Good reads

One of my 2014 resolutions was to track my reading via Goodreads, and I’m here to say I hated it. Record-keeping in itself is a good thing. It’s interesting to know I read or reread at least 95 books last year (a few weren’t in the Goodreads system and I can remember a few more I seem never to have logged), in addition to the beginnings of many books I didn’t finish; a ton of journalism and literary magazines; articles, blogs, and posts; and many manuscripts and student papers. That’s 36 poetry books, 11 books of nonfiction, and the rest fiction, including a few YA titles, lots of genre and literary fiction, and one short story collection (George Saunders). 55 were authored by women—phew—but only 8 by nonwhite authors (excluding a few multi-author anthologies), a number that shocks me with its single-digit lameness and teaches me I have to do better. A third were books I taught; the rest I read for pleasure or, as described in my last post, from professional curiosity about contemporary prize culture.

Unless I have a major obligation bearing down, I won’t finish a book I don’t find engaging, so almost everything on my 2014 list was worth attention or at least fun. Some of it was outstanding, but then, I reread Jane Austen, Elizabeth Bishop, and Gwendolyn Brooks. I’ve also been on a classic-mystery kick so I plunged into Wilkie Collins and P.D. James for the first time. The Moonstone was one of my favorite books of 2014 (and 1868), but mentioning that probably doesn’t do the contemporary publishing industry much good.

Some recent books I loved: a week or two ago I praised two 2014 National Book Award poetry choices: the long-listed Gabriel by Edward Hirsch, and the finalist Citizen by Claudia Rankine. However, lots of less-recognized books offer the NBA selections serious competition. A few comparisons among books that share affinities: Cynthia Hogue’s Revenance rivals Fanny Howe’s Second Childhood in eerie resonance. Rafael Campo’s Alternative Medicine is just as skillful, high-stakes, and risky as Spencer Reece’s The Road to Emmaus. Martha Silano’s Reckless Lovely outshines Maureen McLane’s This Blue. I was moved by Sally Rosen Kindred’s Book of Asters and Laura Gray-Street’s Pigment & Fume. A couple of 2013 poetry volumes I didn’t finish until 2014 but admired were Natalie Diaz’s When My Brother Was an Aztec and Maria Hummel’s House and Fire.

My favorite new literary fiction this year was Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See, a book that has earned plenty of attention. In nonfiction, Peter Mendelsund’s What We See When We Read is pretty extraordinary. I was really looking forward this year to new speculative fictions by Lev Grossman, Jo Walton, and Stephen King, and I liked them all, especially Walton’s My Real Children. I got even more of a kick, however, out of slightly older books I didn’t get to until 2014: Elizabeth Knox’s Mortal Fire and Eowyn Ivey’s The Snow Child. Daniel Abraham’s Long Price Quartet has stayed with me and, older still, Carol Emshwiller’s The Mount. And I loved spending time with Wayne Koestenbaum’s My 1980s in preparation for his fall visit to campus.

In other words, 2014 brought lots of good reads. I can also see a tilt towards British fiction and U.S. poetry, as well as towards white authors generally, so I’ve learned I need to widen my range. I just don’t find the Goodreads platform convenient or useful as a way of discovering personal trends. There are too many clicks to enter and date titles. Nor does the year-in-review feature sort titles by the factors that most interest me.

And then there’s the tyranny of the rating system. I gave precious few threes, which to me means “a decent book but not my cup of tea,” and I wouldn’t even bother to finish the ones and twos. Which leaves me the grand range of four and five to handle poetry books I admire and would recommend as well as, you know, Sylvia Plath. The same binary system has to handle the last in Glen Duncan’s werewolf trilogy, the Tina Fey memoir that cracked me up as an audiobook, and Jane Austen. I feel mean giving fours to contemporary books I hope others will invest their time and money in, but shouldn’t five stars be saved for must-reads, the most powerful works around? Maybe the problem is that I’m temperamentally more critic than booster.

At any rate, this year I’m listing books in a word processing document. I’ll still give you the upshot next January, but without that gold star for stress.

In the meantime, the new term is grinding into gear, with classes beginning Monday. I owe a couple of shout-outs to the Tahoma Literary Review for publishing “Sticky” (a poem about reading and teaching!) and nominating it for a Pushcart; and to editors Albert Bendixen and Stephen Burt for including my essay “The Formalist Modernisms of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Helene Johnson, and Louise Bogan” in the new Cambridge History of American Poetry. And I’m looking forward to hearing unfamiliar poets and meeting old friends at the Bridgewater International Poetry Festival next week (I read on Friday afternoon).

I feel like hibernating with poet-detective Adam Dalgliesh, but apparently work must be done. Zero stars for the weather and one for the month of January in principle. I’m saving the rest of my shiny stickers for spring.