Since my last “real” post (i.e., a post with more than an image of books), I have seen several plays, including The Belle of Amherst featuring Kate Fry (runs through December 6: get there, if you can); finished all of the Forty Little Pieces in Progressive Order and moved on to the Album of Sonatinas (‘hard to believe that I have been studying flute for three years now); and completed (nearly) twelve weeks at my no-longer-new job. By necessity more than design, my bookish notes from the last six weeks mostly comprise dog-earred pages, screenshots, photos of books, and random lists. With this post, I will try to impose a bit of order.

At this point I have finished reading 140 books:

— 45 plays (33 by Shakespeare)
— 38 fiction titles (not including graphic works)
— 21 non-fiction titles (not including graphic works)
— 5 poetry titles
— 31 graphic works (six of which were non-fiction works)

Coriolanus (“Hear you this Triton of the minnows?”) and King Lear (“O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven / Keep me in temper: I would not be mad!”) were the highlights of my recent Shakespeare in a Year progress. Finishing the Sonnets represents a milestone, I suppose, but what a slog! At least I can say I have met my goal to read more poetry this year. Heh, heh, heh. And the otherwise tedious task was certainly leavened by Don Paterson’s erudite and irreverent commentary. Over the next week or so, I will quickly reread The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, and Henry VIII (all of which I have, within the last two years or so (re)read) and then turn to The Two Noble Kinsmen, which I have, to the best of my recollection, never read.

The most recent of the novels I’ve read this year is A Whole Life (Robert Seethaler; translated from the German by Charlotte Collins). In 2015, I noted that Maria Beig’s novel Hermine: An Animal Life (translated from the German by Jaimy Gordon) is perfect, so comparing my experience of A Whole Life to Hermine is the highest praise I can offer this beautiful and deceptively simple novel. See also this review from The Irish Times, which draws parallels to Stoner (John Williams) and So Long, See You Tomorrow (William Maxwell), two books that would, like Hermine, easily earn a spot in my “Essential Bookcase.”

Another of my goals this year was to read at least twenty-six non-fiction works. Monica Hesse’s American Fire and Katy Tur’s Unbelievable represent the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh titles toward that goal. Both books recount fascinating stories that probably would have been better related in long-form articles.

From American Fire: Love, Arson, and Life in a Vanishing Land:

p. 23
[W]hile some of his volunteers thought he was a hard-ass, his military training had taught him that there were right ways to do things and wrong ways, and getting small things correct was the only way to make sure the big things worked when it mattered most.

p. 205
It’s amazing how boring trials can be. How even the most salacious of crimes committed under the most colorful of circumstances can result in testimony that is tedious and snoozy.

From Unbelievable:

p. 201
I think we dislike and ultimately distrust the media because journalism, honestly pursued, is difficult and uncomfortable. It tells us things about the world that we’d rather not know; it reveals aspects of people that aren’t always flattering. But rather than deal with journalism, we despise journalism.

p. 235
We really have to start teaching journalism in elementary school. People don’t even understand the basics of what we do anymore.

Regarding the photo:

— Before seeing The Taming of the Shrew at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater (review here), we attended a “Preamble” program during which the lecturer mentioned Scheil’s She Hath Been Reading. Naturally, I had to have a copy.

— I am reading Hard Times in anticipation of seeing the play over autumn break. (Reviews here and here.)

— Withnail and I arrived on my stack via its (loose) ties to Hamlet.

— And the rest: Family Life leapt off the shelf at me yesterday. It seems like The Road to Jonestown has been on my stack too long. The Hate U Give is one of the few times I’ve given in to “But everybody’s reading it!” We’ll see how that works out.

From The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl:

p. 36
“First, words. We want words that are about Venus, words that’ll tickle people. Make them sit up. Make them muse about change, and space, and other worlds. Words to make them a little discontented with what they are and a little hopeful about what they might be. Words to make them feel noble about feeling the way they do….”

p. 47
“… It always winds up with him telling me the world’s going to hell in a hand-basket and people have got to made to realize it — and me telling him we’ve always got along somehow and we’ll keep going somehow.”

p. 81
It was an appeal to reason, and they’re always dangerous. You can’t trust reason. We threw it out of the ad profession long ago and have never missed it.

p. 95
It was a simple application of intelligence, and if that doesn’t bear out the essential difference between consumer and copysmith mentality, what does?

In May 2011, I clipped David Ulin’s “Summers of Discovery” from the Chicago Tribune. (It also appeared in the Los Angeles Times: “Critic’s Notebook: In Discover Mode.”) I had thought I would reread Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle that summer, but we know how that goes, right? More than six years later, though, I finally returned to the novel, and as I mentioned in my last post, it still resonates.

p. 164
And I remembered The Fourteenth Book of Bokonon, which I had read in its entirety the night before. The Fourteenth Book is entitled “What Can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Past Million Years?”

It doesn’t take long to read The Fourteenth Book. It consists of one word and a period.

“Nothing.”

Since my last bookish post, I have, among other things, seen the Ivo van Hove-directed A View from the Bridge at the Goodman (get there, if you can), visited my daughters, taken three flute lessons, (nearly) finished four weeks at my new job, and completed six books:

■ Timon of Athens (William Shakespeare; 1605. Drama.)
■ Macbeth (William Shakespeare; 1606. Drama.)
■ Do Not Become Alarmed (Maile Meloy; 2017. Fiction.)
■ Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? (Jeanette Winterson; 2012. Non-fiction.)
■ Carrying the Elephant (Michael Rosen; 2002. Poetry.)
■ War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy; 1869. (Trans. L. and A. Maude; Everyman’s Library; 1992.) Fiction.)

The plays, both rereads, represent my Shakespeare in a Year progress. I plan to read Sonnets 112 through 120 and the related commentary between now and Sunday evening, which should catch me up.

From Macbeth, which is one of my favorite of the plays:

Act IV, Scene iii

Be comforted:
Let’s make us medicines of our great revenge,
To cure this deadly grief.

Seven years ago, I pressed my copy of Maile Meloy’s Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It on someone, promising beautiful prose and original storytelling. I regretted it almost instantly, and I really regretted it a few years later when the same someone mentioned the book in conversation, “Have you read it?” she asked. “It’s pretty good.” Um, yes, I read it. The copy you just finished, in fact. And, “pretty good” seems pretty inadequate, but okay. “Mmmm…” I replied, and reminded myself, again, not to give my books away. Pass them to my daughters, sell them, donate them, yes. But give them away? Not anymore, I don’t. Anyway, while I readily concede that Do Not Become Alarmed does not cast the same spell as Both Ways, it is as impossible to put down as Fierce Kingdom (Gin Phillips), which I read last month, so, recommended.

As I mentioned last time, I reread Fun Home (Alison Bechdel) in anticipation of seeing the Victory Gardens production. I had a notion that Jeanette Winterson’s memoir would make a neat pairing, and I was a little right — and a little wrong. Here are my remaining commonplace book entries for Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

p. 140
I did not realise that when money becomes the core value, then education drives towards utility or that the life of the mind will not be counted as a good unless it produces measurable results. That public services will no longer be important. That an alternative life to getting and spending will become very difficult as cheap housing disappears. That when communities are destroyed only misery and intolerance are left.

p. 144
There’s a lot of talk about the tame world versus the wild world. It is not only a wild nature that we need as human beings; it is the untamed open space of our imaginations.

Reading is where the wild things are.

p. 170
And extremes — whether of dullness or fury — successfully prevent feeling. I know our feelings can be so unbearable that we employ ingenious strategies — unconscious strategies — to keep those feelings away. We do a feelings-swap, where we avoid feeling sad or lonely or afraid or inadequate, and feel angry instead. It can work the other way, too — sometimes you do need to feel angry, not inadequate; sometimes you do need to feel love and acceptance, and not the tragic drama of your life.

It takes courage to feel the feeling — and not trade it on the feelings-exchange, or even transfer it altogether to another person.

Michal Rosen’s Sad Book, illustrated by Quentin Blake, is quite possibly the most accurate depiction of sorrow and grief I have ever read. I cannot tell you how many times I have thought to send Rosen a postcard that simply says, “Yes. Thank you.” This week, I read Carrying the Elephant, his collection of prose poems. Again, “Yes. Thank you.”

p. 48
… Yes, it is unfair and
cruel. It also makes me tired with a
tiredness that hangs on like a dog. It’s nice of
you to say you’ll always remember him. You won’t.

p. 50
… You see me and you cry, you’re
overwhelmed. You ask me how it’s
possible for me to carry on. I wonder
if I look like someone who looks like
it’s possible to carry on.

And, as I shared yesterday, I have finished reading War and Peace. Here are the remaining commonplace book entries:

Book Three, Chapter 25
As often happens with passionate people, he was mastered by anger but was still seeking an object on which to vent it.

Book Four, Chapter 13
This was his acknowledgment of the impossibility of changing a man’s convictions by words, and his recognition of the possibility of everyone thinking, feeling, and seeing things each from his own point of view. This legitimate peculiarity of each individual, which used to excite and irritate Pierre, now became a basis of the sympathy he felt for, and the interest he took in other people. The difference, and sometimes complete contradiction, between men’s opinions and their lives, between one man and another, pleased him and evoked from him an amused and gentle smile.

Next up? It’s hard to say. Last night, I grabbed a thriller. After the “heavy” reading and work and the yard chores (yeah, I decided to mow and rake when I got home), You (Caroline Kepnes) seemed right. The thing is, I have a feeling that this is going to become graphic in a way that my post-fifty self no longer tolerates well, so I may be in search of something else before day’s end.

On a related (sort of) note: My husband and I have only two episodes of Jon Ronson’s The Butterfly Effect remaining. We were already Ronson fans (The Psychopath Test, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed), so this podcast (free to Prime and Audible customers) interested us. Although Ronson navigates an X-rated world, the podcast is never more than R-rated. Here’s Ronson’s description:

It’s sad, funny, moving and totally unlike some other nonfiction stories about porn – because it isn’t judgmental or salacious. It’s human and sweet and strange and lovely. It’s a mystery story, an adventure. It’s also, I think, a new way of telling a story. This season follows a single butterfly effect. The flap of the butterfly’s wings is a boy in Brussels having an idea. His idea is how to get rich from giving the world free online porn. Over seven episodes I trace the consequences of this idea, from consequence through to consequence. If you keep going in this way, where might you end up? It turns out you end up in the most surprising and unexpected places.