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2 min read

The book report for May 2023

The book report for May 2023
© Jason Leung, Unsplash

Or, memories, dystopia, and...what were we talking about?

Bought more books than I read, but what else is new?

Dipped into
  • The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric, Sister Miriam Joseph
In progress
  • Harmonium, Wallace Stevens
  • Reading: A Very Short Introduction, Belinda Jack
  • Chromatopia: An Illustrated History of Color, David Coles
  • The Best American Essays 1998, Cynthia Ozick (ed.)
  • An Inventory of Losses, Judith Schalansky
Completed
  • The Flame: Poems & Selections from Notebooks, Leonard Cohen. The best things here are poems that read like songs. When I read them I heard Leonard Cohen’s voice in my head, talk-singing in that way of his.
  • Seasons at Eagle Pond, Donald Hall. I have owned this book for more than 30 years, and somehow just read it for the first time. Too bad, because I could have reread it three or four times by now if I had gotten an earlier start. Set of four lovely essays about rural living in New Hampshire. Great from first word to last.
  • Migrations, Charlotte McConaghy. First-rate storytelling. Veers close to improbability a few times, but populated by vivid characters that stay on your mind.
  • Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again, Johann Hari. Started well, then faltered. Last half of book a rehash of what’s already been said on the subject of lost ability to focus.
  • Red Spider White Web, Misha Nogha. Rarely have I read a stranger novel. Published by a tiny Oregon publisher that apparently did not have a proofreader on staff, it’s a raw, ragged cyberpunk novel that portrays a world dirtier and rougher than those of Blade Runner or William Gibson. Good grimy fun.
Purchased
  • Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again, Johann Hari
  • An Inventory of Losses, Judith Schalansky
  • Trust, Hernan Diaz
  • Pure Color, Sheila Heti
  • Color Problems: A Practical Manual for the Lay Student of Color, Emily Noyes Vanderpoel
  • Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine, Alan Lightman
  • Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke
  • Shy, Max Porter

I have an affiliate shop on Bookshop.org. Should you purchase a book through the link, they toss me a couple of bucks toward my next bottle of gin. Thank you for reading.

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