My Goodreads 2024 Reading Challenge

I read 40 books so far in 2024.

An Elegy for Old Terrors by Zoë Orfanos was recommended to me by the poet's parents, who live here in Indianapolis. 

Most of these were library books I borrowed using the Libby app. I own An Elegy for Old Terrors, Bury Your Gays, Happiness Becomes You, Heathcliff Redux, How To Be Invisible, and Life's Too Short. Nightbooks is my brother's.

The Books I Read in 2021

 

Of these, the best was The Whale: A Love Story by Mark Beauregard. It's the fictionalized story of the forbidden love between Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne. It's so good and so sad. The Hawthorne character is exactly how I always imagined Nathaniel Hawthorne would be. Herman Melville is, surprisingly, extremely relatable. 

I haven't read Moby Dick, and honestly I probably never will because I asked my dad what it was like and he said, "Boring." We both like the Last of the Mohicans novels, so if he thinks it's more boring than James Fenimore Cooper's six pages of descriptions of trees, it's probably pretty boring, even if it is an extended Symbolist metaphor for love. 

Just know, as a bit of background information, that classic American literature lives rent-free in my mind at all times. 

There are a lot of really good ones in this middle photo, but I think my absolute favorite was State of Wonder by Ann Patchett. My copy belonged to my grandma, who loved Ann Patchett, especially Bel Canto. State of Wonder knocked me for several loops and, although it may seem counterintuitive to read about diseases in the midst of a pandemic, actually a good read for the COVID-19 outbreak. I highly recommend it. 

Carmen Maria Machado's graphic novel The Low, Low Woods is excellent, and of course reading Alex Trebek's memoir was a bittersweet pleasure. I think my favorite of these was the first one I read, Ayiti, a short writing collection by Roxane Gay. Everything Gay writes is phenomenal. And I'm not even that upset that she and her wife moved (moved back, in Gay's case) to Omaha and don't live in West Lafayette, Indiana anymore (where I always hoped I would accidentally run into them. Oh well, Indianapolis still has John Green). 

What was your favorite book that you read in 2021?

October Mini-Review: 'Not That Bad: Dispatches From Rape Culture' Edited by Roxane Gay

This should be required reading in every U.S. high school. It can be grim and depressing to face just how badly American culture (this is primarily U.S.-focused) handles the issue of consent to sex. Every essay in this collection is chilling.

Still, we can't do very much to address the problem unless we're willing to face it head-on. Men, women, and children all deserve better than this.

Review: 'Dear Mister Essay Writer Guy'

Dear Mister Essay Writer Guy: Advice and Confessions on Writing, Love, and Cannibals by Dinty W. Moore

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I picked this out from Blogging for Books (free book in exchange for review), although I was not familiar with the writer Dinty W. Moore. If Wikipedia is to be believed, the essayist is actually named Dinty W. Moore, not after the Canadian hockey player (or the corned beef sandwich) but after a character in the comic strip 'Bringing Up Father.' That makes him sound ancient, but he is in fact a Baby Boomer, a few years younger than my parents.

Moore won me over early in this essay collection, with this sentence, "I believe the best way to avoid coming off as a male chauvinist pig might be to not be a male chauvinist pig?" The question mark is unnecessary; the advice is sound.

The questions that spark each essay (or, in some cases, doodle) come from other nonfiction writers, including Cheryl Strayed, Diane Ackerman, and Roxane Gay. My personal favorites include Moore's anecdotes about other writers; he has one on George Plimpton and another with Nelson Algren.

It's on my TBR list.

Moore is funny. Quite funny. He has a quirky sense of humor, which happens to be the kind of sense of humor that most appeals to me. This is one of those books I laughed out loud to, causing my husband to ask, "What are you laughing at?" Just the thing I'm usually laughing at, dear: writers' meta jokes about punctuation and non sequiturs.

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The Literary Tour of London by Tom Laimer-Read. $1.99 from Smashwords.com
Ladies and gentlemen, roll up one and all for the strolling tour of a lifetime! Follow in the footsteps of some of Great Britain's greatest writers! London is a city of literature and lust, poverty and riches, woe and wonder. Come experience the places that inspired and were influenced by some of the greatest writers of all time, and find out more about their fascinating lives.