Getting back on track with a November update

Greetings fellow bibliophiles,

Again, I find myself making apologies for being absent.
I intended to post last month, but the first couple of weeks were crazy busy, then I kept delaying while on vacation, and now it's November.

I'm 7 books away from finishing my 2017 Read Harder Challenge; though I only need to find and read 3, the other 4 I've started and need to finish. This month's selections all fit nicely into a few of the categories.

First, the film version of André Aciman's Call Me by Your Name is due to come out later this month in the US (not sure when we'll get it here in Japan), and in anticipation, I suggest reading the book. Through the voice of Elio, the 17-year-old son of Jewish Italian-American academics, Aciman spins a story of sexual awakening and coming-of-age. When Oliver, a postdoc student who comes to stay with Elio's family in Italy for six weeks during the summer of 1983, Elio quickly becomes enamored and sets in motion a series of events that will be felt far into the future from which vantage Elio narrates. A debut novel and an LGBTQI+ romance, Call Me by Your Name should fit nicely into your RHC.

Winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award, NBCC's John Leonard Award, and a NYT and WP notable book, Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi tells the stories of two half-sisters born in different villages in the Ashanti Empire and their descendants. Gyasi gives us Esi, who is captured by Fante warriors and sold into slavery, and Effia, who will be married to an Englishman. In a series of vignettes that could almost be read individually as short stories, she follows Esi's and Effia's children through the generations, recounting their struggles and successes while giving voice to centuries of history on both sides of the Atlantic slave trade. Set in both past and present Ghana and the United States, this could be a novel set within 100 miles of your location or over 5000 miles from your location (depending on your proximity to southern Georgia, northern Alabama, Baltimore, MD, NYC, and the southern and coastal Ghana). This is also a debut novel and a novel in which all point-of-view characters are people of color.

David Bajo's ambitious first novel, The 351 Books of Irma Arcuri, is about Philip Masryk, a mathematician and runner, and his search for his lover, the titular Irma, who disappears after bequeathing him a collection of 351 books. This is a complex mystery about books, running, mathematics, and human entanglements which, at times, becomes convoluted. With frequent references to a number of works of literature, Bajo raises interesting questions about how we choose to live and love. I first read it at the end of the summer of 2008, and I remember taking my time with it; often reading a chapter and then leaving it for a day or so to think before diving back in. This is the first book that I can remember having that kind of relationship with; slow-moving and thoughtful. It will go onto my list as a book I've read before, but could also fit as a book about books.

Lastly, in her memoir, Negroland, Margo Jefferson weaves together family anecdotes with forays into African American history to produce a fascinating recounting of a childhood spent in the privileged bubble created by the confluence of race and class, and the personal shattering Jefferson encountered during her adolescence and early adulthood. I found this book especially interesting because Jefferson and my own grandmother have a great deal in common. Born just under a decade apart, Jefferson in 1947 and my grandmother in 1938, were both the younger daughters of doctors. This afforded them the opportunities to attend exclusive private schools, camps, and clubs, though my grandmother was white and therefore didn't have to face the confounding menace of racism.

Happy reading!

Fiction
Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
The 351 Books of Irma Arcuri by David Bajo

Nonfiction
Negroland by Margo Jefferson
Margo Jefferson: interview by Tim Adams

Belated July and August Update

Dearest bibliophiles,

It's been so long! Sincerest apologies for my absence; I've been on the road for most of the last couple of months - traveling, visiting friends and family, and then moving to Japan - on top of that my computer charger got packed into my shipment, so I've been without a keyboard for the whole summer. I prefer to write these posts (and anything longer than a few lines) on a real keyboard, so that's been most of the reason for the delay.

I was able to get quite a bit of reading done over the summer, and I'm attaching the list of things I read at the bottom under the label July along with notes about how they may (or may not) have contributed to my progress with the 2017 Read Harder Challenge.

The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin is the third, and final, installment of the Broken Earth trilogy, and just came out a few days ago. I read and enjoyed the first two novels earlier this year and I've been anxiously awaiting the third. The first, The Fifth Season, won the 2016 Hugo Award for best novel and was an April Triple B selection. The world that Jemisin has created is richly constructed with complex characters who are both relatable and endearing. If you've not read a fantasy novel this year, I highly recommend you start with this series.

Ken Liu's award-winning (the first to win the Hugo, Nebula, AND World Fantasy awards) The Paper Menagerie is a moving short story about a biracial child and his struggle to come to terms with his Chinese heritage.

The item I've most been dreading from this reading challenge is the very first - read a book about sports. As most of you know, I'm pretty much the polar opposite of a sports fan - I do yoga and I run, but I cannot be bothered to pay the slightest bit of attention to organized athletics. When I was younger - maybe 7 or 8 - my father took me to a college football game thinking that I might be won over by the collective excitement of the crowd and the festive nature of it being a live event. Alas, I took two books (Goosebumps by R.L. Stine, if I remember correctly) and read the entire time. I didn't even pay attention to the band's performance during halftime. I've been trying to keep an eye out for something sports-related that would be somewhat palatable, and I think I've found it in Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.

Over the summer, I read How to be Gay in which David Halperin argues that there's a lot more to being gay than physical attraction by exploring and interpreting gay cultural artifacts before and since Stonewall. He frequently refers to Susan Sontag's essay, On Camp, and therefore I've added the collection of her essays, Against Interpretation and Other Essays in which it is included, to the list for this month.

Alexander Chee's award-winning debut novel, Edinburgh, was featured in our June reading list and has been one of my favorite reads this year. Chee was a delightful guest on Episode 8 of Food4Thot during which he dished about revenge sex and the struggle to get Edinburgh published. I'm including The Poisoning this month as a short read as an introduction for any of you who have yet to read him, or for those that have and are as enamored as I am.

I started to outline Collier Meyerson's article Fighting White Supremacy Means Owning Up to American History, and realized that I have more to say about it than will fit nicely here. I've moved that to another post which I will share soon.

Lastly, I've recently realized that I enjoy reading poetry far more than I thought I did. In Episode 9 of Food4Thot, Tommy Pico performed a segment of his much longer work Nature Poem, and I couldn't wait to read the rest. I quickly moved onto Morgan Parker's There are More Beautiful Things than Beyoncé in which Parker addresses the difficulty of being a Black woman today. In his collection of poems [insert] boy, winner of both the 2016 Kate Tufts Discovery Award and a Lambda Literary Award, Danez Smith questions what it means to inhabit the queer, Black, male body.

Happy reading!

August

Fiction
The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin (fantasy novel)
The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu (short story with central immigration narrative, also written by an immigrant)

Nonfiction
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami (book about sports)
Against Interpretation and Other Essays by Susan Sontag (The titular essay, for a shorter read)
The Poisoning by Alexander Chee
Fighting White Supremacy Means Owning Up to American History by Collier Meyerson

Poetry
[insert] boy by Danez Smith

July

Fiction
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
Hallucinating Foucault by Patricia Dunker
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin
Black Deutschland by Darryl Pinckney
The End of Eddy by Edourd Louis
Twenty-four Hours in the Life of a Woman by Stefan Zweig

Nonfiction
How to be Gay by David M. Halperin
Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots edited by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

Poetry
Nature Poem by Tommy Pico
There are More Beautiful Things than Beyoncé by Morgan Parker

June Reading List

Greetings bibliophiles,

Summer is almost here, which means that the season of extended beach, pool, and/or outdoor reading sessions is upon us, therefore I have a few extra selections to help sate your literary cravings.
As usual, I'll be offering up options which might help you complete the 2017 Read Harder Challenge.

Isabel Allende's debut novel, The House of the Spirits, is a grand family saga which tells the story of three generations of the extraordinary Trueba clan and of the nation to which they are indelibly bound. Allende is a natural storyteller and her narration slips between third and first person, almost as though the family patriarch, Esteban Trueba, were looking over her shoulder adding his own perspective. For a related short-read, persue this short interview in which Allende explains the possible origin of Latin American 'magical realism'.

June is LGBTQ+ Pride month and the next three books are both written by LGBTQ+ authors and feature LGTBQ+ characters.

Aristotle & Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz is a moving bildungsroman about two Mexican-American teenagers who meet and discover themselves in the El Paso of the late 1980s. Sáenz does a wonderful job of fleshing out his characters; both main characters and their families are drawn with enough humor, pain, and tenderness to feel real. You can listen to a short interview with the author here.

Next up, Christopher Isherwood's The Berlin Stories: two related novels, Mr. Norris Changes Trains and Goodbye to Berlin, that capture the spirit of Berlin in the last days of the Weimar Republic. Isherwood was arguably the first openly gay author to be read widely, and these two novels, published in 1935 & 1939, respectively, are considered to be modern classics. Also, these are the basis for the many iterations of Cabaret.

Lastly, for fiction, is Alexander Chee's Edinburgh, the story of a young Korean-American and his struggle to overcome childhood sexual abuse while also wrestling with his identity. Chee sits in for Dennis in the last episode of the season of Food4Thot and describes the process of getting this novel, his debut, published.

For nonfiction readers, I'll also be reading Adam Phillip's Unforbidden Pleasures, a collection of essays loosely connected by the theme of everyday desire and pleasure.

Fiction
The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende (debut novel, South American book by SA author)
Aristotle & Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz (YA Fiction by LGBTQ+ identifying author)
The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood (novels published between 1900-1950)
Edinburgh by Alexander Chee (debut novel, all POV characters are POC)

Nonfiction
Unforbidden Pleasures by Adam Phillips

Feel free to comment, email, or set up a date with me if you'd like to discuss any (or all) of these.

Happy reading!
RP

Review: Swing Time by Zadie Smith

Greetings bibliophiles,

I stayed up late Thursday night finishing Zadie Smith's Swing Time, a sprawling rumination on privilege and appropriation and the complicated dance between the two.

The story is told from the point-of-view of an unnamed narrator, a biracial thirtysomething disgraced former personal assistant, and weaves through her past and present relationships with a cast of complex characters. There's her mother, a fiercely intelligent, but aloof, black woman whose political aspirations take precedence over her personal relations. Talented, self-assured, but ultimately tragic, Tracey, another biracial girl with an indulgent mother from the housing estate across from the narrator's, whom the narrator meets and begins a complicated friendship in a community dance class. International pop superstar, Aimee, who believes that if all of the world's woes were met with her determination and focus, they'd be easily solved, and therefore founds a girls' school in a rural village in an unnamed (The Gambia) West African country. And vibrant, loquacious Hawa, a teacher who is charged with helping the narrator assess the needs of the girls in this village. In each of these relationships, the narrator is the Ginger to the more decisive woman's Fred; influenced and led, rarely making decisions on her own.

These characters also seem to complement each other, as dance partners should. The bright, but insecure narrator who is a mediocre dancer, but has a lovely voice complements Tracey, who is a confident, natural dancer, but cannot sing and consistently struggles to move beyond the estate despite her talents. They even are opposites in parentage; Tracey's mother is white and devoted to her, but her black father is an abusive criminal while the narrator's mother is a black woman driven to change her community and her father is a loving but unmotivated white man.

The two maternal figures, the narrator's mother and Aimee, also seem to be two sides of the same coin. Both are driven, somewhat aloof, determined to make changes in the world around them, but at the expense of forming loving, lasting relationships with those around them.

Smith also raises the issue of appropriation. In the first chapter, the narrator stops by a theatre to watch a famous director talk about a clip from the 1936 film, Swing Time, in which Fred Astaire does a solo dance, "Bojangles of Harlem," in blackface.  In another scene, the narrator and Tracey are filmed at a childhood birthday party mimicking the lascivious moves of Aimee, who is sort of a mishmash of Madonna, Kylie Minogue, and other 80s pop divas. Aimee, in turn, appropriates the local dance moves of the community in which she builds her school while the locals show off televisions and smartphones (in various states, working and broken).

What does it mean to appropriate and is it ever acceptable? Who owns cultural artifacts? These are some of the questions Smith seems to want us to ask ourselves.

Smith's writing is tight and engaging, and it's easy to see that she's been influenced by the great authors of the past (e.g. Dickens) whose works were serialized; her chapters are succinct and propel the reader forward at a good clip. At over 400 pages, I was a little hesitant to get started but ultimately finished the book in just four days.

Swing Time is my first Zadie Smith novel, and I will definitely be reading others. I found her writing to be very engaging, the characters multifaceted and complex, and the plot compelling and layered. While there are several issues being addressed, Smith is never preachy. Multiple perspectives are given, and it's up to the reader to really address their own feelings and rationalize them.
If you give Swing Time a read, let me know, I'd love to discuss it with you.

Happy reading!

PS The thots over at the podcast, Food 4 Thot discuss Swing Time in episode 7. Follow the link to give it a listen.

May Update

My dear bibliophiles,

This month I'll be continuing to work on the 2017 Book Challenge.

The Marquis de Sade's controversial The 120 Days of Sodom has been challenged or banned in a variety of places, and while it was written in 1785, it went unpublished until 1904, therefore qualifying it as a book published between 1900-1950.

Over the past couple of months, I've really been enjoying Food 4 Thot, a podcast created by 4 hilarious queer writers who chat about books, sex, race, and identity over rosé. On 14 May they'll be discussing Zadie Smith's Swing Time which is narrated by a woman of color.

Modern Japan: a Very Short Introduction is just a little preparatory reading for my upcoming relocation.

This month's selections:

Fiction
Swing Time by Zadie Smith
The 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade

Nonfiction
Zadie Smith's Dance of Ambivalence by Dayna Tortorici (article)
We translated the Marquis de Sade's most obscene work - here's how by Will McMorran (article)
Modern Japan: a Very Short Introduction by Christopher Goto-Jones

If you'd like to meet and discuss any or all of these at the end of the month, give me a shout.

Happy reading!
RP

April Update

Dear fellow bibliophiles,

First, apologies for the late post; the last few weeks have been pretty hectic and I'm only just now getting caught up.

Again, there are several selections that will help with the 2017 Read Harder Challenge. N.K. Jemisin's The Fifth Season is an excellent, award-winning fantasy novel (review coming soon), Chang's The Wangs vs. the World is a debut novel that NPR describes as " unrelentingly fun", and Ben Ratliff's Every Song Ever discusses the impact of technology on how we consume music.

This month's selections are as follows:

Fiction
The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin (2016 Hugo Award for Best Novel & NYT Notable for 2015)
The Wangs vs. the World by Jade Chang
Stone Hunger by N.K. Jemisin (short story w/ optional audio)

Nonfiction
Every Song Ever: Twenty Ways to Listen in an Age of Musical Plenty by Ben Ratliff
Is Bandcamp the Holy Grail of Online Record Stores? by Ben Ratliff (article)

This month's meeting will take place at 12:00 on Saturday, April 29, at Rainbow Sparkly Land. Please RSVP by Wednesday, 26/4 if you'll be able to attend.

Happy reading!
RP

Quick Meeting Update

Good evening fellow bibliophiles,

Just a quick note: there's been an adjustment to both the location and time of tomorrow's meeting; we'll be meeting at 18:00 at Garage in Berga Bāzars instead of Rocket Bean at 18:30.

Hope to see you there!
RP