Well, friends, here we are again.

It’s been almost a year since I’ve written a post, and it’s been over four years since I started talking about reading all of Shakespeare. I had planned on starting in January of this year, and when that deadline whizzed by, I was hoping to get started on or around April 23, since that’s Shakespeare’s birthday, but that didn’t happen.

Things haven’t been going quite as I’d planned, but I suppose that’s life, isn’t it?

I realized earlier this year that I was slowly starting to crawl out of an almost-year-long depressive episode that I didn’t know I was in. I started taking an art class in January, and it was about halfway through that I realized it was the first time I’d been happy in a long time. Sure, I’ve done fun things and was happy in the moment, but the minute I was home alone, I’d sink back into my little pit of sadness. I don’t really do anything anymore because my dog (Truman) developed separation anxiety almost overnight after my other dog (Mojo) passed. It’s so bad that I can’t leave his eyeline, let alone run an errand or two. I have to have someone come sit with him or figure out a way to take him with me if I do anything. So I stopped doing things because it was easier. I felt like a massive burden to be around anyway.

To top it all off, Truman can’t go for walks longer than maybe half a block anymore, and that’s on a good day. Walking used to be the thing that kept me a bit sane – I could get out of the house and just let my mind wander while he sniffed everything in sight. It slightly made up for not being able to go anywhere. Now, he’s SO slow and can really only go short distances, and I end up having to carry him home. I got him a stroller so we can still go for walks, but he’s sensitive to heat and I hate summer anyway, so we’ve been hunkering down for the past few weeks in the lovely hot and humid mid-summer weather we’re so lucky to get in the northeastern part of the country.

All that to say: I’m struggling. I’ve been worse, and I will get better, but it’s an uphill battle. I’m still determined to do the Shakespeare project even if no one listens to it because I just want to prove to myself that I can do it at this point. I don’t know what – if anything – will come of it, so I may as well just do it for me.

In addition to all of that, work has been more taxing lately, summer saps what’s left of my will to do anything, and I’ve run into some technical hurdles, but I’m working on it. I’ve also been trying to get things sorted out at home; I thought cleaning my closet would be a good distraction after Mojo died… I’m still trying to get all of that cleaned up so my bedroom doesn’t look like a department store exploded in it. My advice to you is to not pull everything piece of clothing you have out of your closets, dressers, wardrobes, etc. unless you know FOR SURE that you have the time and willpower to get it all put away again in a short time period.

But you’re not here for me to yammer on about my life – at least, not completely. I have finally been reading more lately, which is a nice feeling, but I still feel overwhelmed when I walk into my library and see the piles and piles of books I have yet to read. I’m really hoping once I get on track with things, I’ll be able to just sit down with a book and enjoy myself.

Two of my favorite reads for the year so far have been The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell and Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about them, but for completely different reasons. The Silent Companions was so delightfully creepy that I feel like it’s haunting me now. If you like creepy gothic books, you’ll enjoy it for sure. Demon Copperhead, on the other hand, was incredibly moving, and the characters have been living in my head since I’ve finished it. I read it alongside David Copperfield, which is what it’s based on, but I’m still working through Copperfield. It’s really good and the characters are quite fun, but it is harder to read because it’s Dickens. You definitely don’t need to read Copperfield before Copperhead, or even read it at all if long Victorian novels aren’t your thing… as much as I enjoy them, I totally get it. But it is fun to see how Kingsolver used the different characters and plot points to create a modern version of the story.

I re-read a few books, too – Dracula, because why not; we read The Bell Jar for book club, and I worry about how much I can still relate to a lot of it, but I also still love it; and The Hound of the Baskervilles, which I read before and mostly forgot, but I think I retained more than I could recall at first because I started to piece things together pretty early on and I don’t think I’m especially clever.

I don’t usually do audiobooks because I struggle to pay attention when my eyeballs aren’t actively engaged, but I have been enjoying the Anne of Green Gables podcast by Mary Kate Wiles. It’s more like a radio play than a straight audiobook, which is fun. I also just love Anne of Green Gables, so any excuse to squeeze her into my life is a good one. It’s perfect for when you want something bookish in your life but also need to put all your clothes away because you’ve made a terrible mess of things… something I know a lot about. Mary Kate Wiles is also part of Shipwrecked Comedy – they’ve done some really fun (and funny) literary series, and are one of my go-to comfort watches. You can find them on YouTube, if you’re interested. She also played Lydia in The Lizzie Bennett Diaries, which I also love and re-watch frequently.

I’ve started reading Weyward by Emilia Hart, too. My boss recommended it to me and I had already picked up a copy. Plus, there’s a note in the beginning about how the witches in Macbeth were originally called the weyward sisters, and it was later changed to weird sisters. I took the Shakespeare connection as a sign that it should be next up. I am also reading Shakespeare, obviously, and will post the list of plays in the order I plan on reading them in case anyone would like to read along.

I suppose that’s all for now. I hope you’re enjoying summer more than I am, and maybe reading on the beach somewhere. Until next time, happy reading!

April 23rd has come and gone, but I’m still working on getting this thing together. I’m doing research and trying to figure out how I want this all to go. It will happen soon – a pile of plays is sitting here, silently judging me for hoarding and not reading them.

In the meantime, my reading slump isn’t totally over, but I have made some progress.

I recently finished re-reading Great Expectations. Well, I say re-reading, but honestly, as I read it, it felt less and less familiar. I have a very distinct memory of Pip and the convict in the graveyard, and Miss Havisham, of course. But a lot of it felt like unfamiliar territory. The last time I had to read it was for school – my freshman year of high school, by the way, which is just criminal. With no context about Dickens and his style and the time period he was writing in, none of it made sense to me. This go-round, I was audibly laughing at quite a few parts. Dickens is funny! We should be laughing! But when you’re, what, 14? It makes no sense. I HATED Dickens for a while, but then I read Hard Times for a class in college, and then A Christmas Carol, which I read in Gonzo’s voice the whole time (because the Muppet version is the best version, obviously). I understood the language more, the style, the jokes, and by then I had also read a lot about the Victorian era because I was slightly obsessed with Lewis Carroll. It also gave me an appreciation for seeing good movie adaptations before reading a book, or using them alongside the book. Sometimes a world is very strange until you can see a representation of it and hold that image in your mind. It’s like seeing Shakespeare performed – the delivery of the lines helps you understand what the unfamiliar words mean. I’m looking forward to conquering more of the Dickens on my TBR list/pile.

I also recently finished reading two Jane Austen novels, and I was reminded that she is the most fun to re-read. Reading the first time around is mostly about focusing on the characters and plot and navigating the language. The second (or third or fourth) time around, you really get to delight in the wordplay and the jokes and get to know the characters more and appreciate just how real they feel. I still haven’t read all of her books, so I feel like I have something to look forward to. And then I get to re-read them!

Mary Shelley is best known for Frankenstein, which I love, but did you know she wrote a lot more than that? Well, I knew she wrote other things, but I don’t think I fully realized just how much she wrote. I read two of her short stories for a class, and I really enjoyed them. I bought a few more of her novels as well, and I have been meaning to read The Last Man since it was about a massive plague and I was trying to read plague things while we were all supposed to be hiding out at home. It’s funny how it feels so long ago, but I also can’t believe it’s been three years.

Speaking of reading for class, I also read The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Island of Doctor Moreau for the first time. They’re two stories that we reference all the time in pop culture, and man, they were not totally what I expected. But I really liked them. I forget how much I like H. G. Wells until I read him, and then I get mad at myself for not reading more of his stuff. I’m working on it. The class, by the by, was the second gothic lit class taught by The Ghoul Guides through The Rosenbach. It was a lot of fun, and I hope maybe someday there will be a part three…

Anyway, there are more books to talk about, but I’m really trying to focus on the podcast and Shakespeare. I keep pushing back my start date for reason after reason, but I think I need to just bite the bullet and get started. It’s a lot of work, but I think once I get started, it’ll get easier. I’m trying to organize all my thoughts and put together something interesting. I don’t want to just be another person yammering on and on about Shakespeare on the internet. And this is going to turn into Shakespeare central for a bit, so I hope you’re all ready for that. And if he’s not your cup of tea, I’ll talk to you in a year(ish). Or, you could stick around and see if something I mention sounds fun and maybe find a way to get into a couple of his works. You don’t have to like all of them. You don’t have to read them, either – plays were meant to be performed, so go watch the movie version or go see one live. They’re a lot of fun, and I think that’s how most people find their way in.

I think I’ve rambled enough for one post… I plan on updating soon with either the beginnings of all things Shakespeare, or maybe just a list of some books I’ve enjoyed so far this year. Only time will tell… procrastination is a specialty of mine.

I think in my last post I wrote something about how almost every one of the past few posts I’d written was just an excuse about why I hadn’t written as much and a promise to write more frequently.

Le sigh.

Clearly, that hasn’t happened. I haven’t abandoned this, but life has been… chaotic? Rough? Overwhelming? I honestly don’t have words to describe it right now. Or I do, I just can’t decide what they should be.

My whole life was sort of thrown for a loop when last summer, one of my dogs needed a wheelchair. It wasn’t a sudden thing – his walking was off, and he gradually lost the use of his back legs. Long story kind of short: Things went downhill pretty quickly, and he was unable to use his front legs after a few months, and developed an unrelated breathing issue, which the vet said was most likely a mass in his lungs. I had to make the heartbreaking decision to euthanize my boy.

It sounds like an excuse to blame things on a dog, but in all seriousness, my life was a mess. I was taking him outside to pee almost once an hour while he had a UTI, and less frequently but still a lot after that. I was doing a TON of laundry because he was having accidents, and most of my life revolved around making him comfortable. And you know what? I’d happily be doing it still if he hadn’t been suffering. But I couldn’t watch him struggle anymore. He didn’t deserve that.

Since then, everything has felt like a Herculean effort. Everything reminds me of him. Some days are OK – I manage to get through work and walk my other dog and talk to my neighbors about everything without tearing up. Other days, I start crying when I wake up and stop when I go to sleep. Not that I need to justify my feelings, but he was my first dog, the first pet I had of my own, and I’ve had him since he was 8 weeks old. He would have been 13 this year, and I always envisioned that I’d have him for so much longer. He was my baby, and with me through so much. It’s really hard to live without him.

The bright side (if I have to find one) is that he isn’t suffering, and I still have my other dog. We can grieve together, and keep each other company. And since he’s become majorly codependent and has separation anxiety, we’re together ALL the time. He’s the perfect excuse to stay home and read, because nothing makes him happier than me being stationary and easy to find. Aside from maybe taking a walk – he does love seeing people and other dogs and smelling everything.

Anyway, life must go on, and so I am gradually getting back to reading. I’m finishing a re-read of Pride and Prejudice because The Rosenbach’s Austen Mondays biblioventure recently concluded, and I was way behind because, well, dog reasons. They are currently doing Pickwick Monthly and will be doing Sherlock Holmes stories starting in the fall, which I’m very much looking forward to since I just picked up a two-volume set of the complete works to work my way through. I also signed up for an Emma reading course, as well as a second gothic lit course through them, so I have a lot of reading awaiting me in the next few months.

I have also been contemplating reading all of Shakespeare in a year. I can’t decide if I want to start this year or if I want to put it off until next year. The practical part of my brain keeps telling me I have enough to read for courses and I don’t need to add to the mix, but the other part of my brain just keeps telling me to do it. If not now, when? And who’s to say something won’t prevent me from doing it next year too? I want to start on April 23 – Shakespeare’s possible birthday and definite death day – so I do have some time to decide. I was also thinking about making a podcast about it, which is part of why I’m not sure about when to start, because it’s more work… but again, if not now, when?

Well, friend, I hope you will join me for my next post, which will hopefully not be about why I haven’t been reading or posting. I’m going to look at all the books I read last year and talk about my favorites, and maybe my least favorites. We’ll see what stand out as I go through the list. I am really glad that I keep track of things on Goodreads – I never rate anything I read, and I beat myself up over my reading goals when comparing my progress with my friends’ lists, but it’s good for helping me remember what I read in a year. Sometimes it’s hard to remember what you’ve read and when you read it. Plus, my job involves a lot of reading, so my brain is taxed with words and things. I’m not complaining, it’s just the truth.

Anyway, that’s all for now. I’ll be back soon with actual book content and not rambling about how sad I am (although to be fair, it might be some of that). Hug the ones you love and give your pets extra treats because you just never know.

It seems like a large portion of the population is behaving as though things are back to normal, but they clearly aren’t. It’s days before Christmas, but I’m not feeling very merry… the past (almost) two years have been quite a rollercoaster, and it’s mostly been down.

I went home in March of 2020 thinking we’d all be working remotely for a few weeks, maybe months. I was stupidly optimistic that people would stay home and wear masks and that we’d be in the clear well before the end of the year. But it’s been over 20 months of nonsense, and here we are. Not long after we were all sent home, my hours were cut. Then, I decided to move last summer, which was brilliant, since we did all the work ourselves and moved everything with almost no help because, y’know, there’s a pandemic. (We, by the by, is my mom and me.) In the fall, my hours were reinstated and I thought things were getting back to something resembling normal. Thanksgiving was a virtual gathering because my sister was potentially exposed to COVID (she ended up being fine), and anyway, I didn’t have a stove. Then, right before Christmas, I was told I’d be losing my job. January 4th was my last day; my grandfather died two days before that.

To say 2021 didn’t start well is an understatement. I spent all my time looking for jobs and crying. I was heartbroken after losing my grandfather, and the loss of my job didn’t help.

Eventually, I found a part-time job and started freelancing for my old job. I proofread a book, too, which was new for me. Things started to level out from being awful to being OK. I discovered the Rosenbach‘s Sundays with Frankenstein program, and Sundays with Dracula, which was over by the time I found it; currently, they’re doing Sundays with Jane Eyre, which is one of my favorite books. Through Dracula and Frankenstein, I was introduced to the Ghoul Guides, and I wound up taking a gothic literature class with them, which was so fun. My TBR pile/list has grown exponentially.

I’ve gone through some reading dry spells, but mostly I’ve been able to read somewhat normally. My schedule is weird, so I don’t always get as much time as I’d like to read, and I’m still trying to unpack and organize the new place. I know it seems like I should have my shit together by this point, but moving was… a process. It’s a story for another time, perhaps. Anyway, I’m only five books away from hitting my goal; last year I missed it by 30 or more, but it was a hell of a crazy year for me.

I feel like most of my posts have been about why I haven’t had time to read or post or whatever, but I’m going to change that. I’ll write more this year; I’ve got so much that I want to read. I hope I’m not getting ahead of myself, but I’ve also got a lot that I want to do, and I hope things start to actually get back to normal so I can do them. I’ll post again soon about some of my favorite pandemic reads and what my reading goals are for 2022. In the meantime, you can find me somewhere comfortable with a good book, my dogs, and probably some coffee.

One of my New Year’s resolutions for 2019 was to write more on this blog, and I failed miserably at it. It’s not that I haven’t been reading – I have, though I also fell short of my reading goal. It was only by two books, and the amount I read of books I started but didn’t finish probably made up those two missed books, but still.

I wish I had a good excuse, but I don’t really. I forget to write, and when I think of it, I can’t decide what to write about. I overthink it, and before I know it, weeks go by and I still haven’t written anything. I suppose that’s probably why I’ve also never finished anything else I’ve been writing.

I’ve also been trying to do stuff around my house. I know, I know, my life is super exciting. But the end goal is a room of floor-to-ceiling shelves for all my books, so it’s worth it, I think.

So, what’s in store for 2020? Glad you asked. I’m being realistic and setting my goal at 50 books again. I know it’s doable because I’ve done it before, and I’m trying to keep it realistic since I still have a lot to do around this place and am hoping to focus a bit more on my writing this year too. Of course, I’m also starting the year off with reading The Count of Monte Cristo for book club, which is a brick of a book with about 1,200 pages. I need to finish it by February 1st, and no, I haven’t started it yet. I also want to read There There by Tommy Orange because it was chosen for the One Book, One Philadelphia project and there are a bunch of events going on around it. Last year, Jesmyn Ward was here, and she was great, so I’d like to go again and start a reading tradition with myself.

My other goal is to read all of Shakespeare. I’m still deciding whether that includes his poetry or not, but I’m leaning toward yes. I guess it will depend on how my year goes. My plan is to read it all chronologically (or as chronologically as I can since there’s no completely accurate list, but more on that another time). I’ve read shockingly few of his plays (for an English major and book lover, anyway) and would like to remedy that since so much modern work is based on them. I feel like it’s a big blind spot of mine, and that I don’t know as much as I should of his writing. That’s pretty much all the thought I’ve put into this… I know there’s a writer who’s also reading all his plays this year, but I had my idea first. Well, before I knew anyone else was doing it, anyway. It’s something I’ve thought about doing before but never got around to it.

And that’s pretty much it. I have a few other goals for 2020, too, and one of them is to be more disciplined about how I spend my time so I can actually get to everything I want. I’m trying to re-learn ASL, and want to practice my drawing more because it’s something I miss doing, and may pick up a musical instrument again. There are the other more typical goals, too, like eating healthy and working out more and trying to be organized and all that, so it’ll be a busy year of self-improvement, but it’s all stuff I’m looking forward to, which I’m sure will help me work harder at accomplishing it all.

Here’s to 2020. I hope yours is great too.

So… it’s Juneteenth, which seems like an appropriate time to post what should have been my Black History Month reads… right?

I tend to procrastinate, but I also had some bad luck with my laptop deciding it doesn’t want to function anymore. I definitely haven’t been putting this off because I haven’t been reading; I’ve hit the halfway point of my year’s goal already, so that’s not the problem. You know how it is, though – one thing goes wrong, so you can’t do what you planned, and before you know it, it’s months later and you kind of forgot what you were doing in the first place. In the interest of getting this thing back on track, I’m going to attempt to bring you up to speed, starting with some pretty awesome books by black women.

I wanted to read more for BHM, but I got a late start and also hit a snag with one of the books I was reading (more on that later), but I got to cross some stuff off my list that was on there anyway. Plus, since it bled into Women’s History Month, it was appropriate that all four books were by female authors. Sometimes things work out better than you could have planned, and sometimes your laptop takes a dump on you. Swings and roundabouts, as they say.

Anyway.

The first book on my list was Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward. This has been on my list for a while, so it was a good excuse to finally get to it. That and I just got her latest book and wanted to read this first. I was not disappointed; it’s a beautifully written book. I’ve seen comparisons between Ward and Faulkner, and I suspect it has a lot to do with being from the same state, and Southern writers tend to be compared to him and each other, but it’s not a bad comparison in this case. Her style is her own, poetic and gorgeous, but the imagery, and making something beautiful out of poverty and ugliness strikes me as pretty Faulknerian. I got totally lost in this book and had the sense that I was there. I have a hard time reading about dog fighting, but she wrote about a dog fight and somehow managed to make it strangely beautiful. When it started, I thought for sure I’d have to skip pages, because I get queasy just reading about rescue dogs that were used for fighting. But I didn’t. I got pretty anxious toward the end when the hurricane hit. I tend to get really stressed out about natural disasters because, well, nature is terrifying. Reading about the flooding and the unstoppable water and destruction is horrifying and sad. I remember seeing it on the news and feeling heartbroken, but reading about it actually happening was a new experience. Let me not neglect the main character, Esch. She’s a teenage girl surrounded by boys and men – her mother is dead, and the only women we really encounter in the book are either teachers or other boys’ mothers and girlfriends. She just found out she’s pregnant, and honestly, if I were her, I’d have fallen apart. Well, I assume I would, but I guess you never know until you’re in it. But she’s strong as hell and deals with everything that’s thrown at her, from the pregnancy to family conflicts to the boy she loves not caring about her and everything in between. I don’t want to say much more, because you should really just read it for yourself, but I would definitely recommend reading it. I’m looking forward to reading more by her.

The second book I read was Passing by Nella Larsen. I read part of this in high school and found it in a used book store a long time ago, but never got around to reading it, so I thought this was a good time. I also thought of it when I read Helen Oyeyemi’s book Boy, Snow, Bird, but more on her later. Passing, if you’re unfamiliar, was one of the books that came out during the Harlem Renaissance and is about passing racially, when light-skinned/part white black people would be allowed in to white-only areas, etc., and in the book, one woman (Clare) has married a white man (uh, a really racist white man) and is living a life of luxury. The main character, Irene, meets her accidentally, and Clare invites her over. After meeting her husband, however, Irene decides it’s too dangerous to associate with her. Eventually Clare insists on spending more time together, and it doesn’t end well, but I don’t want to spoil it. It’s an interesting perspective because I think a lot of literature focuses on black people being poor, at least from what I’ve read, but the people in this book are not poor. It’s easy to forget that they live in a society where they don’t have access to the same places and things that white people have, which I think is what makes what Clare’s husband says so shocking – the reader is seeing this from a perspective where black people really aren’t all that different from the white people keeping them separate, so his racism feels especially harsh. (That and I live in a time where racism is complete and utter bullshit to people with any sense.) There’s a lot more going on here, but it’s short, and I don’t want to tell too much. But it deals with issues of race, and there is also chatter about a same-sex relationship between Clare and Irene, or at least tension of what might be a sexual nature. I don’t know for sure, obviously, but it’s fun to read it with that in mind.

I finally read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by the incredible Maya Angelou. This books is a dream to read, and I loved every second of it. I was really upset when I got to the middle, though, because somehow, I managed to get a book with about 30 pages missing. Seriously. It went from page 162 to 195, and it wasn’t numbered wrong – they were definitely not there. The kind folks at Barnes and Noble let me exchange it, and the guy that helped me out had never seen anything like it before. Anyway, I went home and devoured the rest of it that night. (I am not a patient woman.) The whole thing was wonderful, but there was one section in particular that moved me to tears, and that was her graduation. Some white men come talk at the graduation and pretty much throw the coldest bucket of water on the whole thing, seemingly ruining it. Her despair begins with: “The white kids were going to have a chance to become Galileos and Madame Curies and Edisons and Gauguins, and our boys (the girls weren’t even in on it) would try to be Jesse Owenses and Joe Louises.” And it just gets worse. She goes on about how hard they would have to work to become anything other than maids and field hands, and why? Why aren’t they good enough to get microscopes and art supplies? Honestly, this chapter should be taught in school. As I read this, all I kept thinking was that I finally understood how devastating “separate but equal” was, why it was so important to integrate schools, why those black students put up with the screaming and harassment to try and better themselves. Those photos of students walking so calmly with faces frozen in hate around them always made me feel horrible – this was a thousand times worse. Her words really hit home, and I just think this needs to be taught to kids so they understand why we have (or should have) zero tolerance for the racist bullshit and hateful rhetoric that people feel totally OK with spouting these days. This whole book should be mandatory, really, but that chapter in particular should be in every history class talking about Jim Crow laws and the civil rights movement and protests and all of that. She paints a picture that’s hard to see with just facts and figures and dates and names unconnected to anything else. Nothing hurts quite like watching the wind being blasted from the sails of a class of graduating kids, kids who should be hopeful and optimistic.

My final BHM book is in a very different vein. Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi has almost nothing to do with race other than being written by a black woman, but it’s a great book nonetheless. I read another book by her that was centered around race and a family that was passing, Boy, Snow, Bird, which was also a great read. I’ve only read those two by her, but it’s enough for me to just assume that anything else by her is probably just as good. This book has a dreamlike quality to it – you’re never quite sure of exactly what’s going on or who is who, or what someone’s motivations are. I’m not even really sure of how to explain this book except that a character/muse of an author becomes real, and no one’s quite sure what to make of it or how to deal with it, but they figure it out. I feel like this might be a book that writers appreciate a touch more than most just because wrangling characters becomes very real in this case, and I think that’s something most authors can relate to on a figurative level and be amused by (and maybe also grateful their characters are very much fiction).

Phew. This turned into a long post, but I guess writing about four books will do that. I’ll try not to leave so much time between posts anymore. I mean, about four months is a bit ridiculous. A week seems reasonable. So, see you in a week(ish) I guess?

St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell is a collection of short stories that has been on my shelf for a while and I finally got around to reading it. I was not disappointed. It was something I think I’d heard about on one of the many book-related sites I follow, plus a friend of mine said it was good when she saw I’d picked it up from the bookstore. I started it on the train one day when I was heading to Philly; I like short stories when I’m on the train or if I’ll be waiting around on someone, because I can usually stop at a good spot instead of being in the middle of a chapter in a section and totally absorbed in what’s going on. I know, I’m weird, but my reader friends tend to think the same way, so I feel vindicated in my weirdness about what I read where.

Anyway, back to the book… If you aren’t a fan of magical realism or surrealism or anything like that, this is not a book for you. Each story is like a weird dream – there are enough realistic elements that make you think it’s real, and then there’s something strange, like a minotaur pulling his family in a covered wagon on the Oregon trail, or a girl stuck in a giant conch, or goggles that help you see ghosts  underwater. There’s a camp for insomniacs with a boy who has vivid dreams about past events he wasn’t aware of, a group of children singing to bring down an avalanche, and of course, the titular home for girls born into werewolf families. But it all makes sense within its own context, and it isn’t until you finally surface that you realize, hey, that was a bit odd…

The writing is wonderful. I felt like I was dreaming as I read it – I ceased to be sitting on a train or in Starbucks. I was there, tasting the salt of the ocean, feeling the mud sucking at my heels in the swamp, freezing on the snowy mountain. The one story I had a hard time reading was the one where a girl gets stuck in a giant conch… I’m not super claustrophobic, but I’m not a fan of tight spaces, and feeling trapped gives me some anxiety. This was so well done that I felt like I, too, was trapped in the shell, and I needed to take a breather.

Karen Russell has two other books – another short story collection, Vampires in the Lemon Grove, and the novel Swamplandia! The first story in this collection features the characters from Swamplandia!, and I’m excited to read it because all I could think when I finished that story was that I wanted – no, needed – to know more about those girls and their family. I’ll be sure to share what I think about these when I read them. For right now, I have a pile of Black History Month-themed books I want to get to… and February is almost over, so we’ll see how that goes.

In an effort to catch up with what I’ve read this year so I can (hopefully) write about more current things, here are a few books I’ve read so far this year (warning – there will probably be spoilers):

As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner

I’m still not completely sure how I feel about this book. I love Faulkner’s writing, there’s no question about that. And this wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be – everything I’ve ever heard about this book is that the shifting point of view makes it nearly impossible to follow at times, but my copy has names at the beginning of each chapter/section, which makes it really simple to figure out who’s talking. The hard part for me was the characters. I just didn’t really like any of them. Darl is probably my favorite, because he seems to be the only one who’s semi-normal. Anse is probably my least favorite; the guy spends the whole time putting every member of his family out, along with people along the way, just because he promised to bury his wife with her family. I don’t think that’s wrong, but sometimes you have to just bury someone. I mean, would she really have known or cared? She’s dead! But no, he made a promise, and he’s keeping it – and then he finds and marries a new woman at the end. I mean… what? Seriously? You dragged your poor dead wife’s body all over the damn place, stinking it up, then take money from your kid to get new teeth, and get married woman after your wife’s barely in the ground. She had only died nine days prior, or something like that.

I really want to hear more about Addie. I would probably read a whole book about her life – she sounded interesting. But I can only wonder if I’d end up disliking her after hearing too much; maybe what we get in the book is just the perfect amount of information.

There’s so much more to it than just that, but this is what I walked away with from reading it for the first time. I’m sure I’ll read it again and analyze it more. I still think about it randomly while I’m doing other things and know I’ll need to get back to it one day. Faulkner needs more than one read.

Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare

This was a fun one because I went to a read-aloud group where we did a round-robin table read. (It was at the Rosenbach museum/library – if you love books and are in the Philadelphia area, definitely check it out!) I love reading plays. I used to do theater/drama, whatever you want to call it, when I was in school, so it’s not hard for me to read them and be able to visualize what’s happening. I know some people have a hard time with that, which is why I think this way of reading it is great – it forces you to pay attention since you don’t have one person’s lines to read, and hearing other people saying the lines helps with understanding them. Shakespeare’s language can be tough to get, and I think seeing his plays is still the best way to understand them.

It had been a while since I read this one, and I only vaguely remembered the plot – the mixup with the twins, and the mad Malvolio prank. It’s always fun to remember that women weren’t onstage so Viola is a boy playing a girl playing a boy… for some reason, that amuses me. It’s a very funny play, and definitely one of my favorites (probably in my top 10 favorite Shakespeare plays).  I can’t help but feel sorry for Malvolio being tricked, but I guess we have to assume that he’s really unbearable; we only see a little bit of him being insufferable, and if he’s like that all the time, I’d probably want to lock him away and make him feel insane too. Do I need to say much more about this? I feel like it’s pretty well known… there’s a version you can watch on YouTube that was directed by Kenneth Branagh for anyone who wants to watch it.

The Queen of the Night, Alexander Chee

This was a book I was really excited about when I first heard about it, but I kept putting off reading it because it’s pretty long, and I didn’t have the time to set aside to be sure I’d read a good amount in one sitting… you know how it goes. Anyway, I finally got around to reading it. I really enjoyed it, but I felt like the ending fizzled. I think that was intentional, it’s just disappointing after all Lilliet goes through.

I love that it feels like an opera (also intentional – Lilliet Berne resembles Pamina from The Magic Flute, according to the author). There are impossible and improbably circumstances and coincidences. She goes from American orphan to circus performer to courtesan to maid of the Empress to singer… not always a clear-cut as that, but essentially, that is how she grows. She’s good at lying and disguises, which is how she gets from place to place. It’s hard to sum this book up because it’s so sweeping, and it doesn’t really go in order, though I think that adds to the story; linear storytelling isn’t always the most interesting way to do things. Essentially, someone has written a story that is about her past, which she has hidden from all but four people. The author of the story asks her to originate the role in the opera based on his novel, and she sets out to find out who told him the story before anyone else realizes it’s her true life. The story of her life prior to her singing career is unknown to all but those four people, and it’s not something she wants out there, but we get the full story of how she ended up being the celebrated singer we encounter in the beginning.

It’s always nice to read about strong and independent women, especially during time periods when women were property. Even she is – she essentially belongs to the tenor singer through most of it, though she flees from him more than once. The sad part is, after all she’s been through, her career comes to a really boring end, and she disappears from the opera, but this time, she doesn’t necessarily want to. She ends up doing a traveling opera in America and just… fading away. It’s a sad reminder that female performers have an expiration date in so many minds, even today. I don’t think that was the intent – she commits a crime and needs to hide, and this is the perfect cover, but it’s still just not the end you want for her.

This reminded me of Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus a bit – mostly her time with the circus, but also her character. They are both big personalities, famous women, with secrets and an image to uphold.

Anyway, that’s all for now. I’ve been going through books rather quickly as of late, so I’ll be writing more soon.

Thanks for reading!

 

A friend of mine posted something today saying that February is the real beginning of the year, and January is a free trial month. I’m going to hold that as true since I can’t ever get myself going in January. It’s a hibernation month – it’s cold and miserable and might possibly snow every other day. I want no part of it. Although I suppose February isn’t much better…

Anyway, it’s really just my lazy way of saying it’s a good reason for putting off writing this post about my reading resolutions. They’re possibly the only resolutions I keep each year, which maybe I should work on, but… meh. It’s something I feel proud of at the end of the year. I set my reading goal on Goodreads and just monitor my progress through that. I also love reading challenges, but since I have so many books in mind that I want to get to, I don’t always do too well with them. They do come in handy when I want to try and read more broadly; they help point out areas that I might be weak in, like authors from certain areas of the world, or time periods I might be neglecting. One category I don’t understand that I have seen on more than one is the “book I lied about reading.” Do people really lie about books they’ve read that often? I’m always afraid I’ll end up talking to the one person who actually read it and get found out.

This year, I set my goal at 50 books. I know I could do more (I have in the past), but I have a lot of other goals I’m striving for this year that will take up my time. I’m off to a good start – I’m on book number six. A friend of mine and I were talking about possibly tackling War and Peace this year. I got through Moby-Dick last year, and I think I’d like to try and get through one big hurdle each year. A few of the books I have pulled aside to get to soon are bigger (500+ pages is big to me), which is another reason I set the goal at 50. It’s about one a week, but I have a feeling some of these might take more than a week to get through. That same friend also said this might be the year of the Russians. We’re going to do Crime and Punishment for our book club soon, and I have a few other Russian writers I’ve been meaning to read anyway. I guess if the government is doing a Russian investigation, now’s a good time to do our own. But into literature, not whatever insane goings-on are happening with our circus of a government at the moment.

Hopefully I will hit my goals with reading this year so I don’t feel terrible when I inevitably fall short on all my other goals for the year. I have a lot I want to do, so I’m sure something will get pushed to the sidelines. Of course, one of them is getting my books organized and cataloged, and I’m hoping that one becomes a reality because right now I have books in piles and can’t find stuff when I need to.

Anyway, that’s all for now… join me next time as I go over some of the books I’ve read so far this year.