Books, Books, Books

Me, reading. (Well, in another life, maybe.) 

Best line from a friend in a recent email: "I gotta tell you, April, 'And in other news, I have been tracking my reading for 2018 and I am on book #124 for the year' made me laugh out loud. What an inspiration! I have knocked out quite a few books this year, but I think the total is less than 20."

Well, no matter what the total, books and more books are the order of the day.

So what have I read since last time I posted? All of these:
124. Wonderland: Poems by Matthew Dickman (WOW WOW WOW! Yeah, I was way impressed—can you tell?)
125. Modern American Memoirs, edited by Annie Dillard and Cort Conley (brought out in 1992, this books captures a wide range of 20th century memoirs; I added several titles to my "To Read" list on the strength of the excerpts I read here)
126. King Me by Roger Reeves (strong poetry by yet another young poet; as I read new poetry, I am reminded of something I heard long ago, that we are taught the poetry our literature teachers were raised on, and as a result the school curriculum is always running one or two generations behind the real world; I read young poets so I am not locked into that past)
127. The Day The Angels Fell by Shawn Smucker (I first discovered Shawn in a blog somewhere and he caught my attention because he wrote about writing and job loss; this was his first YA novel; his second, continuing the story, just came out)
128. Warlight by Michael Ondaatje (Ondaatje recently was in the news  when The English Patient was named the "most popular" Man Booker prize novel of all time; his acceptance speech is a worthwhile read in and of itself. Truth? Warlight is even better)
129. The Dip by Seth Godin (I keep a quote by Seth Godin on my refrigerator—"Speaking up is a choice. And, yes, standing on the sidelines is a choice."—and I looked him up only to learn that Godin is a business writer who has popped off a lot of little books; that quote wasn't in this one)
130. The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After by Clemantine Wamariya and Elizabeth Weil (Clemantime Wamariya was six years old when the Rwandan massacres began and her entire life was upended; this is a fierce, moving, heartrending, and stunning memoir)
131. Nothing's Too Small To Make A Difference by Wanda Urbanska and Frank Levering (Wanda Urbanska had a television show on PBS called Simple Living with Wanda Urbanska which I never saw; my introduction to her and her husband Frank  came years ago in Simple Living: One Couple's Search For a Better Life, a book I still return to from time to time when I am trying to take a step (big or small) back from the hurly-burly)
132. Advice For Future Corpses* *And Those Who Love Them: A Practical Perspective on Death and Dying by Sallie Tisdale (a book about dying, death, and grief; I loved this book, period)
133. Zen and Gone by Emily France (an engaging and poignant YA novel by a young writer I was unfamiliar with but will follow now; reading it on the heels of Sallie Tisdale was especially interesting as both authors practice Buddhism and Buddhist thought is interwoven through each book)
134. Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata (Murata is a best-selling Japanese author and after reading this book, her first novel translated to English, I can see why)
135. Buttermilk Graffiti: A Chef's Journey to Discover America's New Melting-Pot Cuisine by Edward Lee (if you read cookbooks for the story rather than the recipes, which is how I read them, this is a provocative one to read; Lee, a Korean-American chef raised in New York and cooking in Louisville, Kentucky, trips around the United States examining ways that immigrants bring their foods to this country and how the traditional food translates into new food in a new setting)
136. Love War Stories by Ivelisse Rodriguez (Rodriguez gives us a collection of short stories set in  Puerto Rican communities both in Puerto Rico and in the United States)

And that is where I am now.