The rules of bookclub are simple. We read a book once a month but it doesn't have to be the same book. You just have to read a book and then we'll come here and talk about it.
I’ve read books all my life. Probably started when I was four years old. Two or three books a week sometimes. Still going strong in my late seventies. I deftly avoided becoming entangled in social media through technical ineptness. That seems to have been a blessing. Still had time to write a few books of my own. Did a double major in literature at university along with some other junk but it didn’t deter me. Learned doublespeak and bureaucratese somewhere along the way and had to unlearn it. I get stressed if I find myself bookless for more than a day or so. When I finish a particularly good book it lingers for weeks and influences my behaviour in subtle and unsubtle ways. The thrill of the chase in tracking down good authors until they’ve been caught and devoured is akin to blood lust. And at the end of the day I feel just a little bit dumber than when I started.
You have no idea how much do I identify with the first two paragraphs. I have spent hundreds of dollars on rare and exciting books, thinking "this is the one", only to drop them after the first few pages. It was Elif Shafak that [I thought] had saved me with her historical novel, the Architect's Apprentice. Alas, I have soon fallen into the whirlpool of the algorithm again...
never get around to reading them, Italian writer writer Umberto Eco, whose library was a maze and amazing, wrote:
It is foolish to think that you have to read all the books you buy, as it is foolish to criticize those who buy more books than they will ever be able to read. It would be like saying that you should use all the cutlery or glasses or screwdrivers or drill bits you bought before buying new ones.
....we understand that it is good to have many at home rather than a few: when you want to feel better, then you go to the ‘medicine closet’ and choose a book. Not a random one, but the right book for that moment. That’s why you should always have a nutrition choice!
I know that feeling,of being so immersed with a narrative that it becomes a part of your own reality yet we're aware that it will end, like all things do. And when the story/show/game is over, you're almost left with a feeling of melancholy as the experience that you were in was, for you, transcendent. It took you out of the ordinary world to somewhere else that fires the imagination.
My first real experience of that was when I had just finished reading Magician by Raymond E. Fiest. That book drew me deep into it world and characters so much that I felt a sense of sadness that the story was over. Thankfully there were follow up novels however that was the first time I felt the true power of brilliant and beautifully crafted narrative.
You should. It's probably one of the better epic fantasy novels that came out in the 1980's. There's a whole series however Magician can be read as a stand alone novel if you're not into delving into 15 plus books. The first trilogy is awesome and I am still scratching my head as to why no one has tried to make this IP into live action etc.
One of the better trilogies, too, as well as being a great fantasy novels. I sometimes feel like modern authors have forgotten how to write standalone novels in their quest for Tolkienesque sweeping grandeur.
Magician stands alone as a great book, and pretty YA friendly, too.
The trilogy expands from The Hero's Journey into a wider scope of geopolitics, class struggle, racial equality etc but without losing the emotional heart of great characters you care about (Martin Longbow being my personal favourite I think).
Yes, books 2 & 3 are linked and you really need to read them both to get the full story but I still find book 2 a satisfying read by itself, although I'm not sure I felt the same way all those years ago when I had to impatiently wait a few years for book 3!
I have made a policy decision not to start trilogies until all three are out. I have been disappointed more times than I care to admit waiting until the next one comes out and realising, I had forgotten a critical point in the months since I read book one or two. Looking directly at you Patrick Rothfuss!
No Matter The Wreckage by Gemma Carey has been on my list of things to read since it was published in 2018. And for a variety of reasons (not just the big glaring sad one) I recently realised I could listen to it as an audiobook. I thought I was prepared but oh, I was not. This book is brutal and clear, a memoir like a jeweller creating facets on a terrible diamond. Each time a facet is revealed it's full of hard light and it hurts. And the more that's revealed the more some of it mirrored stuff I'm going through (cancer care giving). So yeah, I was immersed, enraged, and upset, and finally astonished at the strength of the narrator.
The writing: The language evolves from short sharp sentences and pointed stabby facts, into poetic insights via sentences that slowly become more meandering. Eventually it feels like the jeweller is finished and all that is left is the shine. Like a diamond, handle this book with care and caution.
Anyway, whatever hurts you doesn't make you stronger, it profoundly fu*ks you up, and then you realise it has done for countless generations, and it continues if nothing changes.
This is too relatable just now. I haven’t read the book but I’ve just downloaded it for kindle. Yesterday I purged my phone of social media apps (Reddit is my current worst habit) in order that I might read more, and once I’m done with my current read (“A Voyage Around the Queen” by Craig Brown), I will move onto this!!
Solid move getting those apps off the phone. You don’t have to delete the account but putting a little friction between you and the plunge into the funnel is a good idea.
I've taken to getting the books you mention reading from the library. Started with Faery Tale.... so got My Beautiful Friend just before Christmas and enjoyed everything about it. Finding out there are 3 more in the series made my day.
I often read too fast, & miss finer details. I realised this when I started listening to some old comfort read favourites on audiobook. The slower pace has forced me to marinate in the details of the story, the characters, the use of language - instead of racing ahead for the plot.
I can only do audio for rereads, though. Too impatient otherwise.
Well now I need to read My Brilliant Friend. It’s been waiting patiently for me in my Kindle library for a few years now.
I just finished Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder and I felt conflicted rating it afterwards. The story was very much outside of my wheelhouse and I felt an almost visceral loathing of the anthropomorphism theme running through it (and animal brutality).
But at the same time, I resonated with the more human experience of that first year postpartum - how suddenly your body is a stranger, and you’re healing and learning how to live in this new body and new life, all the while learning how to be a mother, navigating the absolute overwhelm of emotions, hormones, self-doubt and awe while likewise being more sleep-deprived than you ever thought possible. How you have this sudden loss of self. That heavy, Catholic guilt of Not Doing Enough while at home with your child and that ping of wanting to work - you like work. Is that selfish? How dare you want anything beyond what’s within the four walls, laundry piles forming skyscrapers, the steam rising up from another cycle of sterilizing bottles? How you can simultaneously have too much time on your hands to think, overthink, zone out, forget, feel anxious, terrified, happy and sad while also somehow the days and nights slip by and you slowly feel yourself become more feral - how did I not understand, back when I was just me and not A Mother - that taking a shower would be a nearly impossible task? The logistics of being home alone with a newborn. Before Baby, it seemed logical that you would simply shower while the baby slept, do housework while the baby slept, pumped while the baby slept, even napped yourself while the baby slept.
But I learned quickly After Baby that these seemingly simple and innocuous tasks become Sisyphean. Because there’s no rest when the baby sleeps. No one told me, or maybe I just chose not to absorb, that The Silence, The Absence, of not being present even when the baby slept peacefully in the next room puts you in an animalistic survival mode. How can I walk less than 10 steps from the bassinet to the bathroom, and take a shower? How can I cleanse myself if I am not assured, every millisecond, that breath flows consistently in and out, in and out, of my child? How do you assuage that terror that any moment, while having the audacity to brush my teeth or check my work email, my child could draw a final, shuddery breath and slip away from me? With less than 10
steps between us?
There’s always the painfully toxic Positive People who will try to reassure you that The Most Terrible Thing would never - could never - happen.
But I know better. In my career, I see The Most Terrible Things happen to people every day. I know that sometimes things don’t happen for a reason. That there probably isn’t some universal plan and “everything will work out.”
I know what it feels like to sit in a doctor’s office, under the blue light glow of the ultrasound machine, and be told “I’m sorry, there’s no heartbeat.”
No heartbeat. That happens. That really happens. It happens to people. Every day. It happened to me. While I was going about my life. Checking work emails. Showering. There was no noise, no fanfare, no deep maternal warning. Just The Silence. No heartbeat. It happens all the time. They just slip away while you’re napping or folding laundry or sterilizing bottles.
And what do you say when someone tells you your child has no heartbeat? You smile and reassure the doctor that it’s ok. They did their best. It’s fine. You’re fine. We’re all fine. You don’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable or bad for you. Women - Mothers, even though you suppose you can’t call yourself a Mother when you just let this one slip away with The Silence - aren’t supposed to make anyone feel bad or uncomfortable. It’s fine. You’ll go home and have a shower.
So, I suppose, that’s why I didn’t toss Nightbitch into my Did Not Finish reading pile, which is taller than the skyscrapers of laundry that are still forming a cityscape against my bedroom wall. I don’t understand the whole turning into a dog angle. But I did resonate with the Can I Be A Good Mother Without Losing Myself angle and that’s what kept me reading.
Oh and I also meant to add before going off on a tangent: audiobooks were a game changer for me after having a baby. I’ve always read voraciously and I was very scared of losing that part of myself postpartum. I work full time and I have a toddler now. Not to mention I am a Mother of Advanced Age so I am perpetually exhausted. I cannot read before bed anymore - I will fall asleep straightaway. I can’t come home from work anymore and curl up on the couch, escaping into a paperback thriller. No, that time is for my little family now.
But.
My 30-minute commute into work in the morning? Audiobook. My lunch hour? That’s for me. That’s my time.
In the winter, I sit in my parked car with the heat blasting. I drink a very hot coffee - black, the heat of it warming my cold hands - and read my Kindle books. Or, I listen to an audiobook while doing New York Time word games. In the summer I sit outside or in my car with the boot up and windows down for some fresh air. Or I go for a walk with my ear buds in. It’s an hour of bliss.
My commute home, I listen to an audiobook. I pick up my son from daycare. We listen to The Wiggles and if I’m running errands, I’ll play my audiobook and my baby will fall asleep from either the soothing tone (or sheer boredom) of a Brontë novel. When I’m alone and waiting in line somewhere, I read my Kindle. Sometimes I try to read a physical book by my son’s nightlight as he’s drifting off to sleep. But that usually ends with me dozing off as well.
I set a goal to read 50 books last year. I ended 2024 with 90 books read.
Following you on goodreads I always enjoy seeing those books you have selected to read, your current reading progress and your reviews. Please keep them up.
For me, what gets in the way of reading anything new now - particularly new fiction - is that I have way less tolerance for conflict and tragic circumstances than when I was younger. I would look at the blurb, or reviews of that obviously excellent book and dread a tragic outcome.
Your enthusiastic praise of Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend gives it shades of "breathtaking work of staggering genius" and makes me want to add it to my be read pile, but I fear its imminent collapse into a singularity due to its mass. An even better endorsement it is has you reading again the way you want to. The Covid lockdowns got me stress reading and I fortunately haven't stopped since.
The book this year so far for me - R.F Kuang's YellowFace I think the most important lesson to take away from this book for any aspiring writer, - if a editor suggests getting sensitivity reader to go through your manuscript - DO IT. I realise with so much positive acclaim and widely acknowledged how great this novel is, you could dismiss it as hype. You'd be wrong in my opinion because I enjoyed this book so much and read it in a day.
It discusses collaborations, cultural appropriation, tokenism, racism, the hell that is the publishing industry at the moment and how it is only getting worse and with talent, drive and ability being a success is still no guarantee.
I was amazed by R.F.kung's Poppy War trilogy, that she wrote as a retelling of Mao's revolution, the horrors of the Sino-Japanese war combined with the nightmare of the Opium Conflict. I was then amazed by her next Babel and its savage take down of language and colonialism or to give it its full title 'Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution. I am bit worried because I have read her proposal about her next book 'Katabasis' (already pre-ordered I understand that's good to do) and I am worried how can these stories keep being as amazing as they are.
I inherited my parents' book collection. So many good books I haven't read. It does stop me from buying new ones. Discworld is the exception to that rule - any unread Discworlds that turn up are fair game. Dad introduced me to Ken Bruen and James Lee Burke. My weekend visits to Dad used to be a chance to read - we'd both read on the back porch. I need to find a way to carve out that time again. I want to read Christopher Moore's Lam again.
I’ve read books all my life. Probably started when I was four years old. Two or three books a week sometimes. Still going strong in my late seventies. I deftly avoided becoming entangled in social media through technical ineptness. That seems to have been a blessing. Still had time to write a few books of my own. Did a double major in literature at university along with some other junk but it didn’t deter me. Learned doublespeak and bureaucratese somewhere along the way and had to unlearn it. I get stressed if I find myself bookless for more than a day or so. When I finish a particularly good book it lingers for weeks and influences my behaviour in subtle and unsubtle ways. The thrill of the chase in tracking down good authors until they’ve been caught and devoured is akin to blood lust. And at the end of the day I feel just a little bit dumber than when I started.
"I deftly avoided becoming entangled in social media through technical ineptness. That seems to have been a blessing."
The Minister for Understatement would like a word about you intruding into his portfolio.
You have no idea how much do I identify with the first two paragraphs. I have spent hundreds of dollars on rare and exciting books, thinking "this is the one", only to drop them after the first few pages. It was Elif Shafak that [I thought] had saved me with her historical novel, the Architect's Apprentice. Alas, I have soon fallen into the whirlpool of the algorithm again...
For those of us who buy books and
never get around to reading them, Italian writer writer Umberto Eco, whose library was a maze and amazing, wrote:
It is foolish to think that you have to read all the books you buy, as it is foolish to criticize those who buy more books than they will ever be able to read. It would be like saying that you should use all the cutlery or glasses or screwdrivers or drill bits you bought before buying new ones.
....we understand that it is good to have many at home rather than a few: when you want to feel better, then you go to the ‘medicine closet’ and choose a book. Not a random one, but the right book for that moment. That’s why you should always have a nutrition choice!
Absolutely! The Japanese have a word for it. Tsundoku (積ん読)
I know that feeling,of being so immersed with a narrative that it becomes a part of your own reality yet we're aware that it will end, like all things do. And when the story/show/game is over, you're almost left with a feeling of melancholy as the experience that you were in was, for you, transcendent. It took you out of the ordinary world to somewhere else that fires the imagination.
My first real experience of that was when I had just finished reading Magician by Raymond E. Fiest. That book drew me deep into it world and characters so much that I felt a sense of sadness that the story was over. Thankfully there were follow up novels however that was the first time I felt the true power of brilliant and beautifully crafted narrative.
I have a signed copy somewhere. I did a bit on stage with him a few years ago. I still havent read it. Sounds like I should.
You should. It's probably one of the better epic fantasy novels that came out in the 1980's. There's a whole series however Magician can be read as a stand alone novel if you're not into delving into 15 plus books. The first trilogy is awesome and I am still scratching my head as to why no one has tried to make this IP into live action etc.
One of the better trilogies, too, as well as being a great fantasy novels. I sometimes feel like modern authors have forgotten how to write standalone novels in their quest for Tolkienesque sweeping grandeur.
Magician stands alone as a great book, and pretty YA friendly, too.
The trilogy expands from The Hero's Journey into a wider scope of geopolitics, class struggle, racial equality etc but without losing the emotional heart of great characters you care about (Martin Longbow being my personal favourite I think).
Yes, books 2 & 3 are linked and you really need to read them both to get the full story but I still find book 2 a satisfying read by itself, although I'm not sure I felt the same way all those years ago when I had to impatiently wait a few years for book 3!
I have made a policy decision not to start trilogies until all three are out. I have been disappointed more times than I care to admit waiting until the next one comes out and realising, I had forgotten a critical point in the months since I read book one or two. Looking directly at you Patrick Rothfuss!
No Matter The Wreckage by Gemma Carey has been on my list of things to read since it was published in 2018. And for a variety of reasons (not just the big glaring sad one) I recently realised I could listen to it as an audiobook. I thought I was prepared but oh, I was not. This book is brutal and clear, a memoir like a jeweller creating facets on a terrible diamond. Each time a facet is revealed it's full of hard light and it hurts. And the more that's revealed the more some of it mirrored stuff I'm going through (cancer care giving). So yeah, I was immersed, enraged, and upset, and finally astonished at the strength of the narrator.
The writing: The language evolves from short sharp sentences and pointed stabby facts, into poetic insights via sentences that slowly become more meandering. Eventually it feels like the jeweller is finished and all that is left is the shine. Like a diamond, handle this book with care and caution.
Anyway, whatever hurts you doesn't make you stronger, it profoundly fu*ks you up, and then you realise it has done for countless generations, and it continues if nothing changes.
This is too relatable just now. I haven’t read the book but I’ve just downloaded it for kindle. Yesterday I purged my phone of social media apps (Reddit is my current worst habit) in order that I might read more, and once I’m done with my current read (“A Voyage Around the Queen” by Craig Brown), I will move onto this!!
Solid move getting those apps off the phone. You don’t have to delete the account but putting a little friction between you and the plunge into the funnel is a good idea.
I have put the audio book on reserve at the library. I look forward to listening to it.
Wow.
Nice words JB on the magic of reading and how a great book can cast a spell on you, captivating you in hours of bliss.
I felt like that when I read The Sheltering Sky...now I have to read My Brilliant Friend!
Thanks John, you have given me the will to swap scrolling to reading.
There’s 3 more books in the series. You can keep the party going
This is my plan!
I've taken to getting the books you mention reading from the library. Started with Faery Tale.... so got My Beautiful Friend just before Christmas and enjoyed everything about it. Finding out there are 3 more in the series made my day.
IKR!
I often read too fast, & miss finer details. I realised this when I started listening to some old comfort read favourites on audiobook. The slower pace has forced me to marinate in the details of the story, the characters, the use of language - instead of racing ahead for the plot.
I can only do audio for rereads, though. Too impatient otherwise.
I do audio for pleasure. If I have to study the text I need to read it.
Well now I need to read My Brilliant Friend. It’s been waiting patiently for me in my Kindle library for a few years now.
I just finished Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder and I felt conflicted rating it afterwards. The story was very much outside of my wheelhouse and I felt an almost visceral loathing of the anthropomorphism theme running through it (and animal brutality).
But at the same time, I resonated with the more human experience of that first year postpartum - how suddenly your body is a stranger, and you’re healing and learning how to live in this new body and new life, all the while learning how to be a mother, navigating the absolute overwhelm of emotions, hormones, self-doubt and awe while likewise being more sleep-deprived than you ever thought possible. How you have this sudden loss of self. That heavy, Catholic guilt of Not Doing Enough while at home with your child and that ping of wanting to work - you like work. Is that selfish? How dare you want anything beyond what’s within the four walls, laundry piles forming skyscrapers, the steam rising up from another cycle of sterilizing bottles? How you can simultaneously have too much time on your hands to think, overthink, zone out, forget, feel anxious, terrified, happy and sad while also somehow the days and nights slip by and you slowly feel yourself become more feral - how did I not understand, back when I was just me and not A Mother - that taking a shower would be a nearly impossible task? The logistics of being home alone with a newborn. Before Baby, it seemed logical that you would simply shower while the baby slept, do housework while the baby slept, pumped while the baby slept, even napped yourself while the baby slept.
But I learned quickly After Baby that these seemingly simple and innocuous tasks become Sisyphean. Because there’s no rest when the baby sleeps. No one told me, or maybe I just chose not to absorb, that The Silence, The Absence, of not being present even when the baby slept peacefully in the next room puts you in an animalistic survival mode. How can I walk less than 10 steps from the bassinet to the bathroom, and take a shower? How can I cleanse myself if I am not assured, every millisecond, that breath flows consistently in and out, in and out, of my child? How do you assuage that terror that any moment, while having the audacity to brush my teeth or check my work email, my child could draw a final, shuddery breath and slip away from me? With less than 10
steps between us?
There’s always the painfully toxic Positive People who will try to reassure you that The Most Terrible Thing would never - could never - happen.
But I know better. In my career, I see The Most Terrible Things happen to people every day. I know that sometimes things don’t happen for a reason. That there probably isn’t some universal plan and “everything will work out.”
I know what it feels like to sit in a doctor’s office, under the blue light glow of the ultrasound machine, and be told “I’m sorry, there’s no heartbeat.”
No heartbeat. That happens. That really happens. It happens to people. Every day. It happened to me. While I was going about my life. Checking work emails. Showering. There was no noise, no fanfare, no deep maternal warning. Just The Silence. No heartbeat. It happens all the time. They just slip away while you’re napping or folding laundry or sterilizing bottles.
And what do you say when someone tells you your child has no heartbeat? You smile and reassure the doctor that it’s ok. They did their best. It’s fine. You’re fine. We’re all fine. You don’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable or bad for you. Women - Mothers, even though you suppose you can’t call yourself a Mother when you just let this one slip away with The Silence - aren’t supposed to make anyone feel bad or uncomfortable. It’s fine. You’ll go home and have a shower.
So, I suppose, that’s why I didn’t toss Nightbitch into my Did Not Finish reading pile, which is taller than the skyscrapers of laundry that are still forming a cityscape against my bedroom wall. I don’t understand the whole turning into a dog angle. But I did resonate with the Can I Be A Good Mother Without Losing Myself angle and that’s what kept me reading.
Ok. It’s late here and I just found you! Imma reply properly to this over the weekend.
Thank you, Birmo!
Oh and I also meant to add before going off on a tangent: audiobooks were a game changer for me after having a baby. I’ve always read voraciously and I was very scared of losing that part of myself postpartum. I work full time and I have a toddler now. Not to mention I am a Mother of Advanced Age so I am perpetually exhausted. I cannot read before bed anymore - I will fall asleep straightaway. I can’t come home from work anymore and curl up on the couch, escaping into a paperback thriller. No, that time is for my little family now.
But.
My 30-minute commute into work in the morning? Audiobook. My lunch hour? That’s for me. That’s my time.
In the winter, I sit in my parked car with the heat blasting. I drink a very hot coffee - black, the heat of it warming my cold hands - and read my Kindle books. Or, I listen to an audiobook while doing New York Time word games. In the summer I sit outside or in my car with the boot up and windows down for some fresh air. Or I go for a walk with my ear buds in. It’s an hour of bliss.
My commute home, I listen to an audiobook. I pick up my son from daycare. We listen to The Wiggles and if I’m running errands, I’ll play my audiobook and my baby will fall asleep from either the soothing tone (or sheer boredom) of a Brontë novel. When I’m alone and waiting in line somewhere, I read my Kindle. Sometimes I try to read a physical book by my son’s nightlight as he’s drifting off to sleep. But that usually ends with me dozing off as well.
I set a goal to read 50 books last year. I ended 2024 with 90 books read.
Following you on goodreads I always enjoy seeing those books you have selected to read, your current reading progress and your reviews. Please keep them up.
Thank you, Barnesm. It’s good to hear from you!
For me, what gets in the way of reading anything new now - particularly new fiction - is that I have way less tolerance for conflict and tragic circumstances than when I was younger. I would look at the blurb, or reviews of that obviously excellent book and dread a tragic outcome.
I dont mind conflict or even a tasty little tragedy AS LONG AS I GET MY HAPPY ENDING
Your enthusiastic praise of Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend gives it shades of "breathtaking work of staggering genius" and makes me want to add it to my be read pile, but I fear its imminent collapse into a singularity due to its mass. An even better endorsement it is has you reading again the way you want to. The Covid lockdowns got me stress reading and I fortunately haven't stopped since.
The book this year so far for me - R.F Kuang's YellowFace I think the most important lesson to take away from this book for any aspiring writer, - if a editor suggests getting sensitivity reader to go through your manuscript - DO IT. I realise with so much positive acclaim and widely acknowledged how great this novel is, you could dismiss it as hype. You'd be wrong in my opinion because I enjoyed this book so much and read it in a day.
It discusses collaborations, cultural appropriation, tokenism, racism, the hell that is the publishing industry at the moment and how it is only getting worse and with talent, drive and ability being a success is still no guarantee.
I was amazed by R.F.kung's Poppy War trilogy, that she wrote as a retelling of Mao's revolution, the horrors of the Sino-Japanese war combined with the nightmare of the Opium Conflict. I was then amazed by her next Babel and its savage take down of language and colonialism or to give it its full title 'Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution. I am bit worried because I have read her proposal about her next book 'Katabasis' (already pre-ordered I understand that's good to do) and I am worried how can these stories keep being as amazing as they are.
"the hell that is the publishing industry at the moment" is my favourite flavour of ice cream.
I inherited my parents' book collection. So many good books I haven't read. It does stop me from buying new ones. Discworld is the exception to that rule - any unread Discworlds that turn up are fair game. Dad introduced me to Ken Bruen and James Lee Burke. My weekend visits to Dad used to be a chance to read - we'd both read on the back porch. I need to find a way to carve out that time again. I want to read Christopher Moore's Lam again.
I found that reading over lunch and cutting out week night screen time opened up many, many hours.