution to start making about books I’m not compelled by. Unless there’s some essay or idea I want to work out!
• Magic, Inc. – Robert Heinlein, 1940. I was remembering the delightful Heinlein short about the dust devil (“Our Fair City”) and revisited this novella. It’s a weird mixture of small-business story in a world where magic can be harnessed for capitalism, which segues into an interminable watching-the-sausage-get-made political yarn. (The very detailed Wikipedia summary deals with the politics in one sentence, but it feels like a third of the book). There’s lovely chemistry between the narrator, Archie Fraser, and the old witch Mrs. Jennings, one of my favorite ultra-calm-and-competent Heinlein women.
• Doctor Sleep – Stephen King, 2013. The sequel to The Shining which I thought I had never read until I started it again and I totally did try it already, presumably in 2013 or 2014. To my taste quite a bit better than the first, but a couple of plot holes: a not-very-sensical measles-immunity McGuffin, and a miniature train which goes on infrequent excursions to distant points up big grades (granted, there is at least one very long miniature railway – thank you King for making me research this – but nonetheless there is something so weird about the way this Look Park scale thing is described and then they’re heading off to like, Mount Sugarloaf for picnics – who maintains the track? how does this make sense logistically?) I might try the movie at some point.
• The Practicing Mind: Bringing Discipline and Focus Into Your Life – Thomas M. Sterner, 2005 (early self-published edition). I thought this would be a fairly easy purge/low-hanging fruit from the shelves of self-help books I’m trying to purge – I’m a sucker for them! – but it’s actually quite good. Apparently Sterner went on to found a self-help empire, critiqued for promising the moon and the stars, but this original version is modest in its aims, and reaches them.
• Red Dragon – Thomas Harris, 1981. I kept hearing how great this series was and finally checked it out. People are not exaggerating. I loved the sequel even more, but this first Hannibal book is remarkable – compelling, readable, and thought-provoking too. Thriller is not my favorite genre but yeah, this was a great read.

• “The Moon Moth” – Jack Vance, 1961. Just a short story, but such a favorite that I’m listing it. It successfully combines Vance’s mystery genre side (he wrote a bunch as John Holbrook Vance as well as some “Ellery Queen” novels) with his primary skill at anthropological science fiction, culminating in a delightfully-satisfying twist ending.
• Water in Plain Sight: Hope for a Thirsty World – Judith D. Schwartz, 2016 – quotes pulled, tbd
• Angle of Repose – Wallace Stegner, 1971 – quotes pulled, TBD
• Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy (tr. Constance Garnett), 1878 (1901) – ditto!
• The House that Berry Built – Dornford Yates, 1945. My father, who sparked my love of Yates through this book specifically, died this month, and I picked this up to re-read for the umpteenth time in memory of him…
• An Eye for a Tooth – Dornford Yates, 1943. …and then I was off on a Yates kick, but a restrained one. This time I just went back to a few of the thrillers – this is one that I acquired late and so didn’t remember that well. I might only have read it once or twice, imagine that! Not bad but a little past his prime in this genre.
• Safe Custody – Dornford Yates, 1932. I moved on to the series that deal with one of my favorite McGuffins ever, a set of 127 carved jewels commissioned by Pope Alexander VI. They’re so well-described that I wish they really existed; I see that they were probably inspired by the Pope Paul II collection of 827 such gems.

• Station Eleven – Emily St. John Mandel, 2014. I love post-apocalyptic fiction, and the coronavirus pandemic was just picking up in the US when I finished this. I enjoyed it quite a bit, but it was overshadowed by my memories of Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play, which I saw in 2015 (with my friend Stephanie as Bart) and was looking forward to seeing again at UMass this spring. Looks like they’ll do it in the fall – fingers crossed! I might re-read this after seeing the play again, as post-pandemic it will have new resonance. I read it fast, and I’m writing this on 5/2/2020 when the beginning of March feels like it was several years ago.
• Emma – Jane Austen, 1815. Re-read in conjunction with the film, directed by friend-of-my-brother Autumn de Wilde. The film was amazing (saw it opening weekend right before everything shut down), stolen by Mrs. Elton (Tanya Reynolds) even though there wasn’t nearly as much about Maple Grove as in the book.
• The Mouse and His Child – Russell Hoban, 1967. Comfort re-reading but also one of my top ten novels of all time. Description of Crow, the director of the Caws of Art avant-garde theater company: “A tall, well-set-up bird, he wore his great black, glossy wings in the manner of a cloak thrown carelessly over his shoulders…” Someday I’ll write a long essay about this amazing book.
• Medallion Status: True Stories from Secret Rooms – John Hodgman, 2019. Enjoyable but I gobbled it down and don’t remember much now. Hodgman used to have a summer place near here and there were some local references which I always get a kick out of. He’s a good writer.
• The Ends of the World: Supervolcanoes, Lethal Oceans, and the Search for Past Apocalypses – Peter Brannen, 2017 – quotes pulled, tbd
• Krapp’s Last Tape – Samuel Beckett, 1958 – quotes pulled, tbd
• Housekeeping – Marilynne Robinson, 1980 – quotes pulled, tbd
• Envious Casca – Georgette Heyer, 1941. This is a long-time favorite comfort re-read, but I like it less each time I read it. For some reason the romance used to be very compelling to me but is no longer. Still great characters but not as much humor as my favorite Heyers (on the whole she’s shrunk on me as an author as well…)
• Worzel Gummidge – Barbara Euphan Todd, 1936. I had one of this series as a child but I don’t think it was this one – none of the other title descriptions look exactly right either, though. A strange book, but the idea of the TV Gummidge having “interchangeable turnip, mangelwurzel and swede heads” is even weirder…
• Talking Turkey – Hilary Caws-Elwitt, unpublished mss (2014). Re-read my own book (middle-grade animal fantasy) when I had insomnia. It holds up!
• Feast: True Love in and out of the Kitchen – Hannah Howard, 2018. Couldn’t put it down but I didn’t exactly enjoy it – too much self-hatred. I do love the way she writes about cheese.
• Souls – Joanna Russ, 1982. I come back to this novella whenever I feel despair about the world, and it comforts me in a weird dark way.
• The Iron Giant: A Children’s Story in Five Nights – Ted Hughes, 1968. Read frequently in childhood, and some of the images were burned into my brain. but I probably hadn’t revisited it in a couple of decades (not since the terrific Brad Bird movie, which was, gulp, 1989). It’s as wonderful as I remembered.

• Educated – Tara Westover, 2018. I had no idea quite how harrowing this would be. So interesting that the family essential oil empire, described near the end, is still going strong.
• Quit Like a Millionaire: No Gimmicks, Luck, or Trust Fund Required – Kristy Shen and Bryce Leung, 2019 – I’m sort of a FIRE follower and gobble up books like this. On the quick-read/fun side – I don’t think I learned anything new but I like Kristy’s attitude.
• The Art of Frugal Hedonism: A Guide to Spending Less While Enjoying Everything More – Annie Raser-Rowland with Adam Grubb, 2017
• Salt: A World History – Mark Kurlansky, 2002
• Beatlebone – Kevin Barry, 2015
• Moll Flanders – Daniel Defoe, 1722

• The Genius of Birds – Jennifer Ackerman, 2016
• The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia – Laura Miller, 2008. The rare book where my reaction was “I wish I had written this,” because Miller explores so much of what pulls me to re-read these books. I didn’t pull quotes but there’s more I want to explore on a second read. Someday!
• Milkman – Anna Burns, 2018
• Working: Researching, Interviewing, Writing – Robert Caro, 2019 – Couldn’t put it down! I actually haven’t read any of Caro’s biographies but now I want to. My favorite bits were these two heart-warming incidents:

I was still in the first year of research [on The Power Broker] when friends and acquaintances began to ask if I was “still doing that book.” Later I would be asked, “How long have you been working on it now?” When I said three years, or four, or five, they would quickly disguise their look of incredulity, but not quickly enough to keep me from seeing it. I came to dread that question.
…
Then one day, I looked up and James Flexner was standing over me. The expression on his face was friendly, but after he had asked what I was writing about, the next question was the question I had come to dread: “How long have you been working on it?” This time, however, when I replied, “Five years,” the response was not an incredulous stare.
“Oh,” Jim Flexner said, “that’s not so long. I’ve been working on my Washington for nine years.”
I could have jumped up and kissed him, whiskers and all—as, the next day, I could have jumped up and kissed Joe Lash, big beard and all, when he asked me the same question, and, after hearing my answer, said in his quiet way, “Eleanor and Franklin took me seven years.” In a couple of sentences, these two men—idols of mine—had wiped away five years of doubt.

Lynn [Nesbit] had read my manuscript, and said, “I’d like to represent you, but you have to tell me something first. Why do you look so worried?”
I didn’t know I looked worried. But of course I was. I told her, “I’m worried that I won’t have enough money to finish the book.” My editor had left me feeling that few people would read a book on Robert Moses, and that therefore no publisher would give me the money I needed to finish it.
She asked how much money I was talking about. I told her I needed enough so I could spend two more years on the book. I thought it would take me two years. I don’t remember the exact amount I specified, but I know it was not that large. And all of a sudden there were other sentences that I’ll never forget. She said, “Is that what you’re worried about? Then you can stop worrying right now. I can get you that by just picking up the phone. Everybody in New York knows about this book.”
Then she said, “You can stop worrying about money. But I’ve read this manuscript. What you care about is writing. My job is to find you an editor you can work with for the rest of your life.”

• Don Quixote (El ingenioso caballero don Quijote de la Mancha) – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, 1615 (tr Edith Grossman, 2005) – quotes pulled, TBD

• The Parable of the Sower – Octavia Butler, 1993. Re-read, quotes TBD.
• The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin’s Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—And Us – Richard Prum, 2017. Quotes pulled, TBD.
• Jonathan Livingston Seagull – Richard Bach, 1970. Re-read for the umpteenth time (it’s so short!), but my opinion of it drops a little each time.
• Round the Bend – Nevil Shute, 1951. Umpteenth re-read (yes, I was needing comfort reading) but holds up still.
• Homage to Catalonia – George Orwell, 1938 – quotes pulled, TBD
• Dancing at Lughnasa – Brian Friel, 1990 – For Irish Writers book group. Only one quote so not enough for a separate post: Gerry, who’s signed up to go fight in the Spanish Civil War (coincidental, having just read Homage to Catalonia), is asked why he’s going.

  Not so sure I know either. … And there’s bound to be something right about the cause, isn’t there? And it’s somewhere to go—isn’t it? Maybe that’s the important thing for a man: a named destination—democracy, Ballybeg, heaven. Women’s illusions aren’t so easily satisfied—they make better drifters.

• The Countess Cathleen – W.B. Yeats, 1912 – also for Irish Writers, quotes pulled TB.
• Manage Your Day-to-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind – Jocelyn K. Glei, 2013 (99U series) – This was really good! Short chapters with nice graphic design.
• The Circadian Code: Lose Weight, Supercharge Your Energy, and Transform Your Health from Morning to Midnight – Satchin Panda, 2018 – It seemed really good, but mostly because I already do time-restricted eating (Panda’s major recommendation) and it’s worked really well for me. So I was nodding along & patting myself on the back, which is not the most objective frame of mind. In general I’m super-suspicious of “this is The One Answer!” books, but clearly less so when it’s something I’ve already adopted…
• My Boyfriend Barfed in My Handbag… and Other Things You Can’t Ask Martha – Jolie Kerr, 2014 – I read the whole thing but I’m not 100% sure why. I may have learned a few things but I mostly forgot them again (OK, I do want to try using ammonia) and the jokey tone was fun in small doses, annoying in large. I guess I kept expecting Captain Awkward or Ask A Manager level advice/entertainment, but that bar is unreasonably high.
• Drunkard: A Hard-Drinking Life – Neil Steinberg, 2008 – Ah, I thought maybe I had read this already – yes, back in 2010. Why did I put pub year of 2009 – maybe it was the paperback?
• Started Chronicles of Narnia