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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 |  (70) |
| * Partial year | |
[Finished 12 July 2024] I once had one of my stories compared to Flannery O’Connor. I think it was less because of any inherent quality of the writing and more that O’Connor was the only Catholic author the editor was familiar with. I think that was the same in this case where I learned about Power’s novel through the Google News alert I have on “Graham Greene” which mostly gives me stories about the actor, the same quote from The Power and the Glory and authors being compared to Greene. Power was one of these last, but other than the Catholicism, the two authors have little in common. The story follows an ascetic priest and his relationship with a diver, although the reason for Father Cawder’s initial fascination with Diamond, the diver is never really gone into. Interesting, but ultimately not that compelling.
A Life in Men
by Gina Frangello
[Finished 11 July 2024] A fascinating look into the lives of two young women of exactly my age. The inciting incident is a terrifying encounter with a pair of predatory men who the women hook up with in Greece, but we then see one of the characters, who has cystic fibrosis and a consequent shortened life expectancy live with the ramifications of that event along with her friend’s death in the Lockerbie bombing over Scotland. I was drawn into Mary’s bad decisions, always wishing she’d chosen otherwise, but being curious about what comes after.
American Pastoral
by Philip Roth
[Finished 9 July 2024] I pulled this to the top of my list thinking that it might provide a key to the novel I’m putting off starting, but it seemed that there wasn’t as much of a useful guide here as I thought there might be. Still, re-reading it was a wonderful experience, getting to put myself deeply into the world of Seymour Levov and see Roth’s critique of the twentieth-century American dream at close hand.
The Book of Love
by Kelly Link
[Finished 8 July 2024] The first chapter of the book felt a bit of a mess, although it made more sense later (I kind of regret not re-reading it before returning the book to the library), but the whole thing is a delightful bit of magical realism. Some of the parallelisms were maybe a bit on the nose and I kind of wish less was explained (although that might be because I’ve been on a bit of David Lynch kick of late which, among other things, led me to have a dream with characters from the book, but presented as if in a Lynch film.
Wandering Stars
by Tommy Orange
[Finished 28 June 2024] Reading this, I had a feeling that I was kind of experiencing the same kind of thing that I did with Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Chain-Gang All Stars—a book where the author really wanted to convey important ideas and maybe pushed his book too far in trying to include them. I felt like this book was a bit unfocused, trying to cover too much, and maybe should have been more than one book, although perhaps it was also a case of Orange worrying that this might be his last shot at saying his piece.
Awful People
by Scott Mitchel May
[Finished 25 June 2024] A weird book, made a bit challenging by its choice to abandon chronological narrative, but one that I found myself falling for despite itself.
Haven by Emma Donoghue
[Finished 23 June 2024] The only other Donoghue I’ve read is her Room which definitely did not prepare me to read a novel about a trio of medieval Irish monks. What’s particularly fascinating to me was Donoghue’s empathy for all three of her monks, even the strict and ascetic Artt who could have easily fallen into caricature.
Thistlefoot
by GennaRose Nethercott
[Finished 20 June 2024] OK, I’m an idiot. You would think from the cover illustration, I would have figured out that this was a book about the Hut of Baba Yaga. Or if not that, then the fact that we’re introduced to a character named Isaac Yaga. But no, it wasn’t until the hut actually appeared in the pages that I realized what I was reading. An enjoyable book of magical realism and fantasy that I did not expect.
James
by Percival Everett
[Finished 19 June 2024] Go buy this book. It’s absolutely amazing. I had checked it out from the library but fifty pages in, I returned the book to the library because I needed to own it. This book deserves all the awards for 2024 and probably some of the awards for 2023 and 2025 as well because all the awards aren’t enough. It felt like every few pages the whole concept of the book blew up and I was reading something else, even better than what I started with.
Black Skin, White Masks
by Frantz Fanon
[Finished 13 June 2024] A seminal work in cultural anthropology. The pyschoanalytic framework that Fanon uses is dated and unhelpful, but the perspective of racism as an outgrowth of colonialism was an interesting possibility to consider.