Reading

On the Calculation of Volume (Book I) by Solvej Balle

/ Literary Fiction, Reading

★★★★☆ | Literary Fiction | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads 

This insightful review by Adam Woods of On the Calculation of Volume (Book I) intrigued me enough to read this puzzling book, the first of a planned seven-volume series. Five books have been published in Balle’s native Danish with just the first two translated into English.

The narrator, Tara Selter, is caught in a time loop, reliving November 28th over and over again. It’s Groundhog’s Day but with an existential slant on the meaning of self, time, mortality, sustainability, and the inevitable progression of love and marriage.

The science fiction involved with being stuck in a time loop takes a back seat to these serious questions, often in a rhythmic, repetitive style. The plot is thin for most of the novel as the narrator explores an existence devoid of change and together yet split apart from the one she loves.

This first book piqued my curiosity enough that I will certainly continue the series with Book II. I hope a few of my lingering questions will be answered in time.

On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder

/ History, Reading

★★★★☆ | History | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads

A concise summary of the tactics used by totalitarian governments to suppress freedom and democracy. Clear examples from twentieth-century despots support each of the twenty lessons. Reading this on the heels of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich helped me crystalize the most significant actions taken by Hitler to assume his reign of terror.

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The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer

/ History, Reading

★★★★☆ | History | Digital | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads

I read this classic to learn about Nazi Germany and the rise of fascism to understand better any parallels we might be seeing in the United States today. The first third of the book revealed many examples of Hitler’s power grab that felt very eerily similar to Trump. So many that you could make the case that Trump used Hitler as a role model for his political ambitions, as scary as that sounds.

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Maximum Bob by Elmore Leonard

/ Mystery-Suspense, Reading

★★★★☆ | Mystery-Suspense | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph

A recent New Yorker article by Anthony Lane prompted me to read this one, my first Elmore Leonard book. I enjoyed the pacing and dialogue and colorful cast of characters, all set in languid south Florida. The book ends with a promising turn for Kathy Baker, the main protagonist of the novel, but if I remember correctly, Leonard wasn’t in the habit of writing sequels or carrying characters from book to book. A little sad we never get to see what happens next.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

/ ★★★★★, Literature, Reading

★★★★★ | Literature | Print + Digital | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads 

Ah, Gatsby. It’s been a moment. I last read this book in college, and although I remember the story, I’m fairly sure I missed the point. It has been good for me to go back and reread these perennial classics that I thought I knew.

Here we have a true American tragedy, wrapped in social wit and irony, stewed in alcohol and disillusionment, where wealth, whether old or new, buys not love, but misery, where the strong moral values of the Midwest prove all too corruptible, where the very premise of the American Dream is nothing more than a cheat, a scam.

Other than maybe Gatsby, there isn’t a trustworthy or likeable character in the bunch. Ungrateful, snobbish, and vain, they look at people as novelties to play with and discard. Even Nick, our narrator, is cruel and two-faced. While her husband, Tom, is despicable, Daisy Buchanan is the real villain of this story. Her voice is full of money, Gatsby tells us. Not love, not empathy, not kindness. Money.

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Brightness Falls by Jay McInerney

/ ★★★★★, Literary Fiction, Reading

★★★★★ | Literary Fiction | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads

I didn’t like this book at first. I felt claustrophobic, there in the first chapter, squeezed in at the kids’ table surrounded by a large group of strangers at a Manhattan apartment dinner party. These guests were too witty, overly confident, and entirely full of themselves. Who talks like this? And more pressing, who would want to read an entire novel with these assholes?

But I persevered. In fact, it was the Manhattan setting of this book that initially drew me.  I lived in New York in the mid-1990s and recently returned to an apartment on the Upper East Side, where much of the story takes place.  McInerney’s first book, Bright Lights, Big City, helped to convince me to move to New York when I read it in college. The descriptions of the city, its magic, and absurdity were spellbinding. The city itself becomes a character in the story, which we follow over a year, from the bitter cold of winter through the languor of summer to the bracing beauty of fall.

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Nightmares and Dreamscapes by Stephen King

/ Horror, Reading

★★★★☆ | Horror | Audio/Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads 

I’m continuing my quest to read every book published by Stephen King. I’m down to short story collections and a few of his less (ahem) popular novels.

Nightmares and Dreamscapes isn’t King’s best short story collection. I think that award goes to You Like It Darker from last year. But any collection of stories by this generation’s master storyteller is still pretty great.

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London Rules by Mick Kerron

/ Reading, Spy-Detective

★★★★☆ | Spy-Detective | Digital | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads 

Another brilliant volume in the wonderful Slow Horses saga. Jackson Lamb is as disgusting and brilliant as ever, with the Slow Horses needing to save the day from the arrogance and pervasive politics of the intelligence service leaders.  All of the Slow Horses are fighting some inner demon: an addiction, anger issues, or a past mistake that cannot be undone. Yet, despite the odds, they manage to pull together as a unit and save the day.  Fun, funny, and suspenseful.  I love these Slow Horses!

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Gerald’s Game by Stephen King

/ Horror, Reading

★★★☆☆ | Horror | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads

Stephen King must have felt he needed a challenge when he started this one. How about a horror novel with just one character handcuffed to a bed with the only way to move the story along is through inner dialogue. Oh, and let that character be a woman, and let that woman be sexually abused by her father as a child. Yep, that would be a challenge.

And, I guess he succeeded? Maybe? I’m torn over this one, because it feels offensive to me that a male author would attempt to put himself in the tortured mind of an abused woman.

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Revenge of the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

/ Psychology, Reading

★★★★☆ | Psychology | Audio | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads

Another great Malcolm Gladwell read. I think I’ve read all his books now and even took his Masterclass on writing. I listened to the audiobook, which was the perfect format for this one. Gladwell has an engaging reading voice and employed his podcast artistry by including recordings of his interviewees in the audiobook. I love how we weaves together diverse topics into a central theme.

Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

/ ★★★★★, Literature, Reading

★★★★★ | Literature | Print + Digital | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads

Rereading a book you haven’t read in 40 years is an interesting experience. I remembered only the bleakness but little of the story itself. I enjoyed most of the book, though all the decades of Hemingway parodies and copycats stole some of its luster. Still, it is a timeless classic that reinvented the novel. Makes me want to go back and read all those books I read when I was young. If this one is any guide, it will be like reading them again for the first time.

If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills.

Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner

/ ★★★★★, Literary Fiction, Reading

★★★★★ | Literary Fiction | Print + Digital | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads

What a beautiful and poignant book. Hopeful and joyous at the possibilities of life, but bookended by the realities of disappointment and loss. 

You can plan all you want to. You can lie in your morning bed and fill whole notebooks with schemes and intentions. But within a single afternoon, within hours or minutes, everything you plan and everything you have fought to make yourself can be undone as a slug is undone when salt is poured on him. And right up to the moment when you find yourself dissolving into foam you can still believe you are doing fine.

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Quiet by Susan Cain

/ Psychology, Reading

★★★★☆ | Psychology | Print + Digital | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads

Fascinating deep dive into the world of introversion and extroversion. Some meaningful parts of our temperament are genetic and passed down from our parents. If you’re a fussy, highly sensitive baby at four months, there’s a good chance you’ll grow up to be introverted. There seems to be a biological connection between high physical sensitivity and introversion.

Highly sensitive people also process information about their environments—both physical and emotional—unusually deeply. They tend to notice subtleties that others miss—another person’s shift in mood, say, or a lightbulb burning a touch too brightly.

According to Cain, bloggers are almost always introverts. We’ll share personal details with an online multitude they would never disclose at a cocktail party. This is me.

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Laozi’s Dao De Jing by Lao Tzu

/ ★★★★★, Philosophy, Reading

★★★★★ | Philosophy | Digital | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads

This short book oozes with wisdom with the help of Ken Liu’s wonderful translation and notes. Read this one slowly and set aside time for reflection. So much of the advice is contrary to conventional western views that it can seem non-sensical. But try, you must. ★★★★★ 

Can you open yourself to your senses—quieting the mind like water?

Death is good. Senescence is good. The beginning is good. The end is good. You are, like all things in the cosmos, swimming in the flux of Dao.

Creative Nonfiction: The Final Issue by Lee Gutkind

/ Essays, Reading

★★★★☆ | Essays | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads

An interesting selection of essays from the print run of the Creative Nonfiction literary magazine. There were some essays that appeared to stretch the boundaries of truth, but that’s the creative part I guess.

Highlights

If things could be undone, if time could be wound back, like a film, if the past could be kept alive to compensate for the deficiencies of the present: these are the wishes that form character, that grow out of events that form character. It does not take much. The tree bends once, twice, then does not bend again. It grows now as it always will. — Susan Fromberg Schaeffer

There are many things that capitalism produces, and noble behavior on either end of the rich/poor spectrum is not one of them. But we admonish only the poor. — Brian Broome

The Age of Napoleon by Will Durant

/ History, Reading

★★★★☆ | History | Digital | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads

The eleventh and final volume of the Story of Civilization, covering the years from the beginning of the French Revolution through Waterloo. Napoleon’s rise, dictatorship, stunning victories and ultimate defeat were thrilling to read.

From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step. — Napoleon

Babel by R.F. Kuang

/ Fantasy, Reading

★★☆☆☆ | Fantasy | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads

I tried to like this book. It has all the elements of a book I would love: etymology, 19th century England, a diverse set of characters, magic, and an academic setting (Oxford, no less!). But I found it slow and repetitive, filled with one-dimensional, unlikable characters, and lecture after lecture on how the rich and powerful mistreat the poor, especially those who aren’t white and British, except for those that are poor and British. It took me almost two months to finish this, and it was a struggle.

I appreciate the idea behind the story, but not how it was told. Not every book is for every reader.

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Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks

/ Reading, Writing Guides

★★★★☆ | Writing | Digital | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads 

An entertaining book filled with practical advice on how to improve your storytelling, whether in front of a live audience, on a date, or in a written essay. Dicks shares examples of his own stories, then breaks down why they work. ★★★★☆

Quote from Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks: "Storytellers end their stories in the most advantageous place possible. They omit the endings that offer neat little bows and happily-ever-afters. The best stories are a little messy at the end. They offer small steps, marginal progress, questionable results."

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