December Reading Plans & Year-End Goals
Somehow the end of the year is less than four weeks away, so it’s time to start getting realistic about what I can read before 2018 begins. I wish I was the sort of person who was always reading books 4+ months before the release date and setting trends, but I’ve only read three 2018 releases so far, and it’s doubtful I’ll get to more than another handful before the end of the year. Any that I do read and can recommend I will round up briefly in a couple weeks or so.
I’m at least feeling pleased with myself for resuming and/or finishing all but two of the 14 books I had on hold as of last month; one I finally DNFed (The Unseen by Roy Jacobsen) and another I’m happy to put off until the new year (Paradise Road: Jack Kerouac’s Lost Highway and My Search for America by Jay Atkinson – since he’s recreating the journey taken for On the Road, I should look over a copy of that first). Ideally, the plan is to finish all the books I’m currently reading to clear the decks for a new year.
Some other vague reading plans for the month:
I might do a Classic of the Month (I’m currently reading The Awakening by Kate Chopin) … but a Doorstopper isn’t looking likely unless I pick up Hillary Clinton’s Living History. However, there are a few books of doorstopper length pictured in the piles below.
Christmas-themed books. The title-less book with the ribbon is Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak, a Goodreads giveaway win. I think I’ll start that plus the Amory today since I’m going to a carol service this evening. On Kindle: A Very Russian Christmas, a story anthology I read about half of last year and might finish this year.
Winter-themed books. On Kindle: currently reading When the Professor Got Stuck in the Snow by Dan Rhodes; Winter by Karl Ove Knausgaard is to be read. (The subtitle of Spufford’s book is “Ice and the English Imagination”.)
As the holidays approach, I start to daydream about what books I might indulge in during the time off. (I’m giving myself 11 whole days off of editing, though I may still have a few paid reviews to squeeze in.) The kinds of books I would like to prioritize are:
Absorbing reads. Books that promise to be thrilling (says the person who doesn’t generally read crime thrillers); books I can get lost in (often long ones). On Kindle: The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden.
Cozy reads. Animal books, especially cat books, generally fall into this category, as do funny books and children’s books. My mother and I love Braun’s cat mysteries; I read them all starting when I was about 11. I’ve never reread any, so I’d like to see how they stand up years later. Goodreads has been trying to recommend me Duncton Wood for ages, which is funny as I’ve had my eye on it anyway. My husband read the series when he was a kid and we still own some well-worn copies. Given how much I loved Watership Down and Brian Jacques’ novels as a child, I’m hoping it’s a pretty safe bet.
Books I’ve been meaning to read for ages. ’Nuff said. On Kindle: far too many.
And, as always, I’m in the position of wishing I’d gotten to many more of this year’s releases. In fact, there are at least 22 books from 2017 on my e-readers that I still intend to read:
- A Precautionary Tale: How One Small Town Banned Pesticides, Preserved Its Food Heritage, and Inspired a Movement by Philip Ackerman-Leist
- In the Midst of Winter by Isabel Allende
The Floating World by C. Morgan Babst- The Day that Went Missing by Richard Beard
- The Best American Series taster volume (skim only?)
- The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne*
- Guesswork: A Memoir in Essays by Martha Cooley
- The Night Brother by Rosie Garland
- Difficult Women by Roxane Gay
- The Twelve-Mile Straight by Eleanor Henderson
- Eco-Dementia by Janet Kauffman [poetry]
- The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy
- A Stitch of Time: The Year a Brain Injury Changed My Language and Life by Lauren Marks
- Hug Everyone You Know: A Year of Community, Courage, and Cancer by Antoinette Truglio Martin
Homing Instinct: Early Motherhood on a Midwestern Farm by Sarah Menkedick- One Station Away by Olaf Olafsson
- Ghosts of the Tsunami: Death and Life in Japan’s Disaster Zone by Richard Lloyd Parry
- Memory’s Last Breath: Field Notes on My Dementia by Gerda Saunders
- See What I Have Done by Sarah Schmidt
- What She Ate: Six Remarkable Women and the Food That Tells Their Stories by Laura Shapiro
- Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore by Matthew J. Sullivan
- Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward*
* = The two I most want to read, and thus will try hardest to get to before the end of the year. But the Boyne sure is long.
[The 2017 book I most wanted to read but never got hold of in any form was The Resurrection of Joan Ashby by Cherise Wolas.]
Are there any books from my stacks or lists that you want to put in a good word for?
How does December’s reading look for you?
Two Recommended Nonfiction Reads for October
Two very different but equally enjoyable selections for you this month:
American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West by Nate Blakeslee
(Coming from Crown on the 17th)
By the 1920s, wolves had almost been eradicated from the Lower 48 states. In 1995–6, though, two rival packs were brought in from Canada to repopulate Yellowstone National Park. Blakeslee gives a panoramic overview of the reintroduction project and the recurring clashes between hunters and biologists about whether wolves should be a protected species. He keeps his account relatable by focusing on particular family groups of wolves and bringing out the animals’ individual personalities.
One important wolf pack was the Druids, which “were like the Kennedys, American royalty.” O-Six, an alpha female of the third generation so named because she was born in 2006, is one of the main animal characters here, with two central human characters being Rick McIntyre, a long-time National Park Service ranger and wolf expert, and Steven Turnbull (an alias), an elk hunter from Crandall, Wyoming.
The 2011 federal budget snuck in a rider removing wolves from the endangered species list in Montana and Idaho. The same followed for Wyoming, heralding an open hunting season on wolves for the first time in 50 years. Though his sympathies are clear, Blakeslee doesn’t demonize those who killed Yellowstone wolves that strayed beyond the park boundaries. He also emphasizes that the battle over this species reflects a wider struggle “over public land—what it should be used for and who should have the right to decide.”
It’s especially interesting to read about the animals’ behavior: a wolf uncle hanging around to help raise the pups, O-Six fighting off grizzlies near her den, showdowns between packs, and pups hunting mice and ravens for fun.
My rating:
With thanks to the publisher for the free review copy.
Love and Laughter in the Time of Chemotherapy by Manjusha Pawagi
(Coming from Second Story Press on the 10th)
It’s a rare book that can wring both laughs and (mostly happy) tears out of a cancer ordeal. I read a lot of books about illness, death and dying – subjects I can appreciate aren’t for anyone. Nevertheless, I can heartily recommend this to you for the Everywoman perspective on the cancer experience and rebuilding life on the other side. Pawagi is a family court judge and mother of twin teenagers in Toronto. She was diagnosed with leukemia in April 2014, went through two intensive rounds of chemotherapy, and then had a stem cell transplant from a donor from the South Asian immigrant community six months later.
This is a warts-and-all account of the treatment process – if it hurt like hell, if she wept into her pillow at night, if she felt like crap, she says so. Though not entirely without self-pity, the book transforms such feelings through a wry, atheist’s “why not me?” approach. In the lovely last chapter, the author meets her donor, a young man in New York City, and his relatives two years after her transplant and realizes that she’s unwittingly acquired not just a blood brother but a whole new extended family.
They may be clichés but they’re completely true in this case: this is a heart-warming and life-affirming read, and with any luck will encourage more people to become blood and organ donors. (See also this interview with Pawagi from Foreword Reviews.)
Some favorite lines:
“I want to wake up and be a judge again, not an overgrown diapered baby.”
“Hell is other people…in the hospital bed next to yours.”
My rating:
I read an e-ARC via NetGalley.
I also won an advanced Goodreads giveaway copy of a novel that came out in the States in June and will be released in the UK by Borough Press on the 5th, but I’m not sure it’s one I’d wholeheartedly recommend…
Stephen Florida by Gabe Habash
You might think of Stephen Florida as an heir to Alexander Portnoy and Holden Caulfield (“I guess I should describe myself. No, I don’t want to do that”). A senior at North Dakota’s Oregsburg College, he’s obsessed with becoming a champion wrestler for the 133 weight class. He’s a loner, and his every attempt at connection with others falters. Stephen acts and speaks like a crazed preacher, and the more he goes off the rails the harder it is to figure out exactly what’s going on and how much you can trust this narrator. This struck me as a very male story that doesn’t have the same crossover appeal as works by John Irving or Chad Harbach. I would have enjoyed a short story or novella about this character and his self-destructive single-mindedness, but spending a whole novel with him creeped me out.
My rating:
Two in-your-face carnivores were on my reading stack at the same time. What are the odds?!
Other October releases I’m planning to read:
- In Shock by Rana Awdish (St. Martin’s, 17th)
- A Glorious Freedom: Older Women Leading Extraordinary Lives by Lisa Congdon (Chronicle Books, 3rd)
- Eco-Dementia [poetry] by Janet Kauffman (Wayne State University Press, 2nd)
- Hug Everyone You Know: A Year of Community, Courage, and Cancer by Antoinette Truglio Martin (She Writes Press, 3rd)
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 