{"id":3577,"date":"2023-10-31T20:41:41","date_gmt":"2023-11-01T00:41:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/?p=3577"},"modified":"2023-11-23T20:56:37","modified_gmt":"2023-11-24T01:56:37","slug":"october-2023-books-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2023\/10\/october-2023-books-read\/","title":{"rendered":"October 2023 books read"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><em>Record of a Spaceborn Few<\/em> &#8211; Becky Chambers, 2018. Number 3 in the <em>Wayfarers<\/em> quadrilogy, the one I accidentally skipped. I really like this one as well, but they do start to blur a bit. The focus on funeral rites was very interesting.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Small Things Like These<\/em> &#8211; Claire Keegan, 2021. Quotes pulled, TBD.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Project Hail Mary<\/em> &#8211; Andy Weir, 2021. My sister loved it and recommended it, and it did not disappoint. A very similar tone to <em>The Martian<\/em> but on a bigger scale. Unputdownable, and the ending was satisfying and touching. In the cold light of day I don&#8217;t 100% buy the way the alien encounter evolves, but Weir&#8217;s narrative drags you along pell-mell.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Black Boy<\/em> &#8211; Richard Wright, 1945. But the edition I had didn&#8217;t include the second part, so I need to finish it. Quotes pulled, TBD.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The Brilliant Abyss<\/em> &#8211; Helen Scales, 2021. Quotes pulled, TBD.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Great Short Books<\/em> &#8211; Kenneth C. Davis, 2022. I love books about books, and this seemed especially helpful for my <a href=\"https:\/\/salticid.com\/mailman\/listinfo\/forbes_great_books_salticid.com\">Great Books group<\/a>. We&#8217;ve read a lot of doorstops and people are thrilled when one of our titles is short! I added a few to the suggestion list. A mildly enjoyable read &#8211; a bit too much of a survey (for each title, there was a bio of the author, a description\/review, and a list of other books by them) without much personality.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>You Only Live Twice<\/em> &#8211; Ian Fleming, 1964. Read for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.massbook.org\/readingchallenge\">Massachusetts Center for the Book<\/a> October challenge, &#8220;A bestseller from the year you turned 18&#8221; &#8211; oh no, I screwed up! This was a bestseller from the year I was <em>born<\/em>! It sure seemed like a challenge to pick one&#8230;. I turned in my submission without realizing I did it wrong, so here&#8217;s my description: &#8220;The first James Bond novel I&#8217;ve read &#8211; much stranger and less of a typical thriller than I expected. I&#8217;m not sure how accurate the Japanese setting is, but the garden of poisonous plants is fascinating.&#8221;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>How to Be Perfect: the Correct Answer to Every Moral Question<\/em> &#8211; Michael Schur, 2022. I learned about this book from a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.harvardmagazine.com\/2022\/02\/montage-the-good-life\">profile in <em>Harvard Magazine<\/em><\/a>, and since I loved <em>The Good Place<\/em> I requested it from the library. It&#8217;s quite good &#8211; the humor seldom landed for me, but the philosophical review seemed good as a lay person. I wish I could have talked about it with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.petercaws.com\/\">my dad<\/a>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Dorp Dead<\/em> &#8211; Julia Cunningham, 1965. The creepy cover of this book drew me in as a child when I was reading my way through the public library, and I checked it out a couple of times. I haven&#8217;t seen it since and didn&#8217;t remember much about it except that it was strange and scary. Re-reading it as an adult &#8211; hoo boy, I cannot believe this was on the middle-grade fiction shelves between Susan Cooper and Roald Dahl, although those can be scary in their own ways. <em>Dorp Dead<\/em> is super-dark and twisted, but also feels like it&#8217;s 90 degrees from a traditional story. Still unsettling after all these years. I remember being equally fascinated and mystified by her other title on the shelves at the 79th St. library, <em>Burnish Me Bright<\/em>. I see it&#8217;s illustrated by Don Freeman, author of one of my all-time favorites, the heart-warming picture book <em>Norman the Doorman<\/em> (as well as <em>Corduroy<\/em>, <em>Dandelion<\/em>, and <em>Tilly Witch<\/em>), which must have added to my confusion. I&#8217;d love to re-read that too, and now I wonder what her other books are like.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss<\/em> &#8211; Amy Bloom, 2022. I heard Bloom read an excerpt on <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thisamericanlife.org\/779\/ends-of-the-earth\">This American Life<\/a><\/em> and I was mesmerized. It&#8217;s amazing.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>There Is No Good Card for This: What To Say and Do When Life Is Scary, Awful, and Unfair to People You Love<\/em> &#8211; Kelsey Crowe and Emily McDowell, 2017. I had some extra time in downtown Amherst and spent a very enjoyable half an hour browsing the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.joneslibrary.org\/\">Jones Library<\/a> shelves. This impulse pick-up was bite-sized encouragement with colorful illustrations.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Short stories<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Calmgrove&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/calmgrove.wordpress.com\/category\/books\/lovehain\/\">#LoveHain<\/a> is finishing up with Ursula K. Le Guin&#8217;s stories in the Hainish cycle, October focusing on <em>A Fisherman of the Inland Sea<\/em>. I don&#8217;t have that book but the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.loa.org\/books\/554-the-hainish-novels-amp-stories-boxed-set\/\">Library of America boxed set<\/a> has the Hainish stories from it: &#8220;The Shobies&#8217; Story,&#8221; &#8220;Dancing to Ganam,&#8221; and &#8220;Another Story.&#8221; I left a <a href=\"https:\/\/calmgrove.wordpress.com\/2023\/10\/27\/fisherman\/#comment-67570\">comment on the blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Short stories Calmgrove&#8217;s #LoveHain is finishing up with Ursula K. Le Guin&#8217;s stories in the Hainish cycle, October focusing on A Fisherman of the Inland Sea. I don&#8217;t have that book but the Library of America boxed set has the Hainish stories from it: &#8220;The Shobies&#8217; Story,&#8221; &#8220;Dancing to Ganam,&#8221; and &#8220;Another Story.&#8221; I left [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monthly-lists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3577"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3682,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3577\/revisions\/3682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}