{"id":4829,"date":"2025-11-01T20:03:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-02T00:03:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/?p=4829"},"modified":"2025-11-21T17:11:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T22:11:12","slug":"october-2025-books-read","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/2025\/11\/october-2025-books-read\/","title":{"rendered":"October 2025 books read"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><em>My Friends<\/em> &#8211; Hisham Matar, 2024. Second Monday selection; quotes TBD.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Comet in Moominland<\/em> &#8211; Tove Jansson, 1946. Hurray, a children&#8217;s literature group has started as a splinter from Amherst Book Group! Quotes TBD.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration<\/em> &#8211; Jake Bittle, 2023. Nature\/Enviro, quotes TBD.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Green World: A Tragicomic Memoir of Love &amp; Shakespeare<\/em> &#8211; Michelle Ephraim, 2024. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.massbook.org\/readingchallenge\">Massachusetts Center for the Book<\/a> reading challenge prompt: &#8220;A book published by a Massachusetts press&#8221; (University of Massachusetts Press in this case). I wrote: &#8220;All the blurbs say it&#8217;s hysterically funny &#8211; it didn&#8217;t seem that way to me, but I very much enjoyed this memoir of Ephraim making her way in the academy and earning tenure through devotion to <em>The Merchant of Venice<\/em>.&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=6at6thzEZOc\">She&#8217;s funnier on The Moth<\/a>, though!<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>In the Frame<\/em> &#8211; Dick Francis, 1976. Re-read, mostly because of revisiting the George Stubbs and other horse paintings at the newly-reopened <a href=\"https:\/\/britishart.yale.edu\/\">Yale Center for British Art<\/a>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The Running Man<\/em> &#8211; Stephen King, 1982. Same as <em>Long Walk<\/em>: there&#8217;s a new trailer. I haven&#8217;t seen the movie, but enjoyed the re-read and appreciated the prescience.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Dracula<\/em> &#8211; Bram Stoker, 1897. Great Books selection (re-read); quotes TBD.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The Family Under the Bridge<\/em> &#8211; Natalie Savage Carlson, 1958. I remember liking this as a kid primarily because of the Garth Williams illustratations, and because it was set in Paris. It doesn&#8217;t hold up very well.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>The Girl in a Swing<\/em> &#8211; Richard Adams, 1980. I finally bought an epub version of this (I&#8217;ve owned it in paperback for decades) and discovered that it&#8217;s a different edition &#8211; I knew from Wikipedia that there had been a change but didn&#8217;t realize my paperback was the original version. But there must also have been US\/UK differences. I&#8217;ve read the book so many times that they jumped out to me &#8211; maybe a post someday. I see the movie, which I&#8217;ve never watched, is on <a href=\"https:\/\/tubitv.com\/movies\/706961\/the-girl-in-a-swing\">Tubi<\/a> now. On the list! Although this book is unbelievable in a number of ways, I really love it and re-read every couple of years. I must have missed a few occasions because it&#8217;s not listed here after 2006.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Finn Family Moomintroll<\/em> &#8211; Tove Jansson, 1948. Quotes TBD.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><em>Watership Down<\/em> &#8211; Richard Adams, 1972. I had to re-read this after <em>Girl in a Swing<\/em> &#8211; one of my all-time favorites that so holds up. I love the epigraphs more and more; one day I might research them all\/write them up. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Stories<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I suggested these for an Amherst College slow read retreat, which was delightful. We had great discussions about the first two; the Henry James only a few of us talked about, which was fun, but it pales in comparison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2023\/03\/13\/how-i-became-a-vet\">How I Became a Vet<\/a>&#8221; &#8211; Rivka Galchen, 2023 (this is amazing &#8211; I&#8217;ve read it four times now and it gets better every time)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/jhampton.pbworks.com\/f\/The+Life+You+Save.pdf\">The Life You Save May Be Your Own<\/a>&#8221; &#8211; Flannery O&#8217;Connor, 1955<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/loa-shared.s3.amazonaws.com\/static\/pdf\/James-The-Real-Thing.pdf\">The Real Thing<\/a>&#8221; &#8211; Henry James, 1892<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stories I suggested these for an Amherst College slow read retreat, which was delightful. We had great discussions about the first two; the Henry James only a few of us talked about, which was fun, but it pales in comparison.<\/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-4829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monthly-lists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4829","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=4829"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4829\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4865,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4829\/revisions\/4865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/bookblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}