The Tenet of Wildfell Hall Anne Brontë
Reasonably feminist and very entertaining. Realistic characters and a fun insight to the 1800s British idle class

Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeymi

I'm apparently on a English-language Nigerian author kick. Helen Oyeyemi is amazing. This book is a loose retelling of the Snow White fairy tale set in the 1950s with race at the forefront of the story. I'd classify it as magical realism. The plot floats around, as Oyeyemi likes to do, but overall the story was much more straight forward than Mr. Fox. I left Mr. Fox with a desperate longing for it to continue. Boy, Snow, Bird was much more hard hitting. I felt ok walking away from it when it was done. The writing was expertly done but I didn't feel better for having read it.

4.5/5

Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart

Set in a not-so-distant future where everyone is judged by their credit score and now scan instead of read, Lenny is just trying to find his way. It's a story about immortality, youth, and fickle relationships in a world where data is produced by the gig but no one really knows or understands one another. The characters were awful, insecure people with selfish motives and incomplete desires. I couldn't stand hearing about them, to be honest. But like in Hunger Games, all I cared about was the world building. The overt public sexuality, broadcasting live at bars with friends, the Federal Reserve going bankrupt, the largest corporations looking to cash in - felt like an apt exaggeration of modern society now as well as an unpalatable premonition for the future. I think any immaturity in the characters might reflect an immaturity in the author. Not a single character questioned their surroundings. So, to call it purposeful or say more mature characters would have been more enjoyable to read might be an unreasonable critique. He is a great writer though, and makes complex ideas sound simple. He fabricated a very real world with Media and Credit and Retail, a slightly exaggerated mirror image of ourselves.
I recommend this book to get some fresh eyes on things we think of as normal and to realize there are people more vapid and unintelligent than yourself.

5/5

Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons

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Hyperion by Dan Simmons

4.5/5

The Complete Tales of Lucy Gold by Kate Bernheimer

 5/5

Children of God by Mary Doria Russell

5/5

Loteria by Mario Alberto Zambrono

With the expert skill that I have grown to expect from any Iowa Writer's Workshop graduate, Mario Alberto Zambrono deftly tells the story of an 11 year old girl recovering from trauma through journal entries to "You." The exact trauma is left unsaid until the very end and the story hinges perfectly on the subtle mystery that unfolds in an unexpected way. The writing in Loteria stands alone as engaging and rich without ever being trite or surface based on the narrator's youthful age. Short and sweet with a beautiful layout and full color loteria cards interspursed, I give it 8.5/10.

Fer De Lance by Rex Stout

4/10

Kabbalah for Health and Wellness

10/10

The Diviners

6/10 Didn't finish. Not engaging enough.

Maggot Moon

7/10

Love, Dishonor, Lie, Cherish, Perish by David Rakoff

7/10

Black hole

8/10

The Third book has been on my to-read shelf for a while. It is the second choice for the retirement community book club that I'm leading. The book is The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

The book was well written but it offered nothing fresh. It won the Man Booker Prize in 2011 so I expected it to be really good but it actually just felt really slopped together. More old-man-musings. Can we not appreciate anything else as literature? Come on people.
3/5

The second book I read is for the new bookclub I am leading. I'm getting paid $100 per session to lead it! Can you believe that? The book was Thomas Jefferson, Rachel, and Me. Quite a title, right?

The book was yet another musings-of-an-old-man who played the game I love to play- "Imagine someone from the past is transported into the present." That "someone" just happens to be Thomas Jefferson. While the book wasn't very good - it was well written but the plot was just tedious - I did learn a few things about Mr. Jefferson that I didn't previously know.
2/5

It's a new year and I promise to get back on the bandwagon. This year I have already read three books!

Trance:Formation of America by Cathy O'Brien and Mark Philips was incredibly entertaining. Riff with typos, about 80% rape, with questionable content, Cathy O'Brien recounts her alleged time spent as a mind-controlled slave in the MKUltra project. I learned a lot about mind control though and feel much more informed after reading this book - even if it is hogwash.

Genius by Agamben

While I haven't finished a book in a month and a half, I've been reading - here and there, throwing books across the room, forgetting about them as they slowly slink deeper into the shadows beneath my bed. The poet Dan Beachy-Quick recommended I read this essay after "Self-Reliance." What I have gleaned so far is that Genius is a god, a ghost, a possessor who simply happens to appear. One cannot claim his name, only his influence.

Quotes
Passion is the
rope kept taut between ourselves and Genius, the rope on which life, the tightrope
walker, balances.

With time Genius divides in two (si sdoppia) and begins to assume an ethical hue.
The sources, perhaps due to the infl uence of the Greek theme of the two demons
inside every man, speak of a good genius (genio) and a bad genius, of a white
(albus) Genius and of a black (ater) one.

Self Reliance by Emerson

Not really a book, but I'm desperate. My mind has been scattered and unfocused. Technology distracts, paper pages bore. I have fallen behind. Emerson's Self Reliance essay seems somewhat like a madman's ravings. That may be due to the fact that it was written about 175 years ago and a hell of a lot has changed. This may also be due to the fact that it is disjointed and disconnected- perfect for my wandering mind. Plus, he's kinda handsome - check out that mug.

5/5 (of course)







Best Quotes

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius.

For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. The by-standers look askance on him in the public street or in the friend's parlour. If this aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance like his own, he might well go home with a sad countenance; but the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs.

But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.

In the hour of vision, there is nothing that can be called gratitude, nor properly joy. The soul raised over passion beholds identity and eternal causation, perceives the self-existence of Truth and Right, and calms itself with knowing that all things go well. Vast spaces of nature, the Atlantic Ocean, the South Sea, — long intervals of time, years, centuries, — are of no account.

I cannot sell my liberty and my power, to save their sensibility.

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For every thing that is given, something is taken. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts.

The man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe; the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. His note-books impair his memory; his libraries overload his wit; the insurance-office increases the number of accidents; and it may be a question whether machinery does not encumber

Imagine by Jonathan Lehrer

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