The last books read before school starts

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Everything's about to change.

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064) Stranger Planet by Nathan W Pyle, finished August 13

Delightful. I expelled air to express my amusement several times.

a day or two 

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065) Jumping Jenny by Anthony Berkeley, finished August 13

Before I get into how much I liked this book I'd like to note that I'm not sure I've taken many such pure doses of misogyny. I mean—this is a book where it's okay to murder a woman if she's annoying enough. A book where even the best women are silly and doltish. Even the very best woman of all who is intelligent, witty, and excellent in every way, demonstrates her true female superiority by not asking a lot of pesky questions.

That's out of the way.

What I loved though is we see the murder up front. It's a brilliant murder—certain to be ruled a suicide—but then the people at the party get to suspecting each other. And because they suspect each other they work to cover it up so no one gets in trouble. Until they all learn it was actually a suicide. Even the Great Detective, the one who got too smart in the first place, is convinced.

And so the murderer gets away with it.

And then there is a twist in the very last scene that weirdly reemphasizes the okayness of murdering one woman by negating the novel's misogyny via another—no doubt accidentally. I doubt very much that Berkeley had set up a novel-length shaggy-dog story just to point out misogyny is dumb at the same moment he was once again litigating the lowness of women.

Anyway, the structure of the story and the detective's efforts and reasonings were unique in my experience and worth the read. Lots you can do in the mystery genre.

(One other thing: Berkeley likes to let his characters talk over multiple paragraphs. But it's confusing in this edition [link above] because each parapraph ends with a closing ". Don't know if this was some overconfident proofer at the new publisher or a trait of British publishing 90 years ago? If the latter, I feel like I would have seen it before?) 

a bit closer to three than two weeks 

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066) Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson, finished August 18

Been a while since I've read a novel doing much the same things I'm up to. A touch of the bizarre, real human emotions, other people say it's "laugh-out-loud funny"—which I have come to interpret as "wit makes it to the sentence level." Those are all things I'm attracted to in my own writing.

Plus, the wealthy don't come off well, which I'm also in favor of. As a society, we need to see the cancer of inequality for the disaster it is.

 
Anyway, woman invited by rich friend to care for her step-children who, ah, occasionally spontaneously combust.

The biggest surprises for me in reading this were how calmly the book treats the kids' combustion and how fully formed the kids themselves were. When a book is loudly proclaimed A COMEDY you worry (expect) that the weird things will be treated like big jokes and that the characters most closely connected to the weird things will be walking punchlines. Not so here. The kids have real pathos. And the other kid, who seems like a placehholder, becomes real and interesting as well. This is the kind of comedy we should be rewarding. So I'm glad Wilson is putting sales on the board. Good for him.

under a week except maybe i read the first couple pages last month 

 

earlier this year..........

 

Bro! Tell me we still know how to speak of kings!

001) Beowulf translated by Maria Dahvana Headley, finished January 1
002) Cthulhu Is Hard to Spell: Volume Three, finished January 1
003) Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin (translated by Megan McDowell), finished January 8
004) My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris, finished January 11
005) You're a Good Sport, Charlie Brown, finished January 12
005) Into the Headwinds: Why Belief Has Always Been Hard—and Still Is by Terryl Givens and Nathaniel Givens, finished January 24
006) My Favorite Thing Is Monsters: Book Two by Emil Ferris, finished January 25

Maybe we should just pretend this set begins and ends with Wednesday Addams

007) Chas. Addams Half-Baked Cookbook, finished January 29
008) Monica by Daniel Clowes, finished February 3
009) The Unexpurgated French Edition of Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure by John Cleland, finished February 19
010) Peach and the Isle of Monsters by Franco Aureliani and Agnes Garbowska, finished February 20
011) Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, finished February 28
012) Comic Poems edited by Peter Washington, finished March 7

Love, Beauty, and a complete lack of sasquatch 

013) Love that Dog by Sharon Creech, finished March 11
014) Beauty by Sheri S. Tepper, finished March 21
015) Antelope Spring by John Bennion, finished March 24
016) Shelley Frankenstein by Colleen Madden, finished March 28
017) Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew #21: Double Take, finished April 5
018) The Wood at Midwinter by Susanna Clark, finshed April 8
019) Rave by Jessica Campbell, finished April 13
020) The Creeps: A Deep Dark Fears Collection by Fran Krause, finished April 14

Do not ask what she does with the babies.

027) Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito, finished April 21
028) Somna: A Bedtime Story by Becky Cloonan and Tula Lotay, finished April 23
029) Shadow Life by Hiromi Goto and Ann Xu, finished April 24
030&031) The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, finished April 25
032) Raised by Ghosts by Briana Loewinsohn, finished April 26
033) Ephemera by Briana Loewinsohn, finished April 26

Brighter and brighter until we all get our heads lopped off 

034) Brighter and Brighter until the Perfect Day by Sharlee Mullins Glenn, finished April 27
035) Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett, finished May 3
036) The Tragedy of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, finished May 5
037) Equus by Peter Shaffer
038) Travesties by Tom Stoppard, finished May 8
039) The Art of Intimacy: The Space Between by Stacey D'Erasmo, finished May 10
040) A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt, finished May 16

Criticism & Comics

041) Arts and Inspiration: Mormon Perspectives, edited by Steven P. Sondrup, finished May 18
042) The Waiting by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim, finished May 19
043) Odessa by Jonathan Hill, finished May 22
044) Barnstormers: A Ballad of Love and Murder by Tula Lotay and Scott Snyder, finished May 22
045) Bingo Baby, finished May 26 

Books on the Fourth of July

046) Final Cut by Charles Burns, finished May 28
047) Fever Beach by Carol Hiassen, finished June 12
048) How to Talk to Your Succulent by Zoe Persico, finished June 17
049) Poetry Comics from the Book of Hours by Bianca Stone, June 24
050) Night of Camp David by Fletcher Knebel, finished June 25
051) The Serial Killer's Son Takes a Wife by Michael Libling, finished July 3

An old friend makes some introductions (and more)

052) The 5th Generation by Dale Jay Dennis, finished July 7
053) To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis, finished July 10
054) Fer-de-Lance by Rex Stout, finished July 25
055) Meet Monster: The First Big Monster Book by Ellen Blanca and Ann Cook, illustrated by Quentin Blake, finished July 26
056) Last Pick by Jason Walz, finished July 29
057) Death Comes to Eastrepps by Francis Beeding, finished August 2

A lot of comics and then not Twain

058) Gilt Frame by Matt Kindt and Margie Kraft Kindt, finished August 2
059) Monkey Meat: The First Batch by Juni Ba, finished August 3
060) Abbott by Saladin Ahmed and Sami Kivelä and Jason Wordie, finished August 4
061) Mendel the Mess-Up by Terry LaBan, finished August 9
062) Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees by Patrick Horvath, finished August 9
063) James by Percival Everett, finished August 13

PREVIOUS OTHER YEARS IN BOOKS

2007 = 2008 = 2009 = 2010 = 2011 = 2012 = 2013 = 2014 = 2015
2016 = 2017 = 2018 = 2019 = 2020 = 2021 = 2022 = 2023 = 2024