Tag: Jim Harrison

August 2024 Books and Reading Notes

John Winkelman

In August I returned to short prose for the first time since May. It is a strange consequence of having little free time or attention that I have space in my head for fractions of large stories, but not complete smaller stories. Will need to investigate and submit my notes to the Academy.

Acquisitions

Books acquired in August 2024

  1. Hanne Ørstavik (Martin Aitken, translator), Stay with Me (And Other Stories) [2024.08.14]
  2. Salvage #14 [2024.08.16]

Reading List

Books read in August 2024

Books

  1. Jim Harrison, Farmer [2024.08.09]
  2. Jen Haeger, Whispers of a Killer [2024.08.13]
  3. Thomas McGuane, Gallantin Canyon [2024.08.27]
  4. Vanessa Angélica Villarreal, Magical/Realism: Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders [2024.08.30]

Short Prose

  1. Thomas McGuane, “Vicious Circle”, Gallantin Canyon [2024.08.15]
  2. Thomas McGuane, “Cowboy”, Gallantin Canyon [2024.08.17]
  3. Thomas McGuane, “Ice”, Gallantin Canyon [2024.08.18]
  4. Thomas McGuane, “Old Friends”, Gallantin Canyon [2024.08.20]
  5. Thomas McGuane, “North Coast”, Gallantin Canyon [2024.08.21]
  6. Thomas McGuane, “The Zombie”, Gallantin Canyon [2024.08.23]
  7. Thomas McGuane, “Miracle Boy”, Gallantin Canyon [2024.08.25]
  8. Thomas McGuane, “Aliens”, Gallantin Canyon [2024.08.27]
  9. Thomas McGuane, “The Refugee”, Gallantin Canyon [2024.08.27]
  10. Thomas McGuane, “Gallantin Canyon”, Gallantin Canyon [2024.08.27]

Weekly Round-up, August 10, 2024

John Winkelman

A recently-hatched Cicada adult, drying out before its first flight.

[A recently-hatched cicada adult, drying out before its first flight.]

This was another busy week and most of my mental capacity was occupied by the current chaos of American politics, as well as stories coming out of the Olympics, though I have yet to see any actual events. I will need to look for recordings when my time frees up. So somewhere around summer 2035.

Reading

I am bouncing back and forth between three books – Jim Harrison‘s Farmer (which I finished yesterday), Vanessa Angelica Villarreal‘s Magical/Realism, and Maurizio Lazzarato‘s Capital Hates Everyone. All are good, and enough different from one another that I can read them all without them colliding in the extremely narrow space of my attention span and mental capacity.

Writing

Journaling and poetry seem to be the mood of this past week. Completed a lot of the former and started a few of the latter.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Spiritual Beings, Language
Setting: Boardroom
Genre: Weird Fiction

Listening

Interesting Links

July 2024 Books and Reading Notes

John Winkelman

July was not my best reading month. Too much work, plus prep for, and participating in, my first vacation of the year. But what my monthly reading lacked in quantity it more than made up for in quality. Plus, Viriconium was a long, extremely dense book. But well worth the effort.

Acquisitions

Paperback edition of Wholly Esenin, resting on a stone slab

  1. Sergei Esenin (Roger Pulvers, translator), Wholly Esenin: Poems by Sergei Esenin (Balestier Press) [2024.07.17] – Ordered from Books and Mortar, after reading Jim Harrison’s Letters to Yesenin, and watching this documentary about Esenin, created by Pushkin House, and finding the title in the comments.

Reading List

Books I read in July 2024

Books

  1. Jim Harrison, Letters to Yesenin (re-read) [2024.07.02]
  2. M. John Harrison, Viriconium [2024.07.23]
  3. Sergei Esenin (Roger Pulvers, translator), Wholly Esenin [2024.07.31]

September 2023 Books and Reading Notes

John Winkelman

This was an excellent month for acquiring books funded through Kickstarter. Three of the four new arrivals are crowdfunded, and the last is from my (surprisingly persistent, but not unwelcome) subscription to And Other Stories.

For reading, September was a slow month. I had a lot on my mind, and multiple side projects demanding my attention, and my reading pace therefore suffered. But what my reading pile lacks in quantity, it makes up for in quality. So it goes.

Acquisitions

Books which arrived at the house in the month of September 2023

  1. Cory Doctorow, The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation (Verso) [2023.09.02] – Reward from a Kickstarter campaign.
  2. Douglas Adams, Kevin Jon Davies (editor), 42: The Wildly Improbable Ideas of Douglas Adams (Unbound Books) [2023.09.03] – Reward from a Kickstarter campaign. This one was long-awaited, as I backed it in March of 2021. Things Happened in the world in the intervening years, and my patience was well-rewarded, as this book is absolutely gorgeous!
  3. Ai Jiang and Christi Nogle (editors), Wilted Pages: An Anthology of Dark Academia (Shortwave Publishing) [2023.09.05] – Another Kickstarter reward. I have never read any Dark Academia stories, so an anthology seemed like a good place to start.
  4. Tanya Tagaq, Split Tooth (And Other Stories) [2023.09.22] – The latest book from my one remaining subscription.

Reading List

Books

Books I read in the month of September 2023.

  1. Jim Harrison, The Raw and the Cooked (re-read) [2023.09.16]
  2. June Jordan, The Essential June Jordan [2023.09.24]
  3. Maurizio Lazzarato, Governing by Debt [2023.09.28]

June 2023 Books and Reading Notes

John Winkelman

June is my birthday month, and I celebrated by driving clockwise around Lake Michigan, starting in my home town of Grand Rapids and hitting Madison, Marquette, and Sault Ste Marie before returning home. In each city, we stopped at an independent bookstore where I offered my monetary support in exchange for bound bundles of words. That, plus the arrival of a couple of Kickstarter rewards, made this the biggest book acquisition month of the year thus far.

Acquisitions

New arrivals in the month of June 2023

  1. Rihannon Rasmussen and dave ring (editors), Luminescent Machinations: Queer Tales of Monumental Invention (Neon Hemlock Press) [2023.06.02] – Kickstarter reward
  2. China Miéville, A Spectre, Haunting: On the Communist Manifesto (Haymarket Books) [2023.06.03] – Purchased from Books and Mortar bookstore in Grand Rapids, Michigan
  3. Maurizio Lazzarato, Capital Hates Everyone: Fascism or Revolution (Semiotext(e)) [2023.06.06] – Purchased at A Room of One’s Own bookstore in Madison, Wisconsin
  4. R.F. Kuang, Yellowface [2023.06.06] – Purchased at A Room of One’s Own bookstore in Madison, Wisconsin
  5. Chris McCabe (editor), Poems from the Edge of Extinction [2023.06.08] – Purchased at Snowbound Books in Marquette, Michigan
  6. Joy Harjo, An American Sunrise [2023.06.09] – Purchased at Island Books and Crafts in Sault Ste Marie, Michigan
  7. Florence McClinchey, Joe Pete (Ziibi Press) [2023.06.09] – Purchased at Island Books and Crafts in Sault Ste Marie, Michigan
  8. Patricia Bray and Joshua Palmatier (editors), Solar Flare: Solarpunk Stories (Zombies Need Brains) [2023.06.30]
  9. S.C. Butler and Joshua Palmatier (editors), Dragonesque (Zombies Need Brains) [2023.06.30]
  10. Stephen Kotowych and Tony Pi (editors), Game On! (Zombies Need Brains) [2023.06.30]
  11. David B. Coe and Edmund B. Schubert (editors), Artifice & Craft (Zombies Need Brains) [2023.06.30]

Reading List

What I read in the month of June 2023

Books

  1. Jim Harrison, Returning to Earth (re-read) [2023.06.04]
  2. R.F. Kuang, Yellowface [2023.06.16]
  3. Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. [2023.06.24]
  4. Jonathan C. Creasy (editor), Black Mountain Poems: An Anthology [2023.06.25]
  5. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Nomadology: The War Machine [2023.06.30]

October 2022 Reading List

John Winkelman

What I read in October 2022

This was the month I finally made it to the bottom of my stack of back issues of The Paris Review. It was a wondrous, wild ride full of some of the best writing I have experienced in my adult life, but I feel a sense of relief now that I am done.

This was also the month in which I passed 200 pieces of short prose read, which means 2022, for all its chaos and uncertainty, was a stellar year for reading.

Books and Journals

  1. The Paris Review #236 [2022.10.01]
  2. The Paris Review #237 [2022.10.04]
  3. The Paris Review #238 [2022.10.06]
  4. The Paris Review #239 [2022.10.09]
  5. The Paris Review #240 [2022.10.12]
  6. The Paris Review #241 [2022.10.13]
  7. Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #31 [2022.10.15]
  8. Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #32 [2022.10.18]
  9. Lady Churchiill’s Rosebud Wristlet #33 [2022.10.22]
  10. Marissa Lingen, Monstrous Bonds [2022.10.25]
  11. Jim Harrison, The Search for the Genuine [2022.10.28]
  12. Poetry #221.2 {2022.10.30}

Short Prose

  1. Yohanca Delgado, “The Little Widow from the Capital”, The Paris Review #236 [2022.10.01]
  2. Peyton Burgess, “A Supernatural Landscape of Love And Grief Not Unlike Your Own”, The Paris Review #236 [2022.10.01]
  3. Maxim Osipov (Boris Dralyuk, translator), “Sventa”, The Paris Review #236 [2022.10.01]
  4. Kenan Orhan, “The Beyoglu Municipality Waste Management Orchestra”, The Paris Review #237 [2022.10.02]
  5. Joy Katz, “Tennis is the Opposite of Death: A Proof”, The Paris Review #237 [2022.10.03]
  6. Vladimir Nabokov (Tatyana Gershkovich, translator), “A Monologue”, The Paris Review #237 [2022.10.03]
  7. Adania Shibli (Nora Parr, translator), “Mathematics, under Which Is Love, Whose Bed Is Language”, The Paris Review #237 [2022.10.03]
  8. Christina Wood, “A Summer Party”, The Paris Review #237 [2022.10.03]
  9. Lydia Conklin, “Rainbow Rainbow”, The Paris Review #237 [2022.10.03]
  10. Camille Bordas, “The Lottery in Almeria”, The Paris Review #237 [2022.10.04]
  11. Anuk Arudpragasam, “So Many Different Worlds”, The Paris Review #237 [2022.10.04]
  12. McKenzie, “We All Fall Down”, The Paris Review #238 [2022.10.05]
  13. Annie Baker, “Infinite Life (excerpt)”, The Paris Review #238 [2022.10.05]
  14. Caleb Crain, “Walks”, The Paris Review #238 [2022.10.06]
  15. Lawrence Jackson, “Letter from Lafayette Square”, The Paris Review #238 [2022.10.06]
  16. Chetna Maroo, “Brothers and Sisters”, The Paris Review #238 [2022.10.07]
  17. Emmanuel Carrére, “Exhaling”, The Paris Review #238 [2022.10.07]
  18. Sterling HolyWhiteMountain, “This Then Is a Song, We Are Singing”, The Paris Review #238 [2022.10.07]
  19. Lakiesha Carr, “Tomorrows,” The Paris Review #239 [2022.10.07]
  20. Will Arbery, “from Corsicana“, The Paris Review #239 [2022.10.08]
  21. Zach Williams, “Trial Run”, The Paris Review #239 [2022.10.08]
  22. Ishion Hutchinson, “Woman Sweeping”, The Paris Review #239 [2022.10.08]
  23. Kathran Scanlan, “Backsliders”, The Paris Review #239 [2022.10.09]
  24. Annie Ernaux (Alison L. Strayer, translator), “Diary, 1988”, The Paris Review #239 [2022.10.09]
  25. Paul Dalla Rosa, “I Feel It”, The Paris Review #239 [2022.10.09]
  26. Harriet Clark, “Descent”, The Paris Review #240 [2022.10.10]
  27. Esther Yi, “Moon”, The Paris Review #240 [2022.10.10]
  28. Rachel B. Glaser, “Ira & the Whale”, The Paris Review #240 [2022.10.10]
  29. Leonard Cohen, “Begin Again”, The Paris Review #240 [2022.10.10]
  30. Dan Bevacqua, “Riccardo”, The Paris Review #240 [2022.10.10]
  31. Robert Glück, “About Ed”, The Paris Review #240 [2022.10.10]
  32. Matthew Shen Goodman, “Lording”, The Paris Review #240 [2022.10.11]
  33. Darryl Pinckney, “For Snow Queens”, The Paris Review #240 [2022.10.11]
  34. Emma Cline, “Pleasant Glen”, The Paris Review #240 [2022.10.12]
  35. Nancy Lemann, “Diary of Remorse”, The Paris Review #241 [2022.10.12]
  36. Michelle de Kretser, “Winter Term”, The Paris Review #241 [2022.10.12]
  37. Sam Pink, “The Ceremony”, The Paris Review #241 [2022.10.12]
  38. Maya Binyam, “Do You Belong to Anybody?”, The Paris Review #241 [2022.10.12]
  39. Katherine Dunn, “The Education of Mrs. R.”, The Paris Review #241 [2022.10.12]
  40. Christian Kracht, “The Gold Coast”, The Paris Review #241 [2022.10.13]
  41. Jessy Randall, “You Don’t Even Have a Rabbit”, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #31 [2022.10.13]
  42. Goldie Goldbloom, “Never Eat Crow”, LCRW #31 [2022.10.13]
  43. Kathleen Jennings, “Skull and Hyssop”, LCRW #31 [2022.10.13]
  44. Owen King, “The Curator”, LCRW #31 [2022.10.15]
  45. Sarah Micklem, “The Necromancer of Lynka”, LCRW #31 [2022.10.15]
  46. Henry Wessells, “The Beast Unknown to Heraldry”, LCRW #32 [2022.10.16]
  47. Alyc Helms, “The Blood Carousel”, LCRW #32 [2022.10.16]
  48. Kodiak Julian, “Marrying the Sea”, LCRW #32 [2022.10.17]
  49. Joe M. McDermott, “Everything Is Haunted”, LCRW #32 [2022.10.17]
  50. Henry Lien, “The Shadow You Cast Is Me”, LCRW #32 [2022.10.17]
  51. Joanna Ruocco, “Auburn”, LCRW #32 [2022.10.17]
  52. Dylan Horrocks, “The Square of Mirrors”, LCRW #32 [2022.10.18]
  53. Nicole Kimberling, “Sleek Fat Albinos in Spring”, LCRW #32 [2022.10.18]
  54. Jade Sylvan, “Sun Circles”, LCRW #32 [2022.10.18]
  55. Carmen Maria Machado, “I Bury Myself”, LCRW #33 [2022.10.18]
  56. Christopher Brown, “Winter in the Feral City”, LCRW #33 [2022.10.18]
  57. Alena McNamara, “Starling Road”, LCRW #33 [2022.10.18]
  58. Giselle Leeb, “Ape Songs”, LCRW #33 [2022.10.18]
  59. Michelle Vider, “For Me, Seek the Sun”, LCRW #33 [2022.10.18]
  60. Deborah Walker, “Medea”, LCRW #33 [2022.10.20]
  61. D.K. McCutchen, “Jellyfish Dreaming”, LCRW #33 [2022.10.20]
  62. Sofia Samatar, “Request for an Extension on the Clarity“, LCRW #33 [2022.10.21]
  63. Nicole Kimberling, “Cook Like a Hobo”, LCRW #33 [2022.10.22]
  64. M. E. Garber, “Putting Down Roots”, LCRW #33 [2022.10.22]
  65. Eric Gregory, “The March Wind”, LCRW #33 [2022.10.22]
  66. Marissa Lingen, “Shrapnel From My Cousin’s Kaiju Battle: $229 Plus Shipping”, Monstrous Bonds [2022.10.25]
  67. Marissa Lingen, “Accountable Monsters”, Monstrous Bonds [2022.10.25]
  68. Marissa Lingen, “The River Horse Who Almost Ate Me, And His Lawyer”, Monstrous Bonds [2022.10.25]
  69. Marissa Lingen, “The Swarm of Giant Gnats I Sent After Kent, My Assistant Manager”, Monstrous Bonds [2022.10.25]
  70. Marissa Lingen, “After the Monster”, Monstrous Bonds [2022.10.25]

Hello October Again

John Winkelman

New reading material for the week of September 25, 2022

Well that September just flew by, didn’t it? It wasn’t a bad month, just busy and barely any time to sit and relax. All I can say is that it was a hell of a lot better than September 2021.

Three new books and journals have been added to the library in the past week.

First up is the October 2022 issue of Poetry, which arrived on Wednesday and I read on Thursday, because I had a chunk of quiet time.

Next is Cathy Park Hong‘s Minor Feelings, which I added to my list after coming across some of her poetry online. Upon returning home from Books and Mortar, we discovered that my partner Zyra had picked up a copy some months ago and it was sitting on a shelf in plain sight. At least now, as the joke goes, I can read it more than once.

On the right is The Search for the Genuine, the new collection of Jim Harrison‘s nonfiction writing. I doubt there is much in here that I have not already read at some point, but Harrison’s nonfiction is just a pleasurable a read as his fiction and poetry so this is a welcome addition to the collection.

In reading news, in addition to the above I am on the first issue of 2021 of The Paris Review, which means I have only half a dozen remaining in my stack. I might get one more issue. As stated before, I am going to focus on this journal until I am caught up to present, then move on to the next stack of back issues of something.

One of the consequences of reading so many short stories by such a wide variety of writers is that, inevitably, I discover people who have recently died. This happened back in July with Duncan Hannah, whose book Twentieth-Century Boy was excerpted in The Paris Review in 2017. Hannah died this past June, aged 69, which no longer seems very old to me.

This past Friday I cracked open issue #236 (Spring 2021) of The Paris Review. The first item therein is the brilliant short story “Maly, Maly, Maly” by Anthony Veasna So. So died in December 2020 at the age of 28, just before his first book Afterparties: Stories was released.

In writing news, I am planning out my NaNoWriMo project, so while I am taking a lot of notes, I am not writing anything at the moment with a coherent narrative. This will be the first time I have planned out a project in advance, beyond the most basic outline of the order of events. At the moment, I feel optimistic that I will actually finish the first draft before the end of the year.

Back to the Grind, In a Good Way

John Winkelman

Jim Harrison's Complete Poems boxed set

I’ve been busy playing catch-up this past week. Taking two days off of work to attend ConFusion 2022 turned into, as it always does, less of a vacation and more of a deferred workload. That workload caught up with me at 8:00 Monday morning, and was still dogging me when I logged off at 18:00 Friday afternoon. But by several orders of magnitude I am not paid enough to work weekends when the literal end of the world is not at stake.

The only reading material to arrive in the past week, and it is a very big deal, is the three-volume boxed set of Jim Harrison‘s Complete Poems. This collection is absolutely beautiful. The book covers are from paintings by the late Russell Chatham, and the volumes have introductions by (respectively) Colum McCann, Joy Williams, and John Freeman. This set was a special edition published through Copper Canyon Press‘s project The Hearts Work: Jim Harrison’s Poetic Legacy. The online book launch celebration is available for viewing on YouTube.

In reading news, I finished Tamsyn Muir‘s Harrow the Ninth in the middle of last week, and started Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel shortly thereafter. I finished it this past Thursday evening, in our hotel room at ConFusion. After returning home I started reading S.A. Chakraborty‘s The Empire of Gold, the third volume in her fantastic Daevabad trilogy.

In writing news, I was thrown off my stride somewhat by preparing (physically, mentally, and emotionally) for ConFusion, so I didn’t accomplish much. This past week I have made some more progress on my short story, and should have it finished next week. Since my new writing routine has the first full week of the month set aside for editing, I still have one more writing week in which to complete some work. Thanks to my weekend of good friends, good fellowship and good vibes, I feel energized to dive back into my creative work.

December 2021 Reading List

John Winkelman

Books read in December 2021

Reading-wise, this month started out slowly. Between the mental fatigue of finishing NaNoWriMo and the emotional fatigue of GODDAMN EVERYTHING, I didn’t have much brain power left to work my way through the two books I started reading back in October (Graeber) and December (Dostoevsky). Dostoevsky and Graeber are brilliant and rewarding writers, but wow, do they require a lot of focus and mental energy to read attentively.

As a counterbalance, as soon as I finished the Graeber I picked up a few books from my embarrassingly large pile of unread genre fiction. These books were much easier to read. This is not to say that genre fiction is on its face light or inconsequential. The Scalzi, Hines, and El-Mohtar/Gladstone volumes were much easier to read simply because they were (a) not Dostoevsky, and (b) not an economic treatise which covers the previous five millennia of world history.

Jim Harrison’s book sneaked in at the top of the list because I picked it up after the arrival of his Collected Poems at the beginning of the month, and essays about food make for comforting reading.

All of the short prose I read this month was contained in the Dostoevsky. Six birds with one stone. Or maybe one bird with five pebbles, depending on how one splits that particular hair.

Books

  1. Harrison, Jim, The Raw and the Cooked (reread, 2021.12.14)
  2. Dostoevsky, Fyodor (Volokhonsky, Larissa, and Pevear, Richard, translators), The Eternal Husband and Other Stories (2021.12.27)
  3. Graeber, David, Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2021.12.28)
  4. Scalzi, John, The Collapsing Empire (2021.12.29)
  5. Hines, Jim C, Terminal Uprising (2021.12.30)
  6. El-Mohtar, Amal and Gladstone, Max – This Is How You Lose the Time War (2021.12.31)

Short Prose

  1. Dostoevsky, Fyodor, “A Nasty Anecdote”, The Eternal Husband and Other Stories (2021.12.05)
  2. Dostoevsky, Fyodor, “The Eternal Husband”, The Eternal Husband and Other Stories (2021.12.26)
  3. Dostoevsky, Fyodor, “Bobok”, The Eternal Husband and Other Stories (2021.12.27)
  4. Dostoevsky, Fyodor, “The Meek One”, The Eternal Husband and Other Stories (2021.12.27)
  5. Dostoevsky, Fyodor, “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man”, The Eternal Husband and Other Stories (2021.12.27)

Two More Weeks

John Winkelman

New reading material for the week of December 12, 2021

Brief update. Too tired and burned out to throw a lot of detail into this week’s post.

one book and one magazine arrived in the past week.

First up is Vital: The Future of Healthcare, an anthology of speculative stories about what health care might look like in the coming months, years and decades. This was another of the delayed Kickstarter rewards I have written about previously, and once again, no harm and no foul, here in the middle of an ongoing pandemic.

Next is issue 1 of Inque Magazine, from another Kickstarter campaign. Yes, that is a literary journal. And yes, it is that big.

In reading news, I read Jim Harrison’s collection of food writing The Raw and the Cooked. This was prompted by the release last week (and my receipt of) of Harrison’s Complete Poems. I am also making good progress with Graeber’s Debt: The First 5,000 Years and Dostoevsky’s The Eternal Husband and Other Stories. I feel confident that I will complete them this month, which will give me time to get caught up on my genre fiction in the run up to ConFusion 2022, assuming the upsurge in COVID doesn’t cause the con to be cancelled again.

In writing news, there is not a lot happening other than journaling, thanks to a general malaise. I have a lot of great ideas, but right now the though of writing them down exhausts me.