January & February 2023

Dear fellow readers, I’m looking at my previous post date, January 9th, and it’s hard to believe that it’s March 16th, our Spring Break week here in Texas.

I had envisioned a dedicated and witty post today, but instead, mood dictates to alternate pictures with some of my latest reading updates for a lighter update.

Earlier in February, I finished reading I Hold a Wolf by the Ears, a compilation of short stories that made a great impression on me. Short stories is a genre that I’m appreciating more and more, it renders to a slow read if one wishes so, or a faster one, and as long as you finish a story, you can always come back later and not have to start all over or be lost. In my modest experience, good short story writers achieve a coherence that elevates each of the stories.

Laura Van Den Berg challenged some of my assumptions and offered disconcerting and yet not grotesque views of our modern fragmented reality. Lispector mentions in her introduction to this book that a pervading thought in the book would be ‘how strange it is to be ourselves.’

Intimations is, I ashamedly confess, my first book by Zadie Smith. It is truly small vignettes, each of them very relatable, as we all have lived through Covid and we both reside in the United States. After this, I don’t feel as intimidated to try another of her books. Please do recommend, maybe White Teeth?

Another confession, given that I have not read lots of poetry, Cavafy’s poems seem different and refreshing. Maybe, and only maybe, I am coming out of the huge reading slump. I’m not back to the reading capacity I have had most of my life, and I get that it’s not about quantity, it’s the fact that if I’m not reading I’m not well, and that reading means a lot to me, -from my spiritual nourishment to my so fashionable concept of mental health which the classics defined as leisure, and Charlotte Mason as Mother Culture. And it’s not strictly reading, but enjoying art, walks, music and/or podcasts, immersing myself in some creative endeavor or a small project around the house, trying a new recipe with my daughters, etc. Though not strictly reading, I’d say reading is at the core of all this.

I was given this delightful volume, The Novel Cure, which I adore, as well as the next two, Recitative, and The English Understand Wool, which will be my next titles by an author I’m also intimidated by, Morrison, and a new to me author, DeWitt.

Before closing, I must add that I have managed to finish some Calvino re-reads and new reads. Whenever I don’t know what to read, I sometimes pick Calvino, and his Invisible Cities delights me every time. One of my cleaning weekends last month, I also found the two books I hadn’t read that form his Our Ancestors trilogy, and listened to them. They are The Cloven Viscount, The Baron In the Trees, The Non-Existent Knight. They can be read independently since they are only grouped by style, genre and thematically, but they are not connected plots nor characters. I had read The Baron In the Trees, which afforded me a jolly time. If you are curious or a fan and wish to read a generous and insightful article on Calvino, this one published in The New Yorker by Merve Emre that Janakay shared with me I bet will satisfy you.

Most readers favor The Baron in the Trees as the best in those three. I do agree, but the three titles are such a blast. From the article, In response to a 1985 survey, “Why Do You Write?,” he declared, “I consider that entertaining readers, or at least not boring them, is my first and binding social duty.” He accomplishes this with high marks.

There’s more books presents and other titles of interest for the short term future, and hopefully my next upgrade will come soon.