This was an excellent month for book acquisitions. For reading, not so much. Various events conspired to keep my attention span at a minimum, plus it being December I picked a classic Russian novel to read. This year it was Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, which is brilliant, but requires dedicated time to read, and that has simply not been possible. Maybe in January.
So I round out 2024 with 50 acquisitions and 65 volumes read, as well as close to 200 short stories. All in all, not a bad year.
November wasn’t such a great month for reading, mostly due to the existential dread of watching democracy die in the USA. Other than that, things are great!
In contrast with last month, September was an excellent month for short fiction. I have dozens of issues of various magazines and journals lying around my house unread, as well as probably close to 100 anthologies and short story collections awaiting my attention. Any progress is better than no progress.
In August I returned to short prose for the first time since May. It is a strange consequence of having little free time or attention that I have space in my head for fractions of large stories, but not complete smaller stories. Will need to investigate and submit my notes to the Academy.
July was not my best reading month. Too much work, plus prep for, and participating in, my first vacation of the year. But what my monthly reading lacked in quantity it more than made up for in quality. Plus, Viriconium was a long, extremely dense book. But well worth the effort.
Zig Zag Claybourne, Breath, Warmth, & Dream (Obsidian Sky Books) [2024.05.20] – This was a Kickstarter reward from a recently-completed campaign. I met Zig Zag at ConFusion, back in, I think, 2016. He is a superb writer and overall a most excellent human being.
April was National Poetry Month, and I didn’t read as much poetry this time as I have in past years. Part of that was my specific choices for poetry books, and part was general business and mental exhaustion. As you can see from the list below, I have spent most of my reading time buried in All that is Evident is Suspect, a collection of writing from members of Oulipo (Ouvroir de littérature potentielle, or “Workshop for Potential Literature”). The writing therein is frying my brain in the very best way. Highly recommended.
After reading one gigantic book (Demons, Dostoevsky), and well over a dozen shorter books and journals, I have settled into a more sedate reading pace, with a few novels and nonfiction titles for this month. Feels like I have found my reading groove after a chaotic reading start to the reading year. Also, reading would be a good adjective modifier, like “fucking” or “smurfing.”
Nikole Hannah-Jones (creator), The 1619 Project [2024.03.23] – Purchased at Harmony Brewing Company in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Books and Mortar had a popup sale of banned books in the bar, and this one caught my eye. It had been on my radar for a while, and this seemed like a good opportunity to add it to the library.
