{"id":4108,"date":"2024-07-31T20:31:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-01T00:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/?p=4108"},"modified":"2024-08-28T17:16:14","modified_gmt":"2024-08-28T21:16:14","slug":"july-2024-books-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2024\/07\/july-2024-books-read\/","title":{"rendered":"July 2024 books read"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><em>The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath<\/em> &#8211; 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 &#8211; there&#8217;s so much Lovecraft! Interestingly weird but long.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The Invisible Hour<\/em> &#8211; Alice Hoffman, 2023. A friend mentioned that it was set in Western Massachusetts, and I&#8217;d enjoyed the other Hoffmans I read a long time ago. This was good-not-great, but did prompt me to suggest <em>The Scarlet Letter<\/em> for a future Great Books choice. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Summer<\/em> &#8211; Ali Smith, 2020. The last of her season quartet, for the Second Monday book group. Quotes TBD.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body<\/em> &#8211; Neil Shubin, 2009. Nature\/Enviro. Quotes TBD.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The Leopard<\/em> &#8211; Giuseppe Lampedusa, 1958. For Great Books &#8211; quotes pulled, TBD &#8211; and also for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.massbook.org\/readingchallenge\">Mass Center for the Book<\/a> July challenge, &#8220;A book by an author born outside of the United States.&#8221; My one-sentence submission, which doesn&#8217;t do it justice, was: &#8220;A wonderfully vivid and thought-provoking novel of the Risorgimento in Sicily.&#8221;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Moby-Dick; or, The Whale<\/em> &#8211; 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.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife<\/em> &#8211; Sebastian Junger, 2024. I listened to his interview on Sean Illing&#8217;s podcast (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/the-gray-area\/351128\/the-science-of-near-death-experiences\">The Gray Area<\/a>) and gulped it down as soon as my turn came on <a href=\"https:\/\/cwmars.overdrive.com\/cwmars-forbes\/content\/media\/10216931\">Overdrive<\/a>. I don&#8217;t buy the afterlife speculations, personally, but it&#8217;s an incredibly compelling story, and I&#8217;ve always enjoyed Junger&#8217;s writing.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Chaser: Unlocking the Genius of the Dog Who Knows a Thousand Words<\/em> &#8211; 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&#8217;s story &#8211; that she knew a thousand toys by name and could infer that a new word would refer to the one she hadn&#8217;t seen before &#8211; but the details were wonderful. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The Woodrow Wilson Dime<\/em> &#8211; Jack Finney, 1968. Not his greatest, belaboring the &#8220;getting tired of spouse, looking for novelty&#8221; subplot he often uses, but the alternate timeline is fun.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The Bear Who Wasn&#8217;t<\/em> &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Frank_Tashlin\">Frank Tashlin<\/a>, 1946. New York Review Children&#8217;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&#8217;s a bear. The illustrations are much more interesting than the text &#8211; most of them are embedded <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facinghistory.org\/resource-library\/bear-wasnt-2\">here<\/a>, but my favorites are missing.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The Book That Made Me<\/em> &#8211; ed. Judith Ridge, 2016. I&#8217;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&#8217;t stick to the brief, but fascinating because it&#8217;s Australian and many of the books recommended are unfamiliar to me. Lots more for the infinite TBR pile!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Skimmed<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><em>Utopia Parkway: The Life and Work of Joseph Cornell<\/em> &#8211; Deborah Solomon, 1997. I only intended to dip into this briefly (I needed to look up a citation for my <a href=\"https:\/\/reaktionbooks.co.uk\/work\/symbolism-dada-surrealisms\">mother&#8217;s essays<\/a>), but it was so interesting I checked it out and kept it around for months. I read at least half; it&#8217;s a very good biography and a fascinating analysis of the ways Cornell became a key part of the New York arts scene.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>World as Lover, World as Self<\/em> &#8211; Joanna Macy, 1991. I liked a couple of the quotes, which I&#8217;ve found <a href=\"https:\/\/www.spiritualityandpractice.com\/explorations\/teachers\/joanna-macy\/quotes\">collected online<\/a>, as well as the <a href=\"https:\/\/workthatreconnects.org\/resources\/breathing-through\/\">breathing through<\/a> exercise, the <a href=\"https:\/\/workthatreconnects.org\/resources\/the-great-ball-of-merit\/\">Great Ball of Merit<\/a>, and the idea of being &#8220;in league&#8221; with &#8220;the stones and the beasts of the field, and the sun that rises and the stars revolving in the sky&#8221; (adapted from Job 5:23). I learned about the <a href=\"https:\/\/mcld.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/2021-03-Sarvodaya.pdf\">Sarvodaya<\/a> movement and was reminded of <a href=\"https:\/\/workthatreconnects.org\/resources\/council-of-all-beings\/\">The Council of All Beings<\/a> &#8211; I probably heard about that through a Whole Earth publication, and I would love to participate in one someday.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Short story<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Sally Rooney&#8217;s &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2024\/07\/08\/opening-theory-fiction-sally-rooney\">Opening Theory<\/a>&#8221; in <em>The New Yorker<\/em>&#8216;s Fiction issue really grabbed me &#8211; it works on so many levels! &#8211; a bit to my surprise, since I kinda hated <em>Ordinary People<\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Skimmed Short story<\/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-4108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monthly-lists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4108","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=4108"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4195,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4108\/revisions\/4195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}