Open Letter Books – Ecce Signum

September 2022 Reading List

2022-10-012022-10-03 John Winkelman

What I read in September 2022

Despite the craziness of my schedule, this was a pretty good month for reading. I passed 100 volumes read for the year, and 150 pieces of short prose. I have even managed to retain most of what I have read, which is a bonus.

Books and Journals

Mario Levrero, Empty Words [2022.09.04]
The Paris Review #230 [2022.09.06]
The Paris Review #231 [2022.09.11]
T L Greylock and Bryce O’Connor, Shadows of Ivory [2022.09.13]
Sara M. Harvey, The Convent of the Pure [2022.09.16]
The Paris Review #232 [2022.09.16]
Sara M. Harvey, Labyrinth of the Dead [2022.09.16]
Marguerite Duras (Kazim Ali, translator), Abahn Sabana David [2022.09.18]
The Paris Review #233 [2022.09.21]
The Paris Review #234 [2022.09.25]
The Paris Review #235 [2022.09.29]
Poetry #221.1, October 2022 [2022.09.29]

Short Prose

Anuk Arudpragasam, “Last Rites”, The Paris Review #230 [2022.09.01]
Diane Williams, “Garden Magic”, The Paris Review #230 [2022.09.02]
Leigh Newman, “Howl Palace”, The Paris Review #230 [2022.09.02]
William Styron, “From an Unfinished Novel”, The Paris Review #230 [2022.09.03]
Olivia Clare, “Women and Men Made of Them”, The Paris Review #230 [2022.09.05]
Matthew Baker, “Why Visit America”, The Paris Review #230 [2022.09.06]
Emma Cline, “The Nanny”, The Paris Review #231 [2022.09.06]
Willa C. Richards, “Failure to Thrive”, The Paris Review #231 [2022.09.07]
Fernanda Melchor (Sophie Hughes, translator), “They Called Her the Witch”, The Paris Review #231 [2022.09.09]
Kathryn Scanlan, “Yet You Turn to the Man”, The Paris Review #231 [2022.09.11]
Taylor Koekkoek, “Dirtnap”, The Paris Review #231 [2022.09.11]
Molly McCully Brown, “If You Are Permanently Lost”, The Paris Review #231 [2022.09.11]
Clare Sestanovich, “By Design”, The Paris Review #232 [2022.09.12]
Beth Nguyen, “Apparent”, The Paris Review #232 [2022.09.13]
Jesse Ball, “Diary of a Country Mouse”, The Paris Review #232 [2022.09.13]
Senaa Ahmad, “Let’s Play Dead”, The Paris Review #232 [2022.09.14]
Rebecca Makkai, “A Story for Your Daughters, a Story for Your Sons”, The Paris Review #232 [2022.09.15]
Ashleigh Bryant Phillips, “An Unspoken”, The Paris Review #232 [2022.09.15]
Andrew Martin, “Childhood, Boyhood, Youth”, The Paris Review #232 [2022.09.16]
Sarah Manguso, “Perfection”, The Paris Review #233 [2022.09.16]
Emily Hunt Kivel, “The Juggler’s Wife”, The Paris Review #233 [2022.09.19]
Ottessa Moshfegh, “I Was A Public Schooler”, The Paris Review #233 [2022.09.21]
Jamel Brinkley, “Witness”, The Paris Review #233 [2022.09.21]
Amy Silverberg, “The Duplex”, The Paris Review #233 [2022.09.21]
Rabih Alameddine, “The July War”, The Paris Review #234 [2022.09.21]
Shirley Hazzard, “An Unpublished Story”, The Paris Review #234 [2022.09.22]
Shanteka Sigers, “A Way with Bea”, The Paris Review #234 [2022.09.22]
Eloghosa Osunde, “Good Boy”, The Paris Review #234 [2022.09.24]
Thomas McGuane, “Slant Six”, The Paris Review #234 [2022.09.25]
Ayşegül Savaş, “Layover”, The Paris Review #234 [2022.09.25]
Lydia Davis, “Six Stories”, The Paris Review #234 [2022.09.25]
Patrick Barrett, “Saint Cuthbert’s Incorruptible Body”, The Paris Review #234 [2022.09.25]
György Dragomán (Ottilie Mulzet, translator), “The Puppet Theater”, The Paris Review #235 [2022.09.26]
Dantiel W. Moniz, “The Loss of Heaven”, The Paris Review #235 [2022.09.26]
Melissa Febos, “The Mirror Test”, The Paris Review #235 [2022.09.26]
Jack Livings, “River Crossing”, The Paris Review #235 [2022.09.29]
Anthony Veasna So, “Maly, Maly, Maly”, The Paris Review #236 [2022.09.30]
Mary Kuryla, “Hive”, The Paris Review #236 [2022.09.30]
John Jeremiah Sullivan, “Uhtceare”, The Paris Revew #236 [2022.09.30]

Things Feel Back To Normal, But Are They?

2022-09-182022-09-18 John Winkelman

Newly arrived reading material for the week of September 11, 2022

I don’t know if it is because of collective delusion, or that schools are back in session, or that the zeitgeist is one of collective acceptance/resignation, or simply that I have had a few good nights of sleep this month, but the overall vibe in my life is that things seem to be returning to normal, or at least normalizing around whatever *gestures around at everything* is. Which is to say, at least temporarily, I seem to have found my groove.

Three new books and book-ish things arrived at the house over the past week.

First up is the new issue of The Paris Review, which is likely the last issue I will receive as I continue to let all of my current subscriptions lapse.

Next up are two books from Two Lines Press. The first is Visible, an anthology of poetry and prose in translation, accompanied by some beautiful photographs and artwork. The second is Days Come and Go, written by Cameroon author Hemley Boum and translated from the French by Nchanji Njamnsi.

In reading news, I finished Shadows of Ivory by T L Greylook and Bryce O’Connor. It was good! I gave it 4 stars on the usual sites, though I though it more worthy of 3.5 stars, but when in the middle, always round up. Now I can hold my head up when next I encounter one of the authors and request a signature.

Following up that 400+ page doorstopper of a book, I started and finished the 130-page-long The Convent of the Pure by Sara M. Harvey. I received this a while back as part of my subscription to the catalog of Apex Book Company. It was a light but fun fantasy read. In fact, I finished it in a little over a day of reading, and then read the entirety of its sequel The Labyrinth of the Dead in a single day.

Now I am reading Abahn Sabana David, written by Marguerite Duras, and translated from the French by Kazim Ali. I received this book several years ago as part of my since-lapsed subscription to Open Letter Books. Though only a few pages in already it reminds me of Waiting for Godot, which makes sense as the cover blurb specifically calls out Samuel Beckett.

And my pile of unread issues of The Paris Review is down to the single digits, which means, unless things go sideways over the next two months, I will definitely finish the stack before the end of the year.

In writing news, I have started worldbuilding for two stories I wrote a while back, each of which will work better as full-length books. Each is in its own world and therefore I have two folders created and two sets of characters, histories, maps, names, descriptions, etc.

February Barely Scary

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Books from the week of February 13, 2021

First up is issue 7 of Tales from the Magician’s Skull, from a Kickstarter I backed this past October. It looks great, and I am eager to dive into it.

Next is Classic Monsters Unleashed, from a Kickstarter run by editor James Aquilone. This was another of the Kickstarters for which the reward was delayed by *gestures at everything*.

I like the coincidence of a magazine of classic sword-and-sorcery style stories arrived the same week as a collection of new stories about classic monsters. I appreciate the connection of the classic with the current, the exploration of how the old influences the new.

In reading news, I finished Jesus and John Wayne and it left me in a foul mood. The book itself is excellent, well researched and well written, but the subject matter – the white evangelists who are deliberately working to turn the United States into a militant christian patriarchal ethnostate – well, let’s just say I don’t agree with their works, message, or goals. I have a small review written up in my monthly reading list which will post on the first day of March.

To cleanse my palate, reading-wise, I picked up Per Aage Brandt‘s beautiful poetry collection If I Were a Suicide Bomber, translated from the Danish by Thom Satterlee and published by Open Letter Books. I originally acquired this book through my subscription to Open Letter Books, which I let lapse a couple of years ago because I had not read any of the books they had shipped me in well over a year. Now I am slowly working through my backlog of almost three dozen.

I finished If I Were a Suicide Bomber the same day I started it, as I had taken a sick day from work and a few hours is plenty of time for a leisurely read through a poetry collection. I loved it! The poems are sharp, insightful, and full of humor. Taken individually, there are some echoes of Charles Reznikoff‘s Testimony (though lighter), and taken as a whole I noted an occasional similarity to Notes From A Bottle Found on the Beach at Carmel by Evan S. Connell. Highly recommended.

Now I am reading The Same Night Awaits Us All by Hristo Karastoyanov, translated from the Bulgarian by Izidora Angel and also published by Open Letter Books. So far it is quite good, and would fit well on a shelf next to Andrei Bely‘s Petersburg,and perhaps a short distance from Umberto Eco‘s Foucault’s Pendulum, if only because they both involve small, quirky publishing houses.

In writing news, I didn’t accomplish much this past week due to the aforementioned sick day and the associated disruption to my schedule and routine. Perhaps next week will be a little more stable.

That’s it for now. Unless something extravagant happens in the next ten days, this may be the first month in a very long time where I read more books than I acquired. A few more decades of that and I might get to the point where have read every book I own.