{"id":6078,"date":"2016-12-02T19:36:21","date_gmt":"2016-12-02T19:36:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/?p=6078"},"modified":"2017-01-20T16:32:50","modified_gmt":"2017-01-20T16:32:50","slug":"my-november-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/my-november-reading\/","title":{"rendered":"My November 2016 Reading"},"content":{"rendered":"

Books<\/h2>\n

My reading pace slowed a bit in November (the US elections and their sad aftermath have provided me with lots of avenues for distraction and worry), but I still managed to keep up my love affair with books, though I picked a fair amount of duds this month. The poetry and fiction were great, but the nonfiction didn’t really light a spark in me. I did read a fair amount of graphic work this month, which was mostly new for me, though it was pretty hit and miss.<\/p>\n

Outside of the reading I\u2019ve been doing for my dissertation and my work, here\u2019s a list of the books I read for pleasure\/self-education in November\u00a02016:<\/p>\n

Poetry<\/h3>\n
    \n
  1. Catherine Jagoe\u2019s\u00a0Bloodroot<\/em><\/a> (a new poetry collection by a friend). The book had several outstanding poems about making one’s home in a strange land, and a very impressive, moving section about pregnancy and motherhood.<\/li>\n
  2. Robert Lax’s\u00a0A Thing That Is<\/a><\/em>. Minimalist, contemplative poetry from a tremendously interesting human being.<\/li>\n
  3. Archaic Greek Poetry: An Anthology<\/em><\/a>, edited by Barbara Hughes Foster.<\/li>\n
  4. The Collected Poems of Kenneth Fearing<\/a><\/em>. Fearing was a prominent leftist writer in the 1930s. In the late 1920s he attended the UW-Madison where he lived with the poet\u00a0Carl Rakosi and was a lover of Margery Latimer’s. His poems are angry, cynical, and fairly iconoclastic for their time–it seems me that they anticipate much that would be later developed by American counter-culture writers in the late 1950s and 60s.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Fiction<\/h3>\n
      \n
    1. Jhumpa Lahiri\u2019s short story collection\u00a0Interpreter of Maladies<\/a><\/em> (a birthday gift from my\u00a0friend Theresa). Highly recommended!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Non-fiction<\/h3>\n
        \n
      1. Alphonso Lingis’\u00a0The Community of Those Who Have Nothing In Common<\/a><\/em>. A short book made up of dense, often beautiful phenomenologically-inflected reflections on community, illness, embodiment, death, etc..<\/li>\n
      2. Catherine Osborne’s\u00a0Presocratic Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction<\/a><\/em>. Not my favorite book in the series.<\/li>\n
      3. Adam Silverstein’s\u00a0Islamic History: A Very Short Introduction<\/em><\/a>. Covered a lot of ground. Very learned, but I felt that the author’s ideological commitments are probably at odds with my own.<\/li>\n
      4. Eric Tyson and Ray Brown’s\u00a0Home Buying for Dummies<\/a><\/em>. Not the most engrossing read, but I learned a lot.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        Graphic Works<\/h3>\n
          \n
        1. Alison Bechdel’s\u00a0Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic<\/em><\/a>.<\/li>\n
        2. Alison Bechdel’s\u00a0Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama<\/em><\/a><\/li>\n
        3. Lynda Barry’s Picture This<\/em><\/a>.<\/li>\n
        4. Brian Vaughan and Niko Henrichon’s\u00a0Pride of Baghdad<\/a><\/em>. A friend gave it to me and said, I think you’ll like this. Sadly, I didn’t.<\/li>\n
        5. Ted Rall’s\u00a0After We Kill You, We Will Welcome You Back As Honored Guests: Unembedded In Afghanistan<\/a><\/em>. I think Rall may be right in many of his foreign policy criticisms, but he seems like an insufferable narcissist in this book. My least favorite of all the books I read this month.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

          Currently Reading<\/h3>\n

          I\u2019ve started a few\u00a0other books that I\u2019m reading more\u00a0slowly. Each is excellent:<\/p>\n

            \n
          1. Mary Beard\u2019s\u00a0SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0<\/em>Slow going, but Beard is an excellent historian and storyteller.<\/li>\n
          2. Rebecca Solnit’s\u00a0Hope in the Dark<\/em>. Necessary reading in our current moment. I admire the mind and voice of Rebecca Solnit very, very much.<\/li>\n
          3. Jonathan Haidt’s\u00a0The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion<\/em>. I’m still curious rather than fully convinced by Haidt’s central arguments, though I have been enjoying the self-assessments at YourMorals<\/a>.<\/li>\n
          4. Isabel Wilkerson\u2019s\u00a0The Warmth of Other Sons.\u00a0<\/em>Not very deep into the book yet, but impressed so far.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

            To Read Soon<\/h3>\n

            Books recommended by friends that I hope to read\u00a0soon:<\/p>\n

              \n
            1. Alfie Kohn\u2019s\u00a0Unconditional Parenting\u00a0<\/em>(thanks Christina, Anna, and Kaitlin!)<\/li>\n
            2. Matthew Desmond\u2019s\u00a0Evicted<\/em>\u00a0(thanks Jim, Dee and many, many others!)<\/li>\n
            3. Siddhartha Mukherjee\u2019s The Emperor of All Maladies\u00a0<\/em>(thanks Sarah!)<\/li>\n
            4. Michel Faber\u2019s The Book of Strange New Things <\/em>(thanks Jeff!)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

              Longform Journalism<\/h2>\n

              I also read a lot of long-form journalism via the Pocket app on my iPad in November.\u00a0Much of what I read was\u00a0about politics. I’ll spare you all of those pieces. Sans think pieces about recent electoral disasters, my November recommendations include:<\/p>\n

                \n
              1. “Being Mortal: Atul Gawande, a moped death, and my mother’s Alzheimer’s<\/a>” reflections on mortality and human fragility by my friend, the poet and professor Susan Schultz.<\/li>\n
              2. This\u00a0Economist feature on kabaddi<\/a> that introduced me to what looks to be a pretty wild sport.<\/li>\n
              3. “How to Be Good<\/a>,” an old (well, from 2011) Larissa MacFarquhar feature on the moral philosopher Derek Parfit.<\/li>\n
              4. “A lynching in Georgia: the living memorial to America’s history of racist violence<\/a>,” in the Guardian, by Peter Baker.<\/li>\n
              5. “Still Running at 119? Not So Fast<\/a>,”a\u00a0fascinating NYT feature about elderly runners by Jer\u00e9 Longman and Hari Kumar.<\/li>\n
              6. Shane Bauer’s piece about going undercover with a border militia<\/a> in\u00a0Mother Jones<\/em>.<\/li>\n
              7. William Friedkin’s profile of Father Amorth, the Vatican’s chief exorcist<\/a>, in Vanity Fair.<\/li>\n
              8. John Crowley’s sprawling exploration\u00a0of American beliefs about aliens<\/a> in the form of a review two recent books about UFOs in the Boston Review.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

                Hoping that you store up good things for yourself and others this December–Winter is here and before long worse things than snow will be upon our doorstep.<\/p>\n

                Featured image<\/a> by Annie Spratt<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

                Books My reading pace slowed a bit in November (the US elections and their sad aftermath have provided me with lots of avenues for distraction and worry), but I still managed to keep up my love affair with books, though I picked a fair amount of duds this month. The poetry and fiction were great, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6079,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19],"tags":[16,17,6,18],"class_list":["post-6078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reading","tag-books","tag-literature","tag-poetry","tag-reading"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/liwf2uhxs0q-annie-spratt.jpg?resize=600%2C400&ssl=1","author_info":{"display_name":"Steel Wagstaff","author_link":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/author\/steel\/"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/liwf2uhxs0q-annie-spratt.jpg?fit=1200%2C704&ssl=1","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/liwf2uhxs0q-annie-spratt.jpg?resize=600%2C600&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd6z5D-1A2","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6117,"url":"https:\/\/steelwagstaff.info\/wordpress\/my-december-2016-reading\/","url_meta":{"origin":6078,"position":0},"title":"My December 2016 Reading","author":"Steel Wagstaff","date":"January 20, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Books As the year limped its way to a close, I tried to keep up my torrid reading pace. 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