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Hello readers and welcome back to another installment of the Reading List. As mentioned previously I have tried to work in more BIPOC and female authors on this list, but I also have a pretty big backlog of “old white dudes” sitting on bookshelves around my apartment that I need to read to round out the list. To that end, I decided to revisit a writer whose novels I hadn’t read since the first year of this experiment, Ernest Hemingway. I had long wanted to read his 1929 work A Farewell to Arms as it is considered one of his greatest novels, and now I can see why.
The story revolves around Lieutenant Frederic Henry, an ambulance driver during the Great War, and Catherine Barkley, the nurse that helps take care of him after he’s injured. But this novel is about far more than that: the pointlessness of war, the desire for human connection even in a world torn apart by it. The first time Henry is sent to the front he is injured by artillery fire in his leg; he is subsequently taken to the hospital in Milan to recover where he is reunited with Catherine and it is here they become intimate. He gets kicked out of the hospital for contracting jaundice because he drank alcohol. Henry returns to the front only to find the Italian side (for which he is fighting, as an American) is in retreat. He helps them return and they take the ambulances up to another town. After the retreat he is put into a line of officers who are considered to have betrayed the Italian army for their retreat. He jumps into a river to escape it, which leads him to a train. He makes it back to Milan and then he reunites with Catherine in a different town. They hatch a plan to get Henry out of the war zone for good and up to Switzerland, which they execute at night by rowing over a lake. At first they live in the forests of Switzerland but Catherine soon needs to have her baby. They move to another town with a hospital, where the operation to have her baby commences, and I won’t give much more away than this for those who want to read this incredible (yet tragic) work. This was a great read for many reasons, not least of which is something I have covered before: Hemingway’s sparse prose. There is never any more than is needed to flesh out each scene, whether that’s a battlefield or the inside of a hospital or a hotel. And yet he always manages to provide enough description to set the scene from nature or within the city. This novel also reminded me of other great anti-war novels in that the main character escapes the military and is wanted for desertion, and makes his way out of the war. This is now the fourth Hemingway work I have encountered (after The Old Man and the Sea, his shorter works, and For Whom the Bell Tolls) and I am still amazed after all this time of his command of language, even if this was not my favorite of his works. I would say my initial lessons from reading this amazing author (keep it simple, using a novel to tell a deeper truth about life) still hold up. That’s going to do it for the Reading List for this year. Thanks for sticking with me as I have found a new job and with it comes less time for reading. We’ll start this whole thing up again in the new year. Thanks for joining me on this reading adventure!
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Hello readers and welcome back (finally) to another installment of the Reading List. As mentioned in previous entries, I have made it my goal to include more BIPOC authors on this list. To that end I decided to read Salman Rushdie’s landmark, multiple Booker-winning 1981 work Midnight’s Children.
This novel was quite a read for many reasons, not least of which is the time span that Rushdie includes within his narrative. Ostensibly it is the tale of one Saleem Sinai, who was born exactly at midnight during the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan, and therefore gains magical powers from that event. But the narrative actually starts decades and a generation before him, with Aadam Aziz, Saleem’s grandfather, and his journey finding love and marriage and children. The story really picks up with young Saleem realizing his gift of telepathic communication with the hundreds of other “midnight’s children” who were also born at that time and received amazing gifts. But this is merely scratching the surface of this story as we get introduced to multiple characters in the family as well as the exile of Saleem to live with his uncle and aunt at a certain point. The overall story revolves around an older Saleem telling it to his soon-to-be wife Padma and his son, who is not really his son but that of Parvati (a “witch” who befriends and saves Saleem’s life) and Shiva (Saleem’s enemy throughout most of the tale). There is an incredible reveal about halfway through the novel that makes the reader question much of which has gone on before and gives a different perspective to the entire novel. We see the horrific after effects of war take place in a serious way against the family, and later Saleem goes on a pilgrimage joining the army which was to my mind the most interesting part of the novel. After which he finds both his memory and his way back to his old “ayah” at the pickle factory where he is telling the story in the present tense of the book. This was without a doubt one of the weirdest and most unusual books I have ever read. Rushdie definitely has his own way of writing, which includes a lot of repetition of three words in a row and the use of the letter “O” throughout. Like Homeland Elegies there were a ton of Indian and other words I had to look up throughout reading. These elements help shape the narrative toward the magical realist themes of the tale and give it its own style. The story occurs over several decades in Indian history and is an analogous tale to the reality that took place during the partition, political upheaval, war, and “Emergency” times under Indira Gandhi. I learned a lot about Indian history while reading this book. Thank you readers for bearing with me as I have taken on a new job and thus have a little less time for reading; therefore this epic tale took a few months to read. Thanks as always for joining me on this reading adventure. Hello readers and welcome to this installment of the Reading List. As mentioned previously, over the past years I have made it a goal to include more BIPOC authors on the list. To that end I decided to read Richard Wright’s landmark 1940 work, Native Son.
This novel was an incredible read for a few reasons, and made all the more incredible knowing that it was Wright’s follow up to his collection of novellas Uncle Tom’s Children. The book centers around a black character named Bigger Thomas who lives in a cramped one-room apartment on the south side of Chicago with his mother, brother and sister. He has plans to become a pilot someday but is not allowed to take classes because of the color of his skin. Bigger has issues gaining employment and is often hanging out at pool hall where he roughs up one of his friends in a misunderstanding about their plans to rob a hardware store. Later in the day Bigger goes to the rich and white Mr. Dalton’s home to inquire about a job he gains through the relief service. Here he learns he is to become Mr. Dalton’s driver and also be the driver for his daughter Mary. That evening he is instructed to take Mary out to her university classes but Mary tells Bigger she instead wants to go out and meet up with her boyfriend, the Communist Jan. They also want to go to a place to eat that is in Bigger’s neighborhood, as in their clueless way they want to understand how black people live. All three of them proceed to get drunk and then they drop Jan off. Bigger has issues getting Mary into her house because she’s so drunk and it is at this point in the story he commits an accidental crime that I won’t mention for those who want to read this exceptional book. From here on out his job with the Dalton’s is in serious jeopardy and Bigger is eventually found out for what he has done; he then flees for his life. He is eventually caught and put on trial for his crimes, a trial in which the prosecutor running for office describes what his punishment should be and the Communist lawyer set to defend Bigger delivers a lengthy speech contextualizing his client’s actions in a racist America. Finally we see Bigger meeting with his lawyer again at the end in his jail cell before the end. This book was a very powerful meditation on black life in the 1930’s even in a supposedly less segregated city like Chicago, and despite the plain language and slow pace of the novel Wright has much to say about the relations between the races and why Bigger did what he did. I hesitate to call Bigger that more modern term “antihero” because what he does is grotesque, but as Wright says in later letters along with my copy of the novel his goal was to “objectively” show this character for what he does and thinks. I will also mention a trigger or content warning here regarding some events that take place within the novel, including sexual assault (which the main character is charged with but doesn’t commit against Mary, but does to his girlfriend Bessie). Despite that I would still recommend this novel as an unflinching look at black life during this time and how black people were treated vastly differently than white people leading up to the civil rights era. There was a helpful essay included in my copy of the book entitled “How ‘Bigger’ was Born” in which Wright elucidates a bit more about how the character came to be in his mind and how he worked on the novel. I also broke my regular rule about not watching film adaptations and viewed HBO/A24’s fairly decent modernized take on the story, although I did not like how it changed the ending. Thanks as always for joining me on this reading adventure. Hello readers and welcome back to a new series for the website, which as I stated previously began as an outgrowth of a file that’s been sitting in my Google Drive for months now so I thought I’d just break out some of the more important elements. That initial post was called “What’s a Reader For?” and was an attempt to look at all the sources we bring into account each day as we try to understand the world. In the age of the internet and social media I realize that could be an infinite amount so I’m going to break it down into the topics and sources I try to follow each week.
Last time I rounded up some of the most important sources I use to figure out what is going on in the world of books and literature. So what are some more important sites and newsletters to use? I’d be remiss if I didn’t kick off this “part two” list with a magazine I have come to enjoy over the last year(s) that has really been a great resource: Writer’s Digest. I have signed up for their email newsletters and get something interesting to my inbox every week. The magazine is chock full of handy tips for craft and also for those a little farther along in their publishing journey. They always interview an author for every issue and include agent spotlights as well. It’s just overall a great resource for writers at any stage in their career. (They also offer critique services as well as a shop for classes.) [ I should also note that my wife purchased me a subscription to another magazine years ago called Poets & Writers that was helpful though I did not get as much out of it; however I still follow them on Twitter. ] Up next I’ll mention a few more literary newsletters I try to get to each week. The Millions is a site that has been around for twenty years and publishes book previews, reviews, essays, question and answer sessions and all other kinds of writing that I have found to be very helpful over the years. (One of their writers, Ed Simon, helped me flesh out a post I wrote a few years back during the pandemic, and he’s one I would highly recommend.) Another newsletter I try to peruse each week is Arts & Letters Daily as they collect some of the best essays and articles published around the web and in journals. Another phenomenal creator (and the author of Steal Like an Artist among many other books) I follow is Austin Kleon, who each week posts ten things worth sharing to his email newsletter (he also posts regularly on the Tweet Machine). Another great newsletter is New Left Review’s Sidecar as they post essays and reviews that are highly worth your while. And a final newsletter/journal worth checking out is one I have stumbled across in the last few years, The New Atlantis, which tends to publish science-related essays but covers a lot more than that. Finally there are a few independent publishers out there that I try to follow as they have very interesting newsletters: OR Books, Haymarket Books, and of course our very own local and highly regarded Graywolf Press. Well once again this “part two” list is just scratching the surface of the many amazing websites, journals, magazines, and newsletters available that will help you understand the literary world and its various aspects while also honing your craft as a writer. And of course once again as with the previous entries in this series, feel free to add your own source lists in the comments. There may be one more part in the books/literature series (those places I follow via feedly) before I move onto another topic: environmental news. Stay tuned and stay informed! Hello readers and welcome to this latest entry in the Reading List. As mentioned previously, over the past years I have made it a goal to include more BIPOC authors on the list. To that end I decided to read Colson Whitehead’s impressive 1999 debut novel, The Intuitionist.
This was a phenomenal read for my reasons, but was made all the more amazing given that it was Whitehead’s first work (he would go on to win the Pulitizer for The Underground Railroad). The book centers around the Guild of Elevator Inspectors and the two classes therein, Empiricists (who use technical skill and ability to inspect whether elevators are working properly) and Intuitionists (who merely touch the sides of the elevators to intuit what is wrong with them). Lila Mae Watson, who is the first Black female inspector ever allowed into the Guild, falls firmly into the Intuitionist camp and is widely mistrusted by the other older men in the Guild. An elevator she recently inspected has what is termed a “catastrophic accident” and plunges many floors to the ground (fortunately nobody was on it). The book unwinds around Lila Mae’s attempts to figure out what happened, who possibly set her up, and the origins of the Intuitionists. Lila Mae runs into many Intuitionist characters who initially seem to be helpful but are in actuality notorious and trying to use her toward more devious ends as the Guild election comes up. I could go on about the plot some more but suffice it to say this book was magisterial in how it handles race relations. As stated, Lila Mae is the first and only Black female elevator inspector and is treated like garbage not only in the inspector universe but in the world at large (which is pretty obviously New York City in some time like the 1950’s but never named as such): being forced in her university days to live in a cramped room above a gymnasium, later having to find an apartment in a largely immigrant based neighborhood which after the accident gets rooted around in by two tough guys, going undercover during the “Funicular Follies” and viewing her co-workers watching and laughing at a blackface show, and generally being seen as inferior to the white people that make up the majority of the other characters in the book (she and other Black characters within the novel are repeatedly noted as being “colored”). Lila Mae figures into a mysterious mailing of notebooks from James Fulton, the founder of the Intuitionist school of thought (who she discovers was Black) and ends up spending much of the later half of the novel looking for his “black box” elevator, also known as the one that will bring forth the “second elevation.” There is a lot of elevator talk in this book and it’s clear that Whitehead did his research on them. The intrigue among the characters goes on for quite some time and kept me riveted to the page each time I sat with this book. The language used is quite smooth and flowing and Whitehead intimately knows how to turn a great phrase. I would definitely recommend this novel to anyone looking for a rip roaring investigative type story that also handles the topic of race with incredible perception and dedication. There is a pretty big character reveal at the end that I won’t give away but puts a shade on much of the plot that came beforehand. Also at the end we get a glimpse of where Lila Mae might be heading next on her Intuitionist journey. Again I would highly recommend this novel and I am eagerly awaiting the next one of Whitehead’s I get to devour. Thanks as always for joining me on this reading adventure. Hello readers and welcome to this latest entry in the Reading List. As mentioned previously, over the past years I have made it a goal to include more female and BIPOC authors on the list. To that end I decided first up this year would be Toni Morrison’s landmark 1987 novel Beloved.
To start with I must say this was one of the best novels I’ve read in years and taught me a lot about the position of Black people in Civil War era society and how their lives were affected by (as written in the novel) “whitepeople” throughout their lives. The novel follows the main character Sethe as she escapes from slavery and gives birth to her daughter Denver on the way. But that is not the entire plot of the book as it jumps around quite a bit in time, which at first was a bit disorienting but by the time I finished it I realized why Morrison made the choices she did. There is a horrendous choice made by Sethe once she realizes she is going to be caught and brought back into the world of slavery that leads to her losing one of her own daughters, “Beloved” (so named because that was all she could afford on the tombstone). The child goes on to haunt the house where they stay after Sethe goes to jail for her act, causing her two sons to flee the home. However in an odd chance of fate Sethe is seemingly reunited with Beloved eighteen years after the incident and Sethe brings her into the home she has created with another former slave of “Sweet Home,” Paul D. Most of the story takes place at the home for escaped slaves that Sethe’s step-mother Baby Suggs founded but we also get to see the backstory of several of the characters and get an idea of how they escaped the plantation. Baby Suggs was a kind of preacher that assembled others to “the Clearing” where she gave messages and talked about what they had left. Sethe also had a husband at Sweet Home named Halle who did not make the escape. About halfway through the novel Paul D leaves after some unfortunate encounters with Beloved, and the novel shifts to a perspective of how Beloved takes over the household. Denver is forced to leave to reconnect with the society that had abandoned them in the wake of Sethe’s fateful choice many years ago. She finds work, and once she begins to gain the confidence of the other women in the city they gather up to cast out what has become a malevolent presence in the home. Sethe then has a flashback to her earlier life which leads to a brief outpouring of violence. Thankfully the person she attacks has been helping Black people for many years and lets her return to the home. There she reconnects to Paul D, who had his own journey to make with some other characters, namely “Stamp Paid.” It’s hard to describe this powerful, phenomenal work in so many words without wholeheartedly recommending it to anyone who is looking for an incredible story set in the Civil War era and afterward, a brutally unflinching look at how slavery affects the entire person and their past, and how escaping it is not so easy even after the fact. I would say I have not encountered a novel that explores these themes so deftly since reading Kindred a few years ago. I would highly recommend this novel for anyone (like me) who is looking to gain a better perspective beyond their usual one. Thank you for once again joining me on this reading adventure. Hello readers and welcome back to a new series for the website, which as I stated previously began as an outgrowth of a file that’s been sitting in my Google Drive for months now so I thought I’d just break out some of the more important elements. That initial post was called “What’s a Reader For?” and was an attempt to look at all the sources we bring into account each day as we try to understand the world. In the age of the internet and social media I realize that could be an infinite amount so I’m going to break it down into the topics and sources I try to follow each week.
This series has already looked at various newsletters and website sources I use to follow what is happening on the local level in Minnesota and Minneapolis. Now I’m going to shift gears a bit and take a look at some subscriptions and email newsletters I use to keep up with the world of books and literature. I mentioned before I also use Twitter and feedly to keep up with some sites and may include that in the next post(s). First I should start local and mention that I have been a subscriber to the literary review Rain Taxi for a few years now, and it has been incredibly worthwhile. They send out four beautiful looking issues a year and each one is full of reviews of authors I have never heard of, generally gaining me a new understanding of books that have come out over that time. Another cool thing they do is offer online reviews on their website that are only available there. I was fortunate enough to have a conversation with their main editor Eric Lorberer a few years back to discover more about how the magazine functions. (They also host the Twin Cities Book Festival every year, and offer chapbooks and other items for sale on their site.) Next I thought I’d list some stalwarts of the online literary scene. And that begins with Electric Literature, a site that has been around for over a decade and features a ton of great literary essays in their newsletter each week. Of note also is their dedicated Literary Mag “Recommended Reading” which I have gotten into more over the last few years and is a great source to find new short story voices. Another phenomenal site is the Los Angeles Review of Books, which also has a print quarterly and sends out great content from their website with every newsletter. I have come across some of the best book reviews and essays I’ve ever read and saved to my Instapaper through this organization. A site that I have come across in the last few years that offers a contest every month to enter is called On the Premises. Their monthly newsletter rounds up their latest short story competition as well as some great writing advice. A great site that offers a newsletter rounding up important literary stories every week is LitHub (one of their original pieces helped fill out a post I did in the Writing Life series here on my blog). And to round out part one of these sources, Public Books is a most excellent online literary magazine that posts essays on a variety of topics (I have found their recent series “Hacking the Culture Industries” to be incredibly valuable). This list is just a beginning look at the many great book and literary websites out there for us writers to use as resources. But again as with the previous entries in this series feel free to post your own sources in the comments below. I’ll be back with part two (and possibly three) of this list in the coming months. |
AuthorJohn Abraham is a published author and freelance journalist who lives in the Twin Cities with his wife Mary and their cat. He is writing a speculative dystopian novel and is seeking representation and a publisher. Archives
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