May Reads 2025

These are the seven books I read during the month of May.

·      The Coming Bad Days, Sarah Bernstein. My second Bernstein novel, after her Study for Obedience. I love her style and the quiet ongoing grind of her words. Can’t wait for more.

·      Nazi Literature in the Americas, Roberto Bolaño, translated by Chris Andrews. An awesome fictional biographical dictionary of right-wing authors.

·      The Coiled Serpent, Camilla Grudova. Fun short story collection with lots of graphic descriptions and great lists everywhere.

·      Life Is Everywhere, Lucy Ives. Incredible novel, my introduction to Ives. Texts within texts within texts. Extremely impressive. Will read more of her work.

·      259 Leaps, The Last Immortal, Alicia Kozameh, translated by Clare Sullivan. This Argentine novel from a former political prisoner deftly explores exile.

·      Berlin, Andris Kupriss, translated by Ian Gwin. Short story collection from Latvia that didn’t really do much for me.

·      Hypocrisy: Moral Fraud and Other Vices, James S. Spiegel. Nonfiction work investigating Christian hypocrisy. Can’t say I agree with the conclusion but it helped my research for a short story.

Solar Bones: Mike McCormack

This is the first I have read Mike McCormack and I am quite happy I learned about this exceptional one sentence novel. The story involves the civil engineer Marcus Conway as he waits for hours in his kitchen for his wife to return home. His reflections on his family, his community and his entire life unfold in a tidy stream of consciousness narrative which he envisions as a “memorial arc which curves from childhood to the present moment.” I enjoyed the way Conway’s engineering worldview allows him to deconstruct his world to ultimately discover the “harmonic order which underlay everyone and everything.”

The novel opens with the noontime ringing of the local Angelus Bell and introduces the entry of the wider world into Conway’s ruminations. The scene immediately put me in mind of the ringing bells throughout Krasznahorkai’s novel Satantango and mirrors a similar apocalyptic vision, though much more hopeful in the present novel. It did, however, set my mood for the reading and I could hear the Angelus Bell ringing on every page, perhaps calling folks to take stock of their lives and the values we choose to uphold.

I will read more McCormack based on how good this novel is, starting with his two short story collections. Such a pleasure becoming aware of this Irish author.

Jeferson Tenório: The Dark Side of Skin

This incredible novel, translated by Bruno Dantas Lobato and published by Charco Press, explores racial relations in Brazil. Though the black experience in Brazil is distinct from that in America I often found it uncanny how similar the situation seemed: the story could easily have unfolded in any-city USA.

The second person narrative is the ‘invented truth’ or the invented ‘memory of you’ as the narrator grieves the death of his father. Along the way the story deals primarily with systemic racism but also with family dynamics, hurt people and their search for happiness, and the daily struggle of walking out the door each morning. The characters attempt to love and be loved, some seriously challenged by their shortcomings, but for me they remained sympathetic.

Though a bleak and sobering story, I found it engaging and challenging, compassionate and frustrated. A wonderful depiction of the often damaging patterns we encounter in ourselves and in society. Highly recommended.

Rebecca Goldstein: Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel

I will state right from the start that this book and Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem are far from my full comprehension: I’m glad I read it but confess to not fully understanding most of it. I ran across the theory while reading Mircea Cartarescu’s Solenoid and was intrigued with his application of the theory and its philosophical implications. In a nutshell and in my less than mathematical thinking, I understand incompleteness to state that there are objective truths that cannot be proven within that system and that if one fails to reach an objective truth there is a fault in one’s thinking, not in the truth itself. Goldstein’s example is the statement 5 +7 = 12. If one were to add 5 and 7 and arrive at 13, one can assume there is a problem with counting and not with the statement. Clear enough, but I got lost in Chapter 3 where Goldstein lays out the proof for this. Sill, there is something inherently attractive in the theorem and in its application to daily life and it is the reason I slowly worked my way through the book.

One useful application is in evaluating the current mess of constant lies, false ‘facts,’ and the rewriting of objective truths dominant in politics and social life. Its as if we now reject the existence of objective truths in favor of anything we want to create or manufacture to justify our behaviour. People have some bizarre beliefs and opinions and create new ‘truths’ to support those beliefs and opinions, rather than the other way around. Goldstein quotes Gödel in her epigraph: “But every error is due to extraneous factors (such as emotion and education); reason itself does not err.” It seems as if reason is today’s casualty in favor of subjective truths and errors.

I may be making a mistake in trying to apply Incompleteness to daily living, and granted my understanding is tenuous, but it seems like a worthy goal. A challenging book and enlightening reading about Gödel’s life outside of mathematics, especially his relationship with Einstein. A good brain teaser.

Tom Drury: The End of Vandalism

There is a scene near the conclusion of ‘The End of Vandalism’ where a character who owns a campground is explaining to an engineer about the meandering path to the lake. He had complained that it should have been built straight. She claimed she thought it was straight. That is an apt metaphor for how I see this engaging novel unfolding. Short on plot but abounding in stories of the people living in the fictional rural-American Grouse County. Characters who see their lives as heading straight but actually meandering through highs and lows, good times and bad. The stories accumulate to paint a heartbreaking narrative of lifelong efforts to find a bit of happiness.

An aspect of the novel I particularly enjoyed was Drury’s abundant use of music, with liberal sprinkling of musician names, song titles and lyrics. The characters were steeped in music and albums and the CD appeared near the end of the novel, albeit with only one character: most others missed out on that questionable technological breakthrough. Another aspect I enjoyed was the slow decay of the rural county, its towns, and the quality of life of its citizens, summed up well by the narrator with ‘services were leaving Grafton like seed from a dandelion.’

As I read the constant vignettes, I imagined a quilt or a web slowly being built. Intersecting lives, chance meetings and near misses, more and more odd decisions and chances taken. Characters lost on their own meandering paths. A very engaging read and a wakeup call to enjoy and appreciate the journey.

Idle Hill: Available Now! in synkroniciti magazine

My short story Idle Hill is now available for purchase at synkroniciti magazine. It is a PDF download for $7.00 and includes lots of other great authors and artists and their interpretations of the theme Haunting. I have also provided a link to the magazine’s website on my Publication page. Idle Hill is my contribution to this theme and explores toxic masculinity and grieving. It would be wonderful if you could give it a read and let me know what you think. Please enjoy.

Reading Inventory 2023

Here is a wrap-up of my reading activity in 2023. In another post I will list my favorite reads of the year. For now, just the stats.

92 books read ; 23229 pages

shortest book 63 pages, longest 720 pages

47 books in English translation; 45 written in English

79 different authors: 47 male, 31 female, 1 team

45 different translators: 14 male, 28 female, 3 mixed team

27 different countries represented: 32 from USA, next highest was 12 from Argentina

14 different languages represented: English the most at 45 books, Spanish next with 24

58 publishers: Charco Press best represented with 9 books

oldest book written in 1577 and most recent in 2023

49 novels, 24 short story collections, 13 nonfiction, 6 poetry

62 physical copies, 30 ebooks

The Antipodal Point of Fear: My Newest Published Story

The online journal The Normal School published my short story The Antipodal Point of Fear. It is available to read here. This is a story in my childhood series exploring the lives of American children. This story explores the ever-present and overwhelming fears a child has throughout his day and the extreme measure he takes to escape that which overwhelms him. Thanks to the folks at The Normal School for the editing of this piece and their willingness to publish it. I hope you enjoy it.

The Normal School blog post of The Antipodal Point of Fear

Owning Scars: My Newest Published Story

The online journal The Write Launch published my short story Owning Scars. It is available to read here. I am very pleased that they accepted this one and quite happy to see it in print. While on a hike with his sister, the main character in the story experiences flashbacks which he fears reveal a darker side to his personality, a side he does not remember existing. With the help of his sister, and the increasingly disturbing flashbacks, he comes face to face with the ghost of who he was and his harmful actions long since buried. Here is the beginning as presented by The Write Launch. Thanks for reading.

2020 Reading Data

Photo by Thomas Bormans on Unsplash.

117 books read in 2020; 27402 pages

shortest book was 45 pages, longest was 640 pages

90 were books in English translation; 27 written in English

101 different authors: 46 male, 54 female, 1 they

73 different translators: 30 male, 40 female, 3 mixed team

38 different countries represented

23 different languages represented

46 publishers with New Directions and Fitzcarraldo Editions best represented with 10 books each

oldest book published in 1842 and most recent in 2020

88 novels, 27 short story collections, 0 nonfiction, and 2 memoirs

59 physical copies, 58 ebooks, a 2020 trend I am not happy about