April was all spent in Chicago working on Ada Palmer’s class simulation of the papal election of 1492. It really does consume the whole month, tweaking character sheets, writing letters, helping orchestrate—there’s barely time to eat, and pretty much all my reading was just reading myself to sleep. I came home to Montreal right at the end of April and did finish a few things on the train. I only read six books all month, and here they are.
P.S. Come to Italy, Nicky Pellegrino (2023)
A beautiful romance novel set in Italy, by Pellegrino, who is my favourite author working in this genre. This is about a woman from New Zealand who lost her husband to dementia before she lost him to death, and who comes through mourning and the pandemic to find a new love in Italy. You can’t tell from looking at this that it’s actually a good and thoughtful book, but it is. Excellent characterisation, funny in parts and moving in others, with very good depictions of friendship.
The Library: A Fragile History, Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen (2021)
A history of libraries in Europe and the US (with a glance at the rest of the world) from the very first libraries to the present day. An excellent read, well researched and readable, with a lot of thought put in to why people create libraries and how much easier it is to create them than to maintain them over time. It does not shy away from the horrors of book destruction and censorship, and it also looks with clear eyes at the paternalistic and patronizing attempts to institute public libraries, It’s very interesting to see what has worked over time, and to consider why France is doing so much better than everywhere else right now. A thought-provoking and just generally interesting and enjoyable book.
Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys (1960)
Oh gosh I hated this. You may remember that when I was doing my examination of Hugo nominees I said I thought I’d read this and forgotten it and everyone told me no, I wouldn’t have forgotten it? I think I was right, because although I have no memory of it, I did know I didn’t want to read it, and there was one thing in it that rang a vague bell when I got to it. I generally like Budrys, and I really loved reading his old reviews in Dave Langford’s editions of them a few years ago. But this book… it’s as if someone decided to write a pulp SF story after swallowing but not digesting Freud. It makes no sense on any level.
The characters are all awful people, and they’re badly drawn and given to making interminable speeches about their own and each other’s psychology, which might be all right if they were in any way interesting. The SF plot is “there’s an alien puzzle on the moon and also teleportation beams.” It’s very Hemingway, and not in a good way. I dragged myself through this by my fingernails, and knowing it was short, always hoping there was going to be something worth it there. Huge anti-recommend. I’d be interested in hearing why people pressed me to read it and what I am missing about why this is supposed to be a good book. It’s not often I read something I dislike as much as this.
What Abigail Did That Summer, Ben Aaronovitch (2021)
The novella that goes before the last book in the Rivers of London series that I read. Fast, fun, excellent different voice, loved the footnotes even when I didn’t need them (I know perfectly well what Horrible Histories is) and I hope for more Abigail POV. The only hesitation I have is that this book pushes the series closer to the “do they think I’m stupid?” issue I often have with urban fantasy and its related genres, in that if there’s this much magic etc. around, in what’s supposed to be this world, I would have noticed it. The early volumes dealt with this very well, but as it continues and escalates it becomes more of an issue, and this book made me think about it. Aaronovitch better give me some explanation for why intelligent people living in Britain aren’t aware of all this pretty soon.
The Seashell Anthology of Great Poetry, edited by Christopher Burns (1996)
This really was an excellent anthology, well-thought-through by theme, with a good mix of things I knew and new things, and sometimes juxtaposing poems in provocative and powerful ways. I read this two or three poems at a time over a long time, and am sorry to have come to the end of it. The absolute standout new-to-me thing was Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Art of Losing Isn’t Hard to Master,” but really there was so much here that was so good, it’s hard to single things out. Very well done. I also just looked up Burns to see if he’d edited any other similar anthologies and he seems like an extremely interesting guy.
About Writing: Seven Essays, Four Letters, and Five Interviews, Samuel R. Delany (2006)
I’ve had this book for a long time but only read it now that I picked up an electronic copy. It both is and isn’t a book on how to write; what it mostly is is Delany musing on what literature is. There’s a really fascinating section on canon formation that made me sit up and take notice—he talks about the markers of canon, and the way things are pre-welcomed and considered, and then the fascinating example of Steven Crane. It’s worth reading this whole book for that. I don’t know if I’d recommend this to people wanting to know how to write—there’s lots of writing advice in here, but caught up in a lot of other stuff. A good and valuable book but hard to categorize.
Jo Walton is a science fiction and fantasy writer. She’s published two collections of Tor.com pieces, three poetry collections, a short story collection and fifteen novels, including the Hugo- and Nebula-winning Among Others. Her novel Lent was published by Tor in May 2019, and her most recent novel, Or What You Will, was released in July 2020. She reads a lot, and blogs about it here irregularly. She comes from Wales but lives in Montreal. She plans to live to be 99 and write a book every year.
