My New Year’s Bookbuying Resolution — Join Me!

On Saturday, on my way out of Home Depot in American Fork (Utah), I saw something which surprised and delighted me: a Barnes and Noble bookstore. I had never seen it there before, and technically it’s not there now, but I wasn’t hallucinating. It’s “coming soon,” opening in “winter 2024.” This inspires a new year’s bookbuying resolution or two, in which I’d love for you to join me.

I welcome the new arrival. Like the arrival years ago of Home Depot in American Fork and Lowe’s across the street in Lehi, its proximity means I will expend less time and fuel traveling to Orem or wherever else. That means, in theory, more money to buy books and more time to read them. There’s a tiny environmental impact too.

Barnes and Noble American Fork - Bookbuying Resolution

However, silver clouds have dark linings. For me this silver cloud has two: one from the past, nostalgic and not very useful in the present, and one for the not-too-distant future, which you and I can do something about.

Hence my resolution. You’re welcome to share it, once I’ve explained, which is after some related chatter, er, context.

That Teetering Stack of Books I Read in 2022 and 2023 (ish)

I love reading books, and I learned at least in time for graduate school to love writing about the books I read. My intention, these last two years or so, was to keep blogging about the books I read, as I had done sporadically for a while, then more methodically here, here, and here.

Those posts were fun to write, and they were well received, and the routine was simple enough. When I finished a book, I stacked it in a particular place until I had written about it here. Well, the stack has grow too large. I haven’t taken time to write about the books since September 2022, and I was playing catch-up then.

So today we catch up. I’ll list some books in passing but stop to chat about most, knowing full well I won’t do justice to any of them. Sixteen are fiction and grouped accordingly. Seventeen are nonfiction and separated into books about writing and others.

Books I Read Lately – Winter 2022 Edition (in September)

When I finish reading a book, I stack it on a certain shelf near my desk in my home office, away from but in sight of the UCRC, my Unconscionably Comfortable Reading Chair. There it sits until I write of it in a “Books I Read” blog post such as this one.

The stack is now 24 books. It’s getting precarious. And I should long since have written this post and two or three more like it. Such is life.

Here are five books from that stack. I’ll tell you where I found them, unless it was Amazon. I’m trying to reduce my dependency on Amazon. I’ll never overcome it entirely, I suspect, but I do love a good brick-and-mortar bookstore.

I’ll write about the others later. Ideally, sooner.


John Steinbeck - Travels with Charley in Search of American - Books I Read Lately

John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley in Search of America

I enjoy telling people about one of my sons, who grew from a precocious early reader immersed in Dav Pilkey’s Captain Underpants series to a mature mind preferring thick history books and great novels. One of his acquisitions was a passion for John Steinbeck’s writing.

He gave me this book as a gift. It is memoir, not the fiction for which Steinbeck is more famous, and it charmed and delighted me, page after page. It is a rambling account of his rambling journey across the United States with his dog Charley, who is surely one of the best-written canine personalities in prose. They traveled in a custom camper Steinbeck christened Rocinante, after Don Quixote’s horse.

Raphael’s Sistine Madonna, My Two Favorite Authors, and Mother’s Day

I recently added a small canvas print of Raphael’s Sistine Madonna (Madonna di San Sisto) to the wall of my study. (The original is nearly nine feet tall; my print is sixteen inches tall.) Much of its appeal to me is its connection to my favorite nineteenth century author, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and my favorite twentieth century author, Vasily Grossman. (I studied Russian literature quite seriously for a while.) What this has to do with Mother’s Day … we shall see.

Where We Do Difficult Things:
Good AF Writers

Writing is often a solitary activity, well suited to introverts. We thrive in a sort of solitude where we rarely feel alone, thanks to the people or creatures, historical or imagined, who fill our stories and books. But several essential writerly activities require us to interact with contemporary, fellow humans in challenging ways. Three of these happen over and over again at the twice-monthly meetings of a local critique group, Good AF Writers. (AF is for American Fork, Utah. What were you thinking?)

Different critique groups operate in different ways, but most have three nerve-wracking activities in common:

  • reading an excerpt of your writing aloud
  • hearing others’ feedback on your writing
  • giving others your feedback on their writing

Recent Reading: 10 More Books and a Memory

The more I read, the more I want to talk about what I read — and I’ve been reading more lately. I don’t mean more than I’ve ever read before. There was graduate school at Cornell — in Russian literature, a landscape of giant novels (which I still love), countless poems and short stories, and sprawling artistic manifestoes. Long before that were nineteen days at my grandparents’ farm in April 1975.

Do you mind very much if I remember for a few moments before I list the books?

Books I’ve Read Lately (14 of Them)

Lately I’ve been finishing books I started reading in the last year or two — and enjoyed, but left unfinished. Today I’ll tell you about some of those, plus some books I finished more quickly, without leaving them to languish for months or years.

Meanwhile, the poster child for my problem is still unfinished: Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables (first published in 1862). I got about 150 pages in, loved it, and stopped. I recently restarted from the beginning. I’m further in now, but I still have over 1,200 pages to go; it’s the unabridged translation. I’m still loving it, but it’ll be a while before I can report completion.

Among the books I’ve finished, I read some just to read them. Others I read for research, because I’m attempting, as time permits, to learn the art, craft, and business of writing fiction. I enjoyed most of the books I list below in printed form and the rest as audio books.

After I decided this topic might make a fun blog post, I asked myself why I wanted to write it. There was time enough to wonder; some of my writing languishes unfinished for months, like my reading.

On reflection I don’t think my motive is to dazzle you with the breadth and depth of my reading; I know too many people who read far more than I do to be impressed with myself in this way, or to think you’ll be impressed. Besides, if I were trying to impress you, I’d probably exclude at least two or three of the books I’m about to mention. You’ll know which, I think, when you get to them.

It’s more a matter of my enthusiasm for books in general, for some (not all) of these particular books, and for people who read books. When I read a book, I want to talk about it. You’re welcome to join me.

On Writing: “I can’t teach you how to have something to say.”

Here are a few more gems — I know it’s been a while — from Ann Padgett’s “The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir about Writing and Life.” You’ll find it in This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage (New York: Harper, 2013, pp. 19-60), which you should buy — or borrow from the library — and read.

If you write.

Writing must not be compartmentalized. You don’t step out of the stream of your life to do your work. Work was the life, and who you were as a mother, teacher, friend, citizen, activist, and artist was all the same person. People like to ask me if writing can be taught, and I say yes. I can teach you how to write a better sentence, how to write dialogue, maybe even how to construct a plot. But I can’t teach you how to have something to say. (pp. 31-32)