Most of the reasons I have been so busy since late April fall under the heading “Not necessarily my story to tell,” but the next few days should adhere to a more regular schedule of walking, studying, practicing, and reading. Of course, simply writing that sentence may ensure disruption. And so it goes.
Until the next alarum, then, I am finishing A Midsummer Night’s Dream today, having resumed my Shakespeare in a Year project, and I hope to finish Roxana Robinson’s biography of Georgia O’Keeffe over the next few days. My first music lesson since April is scheduled for next week, and maybe I’ll have time for my Latin studies, which have been too long neglected.
The books above arrived while I was in Ann Arbor for a quick “reconnect and recharge” with my two favorite humans. Ordinarily, the drive there takes about five hours, but the last few times, it has taken much longer. On Friday, I left thinking I’d arrive by 7 p.m. their time, but I pulled into their driveway just before 10 p.m. Yeah, that’s pretty rough, but we had a wonderful visit, including a trip to Matthaei Botanical Gardens.
On some level, I always knew May, June, and July were going to be busy, probably stressful. It’s no surprise, then, that I remain behind on my Shakespeare in a Year project and have strayed far afield of my Latin goal. Still, I generally make time to read.
■ Girl A (Abigail Dean; 2021) ■ Day One (Abigail Dean; 2024) Borrowed from the library. Reviews here and here.
■ NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity (Steve Silverman; 2015) Read with my daughter. Related link here.
■ Trust (Hernan Diaz; 2022. Fiction.) RFS Read with UCSC’s The Deep Read. Visit their site for faculty lectures, reading notes, and more.
■ The Story of a New Name (Elena Ferrante; 2012) “So much drama!” my reading friend and I texted to one another as we read the second of the Neapolitan Novels. But what if the author has disguised her commentary on the volatile nature of female relationships and the life of the mind in a melodramatic mix of misogyny, abuse, poverty, and small meannesses? She engages readers in the book equivalent of a soap opera, then levels them with sly observations.
■ The Ministry of Time (Kaliane Bradley; 2024) Part Kate and Leopold and part (somewhat messy) dissection of the nature of power, this novel didn’t impress me as it has others.
■ An American Dreamer: Life in a Divided Country (David Finkel; 2024) Review here.
■ One of Ours (Willa Cather; 1923) Read from the shelves. As I’ve mentioned, I’m (re)reading Cather’s novels, one each month in chronological order. The (inevitable) conclusion of this one, which earned the Pulitzer Prize, gutted me.
■ I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together (Maurice Vellekoop; 2024) Vellekoop’s art is terrific and the story, compelling, but this memoir was too long by about 225 pages.
The books pictured above were part of last weekend’s haul from two favorite independent bookstores: Literati and the Dawn Treader, but it will be a while before I get to them. This morning I will finish Hernan Diaz’s Trust for UCSC’s The Deep Read and likely turn to Elena Ferrante’s The Story of a New Name for an ongoing reading project with a friend.
Here are the books I read in April:
■ Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain; 1885) ■ James (Percival Everett; 2024) In March, John Warner of Biblioracle wrote, “I almost cannot imagine a future where teachers assign ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ without also assigning ‘James’ alongside it. Doing such a thing would be an amazing opportunity for discussion and learning for students of any age.” Agreed. Last month, I reread Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for a Newberry Library course. At the first meeting, participants agreed to add James to the syllabus, and at our final meeting, with only one exception, we agreed that the discussion and experience were richer for having read both novels.
■ Love’s Labor’s Lost ■ Romeo and Juliet April and now May have been much busier and more random than I prefer, so while I have not abandoned my third Shakespeare in a Year project, I have definitely fallen behind.
■ My Ántonia (Willa Cather; 1918) I have not, however, fallen behind on my Cather project (i.e., read her twelve novels in publication order, one per month). It has been about thirty-five years since I first encountered My Ántonia, so when I sat down with it last month, I remembered little more than how much I admired Cather’s style. Well. My younger self had good reading taste if poor retention: This book is perfect.
■ Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (Tom Stoppard; 1966) Reread in anticipation of the well-reviewed Court production. (Review here.)
■ The Lifted Veil (George Eliot) A friend hosted a small group to discuss this slim work — an atmospheric novella with a wildly unreliable narrator that shares more characteristics with Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde than with any of Eliot’s own novels.
■ Sociopath: A Memoir (Patric Gagne) ■ This American Ex-Wife: How I Ended My Marriage and Started My Life (Lyz Lenz) Both of these non-fiction titles were published this year, and both interested me enough to read now rather than later. Reviews here and here.
Nerdishly 