Art by Yasmina Reza (January)
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (January Bonus Round!)
Portrait of a Lady by Henry James (January Bonus Round!)
My Ántonia by Willa Cather (January Bonus Round!)
Leopoldstadt by Tom Stoppard (January Bonus Round!)
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare (February)
Copenhagen by Michael Frayn (February Bonus Round!)
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (February Bonus Round!)
Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare (February Bonus Round!)
The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes (February Bonus Round!)
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (February Bonus Round!)
Ruined by Lynn Nottage (February Bonus Round!)
Leaving Atocha Station by Ben Lerner (February Bonus Round!)
In Search of Duende by Federico García Lorca (February Bonus Round!)
Ru by Kim Thúy (February Bonus Round!)
How I Learned to Drive by Paula Vogel (February Bonus Round!)
Henry VI Part II by William Shakespeare (March)
Crónica de una Muerte Anunciada by Gabriel García Márquez (March Bonus Round!)
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (March Bonus Round!)
Richard II by William Shakespeare (March Bonus Round!)
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway (April)
Othello by William Shakespeare (April Bonus Round!)
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson (April Bonus Round!)
Torch Song Trilogy by Harvey Fierstein (May)
Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare (May Bonus Round!)
Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt (June)
Poet Tree by Jonathan Aprea (ed.) (June Bonus Round!)
Blood, Tin, and Straw by Sharon Olds (July)
Appalachian Elegy by bell hooks (July Bonus Round!)
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini (July Bonus Round!)
Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar (August)
Trinity of the Fundamentals by Wisam Rafeedie (August Bonus Round!)
Men in the Sun by Ghassan Kanafani (September)
El Viento Conoce Mi Nombre by Isabel Allende (September Bonus Round!)
Green Squall by Jay Hopler (September Bonus Round!)
Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin (September Bonus Round!)See also:
- (At Least) 12 Books in 12 Months - 2017
- (At Least) 12 Books in 12 Months - 2018
- (At Least) 12 Books in 12 Months - 2019
- (At Least) 12 Books in 12 Months - 2020
- (At Least) 12 Books in 12 Months - 2021
- (At Least) 12 Books in 12 Months - 2022
- (At Least) 12 Books in 12 Months - 2023
I was assigned this book for my Literature and the Law class. Really liked it! Like a Seinfeld episode. Listened to a recording of a performance on file with the library, rather than reading the physical copy, which worked really well because the voices helped keep the characters separate. I would like to read the piece in the original French, at some point, and Diana said she has read it in both English and French already.
I was assigned this book for my Literature and the Law class. Really liked it! It's about oppressive church laundry systems in Ireland ("Magdalene laundries"). Themes of responsibility and duty to take the hard road in doing the right thing, even when what you are doing is difficult and unpopular. The hardest step, though, is refusing to close your eyes. I want to look at the world, to really look at it. Notice the details of the good parts: the small gratitudes of day to day life. But also not ignore the bad parts of the world. And critically, the most nuanced of things contain both: student organizing is also the way in which I see the greatest among us in this world.
Kept getting locked out of my apartment when my roommate was out of town. On New Year's Eve, and when I texted my super for the second time, she was good natured about it: she hates new years parties and was at home reading and happy to let me in. When she did, we made small talk about what she was reading, and she said she was in a Henry James book club. I had never heard of Henry James, and his name reminded me of Stephen King, but she talked about him as if I should. Then, he was mentioned as one of the greats in one of Alexander Chee's essays too. Then, as I was registering for classes I saw one called "James/Baldwin" about how James Baldwin was influenced by his favorite author: Henry James. Third times the charm, and I decided to read something by Henry James. Found an audiobook of Portrait of a Lady from the library and chugged through it!
I was disappointed with it. It began in such a subversive way, and I was delighted when Ralph bequested money to the main character so she could live her life. I was shocked by the twist at the end, which I thought was pulled off quite well. But the outcome: with the marriages proceeding relatively traditionally, was not as subversive as I was hoping.
I was assigned this book for my American Novel class. Really liked it! I really liked this book! I kept expecting it to become a love story, even when she was off and married, etc. I still expected them to somehow end up together. but instead, it was a story of friendship and shared childhood knowledge. How heartwarming, and surprising.
The preface mentioned that there is something that people know who have lived in rural areas, that only they can know. I feel that I know that thing, too, and I like reading about it.
I think it is funny that everything we read in this class is tangentially about harvard lol how navel-gaze-y.
Reminded me of my friendship with Nicola, I should reach out to her about it. And I wonder if Tara relates to it at all, given her childhood in Iowa that seems so incongurous with the way I see her now. She said she would read it, and I'm looking forward to seeing what she thinks of it.
I was assigned this play in my Literature and the Law class. I highlighted a lot of the book because I found the passages very interesting. The frustrating part of reading plays, though, is that it's kind of hard to reproduce the passages here with all the different character names and formatting. I think I got a lot out of this book!
I was assigned this book in my high school sophomore year English class, didn't read it, and then didn't return my book at the end of the year with the intention of actually reading it at some point. I actually did, in October of 2017, and it is funny to go back to the way I wrote back then in my reflection.
This time around, I was assigned this play in my Shakespeare and the Law class, along with a movie production of the book. I watched the 2004 film version directed by Michael Radford. It was interesting how the movie reinterpreted scenes: not incorrect or worse readings of the text, but just different interpretations that seemed surprising to me.
One thing I like about reading as opposed to watching productions is that I imagine dialogue in my head to be much more quick and back to back than it is acted out, because I don't really read in any natural pauses. This makes all of the characters seem so clever to come up with perfect retorts and turns of phrase in a split second.
I think having consumed this play for the fifth time (2014, 2017, the movie, and then reading it), I am a bit bored by it now.
ANTONIO
I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano,
A stage where every man must play a part,
And mine a sad one.
GRATIANO Let me play the fool.
With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come,
And let my liver rather heat with wine
Than my heart cool with mortifying groans.
Why should a man whose blood is warm within
Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster?
Sleep when he wakes? And creep into the jaundice
By being peevish? I tell thee what, Antonio
(I love thee, and ’tis my love that speaks):
There are a sort of men whose visages
Do cream and mantle like a standing pond
And do a willful stillness entertain
With purpose to be dressed in an opinion
Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit,
As who should say “I am Sir Oracle,
And when I ope my lips, let no dog bark.”
O my Antonio, I do know of these
That therefore only are reputed wise
For saying nothing, when, I am very sure,
If they should speak, would almost damn those ears
Which, hearing them, would call their brothers
fools.
I’ll tell thee more of this another time.
But fish not with this melancholy bait
For this fool gudgeon, this opinion.—
Come, good Lorenzo.—Fare you well a while.
I’ll end my exhortation after dinner.I was assigned this play in my Literature and the Law class. It is about a meeting between Bohr (half Jewish) and Heisenberg (German) in 1941. I really liked it!
Unreliable narrator, and therefore introducing the character of Bohr's wife (Margrethe).
Nostalgia for physics, math, and the divinity of theoretical math and science. I feel like I got a lot more out of the play because of my familiarity with the math and physics stuff from having absorbed a lot in my introductory high school physics classes (i-hat, j-hat, k-hat Scholla gang) and being in the STEM space throughout college.
The former owner who took notes in a foreign scandinavian looking language, and initially thinking it was some fancy math and wondering how it was related, and then realizing that it was just elementary probability equations, like the formula for Poisson distributions, so it was probably just an early undergrad reading the book because of the scientist angle and then also taking notes for other classes in the margins.
Extensive endnotes at the end about what was and was not historically reliable. Read some of it, which was interesting, but did not finish reading those.
I was assigned this novel in my American Novel class. It is about the marriage between Wyland Archer and May in the shadow of a simulated affair between Archer and Countess Ellen Olenska.
I found the novel a bit tedious, but I think I have just read too much of this type of genre lately. For what it is worth, though, these novels (Portrait of a Lady, The Age of Innocence, Anna Karenina, etc.) are very enjoyable audiobooks and I actually struggle to read the visual word. I think this is a credit to the fact that the authors are quite impressive at the sentence and syllable level: they are writing phrases and sentences that have a good ryhtym when said out loud.
I find Archer to be pretty whiny.
This English class has helped me come to admire that novels can convey inner thoughts in a way that other forms of media struggle to. The sentence "I considered going to study, but decided not to because I felt hungry" lends itself to no effective visual representation, but contains depth and emotion and thoughts that are worth communicating and considering.
I was assigned this play in my Shakespeare and the Law class. I watched the 1994 BBC television version directed by David Thacker. I really liked it! Confirmed: Shakespare is so in for 2024.
conventional take: this play is about conflict between strict justice (rigorous enforcement) and mercy/forgiveness. the play comes down on the side of foregiveness and mercy; it criticizes strict justice. another alternative: the important thing is balancing the two.
ANGELO
'Tis one thing to be tempted, Escalus,
Another thing to fall. I not deny,
The jury, passing on the prisoner's life,
May in the sworn twelve have a thief or two
Guiltier than him they try. What's open made to justice,
That justice seizes: what know the laws
That thieves do pass on thieves?
...
For I have had such faults; but rather tell me,
When I, that censure him, do so offend,
Let mine own judgment pattern out my death,ISABELLA
Too late? why, no; I, that do speak a word.
May call it back again. Well, believe this,
No ceremony that to great ones 'longs,
Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword,
The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe,
Become them with one half so good a grace
As mercy does.
If he had been as you and you as he,
You would have slipt like him; but he, like you,
Would not have been so stern.christian theology: god defines the rules, steps back, and lets humans figure it out, before god steps back in.
nobody really gets in trouble in the end
is the duke a merciful character? they say no, it takes isabella to make him merciful. but in my view, the duke is still pulling strings and giving isabella the opportunity to forgive him.
the duke is god. him wanting to marry isabella at the end is a symbol of her nunnery. to the friar he says have faith. he steps back, and lets the humans exercise their free will, and just puts moral and religious tests in front of them. punish lucio because he criticizes the duke (nonbeliever/heresay).
problem play because ends with marriages, but none of them are particularly good marriages
ambiguity in plays allows the directors flexibility, which is a different vesting than in a novel where ambiguity is resolved by the reader
CLAUDIO
Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world; or to be worse than worst
Of those that lawless and incertain thought
Imagine howling: 'tis too horrible!
The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, penury and imprisonment
Can lay on nature is a paradise
To what we fear of death."go we know not where" -> hamlet's soliloquy (whereas Isabella has certainty that she knows where she will go: to heaven)
POMPEY
If you head and hang all that offend that way but
for ten year together, you'll be glad to give out a
commission for more heads: if this law hold in
Vienna ten year, I'll rent the fairest house in it
after three-pence a bay: if you live to see this
come to pass, say Pompey told you so.MISTRESS OVERDONE
Well, well; there's one yonder arrested and carried
to prison was worth five thousand of you all.
Second Gentleman
Who's that, I pray thee?
MISTRESS OVERDONE
Marry, sir, that's Claudio, Signior Claudio.
First Gentleman
Claudio to prison? 'tis not so.
MISTRESS OVERDONE
Nay, but I know 'tis so: I saw him arrested, saw
him carried away; and, which is more, within these
three days his head to be chopped off.abolitionist; the worst punishment is lucio who will have to father his child, which serves a public policy social welfare state goal.
does law have its own autonomy "the law is not dead but has slept"
I was assigned this novel in my Literature and the Law class. Hated it. Boring writing. Preachy anti-communist propaganda in the same way that The Fountainhead was preachy libertarian propaganda.
Hated it. I was assigned this novel in my American Novel class. I did not enjoy it. The novel is a part of the aestheticism movement, so I'm told the prose was the whole point, but I hated the prose. Maybe I would have liked it more if I had read it as an audiobook to hear the rhythm rather than skimming it with my eyes blurring over passages when I got bored.
I'm not as disturbed by the subject matter as other people I've talked to. Sebastian mentioned that it was the first time he had been forced to live a few moments in the head of someone like Humbert, and that instinct was why Sebastian wasn't sure if he could ever to public defense work. But for me, I have already grappled with how to conceptualize mindsets that are so divergent. I was reminded of a practical guide I read before about how to provide social services for people who have sexual desires for children. The idea of doing so seems so repugnant, and yet the point of the article is that if you are a person who does have those desires, the only thing you can do is control your actions, even if you cannot control your initial thoughts.
I think the book is considered so great because it's central theme is so provocative. But because the theme did not come across as that provacative to me, I struggled to get as much out of it as other people do. I just found it a bit boring.
I was assigned this play in my Literature and the Law class. It was set in a brothel in the Democratic Republic of Congo. I liked it!
I was assigned this novel in my American Novel class. Loved it! It is an internal dialogue of an American living abroad in Madrid about his poetry and his lovers.
I am hesitant to identify too strongly with the narrator, because there are important respects with which I do not relate at all to him (such as his imposter syndrome, his existential and concrete anxiety, his willingness to literally just lie, and his feelings and games of jealousy in his love life-s). However, I felt like the book did come to me at the right time.
Like the narrator, I am also throwing myself into the process of learning Spanish. Some recent wins! I recently completed my first Spanish intake for defenders, and I felt very comfortable second seating a Defenders case with Raquel.
Like the narrator, I am also, effectively, an undergrad English major with a minor in Spanish, so the reflections on the discipline of humanities was also relevant to me.
Like the narrator, perhaps surprisingly, I also found the reflections on the impact of substances on thought processes surprisingly resonant. Although, unlike the narrator, I've never taken tranquilizers or "hash," for example, the author did capture a lot of the meta thoughts I have had while intoxicated, which I struggle to record while in that state.
Like the narrator, I am also enamored (infatuated?) with a handful of people, aided by the liminal spot I am at in my life, and by the wealth of fascinating and unfamiliar people I meet in my day to day life. Ah, to be young and free and unbounded.
Like the narrator, I also contemplate (and feel insecurity about (perhaps from a place of guilt)) my positionality: what an unearned blessing that the entire intellectual and physical world is so completely available to me. At first cut, the story criticizes how contrived it is to chase so-called "real experiences." But if real experiences can only be fruitlessly chased, is it impossible, with this positionality, to really live? Wouldn't that deny one's inherent humanity, because the reality of every individual's life must be acknowledged as incomprably equal? So, with this positionality, what is actually the Right Action™?
A small point. Like Writers and Lovers by Lily King, I wish the novel had included more than merely two love interests. Two is already plenty, but because there are only two, they can only be analyzed as a pair rather than pair-wise.
A small regret. Because I consumed this book as an audiobook (which is so OP for crunching through so many books all at once), I did not get to properly sit with the passages of poetry sprinkled throughout this book.
An (at times ironic) quip in the book is that "poems aren't about anything." I think that is funny as I try to chronicle all the books I am reading, and need a shorthand to bring myself back to the experience of having read it.
I don't remember exactly when I finished reading this book (I am writing this in June, so excuse any slips of my mind). The book was a combination of essays/speeches Lorca had given (in English translation), along with some selections and poems from his work (presented in both Spanish and English). I liked Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías, which is about the death of a bull-fighter (Lorca considers bull fighters particularly inspired by duende). I got this book at the Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Harvard Square one day after walking from Spanish class in the Yard to Faro cafe where I overheard people next to me comparing Neruda and Lorca.
"Every man and every artist, whether he is Nietzsche or Cézanne, climbs each step in the tower of his perfection by fighting his duende, not his angel, as has been said, nor his muse. This distinction is fundamental, at the very root of the work.
The angel guides and gives... The angel dazzles, but he flies high over a man's head, shedding his grace, and the man effortlessly realizes his work or his charm or his dance. The angel on the road to Damascus, and the one that came through the crack of the little balcony of Assisi, and the one who tracked Heinrich Suso are all ordering, and it is useless to resist their lights, for they beat their steel wings in an atmosphere of predestination.
The muse dictates and sometimes prompts... The muse awakens the intelligence, brining a landscape of columns and a false taste of laurel. But intelligence is often the enemy of poetry, because it limits too much, and it elevates the poet to a sharp-edged throne where he forgets that ants could eat him or that a great arsenic lobster could fall suddenly on his head--things against which the muses that live in monocles and in the lukewarm, lacquered roses of tiny salons are quite helpless.
The muse and the angel come from outside us... But one must awaken the duende in the remotest mansions of the blood.
And reject the angel, and give the muse a kick in the seat of the pants... The true fight is with the duende."
I was assigned this book in my Literature and the Law class. I really enjoyed the reading process -- listening to the audiobook in the original French, and using a physical copy of the English translation to reorient myself when I got lost. Ge Fang, one of my friends and classmates, properly pointed out that the best way to understand Ru is actually a prose poem, rather than a novel -- each "chapter" is between a paragraph and a page and a half long, which made it easy to keep myself oriented in this way. I started it in the morning of the first mild day of the shoulder season, and went to Faro cafe to sit and read after class. I had washed my hair the night before and slept with it in braids, so I was having a particularly good hair day. I like to imagine I was that hot stranger in the plant-filled cafe. And I had such a lovely reading experience!
However, I didn't actually love the content of the book. The author's politics and implicit assumptions felt a bit boomer-y (a lot of "American Dream" glamorization). I wonder about the political divisions within the Vietnamese community and Vietnamese diaspora with respect to the Vietnam War. I have decided that I think fiction is a bad way to understand history. I am sure I would have gotten a lot more out of this book if I had more established priors and frameworks to understand the underlying subject matter, rather than wondering if my opinions about the work were merely functions of my lack of context. Therefore, with humility, I am hesitant to be too critical of the book, but I will only say that something about the book did rubbed me the wrong way.
Snuck in with my tenth book in February purely because of the leap year! I was assigned this play in my Literature and the Law class. I liked it a medium amount. It was about the (at times sexual/romantic/coercive) relationship between Uncle Peck and his little cousin Li'l Bit who is thirteen years old. It was interesting to read this play in conversation with Lolita, which I read last week. Because it is structured as a play, unlike Lolita, (1) there is no exposition on internal consciousness of any of the characters beyond the physical manifestations in their speech, and (2) the dialogue of every character is presented on equal terms to the reader rather than presented through one character's lens.
I thought this play was particularly impressive because it captured that many abusive relationships depend on moments of tender intimacy that form the foundation upon which the abuse is built; flattening and ignoring that nuance does not strip the perpetrator of their power, it is instead actually counterproductive to the goal of interrupting the abuse.
PECK - There's nothing you could do that would make me feel ashamed of you. Do you know that? Okay.The themes of male familial pedophilia also made me revisit the following two powerful nonfiction essays in Beyond Survival. That entire book continues to reveal hidden gems four years after I first read it in December 2020. The first essay is called Transforming Family by Amita Swadhin, and describes her experience escaping an abusive relationship with her father, and then, years later, helping interrupt his abuse of her much younger step-sister. The second essay is called Excerpts from Ending Child Sexual Abuse: A Transformative Justice Handbook by Staci K. Haines, Raquel Laviña, Chris Lymbertos, Rj Maccani, and Nathan Shara. It is written by organizers who explain in concrete terms the current anti-carceral systemic efforts to interrupt child sexual abuse and pedophilia.
Unrelatedly, I wish I knew more about the genre of theater to more completely understand the role of the "Greek Chorus" cast in this play? All I recall is learning something about it when we read Oedipus Rex in my sophomore year English class in high school, but I don't remember what we actually learned.
[women, gathered in the kitchen, are having a serious conversation about their life experiences]
GRANDFATHER - What are you all cackling about in here?
GRANDMOTHER - Stay out of the kitchen! This is just for girls!
(page 46)I was assigned this play in my Shakespeare and the Law class. First, I watched the 2022 Royal Shakespeare Company version directed by Rhodri Huw. Then, I read the book. There were so. many. characters. I thought the play was a bit boring? I think I just might not be a fan of historical Shakespeare works -- I prefer his tragedies and comedies and problem plays.
I am curious to learn more about meter and iambic pentameter. I am also looking forward to going to class and learning more about what I should have gotten out of this play. The Shakespeare and the Law class I am taking is by far the best of the three English literature classes I'm taking this semester. The professors -- Susannah Tobin and Matthew Stepenson -- are so insightful and such good class discussion leaders.
Class discussion
"first thing we do is kill all the lawyers"
Dune and Henry VI and the artist's control over narrative of representing a revolutionary movement; is it glorified or satirized or villainized. how can you know without a greater amount of context? how can you get context other than seeing multiple representations from a variety of perspectives? if that is how you get more information, consider how much power a person powerful at controlling narrative can be. am I trapped by the myth of objectivity.
bedlam theater company mashup ceasar and cleopatra
one man show all the devils are here
gloucester and king apologist
material conditions. from the perspective of a peasant. is gloucester better than york? better than cade? probably. But if you're a peasant, do you want a nobility class in the first part? is the idea of an elite class society acceptable.
great leaders and great people might be explicitly in tension
why the law for lineage? (1) not convincing up, not convincing down, but convincing across the middle: why should york be in charge instead of warwick or suffolk or anyone else?, (2) some people might be fascinated by the blood lines (following the horse race)
I was assigned this novel in my Spanish 30 class. I did not love it, to be honest. Maybe, though, that is just because I don't speak Spanish well enough yet to fully appreciate it. I enjoy reading Mario Vargas Llosa so much more than Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
I got good advice, though, about reading both this book and Lolita. You are not reading to extract critical information to better understand the nuances of the plot. You are reading to swim in the language itself. Enjoy that experience, rather than getting white knuckles trying to comprehend the sequence of events being depicted.
I recognize the problem is probably just my Spanish language ability! So I will continue to read more Gabriel García Márquez as my abilities develop.
I was assigned this book for my American Novel class. It is the story of siblings: one disabled (Benjy), one headstrong and loving (Caddy), one sad (Quentin the elder), and one malicious (Jason). There is also a cast of supporting characters: the Black servant (Dilsey), the mother, Quentin the younger, etc.
Our professor (Philip Fisher) warned us that the book would be difficult to read and understand, especially because it is a canonical work of stream of consciousness. He was right, I didn't really get much out of the book! I literally cannot think of a single thing -- neither good nor bad nor neutral -- to say about it.
god had some hand in this
he doesn't want to be king at some point (it was a duty, and I'm not complaining about losing my duty), but then later is so sad about it ("death of kings")
empathy for person who was previously an opponent (bolingbrook had the same thing with mowbray)
mirror scene
why did shakespeare write it such that york's son's plot is revealed. and the fight between the father versus the mother and son the idea is that york's son is trying to reinstate
are others supporting bollingbrook because he is a better king or because they have their own political ambitions that are supported by bollingbrook (evidenced by a line later where richard says "all of your boats have risen now")
richard was a bad king because he had gloucester killed
didn't he need to get bollingbrook's money to quell the rebellion in ireland?
why did they have the whole "pause the battle for one of them to kiss the ring"
richard really into clothes, so he says when he steals gaunt's estate that he needs clothes for the war (not like weapons and stuff)
"attorneys are denied me"
goldsmith and bower wrote an "after trump" book - should doj prosecute trump. bower says prosecute: president isn't above the law, etc. goldsmith says don't prosecute: think about the stability/precedent. if we had any trust in the legal system, we would say prosecute and let the truth teller
pardon power - great puns on "pardon"
intergenerational bubble explains why he is so indecisive about whether god is on his side versus he needs friends too
is shakespeare drawing a distinction between richard and henry that richard "should have just killed him" and henry did just kill him makes them swear an oath to not join in rebellion against richard. one of those ironic foreshadowing moments to me.
he is no friend to me but I am sad that mowbray has died in italypardon scene is my favorite. shows king richard's ambivalence about making decisions. also really like the mirror reflection and shattering scene because of the theatrical
"i wasted time and now doth time waste me"
the deposition of richard the ii is a real origin story of how everything went awry for the next multiple generations of kings
you can't tolerate a lawless sovereign, but anything you do about it threatens instability
"open heart surgery without breaking the skin" very merchant of venice
richard's ambivalence about his gender
the queen scenes
I was assigned this book for my American Novel class. Unexpectedly a love story! I liked it!
Literature and war. Illiad. French revolution changed because of "citizen's army", tolstoy - sketches of crimean wars that led to "citizen's newspaper" (literature versus reporting): war and peace,
Othello might have slept with Iago's wife
Passed over for promotion
Soliloquys are often considered bare truth, but maybe Iago was actually lying us to the audience
two main manipulations: cassio go entreat yourself to desdemona; and emilia go steal the handkerchief. but why didn't emilia question the handkerchief thing
oj simpson
what is knowledge/evidence/truth
I really liked the movie, the book was fine.
When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,
Speak of me as I am. Nothing extenuate,
Nor set down aught in malice. Then must you speak
Of one that loved not wisely, but too well;
Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought,
Perplexed in the extreme; of one whose hand,
Like the base Judean, threw a pearl away
Richer than all his tribe;race - he is allowed to marry the white princess
there but for the grace god go I
I was assigned this book for my American Novel class. It tells the story from the perspective of Ruthie, with her sister Lucille. After their mother dies (commits suicide?) they stay with their grandmother, who diesReally interesting book, huge vibe shift in the middle. No male characters. Transience. Child protective services and the state versus the family. Mental illness, especially in women (the Bell Jar with kids in it). Hard to tell the daughters' ages and how their age progresses throughout the story.
I was assigned this play in my Literature and the Law class. I did not get a chance to finish it during the semester, but finished reading it after classes ended.
I was assigned this play in my Shakespeare and the Law class. I watched the 2012 retelling by Joss Whedon during the semester, but did not finish reading it until after the class had ended.
Breathtaking piece of history and journalism. Iconic. Too many thoughts to record, but valuable knowledge to have acquired.
"The dark violet and green velour couch, shrink-wrapped night sky, streaked in 90's jazz, up-holstered... I draw lines across the stiff fibers. I stroke a soft and frivolous thing."
This is the first issue in a series of six poetry collections curated by Jonathan Aprea. Diana invited me to the launch at McNally Jackson on Friday night, and I read it while I took the train into New Jersey for Nick Lancaster's grad party the next morning. My favs from the collection were Sonnet For My Friends by Kyle Broshnihan, Kissing Poem by James Barickman, A Victory by Patrick Dundon, Soggy Sonnet by Kelsea Brunner, and, of course, The Arrival by Diana Cao.
Diana got this collection for me for my birthday, and I was about three quarters of the way through it before it (93 out of 124 pages) got thoroughly waterlogged in Central Park during a breath of rain. My copy of Poet Tree also got submerged, but was salvageable.
Fav poem in a long time was Coming of Age, 1966. We're back in the 60's bb, for better and worse. Other good ones: Dear Heart, Outdoor Shower, The Remedy, At Home, My Mother's Pansies, My Father's Diary, and To My Husband.
I moved to Miami! J.D. Vance got nominated to be the republican VP candidate. I'm from Appalaichia, so a lot of my friends provided helpful pointers on Appalachian writers to read other than Hillbilly Elegy (see Dec. 2019). Saw this one recommended and was able to check it out immediately from one of my libraries. Loved it way more than I liked All About Love by bell hooks (see Jun. 2021). Will try to remember to pull some quotes when I get a chance.
Loved this book! One night in June I was reading Eichmann in Jerusalem right around a stressful time in my life wrapping up law school. I couldn't sleep so I tried to listen to the audiobook, and it was... dark. I realized I needed something way more lighthearted, like a comfort read, to go to sleep. I checked if my library had any books from my favorite fantasy series from my childhood: The Inheritance Cycle including Eragon by Christopher Paolini. It did not, but it had a different standalone sci fi book he had written since then!
It was great! I don't really love sci fi generally, but it was a fun and comforting read. Paolini structures his stories very similarly, so it was reminiscent of Eragon even if it was a different story in a different world with different characters and a different premise.
I really liked the way the story ultimately resolves and the moral conclusions the main character comes to. I feel like a lot of my world view is actually influenced by the morality of characters in The Inheritance Cycle, and it is pretty funny to think how outsized of an influence Christopher Paolini had on my day to day life. Also, now that I'm older, I am realizing just how crazy it is how young he was when he wrote Eragon; when I first read it I was younger than him and reading it so it didn't feel like such a big deal.
Read this for a book club with other incoming Miami public defenders. I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, I liked some of the main character's reflections about art, race, and identity politics only when convenient. On the other hand, I didn't find other themes super relatable, I thought the characters were pretty underdeveloped (especially the main character's love interest), and the plot development came across as kitchsy to other people in the book club (especially my new roommate Patrick Weir).
So after I read it, I had a pretty negative outlook. But then I mentioned it to Diana and she said she loved it! She mentioned that Kaveh Akbar is a poet, and this was his first novel, and she was predisposed to like it because she loves his poetry (and his relationship with his partner who is also a poet she likes). Diana said she liked the beauty of the writing on the sentence level.
Ultimately, I think I fall somewhere in the middle. I didn't love the book, but I also didn't hate it. Also, a small last note I listened to this as an audiobook and the narrator of the book I read did such a good job, especially with accents and stuff, which really helped follow which character was speaking when.
A life-level view of the arc of a revolutionary during early intifadas. Very interesting, especially in the context of thoughts I had during the Harvard encampment. One thing I didn't love about the book was what I felt was some underlying misogyny from the narrator. But, I also thought some of the interactions the narrator had with his mother were very sweet (a theme also reflected in Men in the Sun I read afterwards in the story of Umm Saad). Also thought the reflections on revolutionaries only during school years versus people actually invested in liberation as more than just a fad was pretty interesting -- I don't think I am as jaded as the narrator but it is definitely an interesting perspective to contemplate/reflect upon at this point in my life and the lives of the people around me. Sometimes I wonder how I am perceived.
I read this book for an HLS book club that ultimately fizzled out, but I finished the book. We chose the book because it was recently translated by the Palestinian Youth Movement. When I mentioned Trinity of the Fundamentals to the organizer for the Men in the Sun book club I did in Miami afterwards, she said she had read it but it wasn't a good book to read as a group and I agree with her haha.
Joined a Palestinian book club after moving to Miami! The organizing scene in South Florida is ~very sparse~ given the dominance of Zionism and conservative politics here. So instead of big marches and encampments and actions, even just a community book club feels subversive. The book club itself is also super healthy. I feel like it is hard for a book club to get past one or two books/meetings before it fizzles out. But this book club, from what I understand, has been meeting for like nine months and has read a ton of really heavy-hitting books and is still going super strong.
This fits into a broader theory of organizing I had that brought me to Miami in the first place with respect to other ways Florida is conservative (on trans rights, the criminal legal system, etc.). I think adversity builds more tightly knit communities, which I enjoy. And I think some of the northeast elitism about how politically enlightened their communities are is (1) putting one's head in the sand about the flaws the northeast communities have themselves and (2) a bit victim-blame-y for the oppressed people who, by reason of circumstances, live in more conservative communities.
I'm glad to be in Miami, I love it here and feel so validated in my choice to move here. Whereas the poem White Spaces by Lisa Low was my overwhelming feeling during 1L in Cambridge, nowadays I feel like I have found a home I feel so comfortable and happy in. I am living in the most diverse community I ever have, even if the representation of desi people in particular is pretty low. That's partially based on the fact that Miami is very diverse, but also a function of the people I choose to surround myself with too.
Anyways, the book of short stories! I really liked it!
Structure of the book mirrors structure of palestinnian resistance (originally support from surrounding nations (kuwait in men in the sun), then armed resistance (in umm saad), to steadfastness and nationalist revival (letter from gaza)).
Also, ending with letter from gaza is a response to the character in men in the sun, a lesson that they are misguided from their path in the first place.
Umm Saad reminder of mother when I told her about joining encampment.
Queerness in the relationship of the characters in Letter from Gaza? but also, maybe just affection that isn't necessarily romantic. includes male expression of emotion (mustafa crying, etc.)
"This obscure feeling that you had as you left Gaza, this small feeling must grow into a giant deep within you. It must expand, you must seek it in order to find yourself, here among the ugly debris of defeat."
Loved this collection. Best collection of short stories I've read in a long time. Would recommend!
I got both the ebook and the audiobook from the library, which was great to read together or separately. The ebook is great for getting a more comprehensive understanding of grammar, and the audiobook is great for building my comprehension and training my accent. Super helpful for the Spanish of it all, I feel so close to fluent already. I have started using Spanish professionally, and I will just keep getting better. It is partially that I am good at picking up languages, but it is also the result of effort I am putting into becoming a part of the community here and literally learning the language.
The book was fine. It felt like an airport novel that would sell a lot of copies even if the book isn't itself super groundbreaking. Not sure I would recommend it as a novel. But I feel proud and I am glad I read it!
I was so curious while reading if Isabel Allende is somehow related to Salvador Allende, the former socialist president of Chile who died during a coup by the dictator Augusto Pinochet. I just looked it up, and she is related! Isabel is Salvador's first cousin's daughter! Wild!
Picked up this book of poetry from the south beach library. I was in that neighbourhood for a city council meeting.
The book had a foreword by Louise Glück, which was a name I recognized. I also read this: "I have no beef with Wallace Stevens / Even if some of his poems do feel like so much tropical slumming. // I only wish he could have lived here, in Florida, instead of simply / Visiting once in a while --; how much more essential his summer- // Minded poems would have been!" I don't know who Wallace Stevens is, but reading those lines made me think this book would represent the essential Florida, which was what I was trying to figure out having recently moved here. These poems, however, were very bitter and negative. I should have picked it up from that first poem, which said later "Florida's light is far more aggressive, far / More violent, than Stevens knew - // It gets inside your head and shreds / Things, dismantles memory, shorts out the will". Also, two of the peoms in the middle were honestly a bit incel-y? The book treated nature, which I enjoy reading about, but definitely with a spin that was a bit pessimistic for my taste.
My favorites from this collection were: Nothing to do now but sit and wait; Of Hunger and Human Freedom; and Aubade.
This book was not at all what I expected! I read it in one or two big sittings, including one getting drunk at a very cute happy hour after work where I hope to become a regular. I was surprised because it was going to be a tragic romance in the vein of Song of Achilles. But I felt it was instead very very ambivalent about the gay couple. The main character only actually liked Giovanni for like a couple of pages, and the rest of it I feel like the main character was in fact disgusted by him. I was not rooting for the couple at all, and before starting the book I had expected Baldwin to want me to be rooting for them. I will say, though, I loved the section that introduced Giovanni to the main character for the first time as his bartender. Baldwin gave such a sexy air to Giovanni, and that section was such a blast to read.
I've read The Fire Next Time, If Beale Street Could Talk, and now Giovanni's Room. I liked Beale Street the most, didn't love Fire Next Time, and am still not sure what to make of Giovanni's Room.
Love love loved it! More to say soon.
To Build a Fire by Jack London - read this for American novel. A canonical piece of naturalism: a man boldly treks in the artic, fails to build a fire, and dies. Pretty entertaining read to see a Man™ get what is coming for him.
Big Two Hearted River by Ernest Hemingway - read this for American novel. A sweet story of a man who goes fishing. Reminds me of A River Runs Through It in terms of vibes.
Hell-Heaven by Jhumpa Lahiri - read this for American Novel. Didn't love it, I feel like every Jhumpa Lahiri story is the same (but I've since learned she moved to Italy and has started writing in Italian so maybe she does have a range that I just am not capable of appreciating)
Grammar Questions by Lydia Davis - a bit more of an experimental meditation on the grammar we use surrounding death to explore the narrator's father passing away. Seemed deep, but didn't do much for me. I like the concept, though.
Désiré's Baby by Kate Chopin - kid comes out mixed race, and the less powerful mom is blamed for having Black heritage. The reveal is that the father is the one who actually had Black race. Shows that the notion of race is constructed.
Humility in One Drum by Richard Wagamese - rabbit is better leader for animal kingdom than more powerful types of animals because the rabbit brings humility and a good attitude to her leadership style.
He by Katherine Anne Porter - story about disabled kid from the perspective of the mother
How to Pronounce Knife by Sourahkham Thammavongsa - immigrant kid who doesn't feel she can ask her ESL parents for help with elementary school homework, and does not know how to pronounce the silent k in knife
Verlie I Say Unto You by Alice Adams - Black maid for white family hates and fears her husband whom she has escaped, and has a secret affair with another Black worker in the home. The white family is confused when she is calm (even secretly ecstatic) to learn her husband has died, but then her lover dies and she is extremely distraught.
Defender of the Faith in Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth - Jewish military commander struggles to lead his Jewish subordinates, including one particularly squeaky wheel
El etnógrafo de Jorge Luis Borges - guy goes native and refuses to reveal the secret to life he learns while integrated into the indigenous community, which he takes with him back to his world where he lives a very normal life.
The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol - Russian copying clerk saves up to replace an old coat ("dressing gown") to brave the northern chill, commissions a beautiful new coat, enjoys it briefly, is robbed of the coat, tries in vain to recover it, dies of cold, and haunts people by stealing their coats.
The Shawl by Cynthia Ozick - mother's child is taken away from her and thrown against an electric fence. mother wants to go collect the corpse of her child, but decides not to because if she tries she will be shot.
Alyosha the Pot by Leo Tolstoy - a very obedient servant boy is not allowed to marry the household cook he falls in love with, which he says turned out to be for the best because he unexpectedly dies and therefore their marriage would have been fruitless.
The Head of the Family by Anton Chekhov - a story about a man who is dreadful to his family and household help when he is in a bad mood from drinking or gambling the night before. Later that night, "he begins to feel the stings of conscience," but takes no action. The next day, he is in good spirits and pays no mind to what happened before. He good humoredly asks his son for a kiss, and the story ends when, "[w]ith a pale, grave face Fedya goes up to his father and touches his cheek with his quivering lips, then walks away and sits down in his place without a word." I've heard Checkov is a sparse writer, and that tracks. This story was so short I feel I must have missed something in it?
Wooden Box by Margaret Atwood - a wife, in grief, reacts to objects left behind in her cabin home by her husband who has passed away of a degenerative disease. This short story was pretty good!
"He wanted to be sitting in the sunlight with a glass of white wine while nervous locals told him lies."
"Now here's the jam in the refrigerator, the last jar ever. The last half-jar. Should she eat it or not eat it? Either one seems like a violation. Go to bed, she tells herself. Go to sleep. In the morning it will just be marmalade."
"Nell went outside with a knife and a bowl to dig up spring dandelions as a vitamin- rich supplement to all the white things. Pissenlit was the French vernacular for dandelion: piss your bed, dandelions being a well- known diuretic. Madame Maigretwould doubtless have prepared them in season—she was a formidable cook, unlike Nell—but being gently spoken, she would have used the more elegant dent-de-lion. Lion's tooth."
Battle Royale by Ralph Ellison - this is the first chapter of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. I read the whole book back in high school. I remember liking it, but feeling that I had not entirely grasped the book. There was something about the racialized experience of the main character that eluded me. Now, reading this chapter for American Novel, I realize that I was right. I had not yet reached any point of racial consciousness. I got so much more out of the chapter now then I did back then. I hung on every word, it is really a great book. With that being said, I do not forget what Toni Morrison said when asked about Invisible Man: "And the question for me was 'Invisible to whom? ' Not to me."
El banquete by Julio Ramón Ribeyro - read this for my Spanish class. Short and punchy story about a man hosting a banquet to secure a political position from the president. He spends a lot of money, the president agrees, but then the president is deposed before he can complete the quid pro quo. Three and a half pages, easy Spanish.
Posibilidades de Fotografia by Leandro Ubrina - read this for my Spanish class. Magical realism about anachronistic photoshop to evade Chilean police state.
For Esmé--with Love and Squalor by J.D. Salinger - read this for American Novel. weird story about a GI watching a little girl sing at choir practice and then meeting her over tea. Not sure I understood it, tbh.
2022 Nobel Prize Adress by Annie Ernaux - read this for American Novel. pretty good speech. She wrote in her diary sixty years ago "j’écrirai pour venger ma race." I liked this passage
"This is how I conceived my commitment to writing, which does not consist of writing ‘for’ a category of readers, but in writing ‘from’ my experience as a woman and an immigrant of the interior; and from my longer and longer memory of the years I have lived, and from the present, an endless provider of the images and words of others. This commitment through which I pledge myself in writing is supported by the belief, which has become a certainty, that a book can contribute to change in private life, help to shatter the loneliness of experiences endured and repressed, and enable beings to reimagine themselves. When the unspeakable is brought to light, it is political... But I do not confuse the political action of literary writing, subject to its reception by the reader, with the positions I feel compelled to take with respect to events, conflicts and ideas."
I've thought about this a lot in a semester in which I have participated in political activism against a genocide concurrently as I take a series of classes of English literature. The former is an excercise in exteriority, and the latter is an exercise in interiority, both of which are necessary for a full life.
Loving this collection of short stories! Didn't finish it before I had to return it.
Presented side-by-side in both Spanish and English. I don't love the translation I selected, which was right next to another, slightly more expensive, translation. You get what you pay for.