July Reading

July had only four books in it, but they were all good ones (and one of them was a collection, so I could probably count it as four).

 

I’ll start with the poetry.  (Disclaimer:  I know Paul Corman-Roberts in person and I am an unabashed fan and supporter of this awesome human and poet.)  Paul Corman-Roberts’s new book of poems, Bone Moon Palace is a book I will keep forever.  I copied darn near the whole thing into my commonplace book because it is that good.  My feeling about it is summed up in the conclusion to his poem “You Will Always Have Poetry”—“you will have poetry/and no one/will ever be able to take that away.”  In other words, you can have my copy when you pry it out of my cold dead hands.

 

On to nonfiction.  I read two books.  One was Gail Carriger’s The Heroine’s Journey (Disclaimer two:  I also know and love Gail, who is a generous and helpful person and a fluid and entertaining writer.)  Her book is an extremely useful look at a kind of story that is all around us and yet seldom discussed because some people keep banging on about the hero’s journey.  Not that I have issues with the hero’s journey, but the heroine’s journey is real and lovely and satisfying, too.  One of the things I love about Gail is that she is very careful to distinguish sex and gender—heroes and heroines are gendered roles that do not necessarily correspond to the sex of the characters who take on those roles (she cites Harry Potter as a heroine and Wonder Woman in the recent film as a hero, for example).  The book is useful for writers, readers, and just generally interested humans running around enjoying books and films and such.  It’s also funny and a pleasure to read.

 

The second nonfiction book I read was The Object Stares Back by James Elkins.  I read it in pursuit of my leisurely interest in artist models, but there is a whole lot more in the book.  Elkins is an engaging writer and only occasionally lapses into prose too male for my personal taste.  My favorite phrase in the book is his claim that “Seeing is metamorphosis, not mechanism” (p. 12).  He investigates how we see, what we see, what we don’t see, and more.  It’s fascinating, if not a light read.

 

Finally, I read the second volume of Ursula Le Guin’s Hainish Novels and Stories, which included The Word for World Is Forest, Stories, Five Ways to Forgiveness, and The Telling.  All of the works in this book have followed me around for days because she grabs hold of deep ideas and works them.  It’s a pleasure.  However, my very favorite part was in an essay called “On Not Reading Science Fiction” because she can throw some very good shade when needed.  Here you go:  “I have heard a man say perfectly seriously that the Native Americans before the Conquest had no technology.  As we know, kiln-fired pottery is a naturally occurring substance, baskets ripen in the summer, and Machu Picchu just grew there” (p. 760).

 

Summer total so far:  11 books

Year to date:  44 books