Roof Beam Reader
Adam Burgess
November Checkpoint! #TBR2022RBR
Hello, TBR Pile Challengers!
It is November 15th, which means it’s time for the penultimate challenge checkpoint! I can’t believe we’re nearly to the end of this year, and this challenge. We have 180 posts linked up on the Mister Linky, which is awesome! Remember that all posts linked up for this challenge will be entered into the final, year-end drawing for a $50 gift card to a bookstore of your choice! (Provided it can be sent electronically.)
Question of the Month: Do you have any holiday reading plans? Any specific seasonal titles on your list?
My Progress: 11 of 12 Completed / 10 of 12 Reviewed
I kept telling myself that I’d get an “October month-in-review” posted soon, which would’ve included my thoughts on the Rimbaud Complete that I read for this challenge (book 11 of 12!). But, I still haven’t managed to get it posted. I did get it drafted, so I’m thinking maybe I’ll get that cranked out during Thanksgiving break, when I have some “time off.” (Ha. ha.) I also have James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk sitting on top of my bookshelf, ready and waiting to be Book 12! I’m pretty confident that I’ll finish my challenge this year, and if I can somehow get through two very large tomes (Poetry Handbook and A Brief History of Nearly Everything during Christmas week, then I might even finish all 14 of 12!
Books read:
- Chicago Poems (1916) by Carl Sandburg
- When My Brother was an Aztec (2012) by Natalie Diaz
- Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017) by Jesmyn Ward
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974) by Robert M. Pirsig
- A People’s History of the United States (1999) by Howard Zinn
- The Warmth of Other Suns (2010) by Isabel Wilkerson
- Crush (2005) by Richard Siken
- A Book of Common Prayer (1977) by Joan Didion
- Madness (2017) by sam sax
- Nature Poem (2017) by Tommy Pico
- Rimbaud Complete Poems and Prose (2003) by Arthur Rimbaud
How are you doing?
Below, you’re going to find the infamous Mr. Linky widget. If you read and review any challenge books this month, please link-up on the widget below. This Mr. Linky will be re-posted every month so that we can compile a large list of all that we’re reading and reviewing together this year. Each review that is linked-up on this widget throughout the year may also earn you entries into future related giveaways, so don’t forget to keep this updated!
October Challenge Winner
Congratulations to Jane from Just Reading a Book! Her comment was randomly drawn as the winner of a book-of-choice ($20 USD or less) from The Book Depository! Stay tuned for the final end-of-year giveaway ($50 gift card from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or bookstore of your choice.) Make sure you’re linking up all your reviews and challenge posts, as ALL ENTRIES will be entered into the final contest giveaway.
LINK UP YOUR REVIEWS!
P.S. Did you know I opened a bookstore? It’s true! Check out my online book shop on Pango. It’s a great alternative to Amazon: https://pangobooks.com/bookstore/adambwriter
October Checkpoint with Giveaway #TBR2022RBR
Happy Autumn, TBR Pile Challengers!
Well, it’s autumn here in the United States, but I suppose it is spring elsewhere. Anyhow, those are the two best seasons, aren’t they? So, happiness all-around!
I wonder if you might take a moment to leave a comment this month and share your favorite book from this year’s challenge? If you’ve completed your list or made a lot of progress, share that too! We’d love to cheer you on and feel motivated too, especially those of us who have been stuck for a little bit.
Speaking of stuck, there have only been 9 new links added since last month’s checkpoint, and I have a feeling more reading than that has happened, but maybe not? I for one made just a little progress, finishing one more book from my list (but I haven’t written or posted my thoughts for it yet!), so I can’t fault anyone else. In fact, I’ve been so busy that my postings have essentially boiled down to two per month, once in the first week of each month, wrapping-up the previous month’s reading, and once on the fifteenth, for this challenge. It’s time to take a look at my daily planner and see how I can start managing my time a little better!
Progress: 11 of 12 Completed
I have to say, I really am thrilled with my progress overall, this year. I think, in my ten years hosting this challenge, I’ve only actually finished it once or twice. I don’t think I’ve ever managed to read all fourteen (the main twelve plus two alternates), but that might just happen this year! I’m now at eleven completed and ten reviewed. I’m still “in progress” on what is now book twelve (?), A Poet’s Guide, which is slow going, but I am working through it. Next up, I’ll be reading James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk. I always look forward to Baldwin!
Books read:
- Chicago Poems (1916) by Carl Sandburg
- When My Brother was an Aztec (2012) by Natalie Diaz
- Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017) by Jesmyn Ward
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974) by Robert M. Pirsig
- A People’s History of the United States (1999) by Howard Zinn
- The Warmth of Other Suns (2010) by Isabel Wilkerson
- Crush (2005) by Richard Siken
- A Book of Common Prayer (1977) by Joan Didion
- Madness (2017) by sam sax
- Nature Poem (2017) by Tommy Pico
- Rimbaud Complete Poems and Prose (2003) by Arthur Rimbaud
How are you doing?
Below, you’re going to find the infamous Mr. Linky widget. If you read and review any challenge books this month, please link-up on the widget below. This Mr. Linky will be re-posted every month so that we can compile a large list of all that we’re reading and reviewing together this year. Each review that is linked-up on this widget throughout the year may also earn you entries into future related giveaways, so don’t forget to keep this updated!
MINI-CHALLENGE #4
To be eligible to win a book of your choice ($20USD or less from The Book Depository), please leave a comment on this post sharing your favorite TBR Pile Challenge read of all time. If you’re new this year, it would need to be from this year’s list, but if you’ve participated many times, it can be from any challenge list in the last 10 years. (Yes, I HAVE been hosting this since 2011, can you believe it?) I can’t wait to hear what you all share, and good luck! I’ll choose and post the winner for November’s checkpoint, so be sure to comment by November 14th.
LINK UP YOUR REVIEWS!
September 2022 Reading Review
Hello Readers!
I’m back with another monthly update, this time for September. Wow, did my reading slow down this month! That was expected, though, as school is back in session and this year, I’m on the teaching and learning sides of things (teaching an overload and taking classes myself.) Nevertheless, I did read quite a bit, and some good stuff, too! Check it out and let me know if you’ve read any of these, or do you have any on your TBRs?
Fairy Tale by Stephen King: This is one of those rare Stephen King novels that have a happy ending, although I have to admit that he does seem to be trending toward happier endings in his recent work. As I mentioned in my short Goodreads blurb, and as I’ve been telling pretty much everyone who’s been interested in this book, I think this is the one King has wanted to write for a long time. He’s always been a fan of fantasy. His Dark Tower series was his first attempt at it, and I don’t think he was satisfied with it. This one, though a standalone, does seem to me a success. It reads almost like a love story to the fantasy genre. The book is essentially split into two parts, with the first half being background/character-building in the “real” world, and the second half being the protagonist’s adventures in the fantasy realm. The sheer number of references in this one, from Chronicles of Narnia to Lord of the Rings, is staggering. Also, it’s just a good old fashioned “boy and his dog” tale, and who doesn’t love that? I gave this one four out of five on Goodreads, but I could see it as a four-point-five.
Inside the Storm I Want to Touch the Tremble by Carolyn Oliver: Carolyn Oliver is a longtime online pal, and I’ve been absolutely thrilled for her this year, as she’s been getting all the things published and receiving all the praise. Personal history aside, though, I’ve been deeply moved and impressed by her work. This collection is no different. The poems range from the daring to the beautiful, from the commonplace to the luminescent. I was tickled by the attention to form, too, as so many contemporary poets seem to write almost entirely in free verse. Oliver engages with ghazals and erasures (which I’ve never been able to do well, but wow, hers is a study!), to bref doubles and the Golden Shovel. I gave this one five out of five on Goodreads and can’t believe I got a signed copy. I think it’ll be worth something one day.
Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination by Toni Morrison: This is the book that inspired Elaine Castillo’s How to Read Now, which I read last month. It’s a very short collection of three explorations on whiteness in literature and how authors both reflect and create cultural conceptions of race. I was delighted to see her engaging with Poe’s Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, as that’s a favorite that seems mostly forgotten (like Melville’s Confidence-Man). Much like my reaction to Castillo’s recent work, I didn’t always agree with what Morrison had to say about her sample texts, but I will say I was much more convinced, and awed, by her investigations. The skill she has in reading and deconstructing a text is staggering. I wish I could have taken a class with her. Five out of five stars on Goodreads.
Attack of the Black Rectangles by Amy Sarig King: Amy King always, always, has her finger on the pulse of what’s going on in contemporary society and politics. In this, her first middle grade novel, she responds to the new wave of censorship and book banning that’s sweeping the nation, in all its ridiculous forms. Something King does brilliantly, here, is to humanize the antagonist. The “villainous” teacher who censors books for the good of her sensitive pupils, well, she could easily be crafted as purely monstrous, but King makes it more complicated, and that’s no easy task. The story is fun but serious. The characters are believable and inspirational. The message is necessary and very now. Five out of five stars on Goodreads.
Illustrado by Miguel Syjuco: Wow, this is one complicated and convoluted narrative, or should I say, composite of narratives? But of course, that’s the point. Syjuco’s story is the story of the history of the Philippines if the history of the Philippines could be translated literary in prose. There is one primary narrative and protagonist, a young scholar and writer who takes up his recently deceased (murdered?) mentor’s work and begins the search for a long-lost memoir. The reader is treated to a winding tale of interweaving narratives featuring excerpts from the mentor’s novels, the narrator’s journals, newspaper articles, blog posts, and more, all of which is, I think, intended to reflect the complicated sociopolitical landscape of the Philippines and Filipino diaspora. At the center of the plot is a mystery, but the denouement reveals a surprising red herring that will either make everything clear to the reader or infuriate her. Possibly both. Four out of five stars on Goodreads.
Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution by R.F. Kuang: This one has received a lot of hype, and I’ll admit that I was completely enamored with this book at the beginning. An anti-colonial fantasy novel that features linguistics as the source power? Sign me up! I was definitely delighted by the erudition and the language study, but I felt some of the actual story elements fell rather flat, possibly left to suffer because other themes, like the anti-colonial themes, were pushed so much to the forefront. It’s odd because I tend to agree with the message, but I’m not sure I enjoy a message so didactically overshadowing the method. As I said on Goodreads, this one is impressive in so many ways, but underwhelming in some of the most important elements to fantasy. So, I was left feeling rather torn about it. Three out of five on Goodreads. (I should add, I’m still wildly impressed by Kuang and I have The Poppy War waiting on my shelf to be read. I’m looking forward to it.)
My Favorite of September 2022
September Checkpoint #TBR2022RBR
Hello, TBR Pile Challengers!
As of this drafting (September 12th), we have 160 posts linked-up for this challenge. Bravo!
I wonder if you might take a moment to leave a comment this month and share your favorite book from this year’s challenge? If you’ve completed your list or made a lot of progress, share that too! We’d love to cheer you on and feel motivated too, especially those of us (cough cough) who have been stuck for a little bit.
Speaking of stuck, as summer here in the world’s hottest region begins to come to an end, I will begin to find myself more often outdoors. That usually means a rapid slowing-down of my reading progress. This is a little problematic because I’ve already had two months in a row with now challenge list progress! Teaching two literature courses plus composition courses tends to whittle away at any of my free time, but especially free/pleasure reading, because I need to read so much material for lectures, reviews, and of course I need to read student work, too. All of that is to say… I swear, it’s not my fault! (Ha ha – are you convinced?)
Progress: 10 of 12 Completed
Callooh, callay! What a frabjous day! Thanks to an extraordinarily prolific reading month in August, I’m now ahead of schedule for my reading. (I’ve already hit my Goodreads goal for the year: 65 books. Guess I need to update that!) I also forced myself to sit down and get a few blog posts written, including some thoughts on Didion’s A Book of Common Prayer, which I finished quite some time ago (in fact, I wrote thoughts for two poetry collections that I completed for this challenge after reading the Didion, before writing the Didion review. Huh!) I’m also still plugging away steadily at A Poet’s Guide to Poetry, which means I’m “in progress” on Book 11 for my main 12. I have much hope that I’ll complete my challenge with 14 out of 12 this year! But I do have two very large tomes remaining, so we’ll see how it all actually pans out, in the end.
Books read:
- Chicago Poems (1916) by Carl Sandburg
- When My Brother was an Aztec (2012) by Natalie Diaz
- Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017) by Jesmyn Ward
- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974) by Robert M. Pirsig
- A People’s History of the United States (1999) by Howard Zinn
- The Warmth of Other Suns (2010) by Isabel Wilkerson
- Crush (2005) by Richard Siken
- A Book of Common Prayer (1977) by Joan Didion
- Madness (2017) by sam sax
- Nature Poem (2017) by Tommy Pico
How are you doing?
Below, you’re going to find the infamous Mr. Linky widget. If you read and review any challenge books this month, please link-up on the widget below. This Mr. Linky will be re-posted every month so that we can compile a large list of all that we’re reading and reviewing together this year. Each review that is linked-up on this widget throughout the year may also earn you entries into future related giveaways, so don’t forget to keep this updated!
MINI-CHALLENGE #4 Coming Next Month
Stay tuned & keep posting those reviews to the linky below!
LINK UP YOUR REVIEWS!
A Book of Common Prayer by Joan Didion
A Book of Common Prayer is the story of two American women in the derelict Central American nation of Boca Grande. Grace Strasser-Mendana controls much of the country’s wealth and knows virtually all of its secrets; Charlotte Douglas knows far too little. “Immaculate of history, innocent of politics,” she has come to Boca Grande vaguely and vainly hoping to be reunited with her fugitive daughter.
After finishing this one, my immediate reaction was: This is an American Orwellian. Most of the plot takes place in a banana republic. There’s a bit of a mystery unfolding, as the novel’s protagonist is looking for answers about what has happened to a strange woman—Charlotte–and her revolutionary daughter. Though the narrator meets the woman and her most intimate—if that word can even be applied to anyone like Charlotte Douglas—relations, she remains unknown in the way that many of Didion’s female characters are unknown, unknowing, and unknowable. Is she a spy? Is she completely oblivious to what’s going on around her? And in a country ruled by despots, does it matter either way?
Yet, despite the subject’s being mostly vapid and numb, they are not, for me numbing, as they could be. This is because of the poetic, graceful way Didion writes them, the believable way in which they have been stunned silent and made dumb by the world. I’m always left asking, well, who in their right mind wouldn’t be? Some have criticized Didion’s dialogue and prose as being not entirely believable. To me, the question is, is it believable in context? In other words, do I believe that the narrator would speak the way she does, and that these characters—as they are—would dialogue the way they do? For the most part, I think the answer is yes. I also know these aren’t the kinds of folks I’d find myself hanging out with.
Didion wrote in an essay, once, that she was a woman who felt totally disconnected from the world and had lost any illusions of it—or us—being promising. So, perhaps unsurprisingly, this is a book about disillusionment. About lack of faith in anything, but especially in lovers and in government. The one persistent strand of belief stems from a mother’s devotion to her child, despite that child seeming to be a confirmed terrorist and less than reciprocally interested in her mother. This too, for readers aware of Didion’s personal life story, will resonate, because aside from her husband, the one personal belief she did seem to hold dear was the love she had for her own daughter, Quintana.
A Book of Common Prayer spends much time considering the question of right and wrong. Characters often try to convince others that they were wrong to do, say, or think something. In the end, though, right and wrong don’t seem to matter. It’s almost as if right and wrong, and therefore true or false, have become meaningless. And that might be the entire point. Orwellian indeed.
I’m not as big a fan of Didion’s fiction as I am of her memoirs and essays/journalism, but I find many of the qualities that I like from her non-fiction do carry over. While I still think Play It As It Lays is probably her best novel, I look forward to continuing my journey through Didion’s complete works.
A Book of Common Prayer was Book 8 completed in my 2022 TBR Pile Challenge.
Roof Beam Reader 