{"id":4571,"date":"2025-04-30T20:44:15","date_gmt":"2025-05-01T00:44:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/?p=4571"},"modified":"2025-06-01T17:15:17","modified_gmt":"2025-06-01T21:15:17","slug":"april-2025-books-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2025\/04\/april-2025-books-read\/","title":{"rendered":"April 2025 books read"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><em>Vulcan&#8217;s Hammer <\/em>&#8211; Philip K. Dick, 1960. I resisted re-reading <em>Lucifer&#8217;s Hammer<\/em> and picked this up instead! I read a lot of PKD in the &#8217;90s; I don&#8217;t like his writing much but often find it compelling. This is very relevant to AI concerns today; not great but interesting.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures<\/em> &#8211; Sabrina Imbler, 2022. Nature &amp; Environment selection; quotes pulled, TBD.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Possession<\/em> &#8211; A. S. Byatt, 1990. Second Monday selection; quotes pulled, TBD.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Little Grey Rabbit&#8217;s Story Book<\/em> &#8211; Alison Uttley, 1977. I adore the Sam Pig stories; these aren&#8217;t as good, alas. Delighted to find <a href=\"https:\/\/ejbarnes.substack.com\/p\/the-character-assassination-of-writer\">this analysis<\/a> of why she&#8217;s been described as a horrible person, perhaps unfairly.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The Adventure of the Strange Ruby<\/em> &#8211; Enid Blyton, 1971. Most of the Blytons I read as a child were in French translations, but I think we had this Knight paperback in English. I remember the kids hiding out in the temple with lots of food and cozy rugs to sleep on. Not good, but comforting to re-read.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>How to Lose a Marathon : A Starter&#8217;s Guide to Finishing in 26.2 Chapters<\/em> &#8211; Joel H. Cohen, 2017. I picked this up from the running section of the library and was really looking forward to it, because I love first person accounts of mediocre runners and especially details about the New York Marathon. Unfortunately the &#8220;humor&#8221; was like nails on a blackboard for me. I finished it and would have gotten quite a bit of good practical advice out of it, between the unfunny quips, if I were new to running.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The Diary of a Bookseller<\/em> &#8211; Shaun Bythell, 2017. April&#8217;s Massachusetts Center for the Book challenge: &#8220;A book about books, bookstores, or libraries.&#8221; I wrote &#8220;Enjoyable brief daily entries by an eccentric but realistic bloke who enjoys teasing customers and staff.&#8221; It was really interesting to see day over day how many online sales can&#8217;t be located, and how dependent they are on the (terrible) software platform. He introduces each month with a quote from Orwell&#8217;s &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bookshop_Memories\">Bookshop Memories<\/a>&#8221; &#8211; TBR!<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>A Little Princess<\/em> &#8211; Frances Hodgson Burnett, 1905. Comfort re-read.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Notable novellas and short stories<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/ebooks\/1093\">The Beast in the Jungle<\/a>&#8221; &#8211; Henry James, 1903. Far Out Film watched <em><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Beast_(2023_film)\">The Beast<\/a><\/em> (2023), which is loosely based on this, so I wanted to check it out. Very Jamesian &#8211; I&#8217;m not a fan &#8211; but the connection to the movie was interesting.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/magazine\/archive\/2025\/03\/george-saunders-short-story-moron-factory\/681448\/\">The Moron Factory<\/a>&#8221; &#8211; George Sanders, 2024. I would have loved this even if I weren&#8217;t a <a href=\"https:\/\/georgesaunders.substack.com\/\">Story Club<\/a> member, but GS himself giving it to us makes it all the better. It&#8217;s not dissimilar from &#8220;Tenth of December,&#8221; and I could see a critic accusing it of sentimentality &#8211; but kindness and humanity are his stock-in-trade, and the emotion he evokes is both real and earned.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Notable novellas and short stories<\/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-4571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monthly-lists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4571","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=4571"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4686,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4571\/revisions\/4686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}