e.beck.artist: 2024 book list, rah!

2024 book list

1.Truths I Never Told You by Kelly Rimmer. This was a great book. It hit close to home with a father failing from alzheimer's... but it had so many layers to the plot... and amazing themes to discuss at book club. really well done. wedn book club at JO's if you are looking for a book rec, this is it.

2.the personal librarian ... by marie benedict... historical fiction about JP Morgan's personal librarian.... she was whip smart, successful, and hiding her ethnicity. complicated well done story.

3..Gladman, Renee. Calamities... linked essays about the writer's life .... sort of non-linear, free wheeling.... (for MFA program)

4...Lockwood, Patricia. Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals. cool poetry book with especially interesting juxtapositions.... (for MFA program)

5..Lockwood, Patricia. No One Is Talking About This: A Novel.... a reread because i realized she was the same author as the last poetry book ..... i found this book so interesting both reads.... but didn't really find a way to imagine they were from the same authors. non linear story, but very clear. (for MFA program)

6...Elson, Rebecca. A Responsibility to Awe. .. poetry ... really excellent science themed poems. (for MFA program)

7...Bernays, Anne and Painter, Pamela. What If? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers. sweet Val gave me this book ..... i appreciate her so much .... and have been picking it up for idea nuggets lately.... (for MFA program)

8...Park, Ishle Yi. Angel & Hannah: A Novel in Verse. yay. a beautiful novel in verse with a modern day/new york burroughs romeo and juliet feel. (for MFA program)

9...Ann Patchett's Tom Lake .... well, thank you meryl streep. i listened to this because i had heard suchgreat things about the star's narration. did not disappoint.... the book was charming and made even more delightful by the narration. for w book club. later this year if you are looking for a book rec, this is it.

10....Crossan, Sarah. Here Is the Beehive. Little, Brown and Company, 2020. i reread this because, 1, i love it and it is worth a reread ... and 2, i'm using it in my critical thesis this semester because i'm writing about novel's in verse. great book. if you are looking for a book rec, this is it.

11...Elliott, David. Bull. Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt, 2017. verse novel about the minotaur. spectacular poetry, a plot you know part of already ... with twists. (for MFA program)Elliott, David.

12....Voices: The Final Hours of Joan of Arc. Clarion Books, 2019. same author as above ... even better book... about the last moments of joan of arc for multiple surprising perspectives ... a reread for my academic thesis. (for MFA program)

13...Rakoff, David. Love, Dishonor, Marry, Die, Cherish, Perish. Doubleday, 2013. charming, rhyming, quirky novel in verse. (for MFA program)

14...Reynolds, Jason. Long Way Down. Atheneum. 2017. ... one of my faves last year ... reread for this giant thesis paper i have to write for grad school. but i LOVED LOVED it. so fantastic and creative. really fantastic. (for MFA program)

15...Novik, Naomi. His Majesty's Dragon. listened to it on audible .... it was fun fantasy/historical fiction .... the dragon egg for napoleon was intercepted by someone else. fun book

16...Oakley, Catherine. The Mostly True Story of Tanner and Louise. fun book club book about a variety of relationships and some fun twists..thursday MH..book club really liked. looking for fun and light? this.

17...Harjo, Joy. An American Sunrise. yay.... a poet laureate .... great book. really enjoyed it... listened to it on audible. (for MFA program)

18...Castillo, Ana. Watercolor Women/opaque Men. ...a picaresque novel, which means about a rogue or a rascal, at odds with society .... and in this case it is a woman who is a single mom sorting out her sexual identity... novel in verse.... (for MFA program)

19...Axelsson, Linnea. Aednan: An Epic. Translated by Saskia Vogel ....I first listened to this book, then felt compelled to also hold it in my hands to read it. Seeing the poetry felt important. Three generations of Sami women are depicted in this novel in verse. The story telling on audio seemed lyrical and lulling. The page looked like specks of poem that could be rocks strewn across a snowy, Swedish landscape/page. I was pretty surprised that the look of the poems did not match what I expected after having it read aloud to me. I did not actually have/make a notion in my head before opening the book, but the look was a surprise. I should have anticipated a paucity of words on the page when the book was so fat and the recording was less than three hours, easily a third as long as most novels I listen to. While noodling around the internet to see what people were saying about this translation I came across a quote that was used on Amazon and other sites: “Crystalline prose that reads like poetry and myth at once. There are intricate layers of beauty and meaning here in sparse clusters across a vast new landscape as I’ve never read before. The music of this book is old, and it is new, and it is old.”—Tommy Orange, bestselling author of There, There and Wandering Stars PROSE THAT READS LIKE POETRY …. somewhere else it was called prose poetry in stanzas. I'm struck over and over about the vast variety of poetry. When you add novel story to poetry not everyone comes out with the same idea/notion/product. All these novels in verse look different. Pretty much all of them could be argued to be something else. Novel in verse, poetry novel, whatever you call it, seems the definition is vague and broad by the authors and reviewers. Overall, Aednan was a sad story. It's about the indigenous people of Scandinavia and the shameful way they were treated. Similar to US history, Lise was taken from her parents and put in a school to take away her heritage, her language, her family, her way of life. I was unaware of the colonialist traumas in Scandinavia. Three of my grandparents were first generation Americans from Norway and Sweden. It does not feel like a small not knowing. I enjoyed the learning, the story, the characters.(for MFA program)

20...Wright, C. D. Deepstep Come Shining. road trip novel in verse. (for MFA program)

21....Woolf, Virginia. A Letter to a Young Poet;Including the Essay 'Craftsmanship'.My friend gave me this skinny Virginia Woolf book for giving her a ride to a social outing. I was a bit familiar with V.Woolf, did a google dive, and enjoyed this, in no small part, because I love an epistolatory. I like the familiarity and informalness of this. (for MFA program)

22....Gluck, Louise. Wild Iris. I was fascinated by the structure of this collection of poems. There are seven poems titled Matins and ten titled Vespers. So many morning prayers and ending in even more evening prayers. I find this so curious. I noticed the same repetition of titles in Jericho Brown's The Tradition, with multiple poems called Duplex. I understand why JB did it, having created a new form, the duplex and pointing that out through his book. I don't understand why LG did it. I don't mind it. I like the tone of the collection with god/deity/the great gardener in the sky being a narrator, as well as the poems from the flowers' point of view. I found the whole thing beautiful. I can understand why people would tell me to read it as a "novel in verse" even though it is most surely not. It is a beautifully rendered collection, clearly written to go together exactly so. It speaks more to ideas and sentiments than a novel story. (for MFA program)

23....Gluck, Louise. Meadowlands. HarperCollins, 1996. AWESOME well done novel in verse that intersperses the story of Penelope and Telemachus waiting for Oddyseus to come home with a modern storyline of a couple breaking up. (for MFA program)

24....Powell, Richard. Whom the Gods Would Destroy. I was thinking about Greek Mythology and had a hankering to reread this book again .... i read it first in middle school ... after my mom and brother read it .... and i've read it a bunch of times since. Helios is a trojan bastard prince. I love him.

25....Piccoult, Jodi. Picture Perfect. I simultaneously couldn't put this book down AND didn't love it because I was so annoyed at some plot bits from the very beginning. I wanted her to LEARN, walk away. but, as always, J Piccoult created a page turner.

tuesday book club