April was a good month for acquiring books from independent publishers.
April was an okay month for reading. My work-life balance was, yet again, significantly tipped toward the work side of things, which took from me much of my reading time, and left me unable to focus for what little time remained.
I suspect in the coming months I will be acquiring fewer books, due to supply-chain disruption and the inevitable recession and increased inflation.
After almost two months, I finally finished Demons, by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Wow, was that a slog. A good slog, but a slog nonetheless. Now on to fifteen or twenty shorter, easier reads before attempting something arduous.
Almost all of the books I acquired in January were purchased at, or in anticipation of, ConFusion 2024.
Welcome to 2023! 2022 was overall a good year, but also exhausting, and so I am kind of happy to see it in the rearview mirror.
Two book arrived here at the house in the last week of the year. On the left is the January 2023 issue of Poetry, which came as something of a surprise, as I thought my subscription ended with the previous issue. I guess I was mistaken.
On the right is Apex Magazine 2021, the printed collection of the stories which appeared in the electronic editions of Apex Magazine, from their successful Kickstarter. This book has the honor of being the last book to enter the Library at Winkelman Abbey in 2022, in that it arrived in the afternoon of December 31. Excellent timing!
In reading news, I made some progress through the first issue of the new incarnation of Dreamforge, but my brain is so fried from *gestures at everything* that I couldn’t motivate myself to do much more than watch The Blacklist and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and play Stardew Valley.
In writing news, there is no writing news.
Starting in the new year, I will combine the “books I acquired” weekly posts with the “stuff I read” monthly posts, so now everything will be monthly. I plan to still do weekly (-ish) posts, but they will be both general and topical, and no longer exclusively about book stuff.
Despite the craziness of my schedule, this was a pretty good month for reading. I passed 100 volumes read for the year, and 150 pieces of short prose. I have even managed to retain most of what I have read, which is a bonus.
I don’t know if it is because of collective delusion, or that schools are back in session, or that the zeitgeist is one of collective acceptance/resignation, or simply that I have had a few good nights of sleep this month, but the overall vibe in my life is that things seem to be returning to normal, or at least normalizing around whatever *gestures around at everything* is. Which is to say, at least temporarily, I seem to have found my groove.
Three new books and book-ish things arrived at the house over the past week.
First up is the new issue of The Paris Review, which is likely the last issue I will receive as I continue to let all of my current subscriptions lapse.
Next up are two books from Two Lines Press. The first is Visible, an anthology of poetry and prose in translation, accompanied by some beautiful photographs and artwork. The second is Days Come and Go, written by Cameroon author Hemley Boum and translated from the French by Nchanji Njamnsi.
In reading news, I finished Shadows of Ivory by T L Greylook and Bryce O’Connor. It was good! I gave it 4 stars on the usual sites, though I though it more worthy of 3.5 stars, but when in the middle, always round up. Now I can hold my head up when next I encounter one of the authors and request a signature.
Following up that 400+ page doorstopper of a book, I started and finished the 130-page-long The Convent of the Pure by Sara M. Harvey. I received this a while back as part of my subscription to the catalog of Apex Book Company. It was a light but fun fantasy read. In fact, I finished it in a little over a day of reading, and then read the entirety of its sequel The Labyrinth of the Dead in a single day.
Now I am reading Abahn Sabana David, written by Marguerite Duras, and translated from the French by Kazim Ali. I received this book several years ago as part of my since-lapsed subscription to Open Letter Books. Though only a few pages in already it reminds me of Waiting for Godot, which makes sense as the cover blurb specifically calls out Samuel Beckett.
And my pile of unread issues of The Paris Review is down to the single digits, which means, unless things go sideways over the next two months, I will definitely finish the stack before the end of the year.
In writing news, I have started worldbuilding for two stories I wrote a while back, each of which will work better as full-length books. Each is in its own world and therefore I have two folders created and two sets of characters, histories, maps, names, descriptions, etc.
Things were kind of slow in August, reading-wise, due to a surge in burnout at the beginning of the month, and other assorted drains on my energy and attention span. I did make it through a few more issues of The Paris Review, and some interesting genre fiction as well.
Oh, what a month it has been. The days are longer, the weather is warmer, and we are not far from the halfway point of 2022. Suddenly this long year has become surprisingly short.
Three new books arrived in the past week.
First up is Kameron Hurley‘s new collection of short stories Future Artifacts, recently published by Apex Book Company. I met Kameron at the ConFusion science fiction convention some years ago, and she has graciously signed several of her books. I haven’t read any of her work in a couple of years, so I started reading it on Saturday.
Next on the stack is Issue 22 of the Boston Review Forum, titled Rethinking Law. I had let my membership to the Boston Review lapse, but they had a re-up offer which was too good to pass up. And since it’s only three issues a year, the additional weight in my house should be manageable.
In reading news, I am caught up to autumn of 2021 in my read-through of the pile of unread back issues of Poetry. Time and energy permitting, I may catch up to present sometime in June.
I finished Stephen Duncombe‘s Dream or Nightmare. Though unintended, it was the perfect follow-up to Benedict Anderson‘s Imagined Communities, as though the Anderson is about nationalism and the Duncombe about progressive political strategies, they both make the point that, when it comes to politics (which is to say, practically everything about society), people qua people don’t really notice or care about the minutiae of daily life outside of their immediate reach. What they notice are the stories, the narratives in which connect the individual to the people, places, ideas, and events outside of their immediate purview. This is how conservatives are able to convince their followers that fascism and freedom are synonymous, as long as the Right People are in the in-group. This is also why progressives and lefties are so much less successful at spinning inclusive narratives, as (a) progressives are much more grounded in facts and the real world than are conservatives, and (b) the 15% or so of the USA who are actually left-of-center tend to fail each others’ purity tests when it comes to the work of gathering a community.
To clear my head of modern stresses, I picked up Between Clay and Dust, a novel by Pakistani author Musharraf Ali Farooqi, which arrived at the house back in February of 2016 as part of my (now lapsed) subscription to Restless Books. I finished the book in three days, and it was beautiful. I rated it five stars, and recommend it unreservedly.
As stated above, I am now reading Kameron Hurley’s Future Artifacts.
In writing news, I haven’t done much lately. Too many other things taking up space in my head. I do plan to finish transcribing my National Poetry Month poems over the next couple of weeks.
The year is flying away, now that the days are long and the COVID vaccine behind me. I am slowly (sooo slowly) pulling myself out of my no-writing funk. Much to my surprise, increased human contact seems to be helping. I spent much of this past week out in the world, catching up with people I have not seen in a very long time. It was a wonderful experience, and the post-peopling hangover today reminds me why I don’t go out and socialize very often any more.
A small stack of reading material arrived at the Library of Winkelman Abbey over the course of the past week.
First up is the new issue of Granta, which includes a large collection of writing from young Spanish novelists. I have got into the habit of tossing new lit journals on the shelf as soon as they arrive at my house, but this one, I think, bears immediate reading.
I’m about 100 pages into The Cybernetic Hypothesis, and it seems to be losing its focus somewhat. Still quite informative and disturbing, but the ideas don’t seem to be as clearly defined as they were earlier in the text. I will still read to the end. Perhaps this is merely groundwork for the final parts of the books.
I am closing in on halfway through Son of a Liche by J. Zachary Pike. I really like this books! The writing isn’t quite as tight as the previous volume in the Dark Profit series, Orconomics, but as this book is twice as long as its predecessor, I can overlook the slower pace. It’s loads of fun!
In writing news, still nothing to report. I have a list of anthologies seeking themed submissions, and review it daily hoping for inspiration to strike, but when I have time free, instead of writing, I tend to take naps. I think my body is trying to tell me something.
I was on vacation for the past week which, thanks to COVID, meant I did largely what I do while working, except without the working part. I did take a good long walk on Monday, from my house near downtown Grand Rapids, all the way around Reed’s Lake and back home, with stops at Argos Book Shop and Common Ground Coffee House.
It was a good week for reading material here at the Library of Winkelman Abbey.
First on the list is the latest issue of Poetry Magazine, which is soothing balm on the brain after a hard day of writing code.
Next is Robert Kelly’s A Strange Market, published by Black Sparrow Press, which I picked up at Argos at the end of my long walk. I love the old Black Sparrow books, back when they were an independent publisher rather than an imprint. The rough covers are part of the appeal and the aesthetic.
Next is Obits. by Tess Liem, which I also picked up at Argos. I had never heard of Liem, but a quick and random read of a couple of the poems herein convinced me that this would be a good impulse purchase.
Next is Maze by J.M. McDermott, from my subscription to the catalog of Apex Book Company.
Next is Mohamed Kheir’s Slipping, translated by Robin Moger, from my subscription to Two Lines Press.
And finally volumes 1 and 2 of The Psychopathologies of Cognitive Capitalism. I picked up volume 3 when Zyra and I visited City Lights Books back in summer 2018 and, since I can’t abide incomplete sets, completing the collection seemed like a good birthday present for myself.
In reading news, I finished Arkady Martines’s A Memory Called Empire and it was wonderful! I don’t remember the last book I read which had such deep and subtle political intrigue. I appreciated Martine’s use of the narrow lens of the single viewpoint character (albeit with some branches due to a very specific technology central to the plot). This kept the sense that the machinations and machinery of empire are vast and a single person can only see a small fraction or a single facet of the whole. I will need to reconsider some of my own writing in light of the experience I gained in reading this books.
I also finished Darran Anderson’s absolutely magnificent creative nonfiction book Imaginary Cities. Anderson explores ideas and the mythology of cities, and how they live in our stories, dreams and imagination, rather than the hard numeric facts. This means that Neil Gaiman will be cited next to Le Corbusier, and the stories related by Marco Polo and Samuel Taylor Coleridge will be given equal weight to the news feeds of current and historical events. Every page of this book contains passages good for multiple writing prompts, and as with Martine’s book above, but for quite different reasons, I feel I need to revisit some of my own writing based on the influences herein.
In writing news, not much is happening. I am slowly transcribing the thirty poems I wrote in April, and much to my surprise some of them have promise. I will probably be working on this task for the next few week as I return to work and summer distracts me with the option of being outside and away from a computer. I also started editing a literary fiction short story I wrote a couple of years ago, as part of NaNoWriMo. I think I will have it in shape to send out before the end of summer, assuming my energy level and attention span return to what they were before I received my COVID vaccinations.
One day, having the time and mental capacity to write regularly will be such a regular part of my life that it will not be worth mentioning. But today is not that day.
If the above image seems subtly different from the images in the previous posts, it is because I just bought a new smart phone to replace my ageing Galaxy Note 4. I now have a Google Pixel 4a/5G, which in most ways is not appreciably different from any other mid-range smart phone, but it does have an amazing camera, which is apparently the hallmark of the Google Pixel series. So expect to see an increase in the number of photo posts on this blog.
The weather in this past week was all over the place, from highs near 70 to lows in the teens. All in the space of a few days. Right now the air is a balmy 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Perfect for walking in the woods. Which I just did.
On the left pf the above photo is the latest issue of Poetry magazine, from the Poetry Foundation. On the right is Unwelcome Bodies, Jennifer Pelland’s collection of short fiction which was published by Apex Book Company. I received this as a reward for backing Apex Book Company at a certain tier on their Patreon.
In writing news, I am writing (at least) a poem a day for the month of April, and so far, four days in, am keeping up. Seems I can only write at the moment if I am under some sort of external pressure. That is all.
