Recent acquisitions
Author Archives: Nerdishly
New books
At the Art Institute
“John Singer Sargent and Chicago’s Gilded Age” drew me to the Art Institute this week, and it’s a beautiful exhibition. But it was “Flesh: Ivan Albright at the Art Institute of Chicago” that captured my imagination. I will post more images from my visit later; the above are my photos of two of the Albright self-portraits.
A card game
O wonderful son
“Your silence will not protect you.”
From the choice to portray the relationships between fathers and children as warm and affectionate to the decisions surrounding the expression of Ophelia’s madness, from the decaying set to the superlative performances — it’s simply riveting.
Mid-year reading review
From page 69 of The Hole (Hye-Young Pyun; 2017):
It was impossible to capture the trajectory of life in a map. Without one, there was no way of wrapping your brain around it all, and yet he was skeptical as to whether you could ever represent the world through maps alone.
But it was meaningful. Someone had taken these invisible trajectories that could not be studied with any sort of accuracy and had tried anyway to turn them into a tangible space. He found it boring sometimes for the same reason. A world that could not be understood perfectly, could not be explained unambiguously, and was interpreted differently based on political purposes and conveniences was no different from the world he was already living in. And yet, the one way in which maps were clearly better than life was that they improved with failure. Life itself was merely an accumulation of failures, and those failures never made life better.
The jacket copy suggests that The Hole evokes the work of Shirley Jackson and Stephen King. While I appreciate the assertion, I thought this meditation on the horror of finding blank emptiness at the center of a career, a marriage, a life was more philosophical than the comparisons to psychological thrillers suggests.
This was the book I completed before heading to bed last night, so I have completed sixty-eight books so far this year:
27 novels
10 plays
18 non-fiction titles
13 graphic fiction works
18 works published this year
My complete list can be found here.
Even better on rereading:
■ Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro; 2005. Fiction.)
■ Childhood’s End (Arthur C. Clarke; 1953. Fiction.)
■ Daytripper (Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá; 2011. Graphic fiction.)
■ Mrs. Caliban (Rachel Ingalls; 1983. Fiction.)
Forgot how wonderful this writer is:
■ Memento Mori (Muriel Spark; 1959. Fiction.)
For those who loved The Elementals (Michael McDowell; 1981):
■ The Reapers Are the Angels (Alden Bell; 2010. Fiction.)
A new-ish author who deserves the hype:
■ Little Fires Everywhere (Celeste Ng; 2017. Fiction.)
■ Everything I Never Told You (Celeste Ng; 2014. Fiction.)
Fabulous story for a long car trip:
■ American Kingpin (Nick Bilton; 2017. Non-fiction.)
Honorable mention:
■ The Idealist: Aaron Swartz and the Rise of Free Culture on the Internet (Justin Peters; 2016. Non-fiction.)
The most engrossing book I’ve read so far this year (not including rereads):
■ Behold the Dreamers (Imbolo Mbue; 2016. Fiction.)
Honorable mention:
■ Killers of the Flower Moon (Dan Grann; 2017. Non-fiction.)
■ An Abbreviated Life (Ariel Leve; 2016. Non-fiction.)
■ After the Eclipse (Sarah Perry; 2017. Non-fiction.)
■ The Hole (Hye-young Pyun; 2017. Fiction.)
Two weeks
Before they struck out on their own…
How the time passed:
■ two fledged robins and numerous other juveniles, including cardinals, sparrows, red-bellied woodpeckers, blue jays, and goldfinches;
■ one play (Buried Child at Writers Theatre);
■ two museum adventures: the Field and the Shedd;
■ one documentary (Won’t You Be My Neighbor?);
■ fifteen hours of music practice;
■ one music lesson;
■ one American Red Cross course (Adult and Pediatric First Aid/CPR/AED);
■ four “dates” with the lawnmower, edger, and trimmer;
■ three trips to the car dealership (Bleah!);
■ two hours of volunteer work;
■ two episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale;
■ the first week of my current MOOC (music theory); and
■ six books:
— Macbeth (William Shakespeare; 1606. Drama.)
— Royal City, Vol. 2: Sonic Youth (Jeff Lemire; 2017. Graphic non-fiction.)
— Sorry to Disrupt the Peace (Patty Yumi Cottrell; 2017. Fiction.)
— Macbeth (Hogarth Shakespeare) (Jo Nesbø; 2018. Fiction.)
— Hamlet (William Shakespeare; 1602. Drama.)
— The Lying Game (Ruth Ware; 2017. Fiction.)
As well as all of the even more commonplace activities (e.g., errands, chores, walks, games) that this parttime educator’s summer months comprise. Apart from car shopping and the excessive heat warnings, the season has been quite kind to me, so far. How has your summer been?
Next up: mid-year reading review.
New books
Earlier this week, I weeded my library, which means, of course, that there is room for some new books. What got yanked? Books I have read but will neither reread nor recommend. Books that were compelling at earlier stages in my life. Books I’ve outgrown.
Field Museum
Shedd Aquarium
Last week, my older daughter and I spent a day on the museum campus, first at the Field Museum and then at the Shedd Aquarium. Although the latter was an afterthought, we were both delighted by the “Jazzin’ at the Shedd” program.
Nerdishly 