Stuff I've Been Reading January 2022

 

I read nine books and over three thousand pages in January, so I'm feeling pretty good about my reading for January of 2002. I do like to log things I read in a journal I keep -- BOB or Book of Books, on goodreads, and here. But I do not think I am obsessive and I have not made reading a competition as this article in New York magazine warned about. I will share a few thoughts about my reading below each book.

Books Purchased January 2022

Hell of a Book by Jason Mott. (kindle). 6 January.

Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars by Joyce Carol Oates. (kindle and audible audiobook). 10 January.

Them by Joyce Carol Oates. (kindle). 10 January.

New Kid by Jerry Craft. (ComiXology ebook). 25 January.

Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson. (kindle). 28 January.

 

Books Read January 2022

 

Razorblade Tears by S E Crosby. (kindle and overdrive audiobook). 336 pgs. 3 January.

This was a fun thriller. I think Roxanne Gay's short review summed it up well:

 

Stayed up all night because I couldn’t put this book down. Action packed, a fine hard edge of a story about two very flawed fathers seeking justice for their murdered sons. Really well written and absorbing. I would have liked to see more attention paid to the women characters who were not well fleshed out. And there were parts that were overly didactic about accepting (or not) LGBTQIA people. But this is an explosive thrill ride. You will love this novel.

 

Artificial Condition: The murderbot diaries by Martha Wells. (Kindle). 149 pigs. 485 running pigs. 4 January.

The second short book in the Murderbot Diaries series. If you like action-based science fiction with some humor this book is worth reading. Light but fun.

 

Death Is a Lonely Business by Ray Bradbury. (Kindle and audible audiobook). 240 pgs. 725 running pgs. 6 January.

A Ray Bradbury novel first published in 1985. Sort of a hard-boiled mystery with a certain amount of nostalgia for how California's Venice Beach and the movie industry changed from the 1920s moving forward. If you have only read Farenheit 451 you will find this book different.

 

Hell of a Book by Jason Mott. (Kindle and audible audiobook). 323 pgs. 1048 running pgs. 9 January.

Winner of the National Book Award. An experimental metafictional novel that also foregrounds the issue of police killings of black men. Also there's some invisibility involved. Inventive and fun. 

Night. Death. Sleep. The Stars by Joyce Carol Oates. (Kindle and audible audiobook). 800 pgs. 1848 running pgs. 19 January.

If you want a happy book, Oates is probably not the writer for you. It starts as a book about police violence toward a black man, but is really a book about about one family and how the wife and adult children are changed after the patriarch dies of a stroke. Claims have been made, including in this 2020 New Yorker article, that Oates is America's best living writer. She certainly has published a lot. In addition to her many many published books, Oates has an active twitter account which seems to be a mixture of cat and nature pictures, books and literary topics, and complaints about the former guy.

 

The Power of the Dog by Don Winslow. (kindle and overdrive audiobook). 542 pgs. 2390 running pgs. 22 January.

A longer (500+ pages) about the war on drugs from the 1970s through the Reagan administration and beyond. I liked it, but it can be distressing to think about the terrible consequences of the tremendous amounts of heroin and cocaine that Americans buy and use.

 

Not All Robots#1 by Mark Russell. (ComiXology ebook). 25 pgs. 2415 running pgs. 29 January. 

Recommended by Rand Bellavia. A comic book about a dystopian future and robots and the Me Too phenomenon, sort of.

Them by Joyce Carol Oates. (Kindle). 576 pgs. 2991 running pgs. 30 January.

A family story about a poor white family in Detroit in the 1950s and 1960s and their connection to the riots of 1967 in the city. I will confess to having a hard time following everything in this book. But, then again, I try not to be worried if I do not understand everything in a long book.

 

Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson. (Kindle). 192 pgs. 3183 running pgs. 31 January.

I started reading mouth to mouth after hearing an interview with the author on the kcrw program bookworm.

There are two things I like this be about this book.

First, the book is composed of 65 short chapters with just 192 pages of text. I like novels with short chapters. They make it easy to stay focused. If I am cooking doing something else while reading it'S easy to finish a chapter and then go back to the task. Plus, short chapters give one a feeling of accomplishment — hey, I just finished another chapter!

Second, I have enjoyed learning about the business side of art galleries and the art world.

However, somewhere between the halfway and three quarter point of the book I began to find it tedious.