January/February/March Book List

I forgot to post this end of January then again end of February. Whoops! Guess I'll be doing these quarterly this year. Unless I remember to do it or decide to do it on a more frequent timeline. On verra.

 

 Books Read: 

~James Fenimore Cooper, The Pioneers (447 pgs) [this took me a while to read, though once there was snow on the ground I started making better headway. (It opens as set on Christmas Eve) It's not as overtly racist as the others since it is a critique of the civilizing evil of pioneer American colonialist expansionism and the laying down of rules destroying the wild natural goodness that had been. It's just very sententious and florid and it took 170 pgs to tell through one day in which nothing much happened, he just sets up the pieces for the plot and shows you why these seemingly "good" folk are mostly all hypocrites and cruel and rather foolish people. The plot of those 170 pgs could be told in one normal length chapter by most authors, two chapters by most novelists of the 18th or 19th century -- maybe three if it was Henry James.... The pacing also suffered from being too fast with too much happening in the last 100pgs or so to give the story a plot. I only have one more novel left after this to have read through all the Leatherstocking Tales though! Which is far more exciting than the books themselves, lol. I do wish I had the last one in the same edition to match the other though..... If you ever find the édition of The Prairie it would make me far more happy to have it to match the others than the actual reading of the text ever could.]

~Hannah Whitten, For the Wolf (465 pgs) [I enjoyed this very much for what it was. A dark fantasy Beauty and the Beast retelling with some strongly animist magic layering through it. And what it was was exactly what I needed at that time. It was definitely a retelling of Beauty and the Beast with the "the monsters are the heroes and the sacred are the villains" vibe but I liked where it was going with the return to wilding versus corruptions in the old religious/political hierarchies.]

~Hannah Whitten, For the Throne (483 pgs) [I didn't like this as much as the first book. I liked having the story completed because the first one ended in the middle of a new crisis and I liked the light-dark mirroring needing each other but the plot had a lot of holes. The mirroring was a cool concept, though it didn't feel to always be realized to the best of its potential. And I felt that the heart of the story, especially the love story in it, was trying to be mirrored shadows even our inner demons deserve to be loved to heal what others call monster in us but instead it read as trauma bonding Stockholm syndrome and calling it love. It didn't feel authentic and it felt like excusing/defining trauma bonding as love which I didn't like very well even with the tired sop of, "we need to go find ourselves before we can be together" because there was still no character arc growth other than, "you told me your story and it mirrors my own insecurities so I can see me in you calling that shadow work and we are going through desperately difficult death defying activities together where we rely on each other to survive it calling that trust building."   Which I just didn't like as well trying to force a love story happy ending for all the main characters. Not everyone needs or merits a redemption arc -- redemption arcs are things you earn with your choices not just as a plot point in the unfolding story....]

~Jack London, The Call of the Wild & White Fang (307 pgs) [this is a copy with both novels unabridged; I'm not actually sure why I decided to read these other than they are classics I never read unabridged. But like, I'm the girl who cries at any movie an animal dies or is injured... You can do anything you want to actors, my suspension of disbelief knows it's not real it's only acting. But even hunt at an animal being hurt or dying and I'm bawling... Old Yeller? Sobbed my heart out. Where the Red Fern Grows? Cried for hours. Homeward Bound? Started sobbing, "But. But. A dog wouldn't do that! They wouldn't just leave him..." until he comes over the hill then I was sobbing and laughing and my parents were trying to calm me. Marley and Me? Cried for a solid hour. So animals being hurt or dying even in fiction breaks my own heart every time.  So this was a choice I made, but also they were difficult reads for me emotionally even though reading level wise and thematically they shouldn't have been so difficult or taken as long as they did.  A lot of dogs die in both of the books... A lot of good dogs.] 

~Nilo Cruz, Anna in the Tropics (62 pgs) [script of a play that APT performed last summer. It was fantastic, but it made me want to reread Anna Karenina because it's been a while since I last reread it. And I have the Pevear translation still unread that I picked up. Pevear is the translator that professor Dolinin always said captured the Russian into English best back in my Dostoevsky class in university. Dolinin was a third generation Russian literature professor, his grandfather taught Tolstoy and Dostoevsky under the czar, his father taught it under Soviet rule until it was banned, and when they emigrated to the US when he was a kid he grew up to teach Russian literature in translation specializing in Tolstoï and Dostoevsky. Heavy reading list, but that Dostoevsky class is one of my favorites from college. And Prof Dolinin always swore by any Pevear translation being the most superior for reading Russian classics in English.]

~Sharon Blackie, The Enchanted Life (314 pgs) [I enjoyed this very much, but it didn't feel like anything éclatant -- it was just more of a pat on the head affirmation, "yes you're doing this embodied living correctly, good job never losing your sense of wonder and awe in the beauty of the world."]

~Andre Norton, Flight in Yiktor (251 pgs) [I had read some of these loosely connected series not consecutive from my dad's sci-fi/fantasy collection growing up. But I had never read Forerunner or Forerunner Foray so I wanted to read the other loosely set in this universe for some world building context. Mostly I read and reread her Witch World series as the one my dad told me I would love and should read handed me the books from his collection for me to read.]

~Andre Norton, Dare To Go A-Hunting (248 pgs)

~Susan Fair, American Witches (303 pgs) [this is the one my cat insisted I read. It was fascinating but very quick reading sensationalist history telling ]

~Andre Norton, Storm Over Warlock (201 pgs)

~Andre Norton, Ordeal in Otherwhere (191 pgs)

~Margot Lee Shetterly, Hidden Figures (349 pgs)

~Andre Norton, Forerunner ( pgs)

~ Andre Norton, Forerunner Foray ( pgs)

 ~Jean Menzies (ed.), Dragons, Wyverns, and Serpents (206 pgs) [this was a purse book specifically for working and and elections. Small and innocuous and full of myths/folktales.]

~Patrick Barlow, The 39 Steps (105 pgs) [script of a play that APT performed last fall]

~Lauren Oliver, Delirium Stories: Hana, Annabel, Raven & Alex (178 pgs) [I decided not to reread the Delirium trilogy since the YA plot and character were simple enough the short stories could take me right back to it ]

~Michael Grant, Cleopatra (301 pgs) [this was the other book Griffin pulled off the shelf for me to read after I finished the Witchcraft in America book. I actually read it while reading the Plutarch's Lives of Alexander and Caesar... Still slowly making my way through Volume 2 of the Dryden translation of those biographies, lol ]

~Frank Herbert, The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert (700 pgs) [I read these in between other books. Some of them were phenomenal, some were weird, some deserved more space and room to breathe than short story format.]

~Rudolf Erich Raspe (German author) & Théophile Gautier (translator), Aventures du baron de Münchausen (155 pgs) [the first I ever heard of these classic German folk tales surrounding the historic figure and the ridiculous stories/lies he would tell of his adventures that were popularized in the 18th century was watching parts of the 1988 film version of it back in high school art class. It's very surreal and inane as a film and part of that is because he's a folktale hero and he's sort of flung between one improbable story to the next with no continuity. Some of the folk tales have other older counterparts I've read, but I've never encountered a copy of the stories collected together until finding this French text at a used bookstore. I haven't looked that hard to be fair, but it's rather funny that I should be reading these German magazine stories (first published as a novel form in English) for the first time in a French translation, although they were popular across Europe. These are a collection of some of the retold stories with the famous Doré caricature illustrations, but it's in no way a complete collection. At some point, I should acquire a more complete set translated from the German into English (since reading german is not currently in my repertoire) but this is a good entryway into reading them then going back to rewatch the film at some point.]

~Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (295 pgs) [I had read selections of this in school but never all of it. And I made a promise to my 11th grade AP English teacher Ms. Vale to read it in full at some point. I wanted something beautiful and nature filled and real as a distraction from the state of the human created mess of things.]

Books Acquired: 

~Frederick Atkinson, Sceadugenga

~James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain

~W. R. J. Barron & S. C. Weinberg (editors and translators), Lazamon's Arthur : The Arthurian Section of Lazamon's Brut

~Anne Llewellyn Barstow, Witchcraze

~John Brought (translator), Poems From the Sanskrit

~A. S. Byatt, Babel Tower

~Joseph Campbell, Myths to Live By

~Lucy Cavendish, (illustrated by Jasmine Becket-Griffith), Magical Fairytales: An Enchanted Collection of Retold Tales

~Zu-Yan Chen (editor), Inspirational Chinese Voices Classical Poetry

~C. J. Cherryh, Foreigner

~Martha Cooley, The Archivist

~Zoraida Cordova, Incendiary

~Robert W. Corrigan, Masterpieces of the Modern German Theatre

~Charles deLint, Into the Green

~David & Leigh Eddings, The Dreamers 4: The Younger Gods [this was the last one I needed for the series! I also bought book 2 in paperback as I had it in hardcover for some reason but all the rest I had found in paperback]

~Shauna J. Edwards & Alyson Rich Man, The Thread Collectors

~Flametree (ed.), Scottish Folk & Fairy Tales

~Kate Forsyth, The Witches of Eileanan 2: The Pool of Two Moors (I already had the first book of this series and wanted to read it before discovering it's first in a quartet. After finding the second and third at Half Price Books East, I now only need to find the third so I can binge read the series at some point!)

~Kate Forsyth, The Witches of Eileanan 4: The Forbidden Land

~Hester Fox, A Lullaby for Witches

~Antonia Fraser, The Wives of Henry VIII

~Adalyn Grace, Belladonna

~Ember Grant, Mythology For A Magical Life

~Philippa Gregory, The Boleyn Inheritance

~Philippa Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl

~Philippa Gregory & David Baldwin & Michael Jones, The Women of the Cousins' War

~Lev Grossman, The Magicians [I had previously acquired book 1 in hardcover for free from a little library, but want the series to match on the shelf; so when I found all of the trilogy used in good condition paperback, I decided to pick them up and the hard cover can find a new home]

~Lev Grossman, The Magician King

~Lev Grossman, The Magician's Land

~Alexis Henderson, The Year of the Witching

~Donna Barba Higuera, The Last Cuentista

~Russell Hoban, The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz

~A. E. Housman, The Collected Poems of A. E. Housman

~Kristoffer Hughes, Cerridwen: Celtic Goddess of Inspiration

~Mindy Hung, The Glowing Life of Leeann Wu

~Jake Jackson & Imogen Corrigan (editors), Joan of Arc

~Emily Lloyd-Jones, The Bone Houses

~Charlie Lovett, The Paradox Club

~James Macpherson, The Poems of Ossian

~G. F. Main (ed), A Book of Scotland

~Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

~Anne McCaffrey & Todd McCaffrey, Dragon's Kin

~Anne McCaffrey & Todd McCaffrey, Dragon's Fire

~Prosper Mérimée, La Vénus d'Ille

~Barbara Meillejohn-Free, Scottish Witchcraft

~Sir Thomas More, Francis Bacon, & Henry Neville, Three Early Modern Utopias: Utopia, New Atlantis, and The Isle of Pines (quite excited for this find -- I already own and have read Sir Thomas More's Utopia, but I'd never found copies of the other two before!)

~Garth Nix, Terciel & Elinor

~Rev. Lora O'Brien, The Morrigan: Ireland's Goddess

~Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father (surprisingly, I never did get around to buying this so I was quite delighted to find it in a free Little Library in my neighborhood)

~Jacqueline Onassis (ed) & Boris Zvortkin (illus), The Firebird and Other Russian Fairy Tales

~Edith Pargeter, A Bloody Field By Shrewsbury

~Barbara Léonie Picard, French Legends, Tales and Fairy Stories

~Alwyn Rees & Brindley Rees, Celtic Heritage

~Frances Sakoian & Louis S. Acker, The Astrologers Handbook (no clue if I will like or agree with this one, it seems to focus a lot on where things are "in detriment" which is an outdated concept I've never agreed with. But the book was free in a little library and I decided it was worth grabbing because it can always go back to one if I disagree or don't find it useful.)

~Jean-Paul Sartre, La Nausée

~Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

~Adrian Tchaikovsky, City of Last Chances 

~Jo Walker, A Witch's Guide to Wildcraft

~Alison Weird, Mistress of the Monarchy

~Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas

~Paul O. Zelinsky, Rumplestiltskin