Reading post: October

It's the last day of October -- happy Halloween! --so it's time for a reading post. Although I didn't read a huge number of books this month, several of the books I did read were really long -- and very rewarding! So it was a good month.

Instead of randomly drawing books from my "Briefly Noted" envelopes this month, I deliberately went through them and picked out books that seemed like they might be a little spooky. I chose four fiction and four nonfiction, and managed to read them all, which I never thought I'd do when I picked them out. I have to admit, I spent a LOT of time this past week reading, just because the goal seemed attainable. In general, I enjoyed the nonfiction more than the fiction. Spooky fiction is hard to write.

The Night Ocean by Paul La Farge (2017).  I picked this novel because it is about people who are obsessed with legendary horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. Surely such a book would be spooky, no? 

No. 

Well, in the beginning it is, a little, but it gets less and less spooky as it goes on. There's a fairly erotic section, but that goes away too. The last 100 pages or so were positively boring. I was disappointed by this book. I think the author was trying to do something quite different from what I wanted him to do.

Living With a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth About Everything by Barbara Ehrenreich (2014). When she was a teenager, Ehrenreich (a lifelong atheist) had a mystical experience that she wasn't able to describe. Both before and after she also had episodes of "dissociation" triggered by sunlight. In this book, published 8 years before her death, she explores her difficult childhood and her lifelong attempt to reconcile her atheism and these experiences. She argues that the purpose of our minds may be "to condense all the chaos and mystery of the world into a palpable Other or Others," which, she says "may be seeking us out." Pretty spooky, I'd say.

The Road from Belhaven by Margot Livesey (2024). This is a novel about a girl, Lizzie, growing up on a Scottish farm in the late 1800s. She's based on the author's great-grandmother, who was said to be able to see the future (the author's mother was also psychic, and the author has also written a novel about her, which I might seek out). So that's kind of spooky, but the book doesn't focus on the spookiness -- it's mostly just kind of there, sort of a skill, like having absolute pitch. The scariest things about the book were what you'd expect: will they lose the farm, will Lizzie get pregnant out of wedlock, that kind of thing. There's a pet jackdaw named Alice -- I did like that.

Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis by Annie Jacobsen (2017). Ooooh, this was fun! Especially for me, because I've met some of the people mentioned. Back in 1973 I attended a Hanukkah party given by Elisabeth Targ (her father, Russell Targ, was a psychic researcher at SRI). I even remember the dress I wore, a pretty blue maxi. And Uri Geller was at the party and he bent a spoon! Also, the book discusses the psychic work of Gary Langford, who was my boss's husband back when I was a typesetter. Lauren had told me that Gary was psychic, but I didn't know he had predicted the kidnapping of a brigadier general in 1981. Anyway, even for someone who hasn't met any of the players, the book would be fun. The most interesting aspect of it, for me, was the way the people involved were either super skeptics, who refused to believe anything weird was happening, or went right off the deep end into nonsense, trying to get remote viewers to look for Atlantis, and that sort of thing. It's almost as though it's not possible to study this stuff seriously. Fascinating.

Model Home by Rivers Solomon (2024). I wanted to like this novel about three Black siblings returning to the home in Dallas that terrorized them when they were children. But the narrator was so annoying. Gender-fluid, possibly autistic, a Jewish convert, diabetic, fond of dating-app hook-ups, with a diabetic daughter who's also vegan -- it was just too much. I researched the author a little and they sound just like this character. The other problem was the pages of earnest discussion of childhood trauma, when the author should have been building up the suspense (if it were going to be the kind of book I wanted it to be). Maybe Solomon was trying to do too much in one book. Or maybe I'm just too old for this kind of thing.

Our Moon: How Earth's Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are by Rebecca Boyle (2024). This wasn't terribly interesting, but parts of it were good. I learned a lot -- and then immediately forgot most of it. Still, it's fascinating to read that we still don't really know how the moon was formed and why we have it. And I didn't know the moon has colors! I also didn't know that most of the Apollo astronauts were emotionally unsettled by their moon trips -- many got divorced or became ultra-religious or took up art. Also, I didn't know the moon is gradually getting farther away and one day will leave entirely -- and that will be the end of us.

The Third Hotel by Laura van den Berg (2018). When I started reading this, I didn't like it at all. But it's short, a little over 200 pages, so I kept going, and I ended up liking it. "Liking" might not be the right word. I was a little freaked out by it. The book is about a woman whose husband died 5 weeks previously. She goes to a film festival in Cuba (featuring a movie about zombies) that they were both planning to attend (he was an academic film critic). And she sees him there. Does she really? Is he a ghost? Is he still alive? Is he something in between? Maybe... a zombie? Who knows? I finished the book not having any idea what happened. But it was interesting. A good October book.

Something in the Blood: The Untold Story of Bram Stoker, the Man Who Wrote Dracula by David J. Skal (2016). Partway through this long biography (579 pages, plus notes, etc.), it occurred to me that it made no sense for me to be reading this when I've never read Dracula. But I kept reading, on and on and on. In Skal's attempt to give the WHOLE story, he includes a lot of information that really didn't need to be there, such as a biographical sketch of a woman who refused to edit Dracula. But I didn't mind learning more about Oscar Wilde, the stages of syphilis, and everything Dracula has become through the years. And now, of course, Dracula is on my to-be-read list.

Best books of the 21st century so far

In October I planned to read some spooky books off the New York Times list, but nothing on the list seemed particularly spooky, so I just read one book that I'd been looking forward to.

Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity by Andrew Solomon (2012) was fascinating. It's about how parents cope with children who are very different from them, and different from most people -- children who are deaf, have autism, are dwarfs, have Down Syndrome, and many other conditions. It's a really long book (702 pages plus the notes), and I spent a couple of weeks reading it (while also reading my spooky books). It was worth it, though. Most of the "differences" ended up being things people could live with, somehow, and even be proud of, ultimately. There were exceptions, such as schizophrenia, which no one seemed to be able to see any good in. The long chapter on transgender children was illuminating. Really, everything about the book was. Someday I'll read his book on depression (The Noonday Demon), which comes highly recommended, but hmm, might be a bit too much for me when I'm feeling low! Anyway, I do highly recommend Far from the Tree, if you have a spare month to read it. You could also skip around and only read the chapters that interest you.

So I've now read 56 of the books on the list of the top 100. I still have a good chance of reaching 60 by the end of the year, but we'll see.

 

Other reading

I didn't particularly want to read the book for the book group (The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact, and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook by Hampton Sides), since it wasn't spooky, and I put off starting it until a few days before we met. In fact, it's a pretty interesting book, and if we'd read it in September or November I would have been fine with it. But it interrupted my spooky book reading, so it annoyed me (one of our members doesn't like anything spooky, so I've given up suggesting that type of book). I will say, it's very well written and tells an interesting story. But it's such a sad story in so many ways. Cook was a really good explorer, for his time (the 1700s), and did his best not to destroy the new lands and peoples he encountered. But they got destroyed anyway, by people following in his footsteps. I was especially saddened by the annihilation of the sea otters. Oh well.

Next month

In November I like to read about Indians and American history in general. So I will try to pick some books that match those categories from my "Briefly Noted" envelopes, and maybe also read a couple more from the NY Times list. I'm also going to try to read a massive biography of Harry Truman, since I like to read presidential biographies in November. So, we'll see what actually gets read, but those are my guidelines.