books – Page 8 – Ecce Signum

Some Light Holiday Reading

2018-12-25 John Winkelman

This week brought a wide variety of new reading material in a small stack. The latest issue of Salvage just arrived, along with the latest Paris Review and the fourth volume of the Long List Anthology. I’m off of work until January 2, so I should be able to sneak in some reading time.

I finished reading Ferret Steinmetz’ excellent The Flux and am now dividing my time between Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer and Seth Dickinson’s The Monster Baru Cormorant.

Earlier today I opened the Fall 2018 edition of the Copper Canyon Reader, which contains some excellent poetry by several Copper Canyon poets. I would get a subscription to Copper Canyon, as I have to so many other wonderful publishers, but their subscriptions are $1,000, and that it a little steep for me at this point in my life.

And since this is likely the last post for 2018, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!

Links and Notes for the Week of December 9, 2018

2018-12-17 John Winkelman

Some new books by Muslim authors we can look forward to in 2019. Me? I’m waiting for The Kingdom of Copper by S.A. Chakraborty, the sequel to her excellent The City of Brass.
Some words: Sphinx, sphincter (yes they have the same etymological root)

Yeah, not a lot to add from the past week. Everything is Christmas wishes, end-of-year lists, and the ineffectual flailing our 45th POTUS. I expect things will pick up again in the new year.

Brief Reads for the Week

2018-12-16 John Winkelman

Not a lot new this week for the library at Winkelman Abbey. Here we have the latest issues of Amazing Stories and Apex Magazine. I’m saving my money for the holidays and will probably burn a gift card or two to add to my collection of Russian literature, anarchist literature, and Russian anarchist literature.

Apex Book Company just announced that they will no longer be publishing the print version of their magazine, which makes me sad. It was a year-long experiment on Patreon to see if there was enough interest to keep such an endeavor afloat. According to editor Jason Sizemore, there were just barely enough subscribers to launch the print version for a year, and therefore they are going to return to only publishing electronic versions with possible annual “Best of” collections or the like. If you have not yet experienced Apex Magazine, or the books produced by Apex Book Company, I recommend you hie yourself to their online store post-haste.

In reading news, I completed Flex by Ferret Steinmetz, and immediately started the sequel The Flux, which thus far (two chapters in) is every bit as good as the first. Still about halfway through The Monster Baru Cormorant, and in the spare moments I am reading random entries in Salvage. The most recent was China Mieville’s long essay about social sadism, which is online at Salvage.zone. So it goes.

New Reading Material for the Winter

2018-12-09 John Winkelman

A few new books with dark and somber covers to match late-autumn Michigan. The first two are the second and third issues of Salvage, which bills itself as “a quarterly of revolutionary arts and letters,” and has the tagline “bleak is the new red.” It is good. Really really good. I first heard about it when researching different *punk literary subgenres, and came across an article about China Miéville wherein he discussed his involvement with Salvage. Miéville has lengthy essays in each of the issues I have so far purchased (2, 3, 5) and likely will have more in the future issues which arrive as part of my subscription. Well, of course I purchased a subscription.

On the right is the latest shipment from Two Lines Press, which continues to surprise me with wonderful books.

On the reading front, I have mostly recovered from the week at the AWS:Reinvent conference in Las Vegas, and am partway through The Monster Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson and Flex by Ferret Steinmetz. Both are quite excellent reads and they are absolutely nothing alike. I highly recommend both.

Links and Notes for the Week of December 2, 2018

2018-12-08 John Winkelman

Over at GQ, a beautiful, funny, heartfelt, tearjerker tribute to Anthony Bourdain, from some of the may people who have known, worked with, and loved him.
A good list of the nonfiction which has appeared on Tor.com in 2018.
Excellent interview with, and discussion of, China Mieville.
On the Oulipo.
And in odious political news, Metafilter has just posted the latest in their long-running series on the regime of Terribly Triggered Trump.
And for a ray of hope in these troubling times, here is an interview with Chris Hedges where he discusses the current state of the USA, and his new book America: The Farewell Tour.

Several Weeks of Interesting Links

2018-12-04 John Winkelman

November was crazy busy, what with National Novel Writing Month and the AWS:Reinvent conference, so here are all the links from November 4 until now. Regular posting will resume, er, whenever.

Fifty Must-Read Books By Egyptian Authors
50 Must-Read Microhistory Books
Some beautiful artwork from Russia’s early wars.
Tor.com’s list of new Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Genre-bending books coming out in December.
NPR’s amazing, wonderful, awesome list of their favorite books from 2018. Well over 300 books to add to your list. Page also includes links to their annual lists going back to 2008.
The Millions is currently posting their 2018 Year In Reading list, wherein the Millions contributors discuss the books they have read over the past year. Link goes to the archive page which also includes reading lists from past years.
Kirk Thatcher, the punk from Star Trek IV, is an amazing human being.

A Big Box of Books

2018-11-19 John Winkelman

The week of November 11 brought fifteen(!) new books and journals to Winkelman Library. The top two rows are the contents of the most recent Grab Bag from Subterranean Press, one of the premiere publishers of special editions of genre fiction. The bottom row includes, from left, the latest issue of Peninsula Poets; The Diaries of Emilio Renzi: The Happy Years, which is the latest book from my subscription to Restless Books; Imaginary Cities by Darran Anderson, which I picked up at Books and Mortar; issue 54 of McSweeney’s, and All That Is Evident Is Suspect: Readings from the Oulipo 1963 – 2018, published by McSweeney’s. All this should keep me busy for the next week or so. The books in this photo are #217 to 231 in the 2018 Reading List post, where I have included links for ordering and author information.

Some Interesting Reading Material for the Week of November 4, 2018

2018-11-12 John Winkelman

Only one new acquisition for the first full week of November, but that one thing was actually three things – three chapbooks, to be precise, from Ugly Duckling Presse. The collection (the box for which is at the top of the photo) is called Ideas Have No Smell: Three Belgian Surrealist Booklets. The three are Transfigured Publicity by Paul Nougé, Abstractive Treatise on Obeuse by Paul Colinet, and For Balthazar by Louis Scutenaire.

I have to say, in the brief time that I have held a subscription to Ugly Duckling Presse they have been absolutely knocking it out of the park.

New Reading Material for the Week of October 28, 2018

2018-11-07 John Winkelman

Books for the week of 1018-10-28

This past week was an excellent time to be a reader at the Winkelman Abbey. A fantastic variety of books and journals arrived throughout the week. The top row of this photo is ALL FIVE VOLUMES of the Apex Book of World SF, published by the excellent folks at Apex Publications.

The bottom row contains, from left, Resist Fascism from a Kickstarter campaign run by Bart Leib of Crossed Genres Publishing. Next to that is The Way North, an anthology of Upper Peninsula writing which I picked up when I ordered an upcoming volume of poetry by Jack Ridl, which I will undoubtedly post here when it arrives next spring. Third in is the latest issue of Apex Magazine by the same folks who created all of the books in the top row. On the right side of the bottom row is a recent issue of Sugar House, a lit journal which I picked up for research purposes as I plan my next round of poetry submissions.

All in all, excellent additions to my library.

Links and Notes for the Week of October 28, 2018

2018-11-02 John Winkelman

Now here’s an interesting website (and philosophy): Conceptual Fiction.
From Book Riot, 50 Must-Reads of Slavic Literature. I am humbled to say I have only read one, maybe two of these books.
Jeannette Ng’s wonderful Twitter thread on old and imaginary libraries.
Tor.com has released their new upcoming book lists for November 2018:
Rick Liebling has an interesting essay up on his Medium site “The Adjacent Possible”: The Aesthetics of Science Fiction. What does SciFi Look Like After Cyberpunk?
Bernie Sanders and Greek politician Yanis Varoufakis are teaming up to create a “European Spring” movement to counter the increasing level of right-wing fascism in the European Union, the United States, and Central and South America.
Metafilter’s latest roundup thread of news items and commentary on the reign of racist idiot and Stochastic Terrorist Donald Trump.