Category Archives: 01. 2023 Reading Journal

NF November Week 3: Book Pairings

Pairing fiction + non-fiction is something that I really enjoy. It’s quite serendipitous and usually starts when I read a fiction book and it piques my interest in a specific subject. In a sense it’s an analog variation on the internet rabbit hole.

I also like to pair author-specific fiction projects with biographies or other critical materials. So, for example, I’ve not only read all of Austen’s novels, I’ve also read a couple of biographies about her, and some non-fiction focusing on the regency era.

This week, I’m going to give some suggestions for pairings that I’ve found really enjoyable! I hope that something sparks your interest!

NF Topics I love: the bibliomemoir, books about books, and other bookishness

Are there readers who don’t love books about books and other people’s experience reading them? Maybe – I don’t know. For me, though, this is major comfort reading. I don’t think I’ve ever read one I didn’t at least find tolerable, and I’ve read a few that I return to again and again. Here’s a collage of covers.

I am always looking for new books on this general topic, so if you know of any good ones, let me know below!

NF Topics I love: injustice, poverty and America

It’s not exactly correct to say that I “love” this topic. It’s really more accurate to say that I feel compelled to look my own country, culture and systems directly in the eye, and acknowledge where they (we) fall short. And they (we) fall short. A lot.

One of the ways that I do this is through non-fiction. Earlier this year I posted about three books that fit into this general topic, which you can find here (the books are Glass Houses by Brian Alexander, Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond & The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters upon Your Shore by Jared Yates Sexton). I’m not going to revisit them here, except to say that they were all worth reading, but Poverty, by America was the stand-out that I think everyone should read.

I’ve picked eight other books to highlight here, as well:

Race in America, I think that Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration is absolutely indispensable. It’s long, but it’s also incredibly readable, heartbreaking and unforgettable.
Housing unaffordability and the housing crisis, Nomadland by Jessica Bruder and Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond both address the issue, although from different perspectives.
America’s overdose crisis: I haven’t read Dopesick by Beth Macy, although I intend to, but I have read both Dreamland: the True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic and The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth by Sam Quinones and thought both were worth reading.
Politics and democracy: The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America by George Packer, and, as a bonus, The View from Flyover Country: Essays by Sarah Kendzior
Income Inequality: Squeezed by Alissa Quart

In addition, my TBR on these topics is quite long – here are a few recent additions. These are books that I haven’t read, so I can’t really recommend them. If you have read them, let me know your thoughts!

Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism by Anne Case & Angus Deaton
Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream by Alissa Quart
How the Other Half Eats: The Untold Story of Food and Inequality in America by Priya Fielding-Singh
Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health by Marion Nestle
America, the Farewell Tour by Chris Hedges
American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers and the Making of America by Jon Meacham

A Horse at Night by Amina Cain

A Horse at Night
by Amina Cain
Rating: ★★★★½
Publication Date: January 1, 2022
Genre: essays
Pages: 136
ReRead?: No

A virtuosic meditation on literature and life in the tradition of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own and William H. Gass’s On Being Blue.

“Without planning it, I wrote a diary of sorts. Lightly. A diary of fiction. Or is that not what this is?”

A series of essayistic inquiries come together to form a sustained meditation on writers and their works, on the spaces of reading and writing fiction, and how these spaces take shape inside a life. Driven by primary questions of authenticity and freedom in the shadow of ecological and social collapse, A Horse at Night: On Writing moves associatively through a personal canon of authors—including Marguerite Duras, Elena Ferrante, Renee Gladman, and Virginia Woolf—and topics as timely and various as female friendships, zazen meditation, neighborhood coyotes, landscape painting, book titles, and the politics of excess. Amina Cain’s first nonfiction book is an individual reckoning with the contemporary moment and a quietly brilliant contribution to the lineage of Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own or William H. Gass’s On Being Blue, books that are virtuosic arguments for—and beautiful demonstrations of—the essential unity of writing and life.

I checked this out from my library because was mentioned on one of my favorite Podcasts – The Mookse and the Gripes – by one of the hosts. I had never heard of the author, but when I did a search of the digital collection for NYRB classics, this one popped up.

What a lovely little book. I love books about books and reading, and this one really hit those notes for me. Cain talks about several books that have been really meaningful to her, in what feels like a very off-the-cuff, free ranging way. Some of the books I haven’t read; some of them, I have. She’s a fan of Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend – that’s one I haven’t read – but she also talks about Lolly Willowes, which I have read.

The book is much broader than just reminiscing and analyzing books that she has read, though. She also talks about her own writing, and other more general topics.

Here are a few quotes that I found worthy of highlighting:

To be in favor of solitude is not to be against community or friendship or love. It’s not that being alone is better, just that without the experience of it we block ourselves from discovering something enormously beneficial, perhaps even vital, to selfhood. Who are you when you are not a friend, a partner, a lover, a sibling, a parent, a child?

IN THE LAST YEAR I’VE BECOME fixated on the idea of authenticity. This is partly because I feel at times I have lost sight of my authentic self, and I want more than anything to come close to it again, or at least to feel close to it. For me, authenticity means that how I act and what I say and how I actually feel around others is aligned, that I am connected to myself and to another person at the same time. I want my writing to be authentic too, for every sentence to reach toward honesty and meaning.

There is also the issue of interference, distraction. What part of the self browses the Internet? What is that self trying to get to? I admit that I look online a lot when I am writing. I check my email, look at Twitter or Instagram, and then I look at clothes. I don’t know if my writing has suffered because of this, is simply different than it would have been without these interruptions, or if my writing is able to come through no matter what.

If any of that appeals to you, this slender memoir/essay/meditation might be something you would enjoy!

A Longlist of Books for NF November

I have been gathering potential titles for Non-fiction November. Some of them have long been in my library, or on my TBR, some are new additions. There is no way that I will read all of them, but these are the books I am selecting from:

Travel/geography:

I read Paul Theroux’s Deep South and Robert Macfarlane’s The Old Ways earlier this year & really enjoyed both of them. These two books have been on my personal TBR for a number of years.

The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen: I own a copy of the Penguin Classics edition of this book and actually started reading it last year, but got sidetracked very quickly.
In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin: I think that this book may have made it onto my TBR from listening to Backlisted. If my memory serves, one of the hosts mentioned it in their episode on Utz, by Bruce Chatwin.
Shadow of the Silk Road by Colin Thubron: I was really interested in Thubron’s In Siberia, but that one wasn’t available, so I checked out this one, instead. For reasons I don’t entirely understand, the Silk Road looms large in my imagination.

Books about Books or Authors:

Liz’s recent post about Portable Magic: A History of Books and Their Readers by Emma Smith completely sold me on this one, so I checked it out of my library.
The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym by Paula Byrne: this one is quite a doorstopper, at 686 pages long, so it’s not a likely choice. Nonetheless, one of the weekly prompts is to pair a fiction with a non-fiction book, and this would be a great choice to pair with one of Pym’s novels that I haven’t yet read.
No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy by Mark Hodkinson: the bookish memoir is one of my favorite types of non-fiction.

Social Non-Fiction:

The Secret History of Home Economics by Danielle Dreilinger: I can’t remember where I stumbled on this one, but I was intrigued, so I checked it out of my library.
Dopesick by Beth Macy: I have read several books about the opioid crisis, but I, somehow, haven’t read this one. I also haven’t watched the adaptation.

True Crime:

Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right Wing Extremism by Jeffrey Toobin: I really loved Fever in the Heartland, which I read earlier this year, and this came up as an also read on Goodreads, so I decided to try it.
Evidence of Things Seen by Sarah Weinman: my primary knowledge of Sarah Weinman comes from her work as an editor – she edited the Library of America editions of Women Crime Writers of the 1930’s and 1940’s. I own both of them as digital editions, and have enjoyed the mysteries that I’ve read from them.
Hell’s Half-Acre by Susan Jonasus: this one has been on my radar for a while, and it was available at my library, so I grabbed it.

Memoir & Essays

These Precious Days by Ann Patchett: Patchett’s bookstore in Nashville in on my bucket list of bookstores to visit. If she talks (or writes), I will listen.

That’s enough to keep me busy for a handful of Novembers, so I’ll stop there.

Non-fiction November

I have read more than my usual amount of non-fiction this year – over the next few days, I may post some reviews/thoughts about what I’ve previously read, especially since we are heading into Non-fiction November.

I’ve participated in Non-fiction November in the past by reading books, but after reviewing the announcement post from She Seeks Non-Fiction, one of the hosts, I see that there is more to it than that! There are also weekly writing prompts contributed by the other four hosts that look like they will generate some really interesting discussion and lots of additions to my TBR! I’m extra-excited about the month at this point, and have already started thinking about what I will read – with an eye to the prompts provided.

This year’s hosts are:

Liz, who blogs at Adventures in reading, running and working from home, is an editor, transcriber, reader, reviewer, writer and runner. She likes reading literary fiction and nonfiction, travel and biography.

Frances blogs about the books she has read at Volatile Rune and is a published poet, reviewer, sometime storyteller and novelist.

Heather of Based on a True Story lives in Ohio with her husband, surrounded by lots and lots of critters!

Rebekah reads and writes about social justice, atheism, religion, science history, and more on She Seeks Nonfiction.

Last but not least, Lisa blogs at Hopewell’s Public Library of Life.

I was already familiar with Liz’s terrific blog, but the others are new to me. I’ve followed all of them, so I will get all of the forthcoming non-fiction goodness.

Non-fiction is a really broad category, encompassing a number of different types of books. I haven’t settled on my books quite yet, but I’d like to read at least 4 NF books, one each from the following subcategories: a book of essays, a memoir, something related to travel or geography, and one piece of narrative non-fiction. I also have a distinct weakness for books about books and reading and there are some author biographies on my mental tbr that may, or may not, make it into the month.

A Pair of Dean Street Press titles

It’s old news at this point, but I was so sad to hear that DSP won’t be publishing anymore titles under their Furrowed Middlebrow imprint. Fortunately, it does appear that the titles they already published are going to remain available.

Last year, Liz Dexter at Adventures in Reading spearheaded a Dean Street in December reading extravaganza, and I’m hoping that she does it again this year. I usually spend most of October reading scary books & mysteries, and this year was no different. However, for the fall Read-A-Thon, I decided to do something different and dip into my backlist of Furrowed Middlebrow titles. I was looking for some easy reading, and that seemed to be just the ticket.

I ended up finishing the first book, The Musgraves by D.E. Stevenson, and coming pretty close to finishing the second, The Snow-Woman by Stella Gibbons.

The Musgraves
by D.E. Stevenson
Rating: ★★★½
Publication Date: January 1, 1960
Genre: fiction
Pages: 227
ReRead?: No
Project: a century of women

How old you can grow in three years! It is only a fraction of time but to Esther Musgrave it seemed longer than all the rest of her life put together. In three years she had become an entirely different person-or so she felt. Following the death of her beloved husband, Esther believes she will never be happy again. But soon, her "natural buoyancy" and the problems and adventures of her three daughters-difficult, unmarried Delia, cheerful and practical Margaret, and young Kate just out of school-bring her pleasure and purpose anew. The local Dramatic Club's troubled new production, the arrival of an attractive widow with a hint of scandal about her, the return of Esther's long-estranged stepson, and Kate's perilous rendezvous with a young ne'er-do-well whom Stevenson fans will recognize from her earlier bestseller The Tall Stranger -all provide drama, laughter, and joy to the reader as well as to Esther herself. First published in 1960 and set in the Cotswolds, The Musgraves is one of D.E. Stevenson's most lively and entertaining tales of family and village life. This new edition features an autobiographical sketch by the author.

D.E. Stevenson is classic comfort reading for me, which is one of the primary reasons I chose to read The Musgraves. There has never been a D.E. Stevenson book that I didn’t like, although none of them have quite lived up to the greatness of Miss Buncle’s Book for me. The Musgraves is a middling Stevenson for me, better than some, not so good as others.

I love the way that Stevenson will reintroduce characters from earlier books. This one, apparently, included a character who was a bit of a ne’er do well in The Tall Stranger, which I have not read. He is not redeemed in The Musgraves. I’m wondering if he ever gets the kick in the pants – leading to some positive character changes – in any of her later books. The Tall Stranger is available through the KU library, so I will probably pick it up at some point. I would read this one again.

The Snow-Woman
by Stella Gibbons
Rating: ★★★★
Publication Date: January 1, 1969
Genre: fiction
Pages: 228
ReRead?: No

I suppose I was lonelier than I knew.

It's the 1960s, and Maude Barrington, now in her seventies, has kept life firmly at bay since the deaths of her three brothers in World War I. But when an unexpected visitor convinces Maude to visit old friends in France (and an old nemesis, who persistently calls her "the snow-woman"), she is brought face to face with the long-suppressed emotions, sorrows, and misunderstandings of the past. Upon her return to London, she finds her frozen life invaded by a young mother and her son (born on great aunt Dorothea's sofa, no less) who have been more or less adopted by her long-time maid Millie. And Maude finds the snow of years of bitterness beginning to melt away.

In The Snow-Woman, first published in 1969 and out of print for decades, Stella Gibbons has created one of her most complex and poignant, yet still very funny, tales-of aging, coming to terms, and rediscovering life. This new edition features an introduction by twentieth-century women's historian Elizabeth Crawford.

I have read several Stella Gibbon books, including The Woods in Winter, which I read last year during DSP December.

This is a very late Gibbons, published in 1968, but it feels like it is set much earlier than that – more in the 1940’s. This is probably because the main character has never really recovered from the death of her 3 brothers in WWI. Her life pretty much stopped in 1920, with the end of the war, and never really picked up again. She is now quite an elderly woman, having outlived most of the people she knew as a girl and a young woman.

The title is a propos, because she has been frozen in place for decades. This book is about a quite unexpected thaw, half a century later. I enjoyed it, although not quite so much as The Woods in Winter.

2023 Fall Read-a-Thon

It has been a long time since I posted anything here, but I’ve had a busy few months. There will be time to enlarge on that further, but for right now, I’m here for the fall read-a-thon. I’m in the U.S. – on the west coast – so my start time is 5:00 a.m., which means I’ve been going for almost 8 hours. I haven’t read for 8 hours, though – my general read-a-thon goal is typically to read for about 12 out of the 24 hours.

So far, I’ve finished one rather short mystery and I listened to a short story while I made lunch.

The Case of the Baited Hook
by Erle Stanley Gardner
Rating: ★★★½
Series: Perry Mason #16
Publication Date: January 1, 1940
Genre: mystery: golden age (1920-1949)
Pages: 248
ReRead?: No
Project: a century of crime

The bait is half of a $10,000 bill, delivered to Perry Mason by a man who promises the second half of the note should his companion, a silent masked woman, ever require the lawyer’s services. When a dead body is discovered soon after, Mason feels the hook—but how can one prove the innocence of a person whose identity is unknown?

It’s hard to believe that I’ve never picked up a Perry Mason mystery before, so I decided it was time to rectify the oversight. I wasn’t sure what to expect, and ended up quite enjoying the book. It’s very convoluted, and has echoes of a mid-century noir, but with less grit. I grabbed three others from my library when I checked this one out, and I enjoyed it enough to read at least one more, although not today.

I also read (well, listened to) The Plymouth Express, a short story that has been collected in Midwinter Murder: Fireside Tales from the Queen of Mystery.

Midwinter Murder: Fireside Tales from the Queen of Mystery
by Agatha Christie
Publication Date: October 20, 2020
Genre: mystery: golden age (1920-1949), short stories
Pages: 320
ReRead?: No
Project: appointment with agatha

An all-new collection of winter-themed stories from the Queen of Mystery, just in time for the holidays—including the original version of Christmas Adventure, never before released in the United States!

There's a chill in the air and the days are growing shorter . . . It's the perfect time to curl up in front of a crackling fire with these wintry whodunits from the legendary Agatha Christie. But beware of deadly snowdrifts and dangerous gifts, poisoned meals and mysterious guests. This chilling compendium of short stories—some featuring beloved detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple—is an essential omnibus for Christie fans and the perfect holiday gift for mystery lovers.

INCLUDES THE STORIES:
- Three Blind Mice
- The Chocolate Box
- A Christmas Tragedy
- The Coming of Mr Quin
- The Clergyman's Daughter/Red House
- The Plymouth Express
- Problem at Pollensa Bay
- Sanctuary
- The Mystery of Hunter's Lodge
- The World's End
- The Manhood of Edward Robinson
- Christmas Adventure

I am not sure if I’ve read this particular story, because it is basically a shorter version of The Mystery of the Blue Train, and I’ve definitely read that one. Mystery of the Blue Train was published in 1928, and The Plymouth Express wasn’t published until 1939, so, although Mystery of the Blue Train was somehow published first, the notes on the Agatha Christie website indicate that the full-length novel was lengthened from the short story, which is a little bit confusing.

So far, I’ve read for 4 out of 8 hours. Time to start a new book!

2023 Reading Journal: Non-fiction

I’ve been struggling with blogging, as demonstrated by the fact that I haven’t published a post since my February wrap up six weeks ago. I’m not in a reading slump, but I find myself with very little to say about what I’m reading.

Glass House: The 1% Economy and Shattering of the All-American Town
 by Brian Alexander
Rating: ★★★★
Publication Date: February 14, 2017
Genre: non-fiction
Pages: 336
ReRead?: No
In 1947, Forbes magazine declared Lancaster, Ohio the epitome of the all-American town. Today it is damaged, discouraged, and fighting for its future. In Glass House, journalist Brian Alexander uses the story of one town to show how seeds sown 35 years ago have sprouted to give us Trumpism, inequality, and an eroding national cohesion.
The Anchor Hocking Glass Company, once the world’s largest maker of glass tableware, was the base on which Lancaster’s society was built. As Glass House unfolds, bankruptcy looms. With access to the company and its leaders, and Lancaster’s citizens, Alexander shows how financial engineering took hold in the 1980s, accelerated in the 21st Century, and wrecked the company. We follow CEO Sam Solomon as he tries to rescue the company from the New York private equity firm that hired him. Meanwhile, Alexander goes behind the scenes, entwined with the lives of residents as they wrestle with heroin, politics, high-interest lenders, low wage jobs, technology, and the new demands of American life: people like Brian Gossett, the fourth generation to work at Anchor Hocking; Joe Piccolo, first-time director of the annual music festival who discovers the town relies on him, and it, for salvation; Jason Roach, who police believed may have been Lancaster’s biggest drug dealer; and Eric Brown, a local football hero-turned-cop who comes to realize that he can never arrest Lancaster’s real problems.

This was the first of three books that I’ve read in the last 6 weeks or so dealing with parts of the American economy that contribute or cause poverty and great distress. The premise of Glass House, written by Brian Alexander, is to show the toll that private equity has taken on the economy, by tracing the history of the Anchor-Hocking Glass Company in Lancaster, Ohio.

Anchor-Hocking was founded in 1935, and, at one time, represented the foundation of Lancaster’s economy. Multiple generations of family members – father, son, grandson – went into the factories out of high school, worked hard, raised families and retired with dignity. It was the 1980’s when things began to change for Lancaster – financial engineering, arbitrage, leveraged buyouts, and private economy began a 35 year period of stripping the company of everything of value to benefit shareholders and investors, leaving nothing but a husk of a company. And a town.

This book is deeply infuriating and I had to step away in rage and frustration several times, but it is also well worth reading.

Poverty, By America
 by Matthew Desmond
Rating: ★★★★½
Publication Date: March 21, 2023
Genre: non-fiction
Pages: 304
ReRead?: No
The Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling author of Evicted reimagines the debate on poverty, making a new and bracing argument about why it persists in America: because the rest of us benefit from it.
ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2023: The Washington Post, Time, Esquire, Newsweek, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Elle, Salon, Lit Hub, Kirkus Reviews
The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages?
In this landmark book, acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond draws on history, research, and original reporting to show how affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly keep poor people poor. Those of us who are financially secure exploit the poor, driving down their wages while forcing them to overpay for housing and access to cash and credit. We prioritize the subsidization of our wealth over the alleviation of poverty, designing a welfare state that gives the most to those who need the least. And we stockpile opportunity in exclusive communities, creating zones of concentrated riches alongside those of concentrated despair. Some lives are made small so that others may grow.
Elegantly written and fiercely argued, this compassionate book gives us new ways of thinking about a morally urgent problem. It also helps us imagine solutions. Desmond builds a startlingly original and ambitious case for ending poverty. He calls on us all to become poverty abolitionists, engaged in a politics of collective belonging to usher in a new age of shared prosperity and, at last, true freedom.

I read Evicted by Matthew Desmond back in 2020, and when I saw that the author had a new book coming out last month, I immediately put it on my hold list.

This book is quite different from Evicted. It is more ambitious and wide-ranging and looks at poverty in America through the lens, not of who suffers from poverty, but who benefits from it. Desmond states clearly, and unequivocally, that deep American poverty is a policy choice made by the people who benefit from low-wage workers and hungry children. It is searing and distressing. And, as well, it’s obvious, which is the thing about it that makes it so uncomfortable to read.

The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters upon Your Shore
 by Jared Yates Sexton
Rating: ★★★½
Publication Date: August 15, 2017
Genre: non-fiction
Pages: 302
ReRead?: No
On June 14, 2016, Jared Yates Sexton reported from a Donald Trump rally in Greensboro, North Carolina. One of the first journalists to attend these rallies and give mainstream readers an idea of the raw anger that occurred there, Sexton found himself in the center of a maelstrom. Following a series of tweets that saw his observations viewed well over a million times, his reporting was soon featured in The Washington Post, NPR, Bloomberg, and Mother Jones, and he would go on to write two pieces for the New York Times. Sexton gained over eighteen thousand followers on Twitter in a matter of days, and received online harassments, campaigns to get him fired from his university professorship, and death threats that changed his life forever.
The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore is a firsthand account of the events that shaped the 2016 Presidential Election and the cultural forces that powered Donald Trump into the White House. Featuring in-the-field reports as well as deep analysis, Sexton’s book is not just the story of the most unexpected and divisive election in modern political history. It is also a sobering chronicle of our democracy’s political polarization—a result of our self-constructed, technologically-assisted echo chambers.
Like the works of Hunter S. Thompson and Norman Mailer—books that have paved the way for important narratives that shape how we perceive not only the politics of our time but also our way of life—The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore is an instant, essential classic, an authoritative depiction of a country struggling to make sense of itself.

The final piece of non-fiction that I read in March took me back to 2017, after Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton for the American Presidency. There is a lot of water under the bridge between this book and today, and I’m not entirely sure that going back to that time was at all helpful. It was depressing and remains deeply disappointing, and the events of J6 only enhance that sense. As a retrospective of the election, it was worth reading. But I’m not sure that I really needed that perspective in my life.