Tag: reading

April in All Its Beauty

John Winkelman

Books for the week of April 11, 2021

A year ago this week I began a project which kept me working second and third shift for three months, then a long and late first shift for a couple more. This year I am on a stable project which, other than the fact that I am working from home instead of in an office, is not particularly disruptive. Which is to say, not more disruptive than having a job in the first place.

Only one new book arrived here at the Library of Winkelman Abbey last week – E. Catherine Tobler’s The Kraken Sea, from Apex Book Company.

In reading news, I finished Maurizio Lazzarato’s The Making of the Indebted Man (published by Semiotext(e)), and it left me feeling all kinds of grumpy.

No, not grumpy. Another word, begins with “g”.

GUILLOTINEY!

Yes. That’s the word.

With all of the leftist and left-ish books I have read over the past few years I can feel the strain and stress from the day to day experience of living in a society currently dominated by forces which could be delicately called “reactionary”. But that is the subject for another post or fifty.

I am working my way through Living at the Movies, a collection of Jim Carroll’s early poems. Carroll wrote these poems in his early twenties, and they are good enough for what they are, but as a 51 year old here in the 2020s, I don’t feel as much connection to them as I might have back when I was in my early twenties, thirty years ago.

After finishing Lazzarato’s book I started reading Rediscovering Earth, a collection of interviews with environmentalist and writers about the possible futures of nature and the environment. I picked this one up from OR Books a couple of months ago. It is much more hopeful and inspiring, if not less rage inducing, than the Lazzarato.

In writing news I am maintaining my pace of a poem a day for the duration of National Poetry Month. NaPoWriMo is also happening this month, which is appropriate, though I am not really participating as so many others are, in that I am not posting my poems in public.

Perhaps next year. If NaPoWriMo happens next year.

If there is a next year.

It’s Warm, It’s Cold, It’s Warm, It’s Cold

John Winkelman

We are now well into April, and the normally turbulent weather of this time of year is being exacerbated by a healthy dose of global warming which makes the highs and lows more frequent and more extreme. At present we have no expectation that this trend will reverse itself in the lifetime of any human currently living. Come to that, we have no expectation for things to change in the lifetime of any animal at all currently living, with the possible exception of extremophile critters somewhere around a deep-sea thermal vent in the Pacific Ocean.

No new reading material arrived at the Library of Winkelman Abbey this week. I expect the rest of April will be slow for the acquisitions department.

In reading news, I just finished Ibram X. Kendi‘s How to Be an Antiracist, and it blew my mind open in ways I did not expect. It wasn’t the subject, which was was very much in line with The New Jim Crow, Caste and Carceral Capitalism. Rather, it was the way Kendi drew the distinction between “not-” and “anti-“. For me (straight, white, middle-aged dude), this made me extremely uncomfortable in a positive way, as it pointed out a large blind spot in my interactions with the world. It’s not enough to simply not contribute to the problem. One must actively work to fix the problem, or by virtue of the inertia of the zeitgeist of the world, the problem persists. Any way of living that is not explicitly anti- is implicitly pro-. In matters of oppression and equity, there is no middle ground.

As April is National Poetry Month, I have been working my way through my back issues of Poetry Magazine, instead of the (surprisingly small) number of my poetry books which I have not read. The variety of poetry in Poetry is keeping my mind in the writing space, and I have managed to write a poem a day so far for every day of the month. I won’t copy them out of my journal or type them up until May, most likely, and then we will see if I have managed to put any of the many words I know together in some kind of meaningful order.

Here in the third week of Spring the world is turning green and some of the nights are warm enough to keep the windows open. The fresh air and smell of earth and grass and rain, and the soft sounds of the city at night make for a more restful sleep than I have know in months, and though I am not getting any more sleep than at any point in the past year, it is of better quality and therefore when I wake up I don’t resent being out of bed.

It’s Like, Warm Out

John Winkelman

It’s been a beautiful week here in Grand Rapids, in the last full week of March 2021. The tai chi and kung fu classes are back at Wilcox Park, weather permitting. After almost four months of indoor classes conducted through Zoom, the outdoors seems huge. I went for a long walk at Blandford Nature Center after class, and I was one of maybe five people in this huge park. For most of the two hours I was there I didn’t see another soul, and though the park is surrounded by neighborhoods, for the most part I didn’t hear anyone either. It was a disorienting experience. I felt something which I wouldn’t call agoraphobia, but it was something on that spectrum. A sense of vast horizons, after a year of being inside my house, and much of that time in my office, staring at a computer screen. It was disorienting having the nearest object farther than ten feet away from my eyes.

A decent pile of books arrived here at the Library of Winkelman Abbey in the past week. Two are from subscriptions, and the last three are from a recent order I placed at the best bookstore in Grand Rapids, Books & Mortar.

On the left is the latest issue of the ever-excellent Rain Taxi Review of Books.

Second from left is Nancy by Bruno Lloret, the latest release from Two Lines Press.

In the center is Alix E. Harrow’s The Ten Thousand Doors of January, which I have been meaning to read for, oh, at least a year.

Second from the right is The Reactionary Mind by Corey Robin, which I learned about from Cory Doctorow‘s blog Pluralistic, in which he discussed this book in the same paragraph in which he invoked Frank Wilhoit’s description of conservatism (“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”).

On the right is Automating Inequality by Virginia Eubanks, which I suspect will have a lot to say which heavily echoes the Wilhoit quote. This is, after all, America.

In reading news, I am about three quarters of the way through Gideon the Ninth and loving every page of it. I will probably finish Monday or Tuesday.

In writing news, lots of journaling but not much else. So it goes.

Next Friday I get my first COVID shot. Then I will enter the liminal space between it and the second shot three weeks later. There is no telling what the world will look like on the other side of that experience.

Suddenly Spring

John Winkelman

And what a Spring it is so far, with temperatures in the 60s and sunny and beautiful. The tai chi and kung fu classes have moved back outdoors, and there we will remain, weather permitting, until the snow flies again in November or December. Almost eight months of outdoor classes is pretty good for Michigan.

The new issue of Pulphouse Magazine was the only reading material to arrive in the past week at the Library of Winkelman Abbey. This has made my life a little easier, as I am in the midst of organizing all of my bookshelves, recycling many years of old literary journals, and making one of my bookcases the exclusive home of the many books I own which have been inscribed to me by their authors. The goal, of course, is to outgrow that shelf once the world is in a state where readings and book signings and conventions can happen again. So maybe 2022 or 2023.

In reading news, I am still working my way through the backlog of books in translation. Currently in front of me is Juan José Saer’s The One Before, translated by Roanne L. Kantor, and published by Open Letter Books. After this month I am going to broaden my reading habits a little, and rather than five or six works in translation a month, only attempt two or three, which will leave room for more of the nonfiction, poetry and genre fiction which is also slowly but steadily piling up.

In writing news, as always, there is no writing news. Perhaps next week.

Happy Spring, eveyone!

The Last Full Week of Winter

John Winkelman

And what a week this past week was. Due to family emergencies, trips to the vet, favors for friends, and the necessities of a new project, I have had almost no time at all to read, write, relax, sleep, or clear my head. My only quiet time was the drive to Jackson from Grand Rapids, in which a visit was cancelled at the last minute, and so I drove a total of over four hours in order to deliver a sandwich.

At this point, after the last twelve months – and tomorrow it will be exactly twelve months since the quarantine really took hold for me – I can’t even get angry about this kind of thing any more. But it is frustrating to see the days grow longer and the weather grow warmer and not be able to enjoy it as I have in years past.

Two bound collections of words arrived at the Library of Winkelman Abbey this week. On the left is Elemental, a collection of stories in translation from Two Lines Press. This is the third anthology published under their wonderful Calico series, which is one of the reasons I am continuing my subscription to their catalog.

On the right is the March 2021 issue of Poetry Magazine. One day I will sit down and read all of the back issues which I have collected over the years, which are regrettably collecting dust on my shelf.

In reading news, things have been going slow though I did finish Deepak Unnikrishnan‘s weird and wonderful Temporary People (Restless Books), and am now about two-thirds through Arno Geiger‘s beautiful The Old King In His Exile (And Other Stories, translated by Stefan Tobler). Geiger’s book is his memoir of taking care of his father, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s, which is a thing which has struck down a few in my immediate and extended family, so it is a…well, I wouldn’t call it a comfort read, exactly, but it is supportive.

In writing news, there is no writing new, other than some journaling. Maybe next week.

So it goes.

 

February 2021 Reading List

John Winkelman

I have finally done it.

After about 25 years of trying and failing, I have finally completed reading all 364,000+ words of The Brothers Karamazov. It was magnificent, and difficult, and dense and occasionally fragmented, and absolutely worth the time and effort I put into the seven weeks it took to read the book from the beginning to the end.

With Dostoevsky out of the way for the moment, I turned my attention to the embarrassingly large stack of books in translation I have collected over the past half-dozen years, but not read. Items 7 through 12 on the book list below are the results of that first pass. These shorter, non-Dostoevsky books just seem to fly by.

Because I have been reading so many books, my short fiction reading has sort of fallen by the wayside. Still, a dozen or so in a month is pretty good.

Books

  1. Wilkerson, Isabel, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (2021.02.03)
  2. Dostoevsky, Fyodor (Pevear, Richard and Volokhonsky, Larissa, translators), The Brothers Karamazov (2021.02.12)
  3. Giorno, John, Great Demon Kings (2021.02.15)
  4. Berti, Eduardo (Coombe, Charlotte, translator), The Imagined Land (2021.02.16)
  5. Tenev, Georgi (Rodel, Angela, translator), Party Headquarters (2021.02.17)
  6. Masatsugu Ono (Turvill, Angus, translator), Lion Cross Point (2021.02.18)
  7. Baltasar, Eva (Sanches, Julia, translator), Permafrost (2021.02.22)
  8. Yoss (Frye, David, translator), Super Extra Grande (2021.02.23)
  9. Bae Suah (Smith, Deborah, translator), A Greater Music (2021.02.24)

Short Prose

  1. Buckell, Tobias S., “The Bars at the End of the World”, Patreon (2021.02.01)
  2. Goder, Beth, “History in Pieces“, Clarkesworld #173 (2021.02.02)
  3. Laban, Monique, “The Failed Dianas“, Clarkesworld #173 (2021.02.02)
  4. Bookreyeva, Anastasia (Nayler, Ray, translator), “Terra Rasa“, Clarkesworld #173 (2021.02.02)
  5. Ulmer, James, “Gardenia”, Coffin Bell #4.1 (2021.02.03)
  6. Rodgers, Craig, “Return Policy”, Coffin Bell #4.1 (2021.02.03)
  7. Bernardo, Troy, “Smoky”, Coffin Bell #4.1 (2021.03.02)
  8. Woolf, James, “Mackenzie’s Leap”, Coffin Bell #4.1 (2021.03.02)
  9. Punzo, Andrew, “Hair and Nail and Blood and Bone (You’re Beautiful)”, Coffin Bell #4.1 (2021.02.03)
  10. Rusch, Kristine Kathryn, “The Last Surviving Gondola Widow“, Clarkesworld #101 (2021.02.14)
  11. Clare, Gwendolyn, “Indelible“, Clarkesworld #101 (2021.02.20)
  12. Robson, Kelly, “The Three Resurrections of Jessica Churchill“, Clarkesworld #101 (2021.02.24)

Not Quite Normal, But Close

John Winkelman

February was unexpectedly chaotic, though the ups and downs seem to be tending upward, in part due to a steadily increasing outdoor temperature and amount of sunlight. The lack of a card-carrying white supremacist in the white house also helps.

Three books arrived this past week. On the left is Neeli Cherkovski‘s biography of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, released in 1979, when Ferlinghetti was 60 (!). I picked this up from Third Mind Books in Ann Arbor, which is an excellent resource for anyone interested in the Beats, as well as the Modernist, New York School and Black Mountain poets.

Ferlinghetti died this past Monday, at the age of 101. When I get get my head sorted out about this I will post an article or two.

Next is Anders Dunkers’ Rediscovering Earth: Ten Dialogues on the Future of Nature, (OR Books) a collections of conversations with writers and thinkers discussing what may be and what will be the state of nature and our place in it, going forward from here.

On the right is Cuba in Splinters, a collection of short fiction in translation from Cuba. This was an impulse buy from OR Books, which I picked up when I ordered Rediscovering Earth. My attention was probably primed because I was in the middle of reading Super Extra Grande by Cuban science fiction writer Yoss.

I spent the last week reading books in translation, and completed three more of my backlog of such books – Permafrost by Eva Baltasar (And Other Stories), Super Extra Grande by Yoss (Restless Books), and A Greater Music by Bae Suah (Open Letter Books). Now for a change of pace I am reading Starship’s Mage by Glynn Stewart, which I picked up last year at ConFusion. I’m less than 100 pages in, and really liking it so far.

In writing news, I am working on edits to a short story I wrote for a call for submissions for the Grimm, Grit and Gasoline anthology published by World Weaver Press. The story was not accepted, obviously, but I think it has promise.

This past Friday I had the great good fortune to spend some time talking the story over with Jason Sizemore of Apex Book Company. The opportunity was made available to supporters of the Apex Patreon, which I am and have been for a couple of years now. I met Jason at ConFusion back in (I think) 2016, where we spent a few minutes discussing the ins and outs and ups and downs of the publishing business. Obviously Apex is doing much better than Caffeinated Press ever did, but there were many similarities in the experiences of running our respective independent publishers.

The increased reading and the access to a professional editor have me feeling reinvigorated, and warmth and sunlight are always energizing. It’s time to get writing.

A Break in the Flow

John Winkelman

This past week was one of those rare stretches of time where no new reading material arrived at the Library of Winkelman Abbey. That’s fine. I have more than enough unread books and magazines laying around to last me a decade.

Now that I have finally made it to the end of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov and Giorno’s Great Demon Kings, I have turned my attention to shorter books, which is easy, because I can count on my fingers the books I own which are longer than The Brothers Karamazov.

For the past five years or more I have had subscriptions to the catalogs of various publishers of books in translation, which means for the past five years or more I have accumulated these books much faster than I have read them, and at this point I have well over a hundred works from Open Letter Books, Deep Vellum, Restless Books, And Other Stories, Two Lines Press, and Ugly Duckling Presse awaiting my attention.

In the past couple of years, as my lifestyle and available spending money have fluctuated, I have allowed my subscriptions to all but And Other Stories and Two Lines Press (and possibly Restless Books – it’s difficult to tell sometimes here in the Covid Years) to lapse. So now I have these shelves full of books sitting around unread as I slowly accumulate books from other places, and now I find that I need to archive some of the books on the shelves. As I only archive books I have completed, now is a good time to work through the backlog of these translated books.

In the past week I have finished three books – The Imagined Land by Eduardo Berti (Deep Vellum), Party Headquarters by Georgi Tenev (Open Letter Books), and Lion Cross Point by Masatsugu Ono (Two Lines Press). I am currently reading Permafrost by Eva Baltasar (And Other Stories), and hope to get in one more book before the end of the month. This is easy when the books are only 100 to 130 pages long, and at most 50,000 words, making most of them novellas or very short novels. For contrast, The Brothers Karamazov is approximately 364,000 words.

In writing news, I haven’t written anything new in the past week beyond some journaling, but I am beginning a round of edits for a couple of short stories which I hope to have in shape for submission by the beginning of May.

On the whole, the world is not necessarily a better place than it was a month ago, but some of the worst parts of it are gone, and sometimes a lack of bad things can be as energizing as the presence of good things. Selah.

Thick Books for Cold Nights

John Winkelman

Last week felt like the first normal week of 2021. I had no family drama or cat drama, though we had Pepper fixed and after a day of withdrawal from the Ketamine which is used in cat sedative, she was back to being her usual sweet self, although with a bare belly and a shaved foreleg (for the i.v.) which makes her look like she is wearing an UGG boot.

It was a pretty good week for reading material here at the Library of Winkelman Abbey. Four new founts of information and entertainment arrived during the first genuinely wintry cold and snowy week of the season.

On the left (ha!) is the latest issue of Jacobin, a magazine which has only increased in importance since America’s slide into being a corporate fascist state was slowed slightly by the election of Joe Biden.

Second from left is the latest issue of Poetry, a magazine which has always been important, as poetry has always been important, as the inaugural poem, “The Hill We Climb” by Amanda Gorman, clearly demonstrates.

Third is The Cybernetic Hypothesis, a text by contributors to the leftist journal Tiqqun, from Semiotext(e), a publisher (and group) known for writing material which caused noted coward and fascist bootlick Glenn Beck to wet himself in terror at their mere mention.

On the right is Son of a Liche by J. Zachary Pike, which is the sequel to the wonderful Orconomics. This one is self-published, as was the first which won the Self Publishing Fantasy Blog-Off in 2018.

In reading news, I finished Isabel Wilkerson‘s Caste: The Origins of our Discontents and it left me with much the same feeling as Matthew Desmond‘s Evicted, Sheldon Wolin‘s Democracy, Incorporated, and most certainly Michelle Alexander‘s The New Jim Crow. Which is to say, again, that feudalism was never overcome, it was only rebranded.

I am approaching halfway through The Brothers Karamazov and maintaining a comfortable pace to complete this behemoth of a book before the first day of spring.

Now that I am done with Caste, I started (the late) John Giorno‘s memoir Great Demon Kings, which is a fantastic window into the art, poetry and nascent media scene in New York starting in the mid 1950s. I am a little over a third of the way into the book and enjoying the hell out of it. One note: the subtitle is “A Memoir of Poetry, Sex, Art, Death, and Enlightenment”, and the sex is front and center, and very graphic.

In writing news, my mind finally feels clear and I am ready to begin. I just need to come up with some ideas.

January 2021 Reading List

John Winkelman

In January 2021 I completed three books and 21 short stories. Not bad for such a chaotic month. I had hoped to average a short story a day, but life and world events intervened and significantly cut short my quiet time. Perhaps February will be better.

In the short stories, Coffin Bell is the online journal which recently published my short story “Occupied Space.” I recommend them highly.

Books (3)

  1. Tidhar, Lavie (ed.) – The Apex Book of World SF, vol. 1 (2021.01.05)
  2. Robinson, Kim Stanley – The Ministry for the Future (2021.01.11)
  3. Wolin, Sheldon – Democracy, Incorporated (2021.01.25)

Short Prose (21)

  1. Tobias Buckell, “The Inheritance”, Patreon (2021.01.01)
  2. Kaaron Warren, “Ghost Jail”, The Apex Book of World SF, vol.1 (2021.01.01)
  3. Yang Ping, “Wizard World”, The Apex Book of World SF, vol. 1 (2021.01.02)
  4. Alfar, Dean Francis, “The Kite of Stars”, The Apex Book of World SF, vol. 1 (2021.01.02)
  5. Yaniv, Nir, “Cinderers”, The Apex Book of World SF, vol. 1 (2021.01.02)
  6. Nasir, Jamil, “The Allah Stairs”, The Apex Book of World SF, vol. 1 (2021.01.03)
  7. Halim, Tunku, “Biggest Baddest Bomoh”, The Apex Book of World SF, vol. 1 (2021.01.03)
  8. de Bodard, Aliette, “The Lost Xuyan Bride”, The Apex Book of World SF, vol. 1 (2021.01.03)
  9. Mandigma, Kristin, “Excerpt from a Letter by a Socialist-Realist Aswang”, The Apex Book of World SF, vol. 1 (2021.01.04)
  10. Glines, Larry, “Old Bones”, Coffin Bell #4.1 (2021.01.04)
  11. Žiljak, Aleksandar – “An Evening in the City Coffeehouse, With Lydia on my Mind”, The Apex Book of World SF, vol. 1 (2021.01.04)
  12. Menon, Anil, “Into the Night”, The Apex Book of World SF, vol. 1 (2021.01.04)
  13. Fazi, Mélanie, “Elegy”, The Apex Book of World SF, vol. 1 (2021.01.05)
  14. Živković, Zoran, “Compartments”, The Apex Book of World SF, vol. 1 (2021.01.05)
  15. Wolfe, Viktor, “The Tower”, Coffin Bell #4.1 (2021.01.05)
  16. Tucker, Neal, “My Alexandria”, Coffin Bell #4.1 (2021.01.26)
  17. Fellinger, Noah, “The Desolation Hour”, Coffin Bell #4.1 (2021.01.26)
  18. Cap, M.K., “The Museum of Doubt”, Coffin Bell #4.1 (2021.01.26)
  19. Harper, Elliot, “A Tale From the Terraced Ocean”, Coffin Bell #4.1 (2021.01.26)
  20. Kepfer, Joshua, “The Wolf and the Sheep”, Coffin Bell #4.1 (2021.01.26)
  21. Sanford, Jason, “The Eight Thousanders”, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Sept/Oct 2020 (2020.01.31)