reading list, july - september 2023

John Scalzi, Kaiju Preservation Society. NY: TOR, 2022. James left a PhD programto join a delivery startup, and just before the pandemic, got fired (over a bet!). A pal from school has a job opening, though: come play with dragons. It proves a good fit, even if everyone else did finish a doctorate. Philip Levine, One for the Rose. NY: Antheneum, 1981. I measure a book of poems by the number of pages I dog-ear to mark the ones I love. I actively deface books -- even small press firsts -- to show love, like a name tatooed into physical memory. In this set of thirty-nine poems, I marked five. Jodie Slaughter, Play to Win. NH: St. Martin's Griffin, 2024. Miri doesn't usually play the lottery, but for $220 million she can dream. But when she wins? That's supposed to feel better -- so she fixes it. Funny how money helps like that. LeRoi Jones, The System of Dante's Hell. NY: Grove, 1963. A fevered, allucinatory memior of early life by the poet who became Amiri Baraka. Extremely challenging -- in structure, theme, imagery, and language, too. Samuel Nisenson & Alfred Parker, Minute Biograpies. NY: Grosset & Dunlap, 1931. 150 little sketches -- quite literally -- of famous men and women, the sort of filler that used to be found in the newspaper, like Ripley's Believe It or Not. A portrait image, birth and death dates, and a few bullet-style paragraphs of highlights introducing young readers to major statesmen, inventors, and artists. Julia Quinn, Bridgerton Collection. NY: HarperCollins. As the basis for a Netflix series, the large regency family callerd Briderton has come to my attention. A blurb calls Quinn "our contemporary Jane Austen," and I must know. This voume contains The Duke and I, The Viscount Who Loved Me, and An Offer from a Gentleman. Each is admirably executed; An Offer is a delightful Cinderella story. I'm well impressed -- but let's not get carried away. Julia Quinn needs only be Julia Quinn. Comparing her to Austen because they write of the same time does service to neither. Toh EnJoe, Self-Reference Engine. San Francisco: Haikasorn, 2007. A strange love story, built on an ipossible time war conducted by supercomputers who have declared themselves exstinct, it questions questioning questions, while you struglle for answers. Echo, like each chapter, stands alone -- yet is key to the effort, and should be widely anthologised. It's really good, and might be important. Joe Posnanski, Why We Love Baseball. NY: Dutton, 2023. A history of baseball in fifty moments? A love letter to the sport, a worthy follow-up to the Baseball 100, a celebration. These two books from Posnanski, along with the Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, should turn any casual Little-Leaguer into a well-informed lifelong fan.