Random Modulation

2022: The year in reading

My year in book reading

Overview

You can find detailed views of my reading at https://creads.imagisterium.com. Some highlights here:

• I read a total of 52 books
  • 15 poetry
  • 22 fiction
  • 15 nonfiction
• I read a total of 11,350 pages. (Approximately. I don't always read every numbered page — for instance, end notes that are only citations of sources. On the other hand, I often read introductory material that's numbered separately, usually in lowercase roman numerals.)
• My average reading speed was approximately 32 pages/day, overall. I read poetry more slowly than nonfiction, and nonfiction more slowly than fiction.
• I finished every book I started.

The figures above don't count non-book reading, such as magazines and newsletters.

Standouts

While every book I read kept my interest, some grabbed me more firmly than others. The 3 books from each category that most moved me intellectually, emotionally, or spiritually:

• Poetry:
  • The rehearsal of misunderstanding: three collections by contemporary Greek women poets (Karen Van Dyck, translator and author of introduction)
    The three books included here are The Cake, by Rhea Galanaki; Tales of the Deep, by Jenny Mastoraki; and Hers, by Maria Laina. All three poets began writing when Greece was under a dictatorship. When that era was over, they retained their strategies of subterfuge and indirection to write about the experience of being women in a patriarchal society. Time, location, identity, and language are fluid and ambiguous in these works, and meaning often lurks in what is not said.
  • Mummy Eaters, by Sherry Shenoda.
    I don't say this lightly: Mummy Eaters is a major work, and Sherry Shenoda is a major poet. This collection of poems is structured as a call-and-response across the centuries between the modern-day narrator and an imagined Egyptian ancestor of some 3,000+ years ago.
  • Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse, by Anne Carson.
    The main character is both a modern-day boy and a winged, red monster, while the narrative takes place in many different levels of reality. Carson demonstrates that book-length narrative poetry can still work.
• Fiction:
  • Another Country, by James Baldwin.
    Another Country was a bestseller when published, but critics gave it mixed reviews. Some, of course, objected to the homosexuality in the book. Today, a more likely complaint would be that there don't seem to be any gay characters in the story. (Or maybe one, in a bit part.) The queer men seem to be either bisexual, or "Straight, but I'll make an exception for you." A beautiful, brutal, emotionally complex work.
  • The Hearing Trumpet, by Leonora Carrington. The edition I have is illustrated by the author's son, Pablo Weisz Carrington.
    "Hearing trumpet" refers to an early type of hearing aid, but can also function as a surreal image, a musical instrument whose function is inverted, one that receives sound rather than producing it. When the story opens, the narrator, 92-year-old Marian Leatherby, is given a hearing trumpet by a friend. What she hears is her family's plan to commit her to an institution. What follows is a visionary tale of occult intrigue, encompassing themes of ageism, sexism, community, and ecological catastrophe.
  • My Heart Is a Chainsaw, by Stephen Graham Jones.
    The first book in the Indian Lake Trilogy. I will certainly be reading books two and three. The protagonist, Jade Daniels, busts all kinds of tropes. (I don't want to spoil anything, so won't provide examples.) Racism, child abuse, classism — these real horrors unfold alongside the grisly murders that Jade interprets through the lens of her beloved horror films. I assume the name of Jade's town, Proofrock, is a reference to T.S. Eliot's poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock."
• Nonfiction:
  • Barracoon, by Zora Neale Hurston.
    Hurston's first full-length book, Barracoon was not published in her lifetime — perhaps partly because she let Cudjo Lewis (Kossula) tell his own story in his own words, and perhaps in part because it describes the complicity of some African leaders in the slave trade. The story of Kossula's life is a harrowing and heartbreaking one.
  • Hand to Mouth: The Truth About Being Poor in a Wealthy World, by Linda Tirado.
    I've been poor, and my experience corroborates Tirado's account of what it's like. The last chapter is an open letter to rich people, but this is a book that everyone should read.
  • Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone, by Eduardo Galeano, translated by Mark Fried.
    This book is easy to read in short bursts, but in doing so, you run the risk of missing connections and modulations from chapter to chapter. (Most are shorter than one page.) A succession of chapter titles will give you an idea: "Nijinksy" is followed by "Origin of Jazz," "Resurrection of Django," "Origin of the Tango," "Origin of Hollywood," "Origin of Modern Art," and "Origin of the Modern Novel."

Complete list of books I read

Within each category, the books are roughly in the order in which I read them.

Poetry

1. Cool Shades of Eventide by Nancy Krieg
2. Book of Luminous Things edited by Czeslaw Milosz
3. New Poets of Native Nations edited by Heid E. Erdrich
4. The Rehearsal of Misunderstanding by Rhea Galanaki, Jenny Mastoraki, and Maria Laina, translated by Karen Van Dyck
5. Folly Took a Seat and Laughed in our Faces: A Poetry Anthology by Rebecca Rijsdijk and Leanne Kuiper
6. The Haiku Anthology edited by Cor Van den Heuvel
7. 365 Days: A Poetry Anthology, Vol. 4 edited by James Benger and Dan Pohl
8. corpse whale by dg nanouk okpik
9. Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse by Anne Carson
10. Inside the Outside : an anthology of avant-garde American poets edited by Roseanne Ritzema
11. Mummy Eaters by Sherry Shenoda
12. Field Guide to the Haunted Forest by Jarod K. Anderson
13. Talk Smack to a Hurricane by Lynne Jensen Lampe
14. Cruel Futures by Carmen Giménez Smith
15. A Collection of Nightmares by Christina Sng

Fiction

1. Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
2. The Changeling by Victor LaValle
3. The Atrocities by Jeremy C. Shipp
4. Another Country by James Baldwin
5. Dark Country by Monique Snyman
6. Queens of the Abyss: Lost Stories from the Women of the Weird edited by Mike Ashley
7. Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin
8. What Can You Say Against a Death Machine? by Marty Shambles
9. Your Body Is Not Your Body: A New Weird Horror Anthology edited by Alex Woodroe and Matt Blairstone
10. Coyote Songs: a barrio noir by Gabino Iglesias
11. My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones
12. The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington
13. the Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher
14. Beneath the Rising by Premee Mohamed
15. Against the Grain by J.-K. Huysmans, translated by John Howard
16. Weird Dream Society: An Anthology of the Possible & Unsubstantiated in Support of RAICES edited by Julie C. Day, Carina Bissett, and Chip Houser
17. Convulsive by Joe Koch
18. The Sleepless by Nuzo Onoh
19. Mother: Tales of Love and Terror edited by Willow Dawn Becker and Christi Nogle
20. The Forest Dreams with Teeth by Madison McSweeney
21. The Lawless: A Triptych by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor
22. Anoka: A Collection of Indigenous Horror by Shane Hawk

Nonfiction

1. Mirrors by Eduardo Galeano, translated by Mark Fried
2. Barraccoon by Zora Neale Hurston
3. Christina Rosetti: A Divided Life by Georgina Battiscombe
4. Hand to Mouth by Linda Tirado
5. What Is Life? & other scientific essays by Erwin Schrödinger
6. Confessions of an English Opium-Eater by Thomas De Quincey
7. The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
8. The Curious Case of H.P. Lovecraft by Paul Roland
9. The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois
10. Visionary Fictions: Apocalyptic writing from Blake to the modern age by Edward J. Ahearn
11. Memoirs of a Beatnik by Diane di Prima
12. Haunted Kansas : ghost stories and other eerie tales by Lisa Hefner Heitz
13. The Chinese Eye: An Interpretation of Chinese Painting by Chiang Yee
14. Writing Poetry in the Dark edited by Stephanie M. Wytovich
15. Women philosophers of the Early Modern Period edited by Margaret Atherton

Looking ahead to 2023

I have only a vague idea what 2023 will look like for my reading. My TBR queue is quite long. Some authors I plan to read in the near future, in no particular order: Tananarive Due, Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Stein, William Blake, Victor LaValle, Kenneth Rexroth, Toni Morrison, Anna Akhmatova, Leonid Andreyev, Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Hand, Kenneth Patchen, and Mary Shelley. I'll track my reading either at The Library of the Uncommons or at StoryGraph. I haven't decided yet which. Maybe both.