2023 Reading Recap

2023 READING RECAP

Before 2024 is too far along, I wanted to do a little recap of my 2023 reading. I read 139 books in 2023, about 30 more than usual. You can find the list of all the books I read last year here. Below are some thoughts on my year of reading. 

FAVORITES

Picking favorite books is like being asked to pick a favorite grandchild! With that in mind, I have five grandkids, so here are five favorites from last year:

• Decline & Fall by Evelyn Waugh
• Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene
• Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson
• The History Man by Malcolm Bradbury
• Mating by Norman Rush

OVERVIEW 

I mostly read fiction, but I thought I read more nonfiction in 2023 than I actually did. I have nonfiction books stacked on my floor because I have no room for them on my shelves. So I better make an effort to read more of them!

• 113 fiction
• 24 nonfiction
• two poetry
• 74 audiobooks
• 65 book books

GENRES

There's crossover here:

• 68 literary fiction 
• 47 classics
• 46 mysteries
• 22 historical fiction
• seven food books
• seven memoir
• three campus novels

MORE DETAILS

• 15 (major) prize winners
• nine rereads
• five translations
• 73 by men
• 68 by women

PUBLICATION DATES

• one from pre-1800s
• nine from the 1800s
• 26 from 1900-1950
• 33 from 1950-2000
• 64 since 2000 (before 2023)
• six new in 2023

CHALLENGES

I love reading challenges but only did three last year. 

• TBR 23 in '23: I finished the 23 books on my list. 
• European Reading Challenge. I read books from 12 different European countries.
• Mt. TBR: I read 63 books off my TBR shelves, in addition to my TBR 23 in '23 books, for a total of 86 books off my TBR shelves -- my best year ever! The main reason is that I concentrated on audiobooks that were already on my shelves as paper books so I could clear some space.

BUDDY READS

I really got into buddy reads on bookstagram for the first time. 

• eight Daphne du Maurier books with a Du Maurier Deep Dive group
• four Evelyn Waugh novels in a Waugh Together Now group
• four Somerset Maugham novels
• Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene
• The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne as a Classic Buddy Read
• The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte for Victober
• War & Peace by Leo Tolstoy as a yearlong readalong with the Whisky & Perseverance group

BIGGEST SURPRISE

The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff. I highly disliked Fates and Furies so almost skipped, especially when I saw a sea monster. Glad I didn’t!

FAVORITE NEW-TO-ME-AUTHOR

Laurie Colwin. I loved Home Cooking and More Home Cooking and now want to read her fiction.

FAVORITE BY A FAVORITE

Ms. Demeanor by Elinor Lipman. This was a delightful rom com with a lawyer theme.

SERIES FINISHED

I have dozens of mystery series I want to read so made an effort in 2023 to finish series I've already started. I need to make room in my brain before I start any others. 

• John Banville/Benjamin Black’s Quirke: I read the last two.
• Colin Bateman’s Mystery Man: I finished the last one.
• E.F. Benson’s Mapp & Lucia: Not a mystery series. I read the final three.
• Anthony Horowitz's Hawthorne: I read the fourth one and am caught up until/unless he writes another.
• Jo Nesbo's Harry Hole: I didn't finish reading all of them, but they got increasingly more gruesome and scary. I read The Snowman last year and it was past the scary limit for me, so I am done with this series.
• Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club: I read all four.
• Louise Penny’s Three Pines: I read eight and caught up until she writes a new one.
• Dorothy L. Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey: I finished the novels a couple of years back and finally read all the short stories.

SERIES CONTINUED

• Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlow: I read The Long Good-Bye last year and have read several others. I love them but want to wrap up the series.
• Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot: I only read one last year, The Big Four, and have a long way to go. 
• Elizabeth George's Lynley/Havers: These are chunksters! I read six in 2023 and have nine to go before I'm caught up. 
• Susan Howatch's Starbridge: A series about the Church of England in the first half (or so) of the 20th Century. I read the fifth of six, Mystical Paths.
• Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther: Even though I don't read many WWII stories, I read the third one and plan to continue now that the stories are past the war and into the Cold War.
• Donna Leon's Guido Brunetti: I am not reading these in order, which is highly unusual for me. I read Aqua Alta last year, my ninth, and there are 23 others in the series so I don't plan to read them all. 
• Ian Rankin's John Rebus: This is a favorite, but I am ready to move on. I read seven last year and have three to go. 

SERIES BEGUN

• Anthony Horowitz's Magpie Murders: I will definitely read the second one, Moonflower Murders, this year and hope he writes more. 
• Blythe Baker's 1940s Cotswolds: I read the first, A Simple Country Murder, and liked it but have no plans to read more unless I find the next one in the wild. 
• Benjamin Black's Detective Inspector Strafford: I read Snow, a spin off of his Quirke series, and will continue if there are more books. 
• Alexander Campion's Capucine Culinary Mysteries: Despite the appealing premise, I didn't care for the first one, The Grave Gourmet, and won't continue.
• Nita Prose's Molly the Maid: I read The Maid for book club and plan to read the second one soon. 

That's a wrap! On to 2024! 

What bookish thing are you most looking forward to?

A Round-Up of Reviews -- 7 New-ish and Noteworthy Books

BOOK REVIEWS

A round-up of reviews of seven new-ish and noteworthy books. 

Crybaby: Infertility, Illness, and other Things That Were Not the End of the World by Cheryl E. Klein (2022, Brown Paper Press)

Cheryl E. Klein is a "failed perfectionist and successful hypochondriac" who had a hard time accepting that the world would not end when she was unable to have a baby. She writes with humor about things that would leave most people a sobbing puddle. But her self-deprecating, raw honesty is the beauty of the book. If all we saw were her tears, the book would be too impossibly maudlin to struggle through. As a reader, I felt like I understood what she went through as she navigated a series of disasters that brought her to consider the adventure of open adoption.

Plums for Months: Memories of a Wonder-Filled, Neurodivergent Childhood by Zaji Cox (2023, Forest Avenue Press)

Zaji Cox's new memoir is a collection of impressionistic essays about her childhood, living in a 100-year-old house with her single mother and sister. It is intimate, beautiful, and moving.

The Promise of a Normal Life by Rebecca Kaiser Gibson (2023, Arcade Publishing)

This debut novel finds a young Jewish-American woman trying to find her way in 1960s America and Israel. It is a quiet story and the author’s skill as a poet are clear in the lyrical writing. The unnamed narrator describes her slow awakening through a series of vignettes that bounce around in time. From a mismatch of a marriage and other romantic relationship problems, through her struggles with an emotionally distant but domineering mother, the narrator finally comes into her own in the end.

A Story Interrupted by Connie Soper (2022, Airlie Press)

This is Soper's first book of poetry. It is a collection of poems about actual places and experiences, not abstract ideas. Soper writes about Oregon, where she lives, her travels in far flung places, and the feelings and memories these locations inspire.

These are exactly the kind of poems I am drawn to. I like something I can latch onto and relate to when I read poetry, I don't like to feel like the whole thing is going over my head. Soper’s poems hit me just right.

No God Like the Mother by Kesha Ajọsẹ-Fisher (2023, Forest Avenue Press)

The nine stories collected in No God Like the Mother follow the characters from Legos to Paris to the Pacific Northwest. Ajọsẹ-Fisher's emotionally rich stories deal with people in transition, facing hardships and joys. The theme of motherhood -- mothering and being mothered -- runs throughout and pulls the stories together into a beautiful and emotionally satisfying whole.

No God Like the Mother won the Ken Kesey Award For Best Fiction at the Oregon Book Awards.



Prisons Have a Long Memory: Life Inside Oregon's Oldest Prison, edited by Tracy D. Schlapp and Daniel J. Wilson (2022, Bridgeworks Oregon)

Prisons Have a Long Memory is a collection of essays, poems, and memoir written by prisoners at the Oregon State Penitentiary. Editors Schlapp and Wilson started and led a "storytelling" group inside the prison and then worked with an editorial board of adults in custody to compile this collection. The writings were prompted by questions from middle school and high school students affected by the incarceration of their family members. They reflect the difficult internal struggle to atone, find peace, and create community.



Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire, 1871-1918 by Katja Hoyer, new from Pegasus Books.

Prior to 1871, Germany was not a unified nation but 39 separate states, including Prussia, Bavaria, and the Rhineland. In her new book, Blood and Iron, German-British historian Katja Hoyer tells the story of how a German Empire, united under Otto von Bismarck, rose to power only to face crippling defeat in the First World War. It is a thoroughly researched, lively written account of five decades that changed the course of modern history.

New Books of Poetry and Historical Fiction -- MAILBOX MONDAY

MAILBOX MONDAY

What new books came into your house lately?

I'm excited about these two new books, out recently. Although the books are completely different, I love both covers and how gorgeous they look together!

A Story Interrupted by Connie Soper (2022, Airlie Press)

This is Soper's first book of poetry. From the description and flipping through it, it looks like these are sort of poems I am drawn to. They are poems about actual places and experiences, not abstract ideas. I like something I can latch onto and relate to when I read a poem. I don't like to feel like the whole thing is going over my head. 

From the publisher's description:

Connie Soper’s first book of poetry invites readers to wander the trails of Oregon’s lush and fertile forests, and to celebrate its beaches, coastal cliffs, and headlands. She explores her native terrain with a reverence for the wild and untamed, as well as smaller moments spent in solitude. A Story Interrupted opens its map of place, memory, and inheritances—a map both familiar and uncharted. These poems offer glimpses, as well, of more distant traveled lands, always rooted in a keenly observed sense of place and belonging. These poems recall tender moments and conjure memories that connect us with our past, even if that past is sometimes difficult to acknowledge. Here, open-endedness is not melancholy but joy, each poem a small celebration.

Water Fire Steam by Mitzi Zilka (2022)

This new historical fiction novel is based on real life events and sounds excellent. The story sounds terrific and like it has broader themes that give it appeal beyond the exciting plot.

From the publisher's description:

The year is 1884. Rolla Alan Jones, an ambitious dreamer fresh out of an East Coast engineering school, is commissioned to design and build the first water system in Spokane Falls, Washington, a booming town of twenty-thousand. He is everyone's golden boy for five years until the city burns down on August 4, 1889. The once-celebrated engineer is scapegoated for the catastrophe alleging his system yielded inadequate water pressure. Asked to resign, betrayed by his friends, shunned by the community, and abandoned by his pregnant wife and three-year-old son, Rolla must find the strength to reinvent himself or return to New York as an abject failure. Based on a true story, Water Fire Steam is a story of forgiveness and redemption for anyone who has ever had to claw their way back from an unwarranted accusation.

 

YOUR MAILBOX MONDAY BOOKS

Join other book lovers on Mailbox Monday to share the books that came into your house lately. Visit the Mailbox Monday website to find links to all the participants' posts and read more about Books that Caught Our Eye.

Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit, Martha of Reviews by Martha's Bookshelf, and Velvet of VVB32 Reads graciously host Mailbox Monday. Velvet wants to hand off hosting duties so they are looking for a new helper. If you are interested, see the website for details.

Easton Press List of the list of The 100 Greatest Books Ever -- BOOK LIST

THE EASTON PRESS LIST OF 100 GREATEST BOOKS EVER

A while back, Easton Pres put together its list of the 100 Greatest Books Ever and described the collection as the "most renowned works of literature by history’s greatest authors." It was an interesting mix that includes books going back to ancient times, from around the world, and includes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. 

Easton Press used to sell the whole set in its fancy, leather-bound editions. The list is no longer on the Easton Press website and it no longer sells the books as a set, although they are available individually. They are also all available elsewhere in other formats and editions.

Here is the list, with notes about whether I've read a book, it is on my TBR shelf, or it is available as an audiobook from my library. So far, I've read of the 71 of the 100, but don't know if I will ever read them all. How about you?

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea by Jules Verne ON OVERDRIVE

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne FINISHED

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson FINISHED

Walden by Henry David Thoreau FINISHED

Gulliver's Travels by Johnathan Swift FINISHED

Moby Dick by Herman Melville (reviewed here)* FINISHED

A Farewell To Arms by Ernest Hemingway FINISHED

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane FINISHED

The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling* TBR SHELF

The Odyssey by Homer FINISHED

The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan FINISHED

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (reviewed here) FINISHED

Paradise Lost by John Milton FINISHED

Tales From The Arabian Nights by Richard Burton ON OVERDRIVE

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (reviewed here) FINISHED

Candide by Voltaire FINISHED

Oedipus the King by Sophocles FINISHED

The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo ON OVERDRIVE

The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper* TBR SHELF

The Sea Wolf by Jack London TBR SHELF

Cyrano De Bergerac by Edmund Rostand

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer FINISHED

Collected Poems by Robert Browning

Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson TBR SHELF

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James FINISHED

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (reviewed here) FINISHED

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson FINISHED

Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle FINISHED

Collected Poems by John Keats TBR SHELF

On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin ON OVERDRIVE

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra TBR SHELF

Collected Poems by Robert Frost TBR SHELF

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories by Washington Irving FINISHED

Animal Farm by George Orwell FINISHED

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë FINISHED

She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith FINISHED

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck FINISHED

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen FINISHED

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky FINISHED

Les Misérables by Victor Hugo ON OVERDRIVE

The Iliad by Homer FINISHED

Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence FINISHED

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas* FINISHED

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley FINISHED

Aesop's Fables by Aesop FINISHED

Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad FINISHED

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin ON OVERDRIVE

The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas* FINISHED

Politics and Poetics by Aristotle TBR SHELF

The Aeneid by Virgil FINISHED

Madam Bovary by Gustave Flaubert FINISHED

The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli FINISHED

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë FINISHED

Hamlet by William Shakespeare FINISHED

Pygmalion and Candida by George Bernard Shaw TBR SHELF and FINISHED

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe* FINISHED

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare FINISHED

The Cherry Orchard and The Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov TBR SHELF

The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri FINISHED

The Analects of Confucius by Confucius

A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare FINISHED

Collected Poems by William Butler Yeats (reading now)

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde FINISHED

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray TBR SHELF

The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio FINISHED

Beowulf FINISHED

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy TBR SHELF

The Necklace and Other Tales by Guy de Maupassant TBR SHELF

The Time Machine by H.G. Wells FINISHED

Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev FINISHED

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad FINISHED

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy FINISHED

The History of Early Rome by Livy TBR SHELF

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott FINISHED

The Talisman by Sir Walter Scott TBR SHELF

Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy FINISHED

Alice's Adventure in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll FINISHED

Dracula by Bram Stoker (reviewed here) FINISHED

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám by Omar Khayyám  FINISHED

The Red and the Black by Stendhal FINISHED

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens FINISHED

The Republic by Plato TBR SHELF

Collected Poems by Emily Dickinson TBR SHELF

Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe FINISHED

Tom Jones by Henry Fielding* FINISHED

The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay FINISHED

Silas Marner by George Eliot FINISHED

The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine ON OVERDRIVE

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman TBR SHELF (reading now)

Billy Budd by Herman Melville TBR SHELF

The Confessions by St. Augustine FINISHED

Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe FINISHED

Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott FINISHED

The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler* FINISHED

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (reviewed here)* FINISHED

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky FINISHED

Grimm's Fairy Tales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm FINISHED

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain* FINISHED

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley FINISHED

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens FINISHED

NOTES

This is a repost of the list I first posted in 2009. The links needed refreshing. 

The original list is no longer available on the Easton Press website, so I don't know why the books are listed in this order. The aren't listed in alphabetical order by title or author, nor are they listed by publication date. They must be listed by Easton Press catalog number or publication date, but I don't remember. 

* Marks those that I have in the fancy Easton Press edition, thanks to a lovely Christmas gift from Hubby.

Four New Books: Memoir, Novel in Stories, History, Poetry -- MAILBOX MONDAY

 

MAILBOX MONDAY

I've been Mailbox Monday MIA for a few weeks while getting ready for a trial. In the meantime, several new books have come my way and stacked up on my desk. What do you think of these new releases? Does anything catch your eye? 

What new books came into your house lately?

I Have Not Loved You with My Whole Heart by Cris Harris (OSU Press). This gripping memoir came out in June and I can't wait to read it. 

Cris Harris grew up in a difficult household with an alcoholic father, learning to live with the uncertainty, chaos, and neglect of living with addiction. What he didn't expect was that his father, an Episcopalian priest, would come out as gay during the height of the AIDS crisis and die of HIV in 1995. 

The Image: A Novel in Pieces by Steven Faulkner (Beaufort Books). This short novel launches today!

The Image is the tale of a timeless work of art told in three linked stories. It's a story of how art and faith are often entwined and what it takes to cherish both.

Darrow's Nightmare: The Forgotten Story of America's Most Famous Trial Lawyer: (Los Angeles 1911-1913) by Nelson Johnson (Rosetta Books). This one came out in April. Nelson Johnson wrote Boardwalk Empire that was made into such a terrific TV show. 

Darrow's Nightmare is the nonfiction account of how America's most famous criminal trial attorney was almost a convicted criminal himself. in 1911, Darrow went to Los Angeles to defend two union agitators on trial for mass murder. While there, he was indicted and tried for bribing a juror. A conviction would have ended his career.

Plume Poetry 9, edited by Daniel Lawless. Plume is an online magazine dedicated to publishing the best of contemporary poetry. Since 2012, Plume has published an annual anthology of new poems. 

In this 9th anthology, editor Daniel Lawless did something a little different. Instead of choosing all the poems himself, he chose 49 poems and then let those poets chose another poet to be paired with. The 49 poem pairings appear side-by-side, in dialog, as they say in artsy circles. There is also a selection of nine poems by and an interview with Diane Seuss. 
  

Join other book lovers on Mailbox Monday to share the books that came into your house last week. Visit the Mailbox Monday website to find links to all the participants' posts and read more about Books that Caught our Eye.

Mailbox Monday is hosted by Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit, Martha of Reviews by Martha's Bookshelf, and Velvet of vvb32reads.

   

They Called Him Marvin & More -- MAILBOX MONDAY

 

MAILBOX MONDAY

They Called Him Marvin is the intimate history of one family caught up the War in the Pacific during WWII. First Lieutenant Dean Sherman was one of some 570 Allied airmen captured by the Japanese. His wife Connie was home in Utah, raising the baby Dean never met. 

Roger Stark's new book tells the story of Dean and Connie Sherman in all its historical context, using their own letters as well as primary source materials. It is the story of the brave men flying B-29 fighters and the harrowing effects the war had on families on both sides.

They Called Him Marvin launches September1 and is available for pre-order now. Learn more about the book and what prompted Stark to write it on theycalledhimmarvin.com.  

 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION

"They were the fathers we never knew, the uncles we never met, the friends who never returned, the heroes we can never repay. They gave us our world. And those simple sounds of freedom we hear today are their voices speaking to us across the years." Bill Clinton

Such a man was 1st Lt Dean Harold Sherman, B-29 Airplane Commander. They Called Him Marvin is a history. A history of war and of family. A history of the collision of the raging politics of a global war, young love, patriotism, sacred family commitments, duty and the horrors and tragedies, the catastrophe that war is.

The other books that came into my house last week were this nifty set of vintage Viking poetry books. My neighbor had a garage sale and, while he was ambivalent about parting with this set, he was happy they were only going across the street so he can visit them. 

I can't see myself hunkering down to read any of these cover to cover. But I can imagine dipping into them now and again when I'm feeling nostalgic for my days as an English Major. 

MAILBOX MONDAY

Join other book lovers on Mailbox Monday to share the books that came into your house last week. Visit the Mailbox Monday website to find links to all the participants' posts and read more about Books that Caught our Eye.

Mailbox Monday is hosted by Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit and Martha of Reviews by Martha's Bookshelf.

Empires by John Balaban and Creole Son by E. Kay Trimberger: Book Beginnings

It's Friday, time for Book Beginnings! Time to share the opening sentence (or so) of the book you are featuring this week. What are you reading? What are you planning to read this weekend? What books are sitting on your desk that you have aspirations to read? Hmmmmm . . . . That hits close to home!

Please share your posts with a link below. Or play along on social media and leave a comment with your opening lines or a way to find you.

If you post or share on social media, please use the #BookBeginnings hashtag so we can enjoy each other's company.

Yes, I have several books stacked on my desk that look great and I'd like to spend some time with them. I hope this weekend will give me a chance. Here are two of them:

MY BOOK BEGINNINGS

After most of the bodies were hauled away
and while the FBI and Fire Department and NYPD
were still haggling about who was in charge, as smoke cleared,
the figures in Tyvek suits came, gloved, gowned, masked,
ghostly figures searching rubble for pieces of people,
bagging, then sending the separate and comingled remains
to the temporary morgue set up on site.

-- from "A Finger," the first poem in  Empires by John Balaban (Copper Canyon Press).

This eighth book of poetry from Balaban looks at key moments in history when culture shifts and imperial eras come to an end. Viking traders, Washington crossing the Delaware, a Romanian Jew waiting for the Nazis, and 9/11, all inspire Balaban's verse.

Mine is not the story of how an adopted son finds his birth parents and turns his life around.

-- Creole Son: An Adoptive Mother Untangles Nature and Nurture by E. Kay Trimberger (LSU Press). In 1981, Kay Trimberger became the single white mother of an adopted biracial son she raised in Berkeley, California. After watching him grow into a troubled youth struggling with addiction, Trimberger helped Marc reconnect with his biological Cajun and Creole biological relatives.

Trimberger's new memoir explores how biological heritage and the environment adopted children are raised in interact to shape adult outcomes. She hopes her book will provide support to all parents with troubled offspring. She also suggests a new model for adoption that creates an extended, integrated family of both biological and adoptive relatives.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

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THE FRIDAY 56

Freda's Voice hosts The Friday 56, which is a natural tie in with this event. The idea is to post a teaser from page 56 of the book you are reading and share a link to your post. Find details and the Linky for your Friday 56 post on Freda’s Voice.

MY FRIDAY 56 TEASERS

FROM "BACK THEN" IN EMPIRES

One evening he spotted a mule dear
ambling up a hillside path
and he followed it to higher ground
as a huge moon rose off the ridge
and he caught the scent of pine needles.
So he kept on until dark, reaching a ledge
overlooking Phantom Lake and the ghost town.

FROM CREOLE SON

Our success at building a community sustained the household during these childless years. Our home hosted political meetings, study groups, consciousness-raising sessions, and book talks on feminist and progressive issues.

Mailbox Monday: Four New Books for Corona Stay-at-Home

Four new books showed up at my house last week. I don't know about you, but looking forward to book mail is a big part of my corona stay-at-home lifestyle. What new books came into your house last week?

The book I am most excited about is an advance copy of Hidden Falls by Kevin Myers.



Hidden Falls is part mystery, part romcom, part mid-life crisis story of Michael Quinn. When his father dies unexpectedly, Michael returns to Boston to wrap up family affairs and run away from personal problems, only to learn his dad had ties with organized crime.

Judd Apato who directed and co-wrote The 40-Year Old Virgin with Steve Carell described Kevin Myers' new book:

"Hidden Falls is like Dennis Lehane and David Sedaris got together to write a romantic comedy. It's intelligent, charming, and the perfect combination of funny and thrilling."

Hidden Falls is available for pre-order now. The Kindle edition drops June 2, 2020. The hardback ships July 15, 2020.

These other three books also look terrific:



Creole Son: An Adoptive Mother Untangles Nature and Nurture by E. Kay Trimberger. This new memoir is the story of how Kay Trimberger became the single white mother of an adopted biracial son and watched him grow into a troubled your who struggled with addiction. Trimberger draws on her training as a sociologist to explore how biological heritage and the environment adopted children are raised in interact to shape adult outcomes.

Trimberger writes for a general audience and hopes her book will provide support to all parents with troubled off spring. Creole Son is out now from LSU Press.



Empires by John Balaban. Poet John Balaban's eighth collection of poetry focuses on key moments in history when culture shifts and imperial eras come to an end. There are poems about Viking traders, Washington crossing the Delaware, a Romanian Jew waiting for the Nazis, and a train ride through the American South after Obama's election.

Empires is available now, published by Copper Canyon Press.



The Benefit of Hindsight by Susan Hill. This is the 10th book in Hill's Simon Serrailler series. I haven't read any of this series before, so I am going to dive in with this one and, if I like it, start over from the beginning.

I found this one in one of the many Little Free Libraries that dot our neighborhood. Apparently our LFLs are more cutting edge than amazon because the copy I found is a UK paperback edition. The paperback is not out in the US yet. Yet another blessing of the neighborhood walks that have kept me sane during coronavirus!

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday, a weekly "show & tell" blog event where participants share the books they acquired the week before. Visit the Mailbox Monday website to find links to all the participants' posts and read more about Books that Caught our Eye.

Mailbox Monday is graciously hosted by Leslie of Under My Apple Tree, Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit, and Martha of Reviews by Martha's Bookshelf.

Teaser Tuesday: Phoenix: Transformation Poems by Jessica Goody

Far out to sea, rakish sea lions converse
with St. Francis beneath the steely scrim
of Pacific fog. Their barking can be heard,
tenor notes against the baritone of foghorns.

-- Phoenix: Transformation Poems by Jessica Goody. I love this image because it reminds me of when I lived in San Francisco. I could hear the foghorns (and sometimes the sea lions) from where we lived in Cow Hollow.

Phoenix was recently on tour with Poetic Book Tours.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by The Purple Booker, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Teaser Tuesday: Mortality with Pronoun Shifts: Poems

The Muddy Fork of the Sandy River
is cloudy green-brown with fine silt
a glacier scraped off the mountain.
Where the log bridge washed out
and the trail ends in water,
you cannot tell how deep it goes
or where the footing lies if there is footing.

-- from "Crossing the Muddy" in Mortality with Pronoun Shifts: Poems by Don Colburn, which won the 2018 Cathy Smith Bowers Chapbook Contest.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by The Purple Booker, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.

Mailbox Monday: Memoir and Poetry

A memoir and a book of poetry came my way last week. What about you?



What a Body Remembers: A Memoir of Sexual Assault and Its Aftermath by Karen Stefano. Karen Stefano's story of recovering from a violent sexual assault in college and the PTSD she experienced even decades later has a particularly interesting twist -- she went on to become a criminal defense attorney who defended those accused of crimes as horrible as the one committed against her.



Phoenix: Transformation Poems by Jessica Goody. This new book of poetry is on tour now with Poetic Book Tours. Check back here for a review on June 30.

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday, a weekly "show & tell" blog event where participants share the books they acquired the week before. Visit the Mailbox Monday website to find links to all the participants' posts and read more about Books that Caught our Eye.

Mailbox Monday is graciously hosted by Leslie of Under My Apple Tree, Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit, and Martha of Reviews by Martha's Bookshelf.

Mailbox Monday: Memoir & Poetry

I got two books with moody covers for these moody grey days. What books came into your house last week?



Rash: A Memoir by Lisa Kusel. There are ex-pat memoirs like A Year in Provence and Under the Tuscan Sun. This is one of the other kind.



Mortality with Pronoun Shifts: Poems by Don Colburn. Winner of the 2018 Cathy Smith Bowers Chapbook Contest.

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday, a weekly "show & tell" blog event where participants share the books they acquired the week before. Visit the Mailbox Monday website to find links to all the participants' posts and read more about Books that Caught our Eye.

Mailbox Monday is graciously hosted by Leslie of Under My Apple Tree, Serena of Savvy Verse & Wit, and Martha of Reviews by Martha's Bookshelf.

Book Beginning: The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS
THANKS FOR JOINING ME ON FRIDAYS FOR BOOK BEGINNING FUN!

MY BOOK BEGINNING



The woods of Arcady are dead,
And over is their antique joy
Of old the world on dreaming fed;
Grey Truth is now her Painted toy;

-- from "The Song of the Happy Shepherd," the first poem in The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats. Since we are heading into St. Patrick's Day weekend, it seems a good day to feature an Irish poet. I've been working my way through this book for a couple of years. I keep it on my table at work and try to read one poem every day. I can't say the first poem in the book is my favorite!

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author’s name.

EARLY BIRDS & SLOWPOKES: This weekly post goes up Thursday evening for those who like to get their posts up and linked early on. But feel free to add a link all week.

SOCIAL MEDIA: If you are on Twitter, Instagram, or other social media, please post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I try to follow all Book Beginnings participants on whatever interweb sites you are on, so please let me know if I have missed any and I will catch up.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNING




TIE IN: The Friday 56 hosted by Freda's Voice is a natural tie in with this event and there is a lot of cross over, so many people combine the two. The idea is to post a teaser from page 56 of the book you are reading and share a link to your post. Find details and the Linky for your Friday 56 post on Freda’s Voice.

MY FRIDAY 56

I heard an old religious man
But yesternight declare
That he had found a text to prove
That only God, my dear,
Could love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair.

-- from "For Anne Gregory." This is my favorite Yeats poem, so I cheated a bit to include it here because it is not on page 56. I've always kept this last stanza taped to my desk. I think of it as a reminder of the fickleness of the human heart and a warning against vanity. Or something like that.

Book Notes: The Spirit Level by Seamus Heaney

Today, I finished The Spirit Level by Seamus Heaney. The final poem in the collection is my favorite Heaney poem, “Postscript” – the one that ends with the line “catch the heart off guard and blow it open.”

Heaney won the Costa Book of the Year award for The Spirit Level in 1996 (when the award was called the Whitbread). I’m working my way through the winners of the Costa BOTY, but have only read 12 of the 33 so far, in part because there are several books of poetry on the list.

I’ve been making an effort to read more poetry by keeping a book of poems on my nightstand and reading one poem every morning when I wake up.

Postscript

And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you’ll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

Here is a video of Seamus Heaney reading "Postscript" in 2013.

Author Interview: Kirsten Rian

Kirsten Rian is a writer, artist, singer, photography curator, professor, editor, and general Renaissance woman. Her new book of poetry, Life Expectancy, explores family history, motherhood, and life taken in unexpected directions.

Kirsten recently talked with Rose City Reader about her new book, writing, poetry, and motherhood. 

You’ve done so many creative things in your life – painting, singing, writing, curating, editing, among others – what led you to write this book of poetry, Life Expectancy, at this point in your life?

To be honest, it sort of wrote itself over the span of many years. Writing has always been a form of processing for me, and a way to get perspective on a situation. When the thoughts or wonderings or facts get out of one's own head and onto paper, just enough distance is created to allow for a bit of perspective, a slightly different angle of light. Maneuvering through the physical and emotional complexities of all the medical and death issues pushed on the limits of what my brain and body could manage. Having the ability to write was an intensely necessary tool, and I'm ever-grateful I had it to fall back on and to be there alongside.

Some of the poems in your book read more like essays, all are intensely personal, dealing as you do with the death of your children’s father, medical scares, grief, motherhood, and so much more. Did you have any qualms about sharing so much?

I have never cared what people think, so that never entered my mind. I live by the creed, the truth is the truth. And some of my truth the past 20 years has been hard and scary and uncomfortable. And it's made some people around me uncomfortable. I don't care. I'm living it. I didn't ask for it, it all just happened. It's the truth, and it's life, and sooner or later we will all experience hard, scary, uncomfortable truth. I do love the prose poem format because some of what the kids and I experienced felt like this unrelenting wall, this dense block of experience we couldn't get around. So the form of the prose poem fit well for some of the content. For others, it needed couplets or some other format. The gift of poetry is that the line breaks and white space are content, as well. So we writers use all that, as well, to convey story and emotion.

Did you think of turning your own experiences into fiction and writing the book as a novel?

No. Honestly, this book was a very, very long process and I'm ready to focus on other content. I think as artists our own lives factor in to everything we make on some level, whether intentional or not. So, there's that. But for whatever reason, these particular stories needed to be told in poem form. The thing I love most about fiction is creating characters with their own experiences and impulses and hopes and dreams. I like to get lost in a character and it's time to do that for awhile.

What did you learn from writing Life Expectancy – either about the subject of the book or the writing process – that most surprised you?

I was crazy shocked to learn the book was about mothering through trauma. I thought it was about my son's and my medical issues and Dave dying, which obviously it was on some level, but it wasn't until it was completed that I realized this.

How did you think of the book’s title and what meaning do you want to convey with it?

What struck me the most moving through the events of the past 20 years was that life does not go the way one expects. Literally nothing about my adult life I could have planned. And the hard events...there's no way to prepare for how to maneuver through life and death situations with your child, your husband, yourself. The fact that we looked at death so closely at ages that defied the national 'life expectancy' also came into the meaning.

What is your process for writing a poem? Do you write at a particular time or place? Do you rewrite?

None, nope, and rarely. It's the single mom method. I write when there's time. And I do edit my pieces but large rewrites really never. If it isn't working, then it isn't working. I'm an intuitive writer and I work quickly and in spurts, so it's either there or it's not.

Who are a few of your favorite poets? Can you recommend any who deal with major life issues with the kind of heart and empathy you put into your own work?

Tess Gallagher has always been one of my favorites. Her book Moon Crossing Bridge, written after her husband Raymond Carver died, has me in tears every single time I read it. In many ways, that book was a wonderful teacher for me in how to write about grief honestly and directly and still beautifully and in a well-crafted way. Wislawa Szymborska, Jack Gilbert, Michael Ondaatje, and Dean Young I go back to over and over. TS Eliot's Four Quartets I keep in the car. When I was teaching my kids to drive, once they learned how and just needed more practice logging in hours, I'd read it aloud to calm myself down. Teaching them to drive was quite honestly one of the most stressful things I've ever done. Somebody needs to do a better job preparing parents for what this will be like!

What kind of books do you like to read? What are you reading now?

I love short fiction and really well written novels. I just finished Bette Husted's new book, All Coyote's Children, and am about to launch into Jesmyn Ward's Sing, Unburied, Sing. I love basketball so a good NBA biography makes me happy. And comedy. David Sedaris.

What is the most valuable advice you’ve been given as an author?

Write about your own life. Much of my earlier work was more witnessing, which is fine and valuable, but not if one hasn't told their own stories yet.

You dedicate the book to your mother and grandmother, “who mothered through their own trauma the best they could.” What is the most valuable advice you’ve been given as a mother?

I lingered on this question for awhile. You know, I don't know if I've ever been given mothering advice. I've given myself lots of advice, though! And I instinctively, and it felt like primally, knew how to be a fierce mother when it was needed, especially when it was standing up for my kids.

Do you have any events coming up to promote your book?

I had a few readings when the book first came out, and I just was on Judith Arcana's fabulous KBOO radio show, Poetry and Everything. I'll gear up again to promote in the fall!

What is your next project?

I'll return to Iceland for another residency and produce both an installation and work on writing. I'm in the middle of a fiction project and I really want to write a poetry collection on joy.

THANK YOU, KIRSTEN!

LIFE EXPECTANCY IS AVAILABLE ONLINE OR ASK YOUR LOCAL BOOKSELLER TO ORDER IT!

Teaser Tuesday: Life Expectancy by Kirsten Rian

I am in northern Iceland, 913 miles and a softly arcing mapline away from my own Norwegian beginning stories, and I have a lot of questions, too, about things I don't understand, that can't be easily explained or ordered, in my mind anyway. I have plenty of names, but no way yet to compile them, or to at least attach a meaning I'm willing to accept.

-- Life Expectancy by Kirsten Rian. Kirsten's new book of poetry also includes several essays. In both poems and prose she explores family history, motherhood, and life taken in unexpected directions.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by The Purple Booker, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event.