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February 2024 Books and Reading Notes

John Winkelman

Now that I am no longer trapped under a volume of Dostoevsky I can resume my normal reading pace. In February I completed 16 books and journals. Sure, that sounds like a lot, but I purposefully picked the shorted unread books on my bookshelves. The combined word-count of these 16 books is probably less than a third of what I read in Dostoevsky’s Demons, which took almost two months to finish. And a lot of that was not because of the length of the book, but because it was Dostoevsky, and 1,000 words of Dostoevsky is, like, at least 1,500 words of anyone else.

A lot of these shorter works are graphic novels, or works in translations from works-in-translation publishers like Deep Vellum, And Other Stories, Open Letter Books, and Two Lines Press.

Acquisitions

Reading material acquired in the month of February 2024

  1. Andrzej Tichý (Nichola Smalley, translator), Purity (And Other Stories) [2024.02.24] – The newest arrival from my subscription to And Other Stories.

Reading List

The books I read in February 2024

Books

  1. Wolfgang Hilbig (Isabel Fargo Cole, translator), The Tidings of the Trees [2024.02.01] – Well written and well-translated, but just couldn’t get into this one. Fortunately I have more Hilbig in my library so I can give him another chance.
  2. Saladin Ahmed and Dave Acosta, Dragon [2024.02.01] – Fantastically written and beautifully-illustrated graphic novel. I will now need to seek out more of Ahmed’s comic writings.
  3. Elizabeth A. Trembley, Look Again: A Memoir [2024.02.01] – An amazing memoir about how the stories we tell ourselves (and about ourselves) change over time, and with the telling.
  4. Duanwad Pimwana (Mui Poopoksakul, translator), Bright [2024.02.05]
  5. Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #41 [2024.02.08]
  6. Andy Duncan and Ellen Klages, Wakulla Springs [2024.02.10]
  7. Chris Abani, The Face: Cartography of the Void [2024.02.10]
  8. Ruth Ozeki, The Face: A Time Code [2024.02.11]
  9. Tash Aw, The Face: Strangers on a Pier [2024.02.11]
  10. Oleg Sentsov (Uilleam Blacker, translator), Life Went On Anyway [2024.02.12]
  11. Maurice Broaddus, Buffalo Soldiers [2024.02.15] – Excellent novella in the steampunk tradition. Truly enjoyable reading experience. My only complaint is that this wasn’t a full-size novel.
  12. Anne Garréta (Emma Ramadan, translator), Not One Day [2024.02.17]
  13. Kim Sagwa (Sunhee Jeong, translator), b, Book, and Me [2024.02.21]
  14. Fouad Laroui (Emma Ramadan, translator), The Curious Case of Dassoukine’s Trousers [2024.02.25]
  15. Carmen Boullosa (Peter Bush, translator), Before [2024.02.26]
  16. Valérie Mréjen (Katie Shireen Assef, translator), Black Forest [2024.02.27]

Short Prose

  1. Rachel Ayers, “Magicians & Grotesques”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #41 [2024.02.07]
  2. Nicole Kimberling, “Quarantine Pantry Challenge”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #41 [2024.02.07]
  3. Holly Tamsin, “Fogdog Films”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #41 [2024.02.08]
  4. David Fawkes, “Letterghost”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #41 [2024.02.08]
  5. Oleg Sentsov, “Autobiography (In Literary Form)”, Life Went On Anyway [2024.02.11]
  6. Oleg Sentsov, “Dog”, Life Went On Anyway [2024.02.11]
  7. Oleg Sentsov, “Childhood”, Life Went On Anyway [2024.02.11]
  8. Oleg Sentsov, “Hospital”, Life Went On Anyway [2024.02.12]
  9. Oleg Sentsov, “School”, Life Went On Anyway [2024.02.12]
  10. Oleg Sentsov, “Testament”, Life Went On Anyway [2024.02.12]
  11. Oleg Sentsov, “Grandma”, Life Went On Anyway [2024.02.12]
  12. Oleg Sentsov, “The Makars”, Life Went On Anyway [2024.02.12]
  13. Jim C. Hines, “The Blue Corpse Corps” (Patreon subscriber story) [2024.12.15]
  14. Fouad Laroui, “The Curious Case of Dassoukine’s Trousers”, The Curious Case of Dassoukine’s Trousers [2024.02.21]
  15. Fouad Laroui, “Dislocation”, The Curious Case of Dassoukine’s Trousers [2024.02.22]
  16. Fouad Laroui, “Born Nowhere”, The Curious Case of Dassoukine’s Trousers [2024.02.22]
  17. Fouad Laroui, “Khouribga, or the Laws of the Universe”, The Curious Case of Dassoukine’s Trousers [2024.02.25]
  18. Fouad Laroui, “What’s Not Said in Brussels”, The Curious Case of Dassoukine’s Trousers [2024.02.25]
  19. Fouad Laroui, “Bennani’s Bodyguard”, The Curious Case of Dassoukine’s Trousers [2024.02.25]
  20. Fouad Laroui, “The Invention of Dry Swimming”, The Curious Case of Dassoukine’s Trousers [2024.02.25]
  21. Fouad Laroui, “Fifteen Minutes as Philosophers”, The Curious Case of Dassoukine’s Trousers [2024.02.25]
  22. Fouad Laroui, “The Night Before”, The Curious Case of Dassoukine’s Trousers [2024.02.25]

Weekly Round-up, February 24, 2024

John Winkelman

Grand Rapids, Facing East from the corner of Monroe Ave and Louis Street.

This was another extremely busy week, so not many updates to report, unless ServiceNow debugging is interesting. Managed to read quite a bit in the spare moments in the mornings, and worked out a lot, so as I finish this post I am tired and sore.

Reading

Currently reading The Curious Case of Dassoukine’s Trousers, a collection of short stories by Moroccan writer Fouad Laroui.

Writing

A little creative work this week. A poem and some world-building for the story I wrote most of during NaNoWriMo 2022. So that idea, at least, still has legs.

This Week’s Writing Prompt

Subject: Dragons, Mutants
Setting: Ocean
Genre: Adventure

Interesting Links

Weekly Round-up, February 17, 2024

John Winkelman

Ice sculpture of a castle at the Elliptic at Rosa Parks Circle, Grand Rapids, Michigan

The warm weather comes and goes, and it seems that all of winter was packed into a couple of weeks in late January. I have a friend, Mark, who I get together with weekly to practice martial arts. This is much easier outside, because we don’t need to worry about walls, ceilings, and cats. Of course practicing outside in the winter is difficult, except for this winter. Our last outdoor practice session for 2023 was the week before Christmas, and our first of 2024 was the second weekend of February.

Reading

Still working my way through short books. Currently reading Not One Day by French writer and Oulipo member Anne Garréta.

Writing

Not a lot to report, though I did come up with a couple of ideas for last week’s writing prompt (Genius Loci, Reincarnation, Lost City, War). There is something interesting to be mined from that particular random assemblage of words.

This Week’s Writing Prompt

Subject: Colonization, Kaiju
Setting: Ship
Genre: Literary Fiction

Interesting Links

Weekly Round-up, February 10, 2024

John Winkelman

Happy New Year! Today is the first day of the Year of the Wood Dragon. As I am an Earth Rooster, this is potentially an auspicious year for me.

Reading

I’m still feeling some post-Dostoevsky reading stress, so I have been hitting the big stack of short fiction. A couple of issues of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, some Patreon short stories, and the like. I also have a great many short novels and novellas which have been gathering dust on my shelves for some years now. So I am working my way through them, and enjoying the process. It’s nice to be able to both start and finish reading a work in the same month.

At the moment the book in front of me is Wakulla Springs by Andy Duncan and Ellen Klages. I picked this up at ConFusion in maybe 2016, and am finally reading it.

Writing

Not much to speak of. This year has been busy to the point of distraction.

Writing Prompt

Subject: Genius Loci, Reincarnation
Setting: Lost City
Genre: War

Interesting Links

IWSG, February 2024: Website or Webshite?

John Winkelman

Frost on a car.

Good morning/afternoon/evening everyone! Welcome back for another visit to my humble blog, where I talk about whatever is front and center in my mind at the moment.

The Insecure Writer’s Support Group question for February 2024 is: What turns you off when visiting an author’s website/blog? Lack of information? A drone of negativity? Little mention of author’s books? Constant mention of books?

I have been a web developer, and have run this blog in one form or another, since 1999. Therefore on the topic of what makes a good website, I have Opinions.

In order from most-worst to least-worst, these are the things which will most turn me off about an author’s website:

  1. Not having a website. If you are an author who publishes, then you need a website of your own. Full stop. Social media is good for boosting your signal, but social media platforms are ephemeral and, as we have seen with Twitter (and, increasingly, Facebook), vulnerable to the whims of the petulant billionaire manbabies who run them. Any author who wants readers to be able to find them needs their own website which will be the final source of truth for any information about their person and writing.
  2. Unusable/unreadable website. Bad font and color choices, broken images, broken links, background scripts which consume so many resources that the page never loads, or a browser freezes or crashes. So much style that there is no room for substance. As a corollary, websites which look okay on a computer but which are completely unusable on mobile. Smart phones have been around for decades now, and having a website which can’t be accessed or read on a mobile device is immediately cutting out at least 50% of your viewing audience.
  3. Website full of ads. Nothing wrong with bringing in some passive incomes from Third-party ads or affiliate links or the like. Displaying third-party ads on your website is fine, as long as they don’t consume so much real estate or so many resources that they become unusable. Also if your site doesn’t show more real content than ads by at least two orders of magnitude, then you are actually running a clickbait site with a thin veneer authorial intent.
  4. What is this website even for? If you are an author with a professional author’s website, and on that website the information about you as an author and the works you have written and published is difficult to find, then I as a user will give up after about 30 seconds. Take my blog for instance. I have not published much, but right up at the top is the PUBLISHED WORKS AND LITERARY MATTERS link, front and center. If I ever become a Famous Author, my readers will immediately know where to go to see the complete list of my published works.

Other than that, the things which turn me off of a website are all content-related, like gatekeeping fandoms, displaying a world-view which would cause me to insta-block them on social media, or complaining about evolving tastes and reading habits without also putting in the effort to learn to navigate the increasingly diverse and fragmented pool of potential readers. An author’s website is their personal space where they can post whatever they want. If their content turns me off, I’ll go elsewhere.

And that’s all I got to say about that. How about y’all’z opinions? What makes for a good or bad web browsing experience?

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Weekly Round-up, February 3, 2024

John Winkelman

A view of the Grand River, facing north from the pedestrian bridge.

After several months of January, February is finally here and with it temperatures in the 40s. Normally this would be worrisome, and it is in the larger sense, but for now, after the arctic blast which dumped almost two feet of snow on us and caused some moderate damage to our property, I’ll take it. Then again I remember Februaries at Grand Valley State University, around 1990, when the air warmed and people were outside in shorts and swimsuits, sunbathing on picnic tables amidst piles of snow. So it goes in West Michigan.

Reading

Duanwad Pimwana‘s Bright, translated from Thai by Mui Poopoksakul.

Writing

Nothing to speak of.

Writing Prompt

Subject: Addiction, Economics
Setting: Border Town
Genre: Magic Realism

Interesting Links

January 2024 Books and Reading Notes

John Winkelman

After almost two months, I finally finished Demons, by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Wow, was that a slog. A good slog, but a slog nonetheless. Now on to fifteen or twenty shorter, easier reads before attempting something arduous.

Almost all of the books I acquired in January were purchased at, or in anticipation of, ConFusion 2024.

Acquisitions

new Books and Reading Material in the Month of January, 2024

  1. David Estes and Dyrk Ashton, Kraken Rider Z (Wraithmarked Creative) [2024.01.03] – I have been a fan of Dyrk Ashton’s work for several years. We are Convention friends, and he is a Righteous Dude.
  2. Jean Davis, Frayed (self-published) [2024.01.19] – purchased from Davis at ConFusion 2024.
  3. Michael J. DeLuca, Night Roll (Stelliform Press) [2024.01.20] – Purchased from Reckoning Press at ConFusion 2024.
  4. Reckoning: Creativity and Coronavirus (Reckoning Press) [2024.01.20] – Purchased from Reckoning Press at ConFusion 2024.
  5. Reckoning #6 [2024.01.20] – Purchased from Reckoning Press at ConFusion 2024.
  6. Reckoning #7 [2024.01.20] – Purchased from Reckoning Press at ConFusion 2024.
  7. Zack Be (editor), Inner Workings: A Calendar of Fools Anthology (Calendar of Fools, LLC) [2024.01.20] – Purchased from Storm Humbert during a group signing at ConFusion 2024.
  8. Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth [2024.01.21] – Purchased at ConFusion 2024.
  9. Lesley Connor and Jason Sizemore (editors), Robotic Ambitions (Apex Book Company) [2024.01.21] – Reward for a Kickstarter campaign run by Apex.

Reading List

Books I read in January 2024

Books

  1. Fyodor Dostoevsky (Larissa Volokhonsky and Richard Pevear, translators), Demons [2024.01.26]
  2. Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #39 [2023.01.29]
  3. Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #40 [2023.01.30]

Short Prose

  1. Jim C. Hines, “The Girls From the Hood” (Patreon post) [2024.01.15]
  2. Rosamund Lannin, “The Lake House”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #39 [2024.01.26]
  3. Jim C. Hines, “Coyote Cave” (Patreon post) [2024.01.28]
  4. Eliza Langhans, “A Giants’ Heart”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #39 [2024.01.28]
  5. D. A. Xiaolin Spires, “Fresh and Imminent Taste of Cucumbers”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #39 [2024.01.28]
  6. Anthony Ha, “Late Train”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #39 [2024.01.28]
  7. Chloe N. Clark, “Jumpers”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #39 [2024.01.28]
  8. Nicole Kimberling, “Sugar-Salt Time: A Love Story”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #39 [2024.01.28]
  9. Felix Kent, “Dynastic Arrangements of the Habsburgs, Washakie Branch”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #39 [2024.01.28]
  10. Eric Darby, “The Parking Witch”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #39 [2024.01.29]
  11. Gavin J. Grant, “Possum, Not Playing”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #39 [2024.01.29]
  12. Jordan Taylor, “Strange Engines”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #39 [2024.01.29]
  13. Audrey R. Hollis, “How to Be Afraid”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #39 [2024.01.29]
  14. Frances Rowat, “Ink, and Breath, and Spring”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #40 [2024.01.29]
  15. Fred Nadis, “The Giant Jew”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #40 [2024.01.29]
  16. Amber Burke, “In Pictures”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #40 [2024.01.29]
  17. T.S. McAdams, “Duck Circles”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #40 [2024.01.29]
  18. Margo Lanagan, “More Information to Help You Get to Rookwood”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #40 [2024.01.30]
  19. Mary Cool, “The Fruit That Bears the Flowers”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #40 [2024.01.30]
  20. Lisa Martin, “Seat Belt On, Falling”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #40 [2024.01.30]
  21. Jeff Benz, “The Stone People”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #40 [2024.01.30]
  22. Nicole Kimberling, “We Should See Less of Each Other”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #40 [2024.01.30]
  23. Michael Byers, “Sibling Rivalry”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #40 [2024.01.30]

Weekly Round-up, January 27, 2024

John Winkelman

After the chaotic beginning to 2024, this past week felt like the real start to the new year.

Reading

I finally, after 57 days, finished Dostoevsky’s Demons. It was a bit of a slog for the first half but I powered through. For reference, I read The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment each in less than 30 days, and they are both longer than Demons. I think Dostoevsky’s craft was more polished with the latter two, and the stories more focused.

Also, Demons leaned more into the lives of the Russian gentry and social climbers, whose lives revolve around giving the best impressions at social gatherings. In other words, wankers. And wankers, in any culture, in any time period, don’t always make for the most entertaining subjects.

With Demons complete I am looking for a “cool down” novel. Something more current, faster paced, and, well shorter. At the moment I am reading one of my old issues of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, published by Small Beer Press. It’s good to read something which can be completed in a couple of hours, rather than a couple of months.

Writing

Not a lot, though I am in the process of indexing (and re-indexing) my unpublished short stories, so I can set up a schedule of editing to try to knock some of them in shape for submission by the end of the year. To that end, I have signed up for the Critique Circle, on the advice of my friend the author Jean Davis.

Writing Prompt

Subject: Revenge, Reincarnation
Setting: Boardroom
Genre: Dystopian

Interesting Links

Weekly Round-up, January 20, 2024

John Winkelman

As this post goes live I am in the middle of ConFusion 2024, where I am the Head of Operations for the convention weekend. You can assume that my life at this moment is quite interesting, almost certainly fun, and perhaps even exciting.

Reading

Still reading Dostoevsky’s Demons. I am past page 500, so the end is in sight.

Writing

Nuthin’.

Interesting Links

Weekly Round-up, January 13, 2024

John Winkelman

Constant pain is a great tool for focusing one’s attention. If only that attention could be focused anywhere other than the constant pain.

I spent most of the past two weeks in thrall to a tooth which first appeared to be tender, then cracked, then infected, and finally diagnosed as both split in half and infected. My dentist removed the tooth three days ago, and my life was thereby much improved.

The pain was more manageable than the previous impacted molar back in 2008, but there was nothing about the experience which was at all pleasant.

So 2024 is starting out kind of…unpredictably.

In order to distract myself from the chronic pain of life, I have several things in the works for 2024:

First, Master Lee’s School of Tai Chi Praying Mantis Kung Fu and Tai Chi Jeung.

Second, after several years of volunteering, I am now part of the Convention Committee for the ConFusion Science Fiction Convention. For the 2024 iteration, “Labyrinth of ConFusion”, I will be the Head of Operations, assisted by past Ops people as I settle into the role.

Third, I am part of the newly-formed Grand River Poetry Collective, which is dedicated to publishing Grand Rapids poets. As we get up and running I will be posting many and frequent updates.

Reading

Still working my way through Dostoevsky’s Demons.

Writing

I got nuthin’.

The writing prompt for the next week is:

Subject: Empire, Economics
Setting: Labyrinth
Genre: Procedural

Interesting Links