I’m sitting here in my office library with several current reading projects open on various electronic devices. On my new iPhone I’m gradually reflecting on the horrendous stories of Russian troops caught in the ill-fated Afghan war (The Zinky Boys by Svetlana Alexievich); on my iPad I’m reading both Ace Atkins last Spenser novel, Black Magic and slowly enjoying the more demanding Henry James novel, The Portrait of a Lady (split screen is so handy); and on my old iPhone, which doubles as a go-to-bed radio, I am enjoying an entertaining novel, Mrs. Fletcher by Tom Perrotta. Yes, I watched the HBO series and my impression is that the series is much like the book except Kathryn Hahn is delightful and well worth lusting after.
The last few days I have been scouring my bookshelves, annual reading pools, and Calibre lists for books I just can’t wait to read and have loaded up my current reading pool with dozens of fresh titles, many of which are getting into my daily posting of a reading suggestion. Note that just because I am considering a book for reading, it doesn’t follow that I have immediate access to the book: in fact, I have to go out and find most new books (thank goodness for the online availability of digital books even if I consider them criminally overpriced.
This last month’s suggestions, like most months, include a few books I own, hopefully in easier to read digital form, and even more that will send me off the Apple Books or Amazon if I get the urge to read them.
And there are one or two that I have already read marked in Blue.
02-01-20 – The Overstory — Richard Powers
02-02-20 – History’s Greatest Lies — William Weir
02-03-20 – Naked Came the Manatee — Various
02-04-20 – Pursuit — Joyce Carol Oates
02-05-20 – Life and Fate — Vasily Grossman
02-06-20 – Divide Me By Zero — Lara Vapnyar
02-07-20 – Girl, Woman, Other — Bernadine Evaristo
02-08-20 – The Miller’s Daughter — Emile Zola
02-09-20 – Little Words – Jenny Slate
02-10-20 – Satiristas — Paul Provenza
02-11-20 – China Dream — Ma Jian
02-12-20 – Stalingrad — Vasily Grossman
02-13-20 – Spring — Karl Ole Knausgaard
02-14-20 – This Is Pleasure: Stories — Mary Gaitskill
02-15-20 – The American Canon — Harold Bloom
02-16-20 – Pity the Reader — Kurt Vonnegut
02-17-20 – No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference — Greta Thunberg
02-18-20 – An Orchestra of Minorities — Chigozie Obioma
02-19-20 – Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead — Olga Tokarczuk
02-20-20 – Twisted Tales To Rot Your Brain, Vol. 1 — Nora Thompson
02-21-20 – The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins — Irvine Welsh
02-22-20 – Am I Overthinking This? — Michelle Rial
02-23-20 – In the House In the Dark In the Woods — Laird Hunt
02-24-20 – The Familiar, Volume 5: Redwood — Mark Z. Danielewski
02-25-20 – What Is Liberalism? The Past, Present, and Promise of a Noble Idea — James Traub
02-26-20 – Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know–And Doesn’t — Stephen Prothero
02-27-20 – How Sex Works: Why We Look, Smell, Taste, Feel, and Act the Way We Do — Sharon Moalem
02-28-20 – The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation — Carl Benedikt Frey
02-29-20 – How To Read A Book: The Classic Guide To Intelligent Reading — Mortimer J. Adler & Charles van Doren
A Celebration of Reading 