January/February Booklist

Books Read: 

~Neil Gaiman, Smoke and Mirrors (337 pgs) [I had picked this up a while ago as a used book and it's an early one of his short stories. I started it back over the summer/fall but set it aside as the sexual abuse allegations against Gaiman started coming out. I decided just to finish it so I could put it away and be done with all of his works I own. I can't say I'm surprised at the allegations (I have NOT read the entire article, I don't need the details living in my head rent free) since some of the things in them are found in his fictions, including in some of these. I never idolized him, something about the way he wrote certain things gave me the icks because there was something voyeuristic salacious in them taking joy in what he was writing. Specifically certain parts of American Gods and certain parts of Sandman come to mind. I'm not going to get rid of his works I own, almost all of which I bought used. But it will be a very long time, if ever, before I have any desire to re-read any of his works because I won't be able to read them without remembering what came out about his abusive sexploits with unwilling women.]

~Gregory Maguire, Wicked (406 pgs) [I still don't love these. All the characters are just so sordid without any redemption arc and you get the sense that the author ENJOYS exposing to the reader the ugliest worst in them. There's nobody in any of his books I've ever read who you would be like, "Y'know, I would enjoy sitting down having a chat getting to know you." Everybody is selfish and craven and motivated to act by the worst in themselves rarely, almost never, the best in them they could be.]

~Gregory Maguire, Son of a Witch (334 pgs)

~Gregory Maguire, A Lion Among Men (312 pgs) [found a used paperback copy of this after I borrowed Crissy's copy she had bought for her dad but who only read the first two and didn't want to keep them despite loving the first book. They did not have Out of Oz but from summaries/reviews online, the third one is weirdly it's own book whereas the fourth book is very much the prequel/start of the followup trilogy so it makes sense to wait until/if I have those to read it.]

~James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans (427 pgs) [The first half of this was an easier quicker read than the last one, which was the last one written though the first chronologically and intended to be read first -- while still extremely racist it is significantly less overtly racist statements about all Native American character, much more "noble savage" personifications. The second half was harder to get through reading due to the racism becoming ever more overt and the part once they reach the Hurons took me the longest to get through even though over 2/3 of the way through the novel. Still overly florid language, but once I decided to knuckle down read it, most of it was a fairly quick read until reaching the most racist portions and then I gritted my teeth just wanted to be done with it. While these are considered American classics, I would not suggest that impressionable naive people should read them without a LOT of important contextual foundations about it.]

~Dan Sasuweh Jones, Ponca Nation, Living Ghosts & Mischievous Monsters (166 pgs)

~Daniel Levitin, The Brain in Six Songs: How The Musical Brain Created Human Nature (358 pgs) [I wanted so much more from this book than it provided -- it was a lot of theory about evolutionary biology to explain why music moves people the way it does but very little concrete science to back up the theories he chose to believe.  Mostly it was a lot of rambling personal stories and name dropping of famous musicians he met during the course of writing the book and filler fluff about very obvious reasons some people think music taps into emotional centers. The actual theorizing and science about musicology and why brains are hard wired responsive to it was very lacking in the book. Would not recommend. I've read better books on the brain and music. The last chapter was the best of them, it seemed like the heart of what he wanted to write about, but he had to do the others to suit the structure he created for the book and so he just put filler in to make that seem less obvious.]

~Octavia E. Butler, Wild Seed (307 pgs) [I really enjoyed this one and devoured it in one sitting. One sitting broken up by getting up to make more tea/coffee when my cup was empty at chapter breaks and to use the chapter breaks while the water was boiling to pee, but I read it cover to cover before doing anything else or eating anything. I really empathized with and loved the main character who becomes Emma. Absolutely adore her, she may be one of my favorite literary witches I've ever read and that says a lot given how much I read in the genres that have powerful females with gifts enough to call them witches. Absolutely adore her, would love to know her and call her family/friend.]

~Octavia E. Butler, Mind of My Mind (244 pgs) [this one didn't have as many pages as the last, but I found it hard to get into and finish. It jumps characters a lot and, if I'm honest, I didn't really LIKE or TRUST any of the characters it was about or their perspectives... They were all very morally grey in ways that gave me the ick toward them. I found myself mourning the ending because, you don't have to AGREE with someone's ethical code, but I have a lot more respect and ability to empathize with those who have and live by their own ethical code even if it's nothing like my own.]

~Octavia E. Butler, Clay's Ark (230 pgs) [this one took a little while for me to get into the narrative flow of it and the subject matter, but once I did get invested in the storyline(s) it was a quick read and hard to put down.]

~Octavia E. Butler, Patternmaster (217 pgs) [this one was a simple, obvious story to plot out and the world wasn't my favorite sci-fi fantasy dystopia. It felt threadbare needed more "why should the reader care?" after the effort to enter into the world and starting to like the protagonists.]

~The Penguin Book of Dragons (351 pgs)

~Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees (302 pgs) [this is a book that made me cry at parts of it -- and that's hard for fictions to do unless an animals die or is tortured in the book. It also made me angry at points, the casual racism and the senseless violence/losses in it, and the perpetuating cycles in it that are as true in modern America as they were in the 1964 it's set in. Still there's so much beauty and love woven and shining through the book in spite of the harshness of the world that it was easy to devour it and decide I loved it would recommend it to other people as among my favorites. But. Still. it was the story arc of May that made me cry, not the main character's story or any of the other stories even at their cruellest.]

~Zora Neale Hurston,  Mules and Men (370 pgs) [this is a curious mix of memoir and oral story telling and folktales and hoodoo practices from southern Black culture at the turn of the last century. I'm not actually certain where it should go in my collection now that I've read it...]

Books Acquired (I didn't acquire many books so far this year: little library selections have sucked or already own the books of interest and I haven't been to any book shops yet; my budget is glad for that at least): 

~Kent Haruf, Our Souls at Night [this was among the remaining things in the stacks to go to charity shops if nobody in the family wanted them when grandma moved. I had let the kids have first dibs was really happy to find it and claim it while I was there going through the remaining things packing them up. This was the last book that she read, I know because she told me about it when she was reading it with Phil, a good friend of hers since kindergarten who she stayed in touch with and they were each "the one that got away" but they didn't realize it admit it to each other until they were into their 70s after having lived their full married/kids/deaths or divorces lives and living far away. But after Richard died, they kept up email and then phone correspondance daily (including watching Rachel Maddow together on the phone across the country apart) until his mind failed so badly they no longer could -- and something in her after the news he had passed and her mind started slipping faster. For a while she mourned never getting to say a goodbye to him, but now she no longer remembers he's dead most days, just remembers how long they maintained their friendship circle from kindergarten. Anyway, she said they found this book cathartic about letting go as you age and the people you love start dying and find love/meaning after that -- and I promised her I would keep it and read it after she was no longer able to remember the meaning it once had for her reading it and crying over it with Phil in California. I may be too young in this body to appreciate it as they did, but whenever I read it, it will hold extra meaning for me knowing the story behind it and what it meant for her/them.]

~Gregory Maguire, A Lion Among Men [Crissy actually found this for me at Book Deal, local used book store, knowing I've been looking for a copy but wanting the edition to match the others. I still don't own and having read the last in the series, Out of oz, or the followup trilogy. But I intend to put it away and if/when i find all the others i will re-read all 7 of them together. But it's not a priority for me.]

~Union Haggadah [two more copies, I already had one from Grandma's first move. This was the Haggadah I grew up using for the Seder and that my dad and his siblings and cousins grew up using and that my grandma and her sister grew up using.  They were published in 1923. So they are one of the few Haggadahs you will ever find that do not include anything about the Holocaust in the passages selected for the holiday or giving thanks for being saved throughout the persecutions and servitudes of the Jewish people.]

~Union Prayer Book [this was my grandfather's copy of the important Jewish prayers that he received for his bar mitzvah back in the 50s. He was an atheist most of his life, my family is not very religiously orthodox anything, and I associate Gurdjieff and Cayce with grandpa more than the holy days services/prayers. but it's neat to have this with his name in his handwriting in it know it was his.. It doesn't have transliterations of the Hebrew and I've forgotten most of the Hebrew I learned, but the parts written in English and translated into English I can read. It has the services for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippour in it.]

~Rebecca Yarros, Onyx Storm [still haven't read any of the series but picked it up since I have plans to whiskey book club the series with Amanda and Crissy so picked this one up when it came out. But Amanda had her c section scheduled for the week after the book was released and was then going to have a newborn and the two other kiddos under 5 years old so wasn't up for fitting it in and she had suggested whiskey book club ing this series really wanted to curate the whiskeys for these. So we will whiskey book club at book or 4 all 5 of them when the next ones come out, lol. I probably won't read them before then -- I don't know what I'm missing and it's a lot of page commitment to be rereading them all as each new one comes out which is what I do whenever I get hooked on reading a series while it's still being written/published.]

~I have the copy of my grandmas big tome of a yearbook from 1958, the year she and my grandpa met at Northwestern. It doesn't mean much to me personally and I haven't yet looked through it because paging through it was hard having the death sight knowing most of the people in the pictures were dead or dying. But I didn't want to let it go to a second hand store that would just throw it away, y'know? It felt like... If it couldn't have a new life in an art project of some sort, it should be buried/interred/disposed of by family not strangers.