June, 2022 Readings: "The month of June trembled like a butterfly..." (Pablo Neruda)

On pace to make my target of reading 100 books this year, so I'll start off June cocky, reading two fat novels, back to back.

Beginning with SON OF THE CENTURY, the first installment of Antonio Scurati's 4-volume fictional biography of Mussolini.

Still early stages, but impressed by the scale and breadth of what Scurati is building.

Came across an audiobook version of Labyrinths by Borges. Not the best production unfortunately. The texts, however, still fascinate and baffle me.

Currently reading The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen. Very interesting autobiography. She writes like a poet, very concisely and evocatively. The best moments are when she illustrates the kind of calculations women of her era and background had to make to survive. I find her a somewhat unreliable narrator, specially when talking about her own faults, but the writing itself is superior in quality.

I just realized I used the Neruda quote LAST June.

Shame on Cliff.

The House of Broken Angels – Luis Alberto Urrea
Digital audiobook performed by the author.
3.5****

A large Mexican-American family plans a get-together for the patriarch’s birthday. He’s dying of cancer and wants to gather everyone around him one more time. But as the big day approaches, Big Angel’s own mother dies (at nearly 100 years of age), so now there will be two celebrations in one weekend. One of the guests is Big Angel’s half-brother, known as Little Angel. As the weekend progresses, the brothers come to grips with how different their lives have been; while they shared a father, they did not share a life.

I have read two of Urrea’s novels previously, and am a fan of his writing. He peoples the work with a wide variety of characters – colorful, cautious, steadfast, reckless, proud, shy, angry, happy, broken or successful. He balances tender scenes against highly comic ones or anxiety-producing tragic occurrences.

I do wish I had had a family tree handy, however. Many of his characters go by more than one name, and the Mexican tradition of referring to every relative, no matter how distant, as “cousin” or “uncle” makes it even more challenging to keep the relationships straight.

I listened to the audio, which Urrea narrates himself. He is a wonderful performer of this work! But I think I will have to go back and read the text to fully immerse myself in this big, messy, loud, loving family.

>2 mejix:, I've read his Ficciones and loved that, will definitely pick up Labyrinths when I come across it.

Circe – Madeline Miller
Audiobook performed by Perdita Weeks
5*****

In this marvelous work of literary fiction, Miller, tells us the story of Circe, daughter of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, and possibly best known for turning Odysseus’s men into swine.

I studied the classics in high school so was familiar with the basic story line, and some of the family connections, but Miller gives me so much more detail and really fleshes out these characters. With the possible exception of Scylla, no one is all good or all evil. Whether mere mortals, or exalted gods, they succumb to jealousy, ambition, greed, lust, and pride. They exhibit compassion, tenderness, loyalty and love.

This is the stuff of myths, so there are fantastical elements. I kept wondering where Circe got all her stores of provisions – seemingly endless supplies of wine, cheese, fruit, bread, not to mention the many herbs she used for her potions. But I can suspend disbelief with the best of them, and gave myself up to Miller’s excellent and gripping story-telling.

Miller’s writing wove a spell that completely enthralled me. I was so beguiled that a part of me wished the novel itself were immortal, and that I could keep reading forever.

I listened to the audiobook, marvelously performed by Perdita Weeks. She has many characters to handle and she has the skill to do it well.

I was glad to have a copy of the text handy, as well, because it includes a cast of characters which explains the various relationships between gods, mortals and monsters.

>5 Cecrow: I think there is some overlap between the stories in Labyrinths and in Ficciones. If I'm not mistaken these are compilations made in different countries.

A quickie, Chuck Palahniuk's SURVIVOR.

Not entirely without its attractions, but I do believe the Palahniuk phase of my life is over. Loved FIGHT CLUB and CHOKE, but this one earns a mere "Meh".

Still plowing my way through SON OF THE CENTURY--huge hardcover, strains the forearms just to keep it upright.

GREAT book though...about 150 pages left.

Finished SON THE THE CENTURY and thought I needed a bit of an appetizer before I tackled another big book.

Had fun with Conrad Williams' ONE, a post-apocalyptic novel that, for once, doesn't feature a pandemic (it was published in 2009).

A cataclysm has wiped out most of the world's population and the people who remain struggle to survive in the ruins, unaware that there is something even more terrible to come.

A chiller, but not a stupid one. Very bleak too or, the way I look at it, refreshingly downbeat.

Good summer read.

Time for some poetry (reading more poetry was one of my resolutions this year).

Mary Oliver's WHY I WAKE EARLY is vintage Oliver, her poetic sensibilities as sharply attuned as ever.

"Song of the Builders" was my favorite poem--it is magnificent. See for yourself:

"Song of the Builders"

On a summer morning
I sat down
on a hillside
to think about God –

a worthy pastime.
Near me, I saw
a single cricket;
it was moving the grains of the hillside

this way and that way.
How great was its energy,
how humble its effort.
Let us hope


it will always be like this,
each of us going on
in our inexplicable ways
building the universe.

THE BLIZZARD, a novel by that madman of contemporary Russian literature, Vladimir Sorokin.

An idealistic and pompous doctor is attempting to reach an isolated village with a much needed serum. The village is being devastated by a mysterious virus that causes those afflicted to attack and bite each other.

At first, the novel appears to be very much like a Russian novel from the 19th century, but then it gradually veers into weirder and weirder territory.

Well worth the ride. Sorokin has a singular imagination.

INSPECTION by Josh Malerman.

A Ballardian yarn about 26 boys raised in isolated circumstances, a bizarre experiment concocted and carried out by a mysterious figure known only as "D.A.D."

A fun read, unusual, if not entirely original.

Recent Reading:

I finally finished The Eighth Life, all 960+ pages of it, and while I won't say it was a slog, the shit thrown at the Georgian family whose fortunes it describes was relentless and depressing. Yes, life in the USSR, especially the non-ethnic Russian states, was bad, but surely not everyone suffered as much brutality and misfortune as the family in the novel. The book was a birthday present and not the sort of thing I'd normally read.

Caught by Henry Green, on the other hand, was an absolute delight to read, despite its less than cheering topic. It's semi-autobiographical in as much as Green himself joined the London Auxiliary Fire Service at the outbreak of World War II, and Caught describes a year in the life of an upper class man in the AFS during the Blitz. Green had an amazing ear for voices, and was not afraid to experiment with his prose. One of the best writers the UK produced in the first half of last century.

From the sublime to the ridiculous - The Rats by James Herbert, the novel which began his career. I remember reading a couple of his books at school back in the 1970s, but not this one (or its two sequels). The title pretty much says it all - giant carnivorous rats invade London - but the writing is really crude, and if Herbert succeeded it was more because he was in the right place at the right time than because of anything in the novel itself.

One book that had been sitting on my TBR for a long time is Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy. Happily, it proved more readable than I'd expected, although the sections set in a 1970s New York sanatorium make for grim reading. I can see why the book is considered a feminist classic, but it has not aged especially well. Expect a longer piece on it on my Medium blog.

Samuel R Delany's Driftglass was a reread, although I think it was back in the mid 1980s I last read it. Several of the stories it contains - particularly the longer ones - I'd reread in the years since, but others I'd completely forgotten. Delany has always been a favourite writer, and his fiction has always been very much of its time. Driftglass contains some great stuff, and some that is pretty forgettable. Worth reading, though.

A trio of sf novels...

The Book of Dreams by Jack Vance is the final book of the Demon Princes quintet. I've enjoyed these, but they're very variable in quality and enjoyment. I like the villain of the second novel, The Killing Machine, the best, but the third novel, The Face, was easily the funniest. The Book of Dreams drags on a bit, and the villain's USP - he appears to have multiple personalities, built on fantasy figures he created as a child - is handled badly. The book has its moments, but it's one the weaker ones in the series.

I think I must have read Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert A Heinlein back in the late 1970s, and pretty much the only thing about it I remembered was that it was about slavery. Why US sf authors continue to create space opera universes in which slavery is a thing I find completely puzzling. It's not like they even comment on the institution, it's just background, world-building. Heinlein's novel at least comes down hard against slavery (despite the odd ambivalent comment), but the fact the villain of the piece is a single person, and not a system, is a little disappointing. It's also clear Heinlein knew fuck-all about Finland or Finns.

Finally, a favourite sf novel, John Varley's The Ophiuchi Hotline, which I have now read several times. And each time I find something new in it. I've always liked Varley's Eight Worlds, and if The Ophiuchi Hotline is a little rough around the edges, there's a lot of fun still to be had in travelling around the book's universe (well, Solar System). Expect a long piece on my Medium blog on this book.

Speaking of which, a recent review I posted on Medium:

Notes from the Burning Age, Claire North: https://medium.com/p/notes-from-the-burning-age-claire-north-290987011948

>12 CliffBurns: This almost sounds like a mash-up of the story of Balto (trying to get medicine to an isolated village) and the movie 28 Days of Night (mysterious virus that causes the infected to bite each other)! Sounds interesting.

>15 SarahK0801: There are some new translations from Sorokin--apparently his older novels didn't fare as well with English translators--but I found THE BLIZZARD quite fascinating.

I'll definitely be searching out more of his work.

I will check out that Sorokin for sure. Anyhone else read the Ice Trilogy?

Should finally finish today a book about evolutionary biology of human fat, 'fat' being specifically adipose tissue rather than obesity. Not a subject I'd ever been interested in but it was knocked down from £80 (academic book prices ugh) to a few pounds & I'm always curious about subjects I know nothing about.

Could ye please let me know whether your profile page has changed, please? Format of mine completely different now in what looks like a design change but that, given how many glitches there have been over the years peculiar to my own page, mightn't be. Thanks.

>17 bluepiano: Profile changes:
https://www.librarything.com/topic/342464#n7867453

Thank you very much. Had been especially bothered because I've been in correspondence w/one member for years & feared that was over & done with till I found a post on the thread mentioning how to access messages. (In 'activity area'.'Activity area' indeed. The link is at top of page, not in a flipping sandbox. Gad, I love being old enought to harumph! plausibly.)

I've spent quite a large chunk of June reading Alex Ross' Wagnerism; art and politics in the shadow of music, which (amongst other things) undermines a lot of peoples' beliefs as to the role of Wagner in Nazi ideology and propaganda. Who knew that Wagner gets used more in Hollywood films of the 1940s and 50s than he ever was in the output of Ufa? My review here: https://deepwatersreading.wordpress.com/2022/06/25/wagnerism-art-and-politics-in...

Reading a Pierre Berton I missed, The Promised Land, about the settling of Canada's prairie provinces. It's a strange relief to know that politics was even more messed up in those days than now. I guess not everything gets worse!

>20 RobertDay: Thumb's up, Robert, couldn't help leaving a comment.

>21 Cecrow: Wow, haven't read Berton in ages. That's one I might poke into in the not so distant future (being a lifelong prairie boy).

Finished THIS THING DON'T LEAD TO HEAVEN, an early Harry Crews novel (biz-arre!) and Anne Sexton's poetic retellings of the Brothers Grimm stories, TRANSFORMATIONS.

Both were dazzling and perplexing for entirely different reasons.

Paged my way through the ORSON WELLES PORTFOLIO this afternoon, a great way to enjoy a lovely day on the back deck.

Really gorgeous book, superb production values. Everything from doodles and caricatures to set and costume designs to fully executed oil paintings.

Originally carried a hefty price tag but I picked it up fairly cheap (thanks to Bookfinder.com).

I admit it, I'm a Welles nut.

Last book of the month, HERE, by Wislawa Symborska, Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet.

Beautiful poetry, deceptively simple. Memory claims more and more of an aging mind, the past encroaching as the future dwindles.

Honest, spare, insightful.