I'm still here! Thoughts on why this blog exists plus a preliminary Top Ten Books I Read in 2021 list

Life caught up to me these past few months, with things heating up at work at the same time as my non-reading extracurriculars (it can never be just one thing at a time, can it?), but I have been reading through it all and considering what direction I want to take this blog, if any, or if it should just be tabula rasa for me to do with it what I will.

Though I’ve not been posting, I have had some reading achievements since July: I read Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (translated by Constance Garnett), read The Odyssey by Homer (translated by Emily Wilson (so good!)), began the Louise Penny Three Pines/Inspector Gamache series, and kicked off two travel reading projects. Along the way I finished my annual Goodreads goal of finishing fifty-two books, and I made a preliminary top ten list of books read in 2021 (I will include at the bottom of this post. The final list comes out in December; I usually post this to social media).

I may be overthinking it, but sometimes I am not sure I have much to add about a subject or a book that hasn’t already been said better by someone else, so I have felt a bit tongue-tied when considering blogging in the past couple months. This is not the first time I’ve opened up this blog since my last post, but it’s the first time I eked out more than a paragraph. I am writing this because I am trying to make sure I am thoughtful about what I put out there, to make sure I know WHY I want to write a blog. Is it to build community? Is it to start a conversation with someone? Is it just to check a box in my list of things I want to do? Is it to have fun? I mean, it can be all of the above or none of the above, I’m sure. Although I think the last question has to always be answered with a “yes” for just about anything for me, or I’m not sure I’ll stay motivated to keep at it.

I’ve considered making the focus of the blog be Reading Projects. I have several ongoing projects at any one time, some that I know will never be completed (Stephen King reading project, for example, unless I dedicate a year to Stephen King books. At this point, his annual output is greater than the number of his books that I read in a year.), some that have a deadline (chiefly revolving around travel plans or book awards ceremonies), and some that are achievable in this lifetime but have no deadline (read all of the Louise Erdrich books). Right now off the top of my head, these are my active projects:

• Stephen King Reading Project (read all books published under Stephen King’s name)
• Louise Erdrich novels (read all books published by Louise Erdrich)
• Quebec travel project (read 6 books either about or set in Quebec/Canada before 11/18 when I go to Quebec City, a trip booked after finishing Louise Penny’s Bury Your Dead, the sixth in the Three Pines Series) 
• Three Pines/Inspector Gamache series by Louise Penny (I’m on book 7)
• Sister Fidelma mystery series by Peter Tremayne (I think I’m 2 books behind) 
• The Masquerade tetralogy by Seth Dickinson (all caught up, just waiting on publication of the final installment, but waiting very patiently. These books are all Very Worth the Wait.) 

• Greece travel project (read books on the history of Greece, travel writing in Greece, Greek novels, novels set in Greece or about people of Greek heritage, etc., deadline June 2022 or whenever my Greece trip happens) 
• Japan travel project (read about the history of Japan,  culture of Japan, travel writing in Japan, Japanese novels, novels set in Japan or about people of Japanese heritage, etc., deadline ???? This trip keeps getting pushed back, so more time to read, I guess!)

• Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (I will finish this book some day, I swear) 
• Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery (2 more books to go in the series, though I really have to admit that a new understanding of the treatment of French Canadians in the series has made me put these last two off)
• Book club reading (ongoing, neverending!)

I usually pick one or more award each year and try to read through the shortlist of finalists for that award too. One of my favorites has been the Tournament of Books put on by Morning News every year. I did read through a majority of the shortlist this year but could not get through the entire list. In 2020 and 2021, I am giving myself way more grace and leeway than before, because pandemic reading has its ups and downs. I also have read through the shortlist of the National Book Awards for Non-fiction, the shortlist for the Nebulas, and the shortlist for the Hugos, among other lists.

Project reading can be very rewarding, though sometimes I have pushed myself to read through something that wasn’t for me, just because it was on a list. Reading should always be fun to some degree. So as much as I am a completist, I have been training myself to be ok with having projects that will never be finished. I think there’s a metaphor in there for the Self, isn’t there?

Anyway, I guess I don’t know where I’m going with this blog, if anywhere. Perhaps it is still a worthwhile endeavor; perhaps I don’t need to have a destination. A life in books, from what I can tell so far, is a meandering life, but a rich one as well. I’ll have to wait and see what happens next.

As promised:

Preliminary Top Ten Books Read in 2021 (ok, some are series, but I can do what I want with my list, as of 9/14/21)

1. Still Life and A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny

2. Murderbot Diaries (#1-4) by Martha Wells

3. The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson

4. The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison

5. Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe

6. How Much of These Hills Is Gold by C Pam Zhang

7. Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

8. Red Pill by Hari Kunzru

9. Luster by Raven Leilani

10. Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica

Honorable mention: Why Won’t You Apologize? By Harriet Lerner - this was recommended at an implicit bias workshop at work during a conversation about microaggressions, but I have found it useful in so many other situations as well.

Big Book #2: The Mirror & The Light by Hilary Mantel

For my second big book of #BigBookSummer, I read The Mirror & The Light by Hilary Mantel, the concluding volume of the Thomas Cromwell trilogy. It chronicles Cromwell’s life from the time from Anne Boleyn’s beheading to his own comeuppance. My initial feelings were not positive, but sometimes I think that a book’s membership in a series can taint my opinion of it because I’m comparing it to the other books in the series. On that level - the middle book - Bring Up the Bodies - was the best, the shortest, and most focused, as it is structured around Cromwell’s involvement in the romance and the, um, subsequent falling out (to put it lightly!) between King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. The Mirror & The Light, however, did not have the benefit of a singular salacious story to propel the reader forward. I’ve given myself a week to digest this book a bit more, and I still think it was too long and rather hard to get through. It was not for me. I remember thinking that in both of the first two volumes initially, but then the books always picked up and I couldn’t put them down. There were several passages and dialogues in this book that I loved and thought this book was picking up for me, but these glimmers would always fade away. 

I thought it was interesting to learn about the operational impact of the Reformation, specifically how the lands and wealth of abbeys and monasteries were disbursed after Henry VIII had most of them shut down. There was a silver lining after all - the historical part of the historical fiction was solid.

On to the next big book! 

It me

Dune Wrap-Up

This past weekend I finished my first big book for Sue Jackson's #BigBookSummer Challenge, which was Dune by Frank Herbert. The novel was 617 pages long plus an additional 70 pages of appendices, including a glossary of terms and sections about the world of the novel. This was a reread, and I posted my thoughts on rereading before I jumped into the meat of the book. 

Dune begins as the Atreides family obeys imperial orders to take over rule of Arrakis, the desert planet, from their sworn enemies the Harkonnens. Arrakis' climate is brutal, lacking water resources to the point where the indigenous people, the Fremen, wear "stillsuits," which absorb perspiration and other liquid waste and recycle it as drinking water. The Harkonnens and other imperial houses give the indigenous people little regard and maintain interest in Arrakis for the singular purpose of extracting its crop of melange, known as "the spice," for export to other planets in the system. The Atreides make this move to Arrakis knowing that a conspiracy is waiting for them there, seeking to destroy them. 

Paul Atreides, the main character, is the culmination of his father's men's instruction but also of his Bene Gesserit mother's training. The Bene Gesserit are a school of women who train their acolytes in various modes of influencing others, including The Voice, in which a Bene Gesserit can pitch their voice in such a way that the listener is forced to obey against their will. They have also implanted prophecies in various places which Bene Gesserit can exploit when survival needs require it. (There are definitely some interesting gender themes to explore here, as the most powerful women in this universe are often sought after by powerful men but relegated to a role of influence and then thereafter are subject, as often shown in the story, to suspicions of treachery and accusations of witchcraft.) Paul must use the full force of his training to survive the political and ecological challenges on Dune.

I'll stop the summarizing there to avoid getting into spoiler territory. Most of the book is not very action-packed, so I think it's no wonder I forgot from my first reading what happens, because not much really does; however, the scope of the world-building is remarkable. I still loved the book, though I think upon second reading I was more aware of the crafting behind it, rather than feeling completely immersed in the story. I think that often happens in subsequent readings, so I'm not mad about it. The amount of information included about the Bene Gesserit and the religious beliefs of the Fremen is perfectly done. Herbert scheduled out morsels of high-context revelations but didn't reveal too much to destroy the mysteries of faith. The novel examines heavy themes such as colonialism, religion, ecology, political intrigue, and reading it can feel dense as a result. The final scene relieves some of that with almost farcical camp. I love a good villain, and Baron Harkonnen is up there with the best (worst!) of them, and I love precocious four-year-olds.

Totally worth putting on your lifetime bucket list. I'm almost afraid to read any sequels that risk ruining the first, but I will add the next book to my TBR for some point in the future.

Smelling the spice

Quickie: "It's the end of the world as we know it..."

 "....and I feel fine." (obligatory!)

I'm here to make a quick plug for The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking) by Dr. Katie Mack, who is a theoretical astrophysicist currently working at North Carolina State. The book is about how the universe may end, and each chapter investigates the physics behind a new doomsday possibility with a level of buoyancy one might not expect on such a topic. The joy Mack takes in her work is contagious, and even if I occasionally felt like I had accidentally consumed edibles while reading it due to my non-scientist brain, the writing was very accessible. Also, any science book that starts off with Robert Frost has to be good, right?

Great fun, great pop science fiction references. Any review that calls this a romp is hitting the nail on the head. Because this was a romp.

Freya's knowing gaze

Big Book Summer Challenge: CHALLENGE ACCEPTED

In one of my first acts as blogger, I am announcing my plans to join the Big Book Summer Challenge  hosted by Sue Jackson at Book by Book. The main part of the challenge is to tackle a book that is 400 or more pages long between Memorial Day and Labor Day. In fact, I currently plan to read at least three books that fit that description within the timeframe.

The first is Dune by Frank Herbert, which I posted about yesterday in the first post on this blog. I’d been meaning to reread Dune for a while now, and another participant in the challenge and a fellow book lover in the Book Cougars community, Tina, said she was considering it for her challenge, which pushed me to start reading it. Another Book Cougar community member, Kim, whom Tina and I have both met on the Readalong Zoom Discussions hosted by the Cougars, is joining us for a summer of Dune. We will have to figure out how to share our experiences and maybe try to watch the movies at the same time or together online somehow.

The second is The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson. I’m intimidated but excited. I’ve never read it in its entirety in anyone’s translation.

The third is The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel, which finishes out Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell trilogy.

I’ll be reading these last two alongside a college roommate with whom I recently reconnected. She has always had a passion for literature and philosophy, and when we were in college she majored in our university’s Great Books program. I’m pretty pumped to tackle these books with her! She already has her sights on finding some good YouTube lectures and maybe some extra coursework from any classics syllabi we can find on the internet for The Odyssey. I feel like I’m in good hands already, but if you have any suggestions on good resources for any of these books, please pass them along!

Post 1: Rereading Dune

June 2021: This is the second time I've begun to read Dune by Frank Herbert and the third time I have owned this book.

There are so many reasons to reread books, one of which is that my memory is fickle and ill-behaved. I remember loving Dune, but even within the first five pages of this reread I could see how much I'd forgotten. There's a sense amongst the Atreides house of impending doom in the move to Arrakis, yet also of duty, both of which my memory has ignored entirely in favor of the theme of messianism and prophecy, stillsuits, and SPICE. But there is also still that which lends itself so deliciously to camp, which I do remember and which I'm sure contributed heavily to how much I loved this book. I am rereading to remember what happens and how the story is told.

Another reason I reread books is because they often become better with subsequent rereads. Of course, it's me who changes for the better and not the book, but I suppose it feels good to be reminded that, in a culture with such an emphasis on youth, I'm actually improving over time. This is not to say that young people as a rule lack wisdom, but it is to say that I have more of it than I once did. Maybe this wisdom will sharpen my focus on the supporting cast of adult characters as well as allow me to pick up more on the messianic young character Paul Atreides.

One more reason to reread Dune, specifically, is because this time I'll have great company doing so. Some reading buddies from the community created by the Book Cougars are reading it as part of the Big Book Summer Challenge hosted by Sue at Book by Book. And also, as I have posted on my Instagram (@colleenka) about it, I've heard from a couple other friends who are reading it this year as well. The big blockbuster movie coming out in October probably has something to do with the timing!

So, why have I owned it three times? Because I have gone through fits and spurts over my adult life of buying into various degrees of minimalism as well as have moved eight times in fourteen years. Moving boxes of books is nothing to sneeze at, so I have donated my first two copies of Dune amongst dozens of boxes of other books to make moves easier on myself. But something keeps me coming back to it, and now that I own my own place and will not be moving any time soon I can (once again) reevaluate my relationship to things I own. I just bought a trade paperback copy because it's comfortable to read and think this summer I might acquire more than one copy of Dune, including the graphic novel and a hardcover copy, now that I'm a little more geographically stable.

I look forward to reading more and hope to post more on Dune and other books too. It's been a number of years since I attempted a book blog, and hopefully I can apply the wisdom I supposedly have gained since the last time towards managing a blogging project. 

Until next time,

Colleen