2025: October 4: The rest of the summer reading

 Here we go: 

Maybe second hand from Autumn Leaves in Ithaca, I can't remember

Joan Silber, Fools, (2013). This was recommended to me by someone who knows I'm writing historical fiction about people with strong political beliefs because Silber manages to avoid making her characters into doomed caricatures of uncool revolutionary zeal, but rather conveys their genuine convictions as making sense given what they're seeing around them. These are short stories that cover entire lives of people who are tangentially related to each other and it is all very well done. 

Chapter 2 Used Books, Winona, Minnesota

Sheri Tepper, Gibbon's Decline and Fall, 1996. For a  29-year old book, this is scarily prescient about the resurgence of anti-women fundamentalism in the United States. That one of her potential answers lies in desexualizing ourselves depressed me a little. There's also a fair amount of goddess-centered women's power stuff that isn't my thing. But she does a good job of threading together six different main characters through a complicated plot without me getting lost. 

Broome County Public Library

Rita Bullwinkel, Headshot, (2024). I told Michael that I thought this was good but not very interesting and he said maybe that means it's not actually good. And yeah, I can see that she's clever and all, and can write a smart sentence with thoughtful interiority, but I ultimately didn't care about any of the characters or how the book would end. So I didn't finish it. 

Barnes and Noble (new)

Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half, (2020). Before I say anything, look at this cover, and at the cover of Headshot, above. Because it's a design style that seems popular right now and it honestly looks unimaginative and ugly to me. Which is sad, because this is a good book. I read it very quickly, like movie popcorn, and almost felt guilty for not lingering over the words, but she'd set up a tension and made me dead curious as it how, and if it would resolve, so I wanted to get to the end. Now, though, I have time to slow down and go back to it because we're reading it in my writing class.

Barnes and Noble (new)

Tobias Wolff, Old School, (2003). Somehow I associate Wolff with a category of writer I rarely read - mid-twentieth century Literary Men - and while that's close, it isn't entirely a fair association because he's actually a late-twentieth century Literary Man. Ok, that probably isn't fair either, but this book is Very Literary. It's literally about writing and one of the few woman characters is Ayn Rand, who he skewers (probably rightly, I've never read her, only about her, and she doesn't seem like a nice person). Wolff can write, he's clever and thoughtful and brutally honest about his character's flaws, which drive the narrative. I don't particularly like or believe in the world he's built in this book, but I still found it intriguing. We are also reading this for my writing class, so I'm going to get to pull it apart a little and see how he does it. 

Broome County Public Library

Hilary Mantel, Beyond Black, (2005). I may have been one of the only people in the world not to like Mantel's historical Wolf Hall (to the extent that I didn't even finish it), but this earlier contemporary novel I found much more compelling. It was, as its title suggests, very dark, and trigger warning - there is some horrible childhood trauma. I do think one of the main characters got short-changed towards the end but it was overall surprisingly funny for such a dark book.