Book notes

Reading

These are the books I am actively reading.

• The Three-Body Problem, Liu Cixin
• The Long Fall, Walter Mosley
• The Coaching Habit, Michael Bungay Stanier, which I picked up and started reading this week because it sounded like a good fit via Josepha’s leadership books blog post. I’m about half finished and so far it is. Thanks Josepha!
• Hamlet, William Shakespeare, but just the next few pages. Too much excitement in the other fiction.

Less actively reading

I’m always “reading” a dozen books, some of which I haven’t actually touched in months. These I’ve at least opened at some point in the last month or are collections that I’m working through slowly.

• English Magic, Uschi Gatward
• Complete Short Stories, Graham Greene
• The Stinging Fly, Issue 46, Volume Two
• How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America, Clint Smith

Recently finished

Wild Kingdom (1996), the debut collection by Vijay Seshadri, which my dad gave to me many many years ago, well before Seshadri was a Pulitzer winner; a collection I have been sloooooowly working through over the last two years even though the poems are very enjoyable.

It closed with two poems—The Lump and Lifeline—that were great in a way that made me want to start from the beginning. It was like the entire collection established our rapport for those two poems. I’m looking forward to reading more of his work.

On deck

• The Storyteller, by Dave Grohl, is still on the nightstand.
• Lean Inception, by Paulo Caroli, is on the breakfast/lunch table.

And I have a whole load of print books lined up on a bookshelf now. Exciting!

Added to the long list

These are books I’ve run into over the last week and added to some sort of “to one day read” list that is ever growing and will never shrink.

• The Long Meadow, Vijay Seshadri
• Companion Piece, Ali Smith, because the seasonal quartet was so good and why not have another.
• Glory, NoViolet Bulawayo, a Zimbabwean successor to Animal Farm.
• The Candy House, Jennifer Egan, a sequel (?) to A Visit from the Goon Squad, which I had a copy of for about 10 years before reading as part of book club. Why not see what’s up with everyone?