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I tend to be a voracious reader, and I read widely. This list has its origins in an old signature file which I would update periodically with the current book that I was reading. That gradually transmogrified itself into the current massive archive with brief reviews.
| What I've been reading lately |
| Number of books read and reviewed each year | |
|---|---|
| 1995* |  (28) |
| 1996 | (47) |
| 1997 | (74) |
| 1998 | (61) |
| 1999 | (62) |
| 2000 | (27) |
| 2001 | (51) |
| 2002 | (60) |
| 2003 | (37) |
| 2004 | (36) |
| 2005 | (32) |
| 2006 | (46) |
| 2007 | (109) |
| 2008 | (78) |
| 2009 | (65) |
| 2010 | (68) |
| 2011 | (98) |
| 2012 | (129) |
| 2013 | (114) |
| 2014 | (101) |
| 2015 | (88) |
| 2016 | (82) |
| 2017 | (76) |
| 2018 | (67) |
| 2019 | (95) |
| 2020 | (90) |
| 2021 | (85) |
| 2022 | (101) |
| 2023 | (124) |
| 2024 | (154) |
| 2025 |  (58) |
| * Partial year | |
[Finished 29 May 2025] A somewhat challenging book to read, partly because of vocabulary (not helped by one of the narrators having an imaginary friend with whom he speaks in made-up words), but mostly because it’s a trio of stream-of-consciousness first-person narratives without any ostentatious markers of which person is the first person in any given section. The book is notable for being the first depiction of the Maconda which is the center of Cien Años de Soledad as well as the “off-screen” appearance of Coronel Aurelio Buendía. There’s some beautiful prose and reading in Spanish always makes me more attentive to the writing than I am in English, but overall, this didn’t feel like essential GGM.
Le Divorce
by Diane Johnson
[Finished 26 May 2025] I think this was part of the Read Like a Writer reading list, although I didn’t really find a lot to learn from Johnson’s writing.
Rental House
by Weike Wang
[Finished 25 May 2025] I found this book fascinating in how it’s structured around a pair of vacations but manages to extend so much beyond that timeframe simultaneously. A lot to learn from Wang’s use of time.
The Thames and Hudson Manual of Typography
by Ruari McLean
[Finished 25 May 2025] Large chunks of this book are functionally obsolete, but the core concepts of typographic design still hold and have a lot to offer. One of the few typographic works which addresses tabular material.
The Best American Poetry 2023 edited by Elaine Equi
[Finished 21 May 2025] I apparently have now read every Best American Poetry since 2012. There have been installments that blew me away (like 2012) and some that at the end I was kind of meh. This was more on the meh end of the scale although a few individual poems delighted me a great deal and a few inspired me to consider new ideas for my own poems.
Kairos
by Jenny Erpenbeck
[Finished 16 May 2025] I heard about this book from the Beyond the Zero podcast, but while it sounded interesting when it was discussed there, when I read it, I was left feeling somewhat unmoored and disconnected from the text. I guess I was the wrong reader at the wrong time.
Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls
by T Kira Madden
[Finished 16 May 2025] While there were some fascinating parts to this memoir, overall, I was not grabbed as much as I hoped I would be.
Creation Lake
by Rachel Kushner
[Finished 10 May 2025] A weird and wonderful book about ecoterrorism and identity and agents provocateurs, although one that didn’t occupy a lasting place in my mind after I finished it.
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
[Finished 8 May 2025] One of these books that get referenced a lot and I finally got around to reading it. I think my first encounter with Marcus Aurelius was through John Irving (perhaps Garp?) and later through Salinger, so getting a chance to finally read him first hand was like meeting someone long discussed bur never met. This seems the sort of book that is best dipped into at random more than read straight through.
The Liberators
by E. J. Koh
[Finished 4 May 2025] A delayed read from the otherppl book club. I avoided reading the jacket copy and had only vague memories of the podcast interview so I was thinking that this was a different unread book from otherppl when I started. It was interesting to learn more about the background and aftermath of the Korean war, but I found the overall effect to be somewhat unsettling.