April Recap
At long last.
Hi again, my April was lovely. I hope the spring is treating all of you as well!
Thankfully I have no real surprises of major life updates, so I just stayed busy with work and my own little projects. I was pretty good about planning social events this month and was consistent with enjoying walks, board games, and even some video game time with friends. The weather has also been gorgeous so going outside each more was especially nice.
Don’t ask why this is so late. I had a hard time sitting down and writing about some of these books and then the weeks got away from me.
Books
The streak of amazing and challenging books continues and I am feeling like I might just become a “serious” reader for a bit at this rate. Hopefully I don’t get insufferable and can just enjoy more aspects of books.
Storygraph Wrap-Up:
Winged Histories, Sofia Samatar
Discord Book Club
I didn’t like this one. I didn’t hate it (at least all of it) but I didn’t enjoy the act of reading most of it and would have stopped in the second “book” if I was reading on my own and not for a book club. It’s split into four sections, each told very differently and with different focuses but tell the stories of a few women all surrounding a civil war and time of upheaval. I like the big picture premise, and enjoyed the club discussion, but most of the sections felt tedious and opaque to me. Stream of consciousness, memory mixing with current events, and jumbled historical info dumps in a book without much of a plot left me feeling detached and adrift. It wasn’t inscrutable exactly but as I was reading I lost interest every time I put down the book and then didn’t want to pick it up again. If I didn’t read sections in one sitting the names, places, conflicting accounts and nuance all drained out of my head and the four books started to feel repetitive in addition to being not fun to read.
Mark Twain, Ron Chernow
Ron Chernow writes great biographies about important and interesting people (or important men at least…). I have read his Grant, Washington: A Life, and Titan (John D. Rockefeller) books before and want to get the rest, especially his Hamilton book which is the one that inspired the musical and earned his *first* Pulitzer. I started this one on a whim because I was between library holds for an audiobook, and my sister had been raving about James by Percival Everett which I didn’t want to read before reading Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn and getting some context to appreciate. I found 1000 pages of context here.
I didn’t know much about Twain as a person or have a great grasp on his impact on American Literature beyond the Sam Clemens appearances in time travel Star Trek episodes, the odd quote, and reading Tom Sawyer in middle school. I learned a lot and was very impressed with the way his life was told. Twain wrote and spoke about his life often and with legendary wit, so much of the biography was quotes from Sam that complement, mock, or conflict with the life story Chernow paints using research. Often, each paragraph would be followed by a comment and joke by Twain leading to the feeling that the subject of the biography was conversing with the reader and writer freely in a bit of a magic trick. Great read!
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain
After the biography I moved on to the real thing. I read Tom Sawyer in middle school and parts of the book (mostly just the fence painting if I’m honest) were floating around in my head as disconnected cultural artifacts, but I didn’t have a real opinion or memory of it as a book. I am happy to report that Tom deserves to be a classic. It’s funny, clever, and always entertaining while feeling like a useful window into the time and place (or at least a window into Twain’s memory). I kept finding lines that I wanted to remember and little moments that felt timeless. Tom as a character comes across especially strongly and gives a strong sense of being the ur-text for so many young protagonists I’ve read dozens of times. There are definitely parts that feel dated, but not as many as I was expecting. Slurs and cruelties of the time period described aside, I found it to be a great and easy read.
The Word for World is Forest, Ursula K. Le Guin
The Year of Le Guin
Story time~~~~~
I read this five years ago for the first time, I know because it was when I was in the process of moving to Boston. I listened in the two weeks between working at a summer camp in Western Mass and moving into an apartment in Brookline. For those two weeks, I got permission to stay on the camp and sleep in the cot in the infirmary in exchange for doing camp chores I had already been doing for three months. At first other counselors and staff were there and I played board games (my car was sitting on a side road filled with all my worldly possessions, and some forty games that survived my first move purge) and enjoyed their company, but my friends left one by one and eventually I was the last one on the property.
So I cleaned, fed chickens, collected eggs, ate freely from the camp kitchen, and walked the trails. I rarely went for hikes further than a few miles away from the camp but spent most of my days on continuous loops all around the property. This was some of the most “productive” time of my life because while stomping I listened to audiobooks constantly. The Word For World is Forest was one of these and I likely listened from start to finish in one afternoon while walking and munching on a bag of nuts and chocolate chips I scooped from 50 gallon bins in the not quite commercial scale kitchen each morning. I can picture the path I took that day, but don’t know if it has a name. If it is not clear, an open schedule, comfortable solitude, and a trail to walk were near ideal conditions for me to enjoy myself.
It was a great day, but I don’t remember the book blowing me away. The impression I had was a rightfully angry book on colonialism, a familiar plot, and some cool ideas but not enough time to explore them. Today after rereading, I think my assessment is more or less the same although I found a little more to appreciate. I saw a lot of connections based on Carl Jung this time (there is a Dr. Jung character and dreams are central to the Athshean culture), and was paying attention to the tone and anger of it all with the new knowledge (from an essay in the Language of the Night) that she wrote it as her Vietnam War protest book.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
I liked Tom, but I loved Huck! This book immediately surprised me with the strength of Huck’s voice, and being in his head was a delight the whole way through. He’s funny, clever, filled with heart and his slow awakening to the adult world around him, especially racial injustice, is as good as any character writing I’ve seen. I shouldn’t neglect Jim either, who was just as great. I also found Huck benefitted from a more linear plot structure with the journey taking characters from where they started to different places physically, emotionally, and in understanding. The whole journey as well as the many episodes and vignettes along the river felt ripe with allegory and lessons. This book is likely a new favorite for me.
The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
The Year of Le Guin
This was a reread, but I’m still impressed. I particularly enjoyed the relationship between our two main characters and their journey this time. There is a clear sense of atmosphere to this icy world (fittingly named Winter) that is more inhospitable than just cold, and so it is fitting that the book depicts a slow warming where understanding replaces hostility. It works so well! The clear best Le Guin I have read up to this point in the year… for a few paragraphs at least.
Wolf Worm, T. Kingfisher
Discord Book Club
This was a fun horror book about creepy parasites in the woods. It was easy to read and had some tense scenes, but I don’t think it will stick in my head for very long. The book club discussion was really fun because I felt like we had to find our own discussion topics from within the book because this one had few rough edges or standout highlights. It did its job but didn’t have much texture for me. I am curious what I will think of the next Kingfisher I get to.
North Woods, Daniel Mason
Family Book Club
This is an interesting one because in the first week of book club I thought this would be a great book and then slowly decided it was not exactly what I hoped, but still solid. I was all set to write here that THIS is what I wanted the Overstory to be last week, and then I had a similar slight slump in enjoyment as North Woods became more of a novel instead of a collection of thematically evocative vignettes. However, I still think the constantly changing style was fun and often funny, and there were no parts of this book I disliked so Mason deserves much praise. We also never ran out of discussion topics and frequently went later in the night than usual!
The Crossing, Corman McCarthy
He did it again. It took me three weeks to read this and it warped my whole month. My Kobo reported that my average reading session was 10 minutes long and I believe it. I had to sit and digest every few pages and it was both challenging and rewarding. Notably, the Crossing felt like it had a lot more spanish than my other McCarthy experiences so far, sometimes with much of the already complicated philosophical conversations happening in a language I don’t speak. I made the decision to not search for translations, and just use the spanish dictionary download on my Kobo to look up words as needed to piece things together. For most of the basic conversations I have no issues following everything said, but all of the sudden anyone he meets on the road can swing an interaction into discussions of truth, god, power, and the nature of reality and my baby brain was dropped into the deep end. I like treading water though.
I don’t think this is my favorite McCarthy, and was the one I “enjoyed” reading the least, but it is the book I am most likely to want to reread and get a new perspective on. It felt opaque at times but in a way where I was making connections and then struggling to explain them to friends. I was excited to describe the symbols, contradictions, and threads but realized that I wasn’t able to always put it into words cleanly. The way this book iterates on ideas in his other books especially was hard to convey at work while rolling baguettes and ranting to my friends who have read neither book. The husk is not the thing…
James, Percival Everett
The end and instigator of my Mark Twain mini project. It was fun to revisit Huck Finn and see what is the same and different, and especially to have a more sober and adult view. I thought the minstrel show sequence was absolutely inspired and infuriating, and everything after that till the end really sung. As much as I enjoyed revisiting the original from a different perspective, my favorite parts were when James and Huck get separated and Everett has more freedom to use the setting and characters without being tied to the original. This was a great book! I will be reading more Everett soon.
The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin
The Year of Le Guin
The year can end now; I found the best Le Guin book. We did it everyone. Snacks and drinks will be available in the conference room.
I don’t know if I had a better or worse read this time, because I enjoy this book so much that degrees of brilliance don’t matter. I think it succeeds in basically everything it tries and should be regarded as the best utopian book there is. I could be convinced of it earning the best Science Fiction book period. Let’s leave that for the end of the year rankings I guess. This will be as short a review as I can make because I simply don’t have time to write everything I like. I can say everything I dislike easily: nothing.
What makes it the best utopia? It escapes the traps of simplicity and naivety by depicting an imperfect dream. Anarres is a set of values more than a colony, and the extent to which it lives up to the promise of utopia is not clear. There is conflict, backsliding, and betrayal of the dream, but the light shining through this book is that people still fight for it even if the fight will never end.
“The Odonian society was conceived as a permanent revolution, and revolution begins in the thinking mind.”
Shevek is also just a perfect character. His life is so sad, hopeful, and human. Struggling to communicate, seeking asylum, and hoping to reduce the distance between people and the stars is the pinnacle of Science Fiction heroism. More of this please. Moreover the tone and pace of this book shines by flipping back and forth from his past, present, and sister worlds. We see it all through someone desperately trying to find common ground, and a beautiful blend of melancholy and hope.
“You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.”
Split Tooth, Tanya Tagaq
This was an unusual read for me and I don’t think I would have picked it up without a buddy read, but in the end I am glad I did. It deals with extremely heavy subject matter (sexual assault and teenage pregnacy most of all), but what Tagaq does with the real events that happened to made me think and feel. There is beauty in the horror and real skill in the telling. I listened to the audiobook and originally thought this was a mistake but can confidently say it is the intended and best way to experience Split Tooth. The author is a throat singer and reads the book herself. It adds a lot, but be warned that she wants you to be uncomfortable.
No Time to Spare, Ursula K. Le Guin
The Year of Le Guin
Another Essay collection to round out my month, and a preview to the blog that Ursula started in the years before her death. This book was a mix of end of life thoughts on writing, the world, and her cats. Incredible. What a cool lady.
Games
SLAY THE SPIRE 2
I have beaten Ascension 10 and survived the first balance patches. Even after they tried to take away Prepared, spires must be slayed.
Movies
Stand By Me
I saw the 40th anniversary release of this film because it comes from a Stephen King story we read in my work book club the previous month. Lovely movie. There is a lot of coming of age magic that fills the journey and makes it a joy to watch.
A Magnificent Life
I love animated movies, and was glad I had the opportunity to see a random animated biopic about someone I wasn’t familiar with. The Marcel Pagnol in this movie was compelling and believable, and the visuals were constantly impressive. My favorite part was seeing clips of the real black and white movies he made and being able to recognize the actors on screen from their exaggerated animated selves. It’s a cool art style and felt loving.
Hamlet (2026)
Another random afternoon watch for me. I initially struggled with Shakespeare dialogue coming from British-Indian accents, but found my footing after a scene or two. I think they used the modern day setting to play with the classic story in cool ways and I really enjoyed the third act a lot ( I had to research which act of Hamlet has the wedding feast).
Fight Club 4k Remaster
I can finally cross this off my list. Great movie! It’s so stylish and confident and was thoroughly enjoyable to watch because it was constantly taking big swings. I enjoyed the morbid humor of the first 30 minutes most and just being in such a sad twisted head more than any of the men punching each other or the twist that I have known about all my life. I’ll try to read the book soon.
Whisper of the Heart
Another Ghibli film I can cross off. Very sweet and of course beautiful. I enjoyed just how quiet the scenes were and how comfortable it was in its world. It feels like a timeless childhood summer where the world shifts without anyone else noticing.
Shows
Legend of the Galactic Heroes
We have to be over halfway by now surely. Still good.
What’s Next?
I’d like to write something in the next week or so for you. We shall see.