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
Showing posts with label 2017 book challenge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2017 book challenge. Show all posts
Saturday, August 19, 2017
Wednesday, May 31, 2017
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
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
Monday, May 8, 2017
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
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
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