Reading through change

I have zero plans for New Year’s Eve: I don’t care enough about the midnight moment to stay up past bedtime, plus we just returned from visiting my sister in Florida (my family of 4 in an economy car for 12 hours each way), and we’re all tired. But introspection IS my jam, so like everyone else, I’m pondering the year behind me and imagining the year ahead.

2023 was framed by sorrow. Personally, it began in argument with my brother and the late-January realization that he’d scammed my sister and me, pretending my mother’s small bequest was legally tied up when he had already taken control of the money. None of the family is in touch with him anymore. Bummer. The year ended with having to euthanize Ursula, the best cat I’ve ever had, and only eight years old to boot. I miss her for her own sweet self, but her long decline also reminded me too much of my mother’s–cancer that resulted in painful open wounds–and my retrospective understanding that we intervened in my mother’s dying too much, that she could have left sooner and with less suffering if we’d understood more quickly that we were in the end game.

When my attention spirals beyond the very local, I see lots of friends grieving or upending their lives. I feel constant horror about the massacre of so many Palestinian civilians in Gaza. It sure looks like climate change is accelerating. US politics suck. 2023 was rougher than my small griefs, and I can’t rationally believe that 2024 will be safe and just for the world.

However, even a tough year brings gifts. Again looking inward: while I’m fed up about many problems at my workplace, the core work of teaching students remains a positive constant, as does my editorial labor for Shenandoah. Otherwise the positives, like the negatives, involve upheaval or at least turns in fortune. My son started graduate school; my daughter is applying now; my spouse and I both had books accepted. Likewise, some of those friends upending their lives will be better off in the long run, even though the interim is hard.

I haven’t reported on the acupuncture regimen I started in September, but that, too, has felt like a minor revolution. From the start, it brought a reduction in pain and lift in mood; I also just find the process deeply interesting, and learning makes me happy. Just before Thanksgiving, though, the acupuncturist (known in our house as The Needle Witch) cleared a blockage (no, I don’t know exactly what that means), and since then I’ve been flooded by emotions whose intensity is hard to manage. I cry more often and feel raw, like layers of skin have peeled away. The Needle Witch says that the lower abdomen is the body’s closet, where we store old hurts, and I’m on a path to a new balance, at which point I won’t need treatments anymore. I hope so. Certainly acupuncture has been more transformative than I expected.

During this academic break, while not hanging out with family, I’ve self-medicated by reading, as usual. In my last blog I reported on some indie press favorites, but of course I read lots of books from the heavyweights, too, especially on the fiction side. The major press novels that stay with me most powerfully include Kuang’s Babel, historical fantasy about empire and industry; Zevin’s Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, which everyone was rightly wowed by; Millet’s The Children’s Bible, an intensely literary apocalypse story; King’s Holly (emeritus professors go hilariously cannibal, although an elderly woman poet shows a more positive side of academia); and Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These, a moving and perfectly beautiful novella about Ireland’s Magdalene laundries and what it takes for an ordinary, not-powerful person to stand up to toxic institutions. I recommend all of them and everything else on my list, too–it’s rare for me to finish a book I don’t find compelling in some way, because life feels too short for that. (Although I’ll confess that Jorie Graham’s poetry doesn’t do much for me, which I expect is my fault–so many people I respect admire her work.) The two books I’m reading now are also terrific so far: Hernan Diaz’s Pulitzer prize-winning novel Trust and the nonfiction The Body Keeps the Score, which friends have been recommending for years. My full year in books is below, with asterisks marking books published in the last year or so, and the reasons I read them in parentheses, because that helps me think about how books catch attention. I hope 2024 brings me more literary treasures like these, and lots of travel, and maybe a kitten.

Happy New Year and peace to all.

Poetry (42)

• 1/7 Minor, Flowers As Mind Control* (met at conference)
• 1/21 Harlan, Bright Shade* (Shenandoah contributor)
• 1/29 Derricotte, The Undertaker’s Daughter (recommended by acquaintance)
• 2/10 Gailey, Flare, Corona* (friendship and fandom)
• 2/13 Huong, trans. Balaban, Spring Essence (for student project)
• 2/18 Hogue, Inside, it is dark* (fandom)
• 3/4  Lynn, Mothman Apologia* (Shenandoah author)
• 3/12 Fisher-Wirth, Paradise is Jagged* (fandom)
• 3/12 He, Sandman* (picked up at AWP)
• 4/15 Satterfield, The Badass Brontës* (fandom)
• 4/16 Meadows, In the Hands of the River* (Shenandoah author)
• 4/22 Alenier, ed., From the Belly: Poets Respond to Tender Buttons (review copy)
• 4/23 Hunter, Some Flowers* (fan of his scholarly work)
• 5/20 Connors, If I Were a Whale: Ecology Poems for Children (by a friend)
• 5/30 H.D., Hermetic Definition (reread for research)
• 5/31 H.D., Trilogy (reread for research)
• 6/26 Rau, How We Make Amends (advance copy to blurb)
• 7/2 Dasbach, Forty Weeks* (met at a conference)
• 7/21 Mirrlees, Paris (reread for research)
• 7/22 Berry, The Home Child* (friend’s recommendation)
• 7/25 Michael, The Red Queen Hypothesis* (fandom)
• 8/1 Choi, The World Keeps Ending and the World Goes On* (fandom)
• 8/2 Slaughter, Spectacle* (met at a conference)
• 8/7 Hollowell, Corvus and Crater* (FB notice)
• 8/10 de la Paz, The Diaspora Sonnets* (fandom)
• 8/12 Peacock, The Analyst (fandom)
• 8/16 H.D., Vale Ave (research)
• 8/20 Raphel, Our Dark Academia* (friend’s recommendation)
• 8/23 Igloria, Cassinetto, Hoffman, Dear Human at the Edge of Time* (contributor)
• 8/26 Shockley, Suddenly We* (fandom)
• 10/1 Lynn, Mothman Apologia (reread for teaching)
• 10/23 Carson, Autobiography of Red (reread for teaching)
• 11/1 Givhan, Belly to the Brutal (reread for teaching)
• 11/2 Hong, Dispellations (in ms)
• 11/9 Gonzalez, Limerence* (met at conference)
• 11/10 Gray, Leda’s Daughters* (by a colleague)
• 11/27 Gailey, Flare, Corona* (reread for class)
• 11/27 Smith, Life on Mars (reread for class)
• 12/14 Hoover, No Spare People* (fandom)
• 12/20 Rogers, Fat Girl Forms (Shenandoah poet)
• 12/22 Hoffer, Undershore (met at a reading)*
• 12/22 Graham, To 2040* (gift)
• 12/23 Lynn, How to Maintain Eye Contact* (fandom)
• 12/24 Hughey, White Bull (met at conference)

Fiction (46)

• 1/3 Roy, The God of Small Things (Booker Prize)
• 1/8 Anappara, Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line* (reviews)
• 1/18 Osman, Thursday Murder Club (audiobook, friend’s recommendation)
• 1/27 Powers, Bewilderment* (fandom)
• 2/11 Kuang, Babel* (son’s recommendation)
• 2/12 Johnson, Train Dreams (student recommendation)
• 2/19 Dimaline, VenCo* (fandom)
• 3/5 Bardugo, Hell Bent* (fandom)
• 3/10 Zevin, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow* (reviews)
• 3/26 Makkai, I Have Some Questions For You* (fandom)
• 4/10 Fowler, Booth* (fandom)
• 4/13 Jones, Don’t Fear the Reaper* (fandom)
• 4/18 Le Guin, Dragonfly (reread for teaching)
• 4/21 Okorafor, Akata Witch (reread for teaching)
• 5/5 Grossman, Magicians (reread for teaching)
• 5/15 Bardugo, Ninth House (reread for teaching)
• 5/22 Grossman, Magician King (reread for fun)
• 5/27 Grossman, Magician’s Land (reread for fun)
• 6/14 White, Midcoast (friend’s recommendation)
• 6/19 Abbott, Beware the Woman* (NPR review)
• 6/28 King, The Stand (fandom)
• 7/11 King, The Dead Zone (fandom)
• 7/17 Millet, The Children’s Bible (fandom)
• 7/20 King, Cujo (fandom)
• 7/28 King, Christine (fandom)
• 7/30 Millet, Mermaids in Paradise (fandom, audiobook)
• 8/3 King, Pet Sematary (fandom)
• 8/9 Heaberlin, Night Will Find You (indie bookstore display)
• 8/13 Marks, Fire Logic (friend’s recommendation)
• 8/17 Marks, Earth Logic “
• 8/20 Marks, Water Logic
• 8/27 Marks, Air Logic
• 9/4 Kingfisher, What Moves the Dead* (colleague’s recommendation)
• 9/13 Moreno-Garcia, Mexican Gothic (reviews and friends’ recommendations)
• 9/20 Beagle & Weissman, New Voices in Fantasy (reread for teaching)
• 9/27 King, Holly* (fandom)
• 10/1 Adelmann, How to Be Eaten* (review)
• 10/8 Carter, The Bloody Chamber (reread for teaching)
• 10/17 Priestly, Benighted (friend’s recommendation)
• 11/17 Jones, Mongrels (reread for class)
• 11/20 Christie, The Hallowe’en Party (fandom)
• 11/27 Givhan, River Woman, River Demon* (fandom)
• 12/10 Due, The Reformatory*
• 12/20 Galbraith, The Running Graves* (against my better judgment)
• 12/21 Belasco, Adventures in Bodily Autonomy* (press announcement)
• 12/22 Keegan, Small Things Like These (gift)

Nonfiction/ hybrid (12)

• 1/27 Robinson, Poetry Matters: For Better and for Verse* (by a friend)
• 2/26 Dungy, Guidebook to Relative Strangers (reread for teaching)
• 6/1 H.D., Hirslanden Notebooks (research)
• 6/2 Debo, The American H.D. (research)
• 6/3 Robinson, Astral H.D. (research)
• 6/29 Decker, DePaulis, Dummett, A Wicked Pack of Cards (research)
• 6/30 Gilbert, The Golden Dawn Scrapbook (research)
• 7/2 Hunter, The American House Poem* (research)
• 10/24 Guillory, Professing Criticism* (reviews and side pieces)
• 11/6 Fodor’s Aruba (travel planning!)
• 11/6 Batuman, The Possessed (daughter’s recommendation)
• 11/14 Furr, Love Story With Birds (manuscript for blurbing)