I didn’t plan to skip posting yesterday but after I got through all my email and myriad other tasks that I have been neglecting and could no longer put aside, I found myself out of time for blogging. Sure I could have skipped my nightly workout but when you work at a job where your day is spent mostly sitting, skipping a workout is not a good idea for both mental and physical health reasons. This evening I was going to tell you about a really good poetry book I just read but my commute home was rather sapping due to the Twins baseball game going in to extra innings and all of them trying to get home while all of us who worked all day were also trying to get home. Playing at sardines does not make for a happy metro ride home. But enough of all that, I’m going for easy tonight and what could be easier than talking about what I’d like to read in August?
Actually, it isn’t easy at all. I managed to read quite a bit in July including a book on growing your own mushrooms to review for Library Journal. I have a bunch of recently finished books to write about, but I didn’t really get to all that I had planned read. I didn’t once pick up the Judith Herzog book of poetry. Nor did I get to Medea or Angle of Repose.
After a three-week hiatus from My Struggle, Book One by Karl Ove Knausgaard because I had to return it to the library, no renewals, I managed to get a copy from the university library. I picked up where I left off a few nights ago and I dunno. The book started off great but the more I read, the more I began to lose interest. Then I had to take a break from it and now that I have it again I am finding it hard to care. I am well over halfway through the book, almost two-thirds of the way, and I have lost whatever point there might have been to the book. I have ceased to really care about Karl Ove and his struggles that aren’t really struggles at all but more like part of the middle class human experience. I know Knausgaard is being talked about as a kind of modern day Proust, but at least Proust turned his life into something interesting and he wrote a lot better too. So I am having a dilemma. I am so far committed to this book do I just give up on it? Or, if I stick with it until the end will it manage to redeem itself?
Gathering Moss came in for me at the library and I started reading that and will continue. My goodness moss is fascinating! I have some patches of moss growing in the shade under the apple trees in my front yard and this book makes me want to buy a magnifying glass and go out and peer at the them. My neighbors probably already think I am crazy so seeing me kneeling in the dirt with my face near the ground would likely only provoke a raised eyebrow.
My turn has also come up for Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost. I haven’t had the chance to start it yet. Perhaps I should give My Struggle the heave ho and dive into this instead?
Meanwhile, Sheila Heti’s How Should a Person Be? is waiting for me to pick up at the library and The Memory Garden by Mary Rickert and Mindfulness in the Garden: Zen Tools for Digging in the Dirt by Zachiah Murray are both in transit to my library and will be ready for me to pick up in a day or two. So the more I think about it, the closer I am getting to returning My Struggle. Actually, I think I will unless one of you who have read it tell me I should stick with it because the funeral of Karl Ove’s dad and everything that comes after is that amazing. If no one tells me that, then back to the library it goes and Knausgaard gets a check in the overhyped book category.
Currently on my Kindle, which has been very well behaved since I zapped it back to its original factory settings, I am reading Willa Cather’s book of short stories The Troll Garden published in 1905. I believe this is her first book of published fiction. I am enjoying it though if I hadn’t already read a number of Cather novels and fallen in love with her, I don’t think this book would make me want to read more. Not that it is bad, it is just very early and undeveloped.
With all those books on my plate and very likely a few that are not even on my radar at the moment, I won’t be surprised if come September I have a long list of books I didn’t manage to get to. But then who knows? Perhaps I will have a wild reading frenzy. It could happen.
Ahh, that’s a tough call. The giving up on a book. I rarely do it, but then again, sometimes you just have to set it aside if it is not reaching you. As for that Solnit book, I too have had it on my shelf for eons, and have never read it yet.
Happy reading to you, Stefanie.
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My Struggle (and your struggle too)…it is a pain when a book becomes such a slog to read – even worse because you know that the hype must have something to it. I hope you have a bit more luck soon. Recent reads with me have been the novel Panopticon by Jenny Fagan which I found out through Alex /Thinking In Fragments – a punchy novel featuring a female Holden Caulderish character struggling to survive the care “system”. Also reading stuff in preparation for the Scottish indepenence referendum which takes place six weeks today.
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Ian, if I hadn’t been forced to have a break from the book I probably would have kept reading until the end but the break did me in. I remember Alex’s review of Panopticon, it sounded like a good book. So you liked it too? I didn’t realize you were in Scotland. The vote is coming up pretty fast. I hope however it turns out everyone is happy with it!
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Cipriano, I just couldn’t pick up My Struggle last night and started reading Solnit instead and immediately fell head over heals for the book. I think Knausgaard is doomed.
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I haven’t tried Knausgaard partly because I feared I would react as you have – who cares? The amount of critical enthusiasm he’s gotten is enough to make me curious, but life’s short and that’s a lot of pages. In one interview I read with him he talked about one part of the book being so hastily written he had no interest in rereading it himself: if he can’t be bothered, why should I be?
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Rohan, I was fooled by the critical enthusiasm! The book begins on a high, a prelude meditation on death that is very well done. Unfortunately it is all downhill from there! And saying in an interview you wouldn’t even reread part of your own book, well, you’re right, why should anyone else want to read it then?
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I have Knausgaard sitting on my shelf and I do want to give him a try but haven’t got anywhere near him yet. I also want to read Rebecca Solnit! Too many choices. I have often suffered from overlong break syndrome, where you put a book to one side (briefly, one thinks) only to return to it much later and in an entirely different mood. It’s never gone well for me! I’m very interested in what you make of How Should A Person Be. I’ve been intrigued by that but not got hold of a copy yet.
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Litlove, Oh dear. Well, I have returned him to the library unfinished with only a tiny twinge of regret. I hope when you give him a try that you have a better go with him. Having to return the book to the library and wait for another copy doomed the whole thing for sure since I was already losing motivation. I began the Solnit and she is like a breath of fresh air after Kanusgaard. My struggle is over (heh). I’ve heard mixed things about the Heti book but I am really curious so we’ll see how that goes!
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I have books on my partly read shelf … Half a shelf really … That I insist to myself that I haven’t given up, that I will get back to them one day, but hmmm …. I suspect I won’t. Some are books I was struggling with while others I was enjoying but something interrupted me and I had yo put them down eg a trip for which it would have been silly to take a half-finished book, a reading group scheduled book that I had to read to a deadline, etc. One I lost for months and by the time I found it the link was broken and I knew I’d have to start again. Oh dear that was a ramble that got off the point. Anyhow, my emotions say don’t give up so far in, but my head says why waste more time on a book you really aren’t enjoying?
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whisperinggums, I had a Gaddis book and the third volume of Proust on my I’m really reading these even though I haven’t picked them up in a few years shelf. I finally cleared it off and it felt so good to not have them hanging over me any longer. If my reading of Knausgaard hadn’t been interrupted I would have gone on until the end even though I wasn’t enjoying it. But the enforced three-week break, it killed it and I decided to give up and move on.
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Yes, I think I need to do that to my shelf too. There are a couple I really do want to read but several I never will, I know. You are giving me courage. Do I really, after all, NEED to read Gaddis to be well-read?
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No one really ever has to read Gaddis but we make it out like we do and when we don’t we are so hard on ourselves. At least I am. It seems I am constantly working to forgive myself for all my reading “failures” and then laughing at how absurd it is to begin with. 🙂
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Me too, Stefanie – and we keep on doing it don’t we? Silly us!
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I find that there is a perversity in my life which dictates that the books I get stuck on are never the ones that the library recalls while those that I am desperate to finish are always demanded back just as I reach the really good bit. Oh well! I suppose that’s what library fines were designed for 🙂
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Alex, I think that is a common perversity among readers! I began the year with zero library fines but they have been adding up as I have had to keep a book an extra day here and there in order to finish it. Now I owe the library over $3, which, all things considered, isn’t all that much, but oh the guilt nonetheless!
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It can be hard picking up a book-especially a library book, after a hiatus like that. Sometimes I can pick up the thread easily enough but other times I have mentally moved on to something else. I tend to just let the book go–either forever, or until some later time when the interest hits me again. I am not sure if that is a good policy or not as I hate to even think how many half read books I have sitting around–this is my year of starting every book that appeals and not finishing many of them in a very timely manner….
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Danielle, if I hadn’t been forced into taking a break I probably would have slogged on until the end, but then maybe having to return it was a blessing in disguise.
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