June Reading

June was a good month for reading, possibly due to time on airplanes.  I read seven books.

 

For the first time in a long time, I read a graphic novel, Kiki de Montparnasse by Catel and Bocquet.  It traces the life of a famous artist’s model in Paris in the time of the surrealists.  Know that Man Ray photo of a naked woman with cello curls on her back?  The woman is Kiki.  She lived hard and had plenty of adventures and the graphic novel is not shy about any of it (may not be kid-appropriate, depending on your kid and your parenting style, despite being a comic book).  It was an interesting way to learn.

 

Again, for the first time in a long time, I spent some time reading poetry.  The Rattle Bag is an anthology edited by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes.  It includes poems they selected because they just liked them.  I liked an awful lot of them, too.  There were some familiar names and some favorite poems in there, but also a lot I had never encountered before.  They decided to arrange the poems alphabetically by title rather than by time period or theme, which makes the whole an exercise in serendipity in a delightful way.  I also learned that I really really like Gerard Manley Hopkins, which is not a surprise.  I would recommend this book.

 

The only nonfiction book I read this month (assuming that a biographical graphic novel doesn’t count) was Francine Prose’s The Lives of the Muses.  It’s a compelling book that follows the lives of nine women who inspired various famous artists in their fields.  It talks about what it means to be a muse, the limitations of the role, how it plays with being a human being, and more.  I learned a lot, but I also felt suspicious after I read the chapter about Alice.  I’ve read a lot about Alice Liddell and Charles Dodgson and I have Opinions.  What Prose has to say about them and their relationship doesn’t sync well with my sense of things, which calls the rest of the book’s perspectives into doubt, no matter how beautifully expressed those perspectives are.  That’s my two cents and your mileage may vary.

 

I enjoyed Naomi Novik’s Temeraire books and am really loving her shift toward exploring fairy tales.  Spinning Silver is a page-turner that starts from Rumplestiltskin and goes to dark, fascinating, and amazing places.  Her characters are always relatable if not always likeable and the weaving of the plot is deft and compelling.  Read it.

 

Tana French’s The Searcher is one of her strongest books to date.  I love her finely drawn characters and her dialogue is funny and true.  The plot was mostly beside the point for me.  I figured out the twist before she revealed it, but I was happy to have her take me for the ride because her telling is wonderful.

 

I love Ann Cleves and Silent Voices gave me no reason to stop.  Vera is a unique character and I love hanging out with her.  I like mysteries that are novels first that happen to have a mystery in them and this one definitely fits that description.  The interplay of people and events is done wonderfully well.

 

Finally, I continue my leisurely reading of all of Ursula Le Guin with Tehanu.  This book was written well after The Farthest Shore although the events follow upon it directly.  What Le Guin brings to her return to Earthsea is all the life she lived between the writing of those two books, and it’s a lot.  She does not flinch when it is time to write about atrocity, gender relations, power, and the struggle to be who we are when that seems to be changing.  She is always worth reading.

 

Monthly total:  7

Summer total to date:  7

Year to date total:  38