Stuff I've Been Reading December 2021

So, another month and another year has passed -- welcome to 2022! --and I feel pretty good about my reading progress. I finished the year having read more than 100 books and I think that December had a lot of good ones. Scroll down to see a few thoughts.

Books Purchased December 2021

1. No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood. (audible audiobook). 7 December.
2. Tenth of December by George Saunders. (kindle). 10 December.
3. Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood. (audible audiobook). 12 December.
4. Red Comet: The short life and blazing art of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark. (kindle and audible audiobook). 12 December.
5. A Woman in Berlin: Eight weeks in the conquered city: a diary by Anonymous. (kindle and audible audiobook). 19 December.
6. Hitler by Ian Kershaw .(audible audiobook). 19 December.
7. Leningrad by Anna Reid. (audible audiobook). 19 December.
8. The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2021 by Ed Young. (kindle). 24 December.
9. The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells (6 books). (kindle). 24 December.
10. Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. (audible audiobook). 26 December.

Books Read December 2021

Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich. (kindle and overdrive audiobook). 368 pgs. 2 December.

I would not say that I disliked this book, but I liked The Sentence much more.

The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois by Honoree Fannone Jeffers. (library hardcover and overdrive audiobook). 816 pgs. 1184 running pgs. 7 December.

One of the best books of the month, and of the year. At least in my opinion. I wrote a few thoughts about this earlier on this blog.

No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood. (kindle and audible audiobook). 224 pgs. 1408 running pgs. 9 December.

This is perhaps THE Internet novel. At least the text-based internet; Lockwood does not really have anything to say about podcasts or image based things like Snapchat. Absurd and entertaining.

Tenth of December by George Saunders. (kindle and overdrive audiobook).  251 pgs. 1659 running pgs.12 December.

If you want realistic fiction, then this is probably not the book for you. But if you enjoy experimental stories, then I recommend this book.

Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood. (kindle and auidble audiobook). 336 pgs. 1995 running pgs. 16 December.

This book is a good companion to No One Is Talking About This. Priestdaddy is a more straightforward memoir about Lockwood's relationship to her father. But her father is, shall we say, a one-of-a-kind character.

Red Comet: The short life and blazing art of Sylvia Plath. (kindle and audible audiobook). 1152 pgs. 3147 running pgs. 26 December.

I will admit that this book could have been shorter -- did we really need to know the detailed history of Plath's grandfather in order to understand her poetry? But the book is a serious argument for why Plath is a major English language poet. I think you people interested in poetry or feminism would find it fascinating to see what the material life of a young writer was like sixty years ago.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. (kindle and audible audiobook). 354 pgs. 3501 running pgs. 28 December.

I have also been watching the HBO series. The two are both good, but they are not the same. Be aware that this novel is a post pandemic post apocalyptic story.

All Systems Red (murderbot diaries volume 1) by Martha Wells. (kindle). 155 pgs. 3656 running pgs. 

The story of an android programmed to be able to kill. And yet the android would really rather be binge watching his favorite tv show. I feel like you either find this short novel entertaining or you lose interest quickly. I liked it.