June Is Busting Out All Over

I’m getting into a new pattern for reading. First, I am constructing an entirely new reading list each month rather than simply pushing the unread titles ahead a month and filling in with a few new titles.That doesn’t mean the new month’s list doesn’t include a couple of familiar titles, but for the most part it is fresh and new.

Then I have somewhat compartmentalized my reading selections. I generally have a paper and ink book convenient to my sunny rocking chair out on the porch. Here is where I hope to whittle down the inordinately large number of books filling up my bookshelves. Another major reason for reading a real book outside is that it eliminates some of the problems an electronic screen has with the Florida sun.

I also read on two primary electronic devices two different books: one on the iPad which is almost always propped up on my desk, and one on my iPhone which travels with me everywhere. The iPhone goes to bed with me at night, allowing those last few pages to be read as I (hopefully) drift off to sleep (the iPhone also controls my bedside digital radio). Both of these devices use Marvin as a reader so I can synch back and forth when I want to continue reading whatever text intrigues me on the other device.

I also have a large number of titles stored and synched on iBook but I tend to onl use iBook for purchased books from Apple and on my main computer. There are a few titles stuck in the Nook or Kindle accounts but I have forgotten these for the most part.

For June the reading pool includes mostly new works, some short, others long. I also am trying to get serious about going back and finally completing a couple of longer or more tedious works that may have languished in my reading pool for months if not years.

Here is the June Reading Pool. See anything you might want to read?

1. Ema the Captive — César Aira
2. The Monkey Link: A Pilgrimage Novel — Andrei Bitov
3. Spook Country — William Gibson
4. The Moravian Night — Peter Handke
5. The Tragedy of Macbeth, Part II: The Seed of Banquo — Noah Lukeman
6. Notes of a Crocodile — Qiu Miaojin
7. The Counterlife — Philip Roth
8. Adios, Cowboy — Olija Savicevic
9. Ernesto — Umberto Saba
10. Maigret In New York — Georges Simenon
11. Shosha — Isaac Bashevis Singer
12. A Clue To the Exit — Edward St. Aubyn
13. Memoirs of a Polar Bear — Yoko Tawada
14. P. I. — Kamilla Gary Wyatt
15. The Midwich Cuckoos — John Wyndham
16. Miss Chopsticks — Xinran
17. Maneater — Kahoko Yamada
18. Parade — Shuichi Yoshida
19. I Did Not Kill My Husband — Liu Zhenyun
20. A Cop’s Eyes — Gaku Zukav [Stories]

• The Big Money — John Dos Passos
• Infinite Jest — David Foster Wallace