A month of discovering new authors and catching up on modern classics. And two more candidates for Book of the Year. I was also much stricter in monitoring my social media use — this freed up more time to read.
1. The Book of Strange New Things
— Michel Faber
I don’t believe I’ve ever consumed a 600-page book as quickly. Loved the idea of a Christian missionary proselytizing to aliens lightyears away. A wonderful read.
2. Stoner
— John Williams
An absolute gem. Human, all too human. Why is this not better known? Candidate for my book of the year.
3. Dune
— Frank Herbert
Solid page-turning sci-fi, but not great.
4. Dune Messiah
— Frank Herbert
Half the length of Dune, and half as good.
5. Children of Dune
— Frank Herbert
Not good enough that I want to read the next three in the series. Too much intrigue and pseudo-philosophy and too little action — for me.
6. Let Me Tell You What I Mean
— Joan Didion
Every generation is better off with a Joan Didion. Good review in The Guardian. I have Didion’s first novel, Play It as It Lays, on order.
7. My Death
— Lisa Tuttle
Loved this novella. On the look-out for more by this author.
8. The Belly of Paris
— Émile Zola
Simply great storytelling. Zola plonks you down in the middle of nineteenth-century Paris, right in the muck and pungent odors and scrapping and gossip and cruelty and wit and desperation. This is part of Zola’s Les Rougon-Macquart cycle of 20 novels. I plan to read them all.
9. Slaughterhouse-Five
— Kurt Vonnegut
The writing was good enough for me to not abandon it, but why this is still considered a classic is beyond me. Great cover, though.
10. The Membranes
— Ta-wei Chi
Not terribly compelling for me, although the ending of this novella was pretty good.
11. Severance
— Ling Ma
Liked the flashback scenes and main character — the rest, not so much.
12. Inverted World
— Christopher Priest
Great concept for a novel. Loved this. Will find more Priest to read.
13. Non-Stop
— Brian Aldiss
A pleasant surprise. Great story concept and some nice plot twists. Classic sci-fi.
14. Pnin
— Vladimir Nabokov
In the back-cover blurb, John Updike describes Nabokov’s prose as ‘ecstatic’, and that’s precisely why I don’t enjoy reading him. Only my second but likely my last Nabokov.
15. Coming Up for Air
— George Orwell
Epitomizes what we mean by ‘Orwellian’. Bleak, authentic and insightful. The annotations in this Alma edition are pretty useful too.
April 2024 reading stats
books
15
pages
4419
authors
12
