Currently Reading

 It's been a while!

I'm kind of obsessed with zuihitsu right now, a Japanese literary form somewhere between a poem and an essay. It's translated as "following the brush" and comprised of connected statements, lists, references, what have you, depending on the writer and topic and method chosen. A very flexible literary form. I've had one that I've written accepted for publication and I want to write more. So I'm immersing myself by reading them. The most famous is Sei Shonagon's The Pillow Book, but right up there is Yoshida Kenko's Essays in Idleness, which I'm loving. So that's what I'm reading. What about you?

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

 

It's Monday, and I'm treating myself to a re-read of  Diana Wynne Jones' children's classic Howl's Moving Castle. It's the basis for my favorite comfort-watch movie and I know the book is very different from the movie but that's what I love about both, the way that Hiyao Miyazaki used this weird and wonderful book as the jumping-off point for his own weird and wonderful art. I'll put on some of Joe Hisaishi's magical soundtrack, make some tea and settle in. What about you?

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

 

Shze-Hui Tjoa's memoir The Story Game is my current read. It's a mysterious, searing memoir told in a format I've never seen before, alternating between first-person narration of anecdotes whose connection only becomes clear as we go on, and a conversation between the narrator and a younger child. 

I received it for review and promotion from the publisher, Tin House Books, whose books I always love. They really do publish the crème-de-la-crème of both fiction and nonfiction. They also run some pretty great writing workshops. 

They sent me this nice gift wrapped package with two promotional postcards. So fun!

Anyway definitely check out The Story Game. I am probably going to be done reading it in another couple of days and then you'll see a review in my Substack, which I encourage you to subscribe to.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

 

I'm reading J.L. Carr's lovely A Month in the Country, about an art restorer and WW1 vet spending a summer in the English countryside restoring a painting in a village church. It's low-key and delightful and very short- only 135 pages in the New York Review Books Classics edition. I heard about it from YouTuber Tristan and the Classics, which I recommend you check out for great reading ideas.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

 

I'm debating doing this here or over on my Substack but I feel like taking this up again right now. I was thinking about a written reading journal when I remembered I have an actual blog I could use. So here we are.

 

I have an advance copy of Joan Leegant's new collection Displaced Persons, which she sent me for review. It comes out in June and I'm starting it tonight.

 

I'm roughly 1/3 of the way through Sarah Waters' wonderful Fingersmith, a Victorian-era crime drama set in and around London.

What are you reading?

It's Monday and I Just Started Reading...

 

The Shadow Rising! The fourth book in the Wheel of Time series!!!!

So far so good but I'm only one chapter in. That awful Lady Suroth is back. She's the worst!! And who is Ordieth? I have a theory. RAFO. Read and Find Out!

It's Monday, and I'm Reading

Hopefully I'll be finishing up these two books tonight and have some new ones for you next Monday but for now...

Jeannie Vanasco's memoir, Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl, is an unusual memoir made up of mostly dialogue and transcribed conversations, about a woman's attempt to make sense of the rape she suffered at the hands of her high school friend. Vanasco wants to know if good people can do bad things, and if it's possible, or desirable, to forgive them, and if it's possible for those people to understand what they did and face up to it. I don't know!

 

 

Mary Elizabeth Braddon's 1862 novel Lady Audley's Secret is basically about a good girl gone bad. It starts with a character named George Tallboys, a British man returning to England from finding his fortune in Australia only to discover his wife Helen is dead. He spends time with his friend Robert Audley, a minor nobleman whose uncle Michael is married to a much-younger woman with a mysterious past. Then George disappears. It's a moody and suspenseful piece of 19th century atmosphere.

I'm also 14 chapters from finishing The Dragon Reborn, the third book in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. I might be done with that by next Monday, too.

What are you reading?

It's Monday! Remember Me?

It's been over a month since I posted but never fear, I haven't given up my blog (again). I've just been lazy about posting.

I'm on book three of Robert Jordan's fantasy epic series The Wheel of Time, The Dragon Reborn. Lots of stuff happens in The Eye of the World and The Great Hunt, and more stuff is happening now, to a guy named Rand and his pals Perrin, Mat, Egwene and Nyaneve, plus some other dudes like Moiraine, Lan, Padan Fain, and so on.

I am really loving this series and plan to read all 14ish volumes in the next year.

I'm reading Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret, too, an older novel about a young lady with skeletons in her closet. Among other things. Fun!