Wednesday Reading Recommendations

January 31, 2024

Lordy, lordy, lordy, revising this book is proving to be a challenge. The good news is that thanks to help from readers here, we have a title that I’ll be sharing at some indefinite point in the future.

The not as good news is that revising a book is harder than drafting a book. With the draft, everything is possible, you can write and write and write, having confidence that anything not smart or sensible can be excised before it’s ready for readers. You can throw whatever you want at the wall.

In revision, you have to decide what’s actually going to stick. Having to make choices is significantly harder than generating an endless list of possibilities.

Maybe that’s why people reach out to me looking for a recommendation of what they should read next. It absolves them of the pressure of choice.

Recommendations

1. The Twilight World by Werner Herzog
2. System Collapse by Martha Wells
3. The Death of Francis Bacon by Max Porter
4. Cold Hand in Mine by Robert Aichman
5. Matrix by Lauren Groff

Suzanne R, Perth, Australia.

I hope the Werner Herzog book was on audio. I could listen to that guy read the terms of service for the Apple Store and be riveted. Suzanne is not put off by the experimental, so hopefully she’s intrigued by the perambulations of the Julio Cortazar classic, Hopscotch.

1. Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
2. The Keep by Jennifer Egan
3. Notes On Your Sudden Disappearance by Alison Espach
4. Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward
5. My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

Alex L. - Kansas City, MO

These books all have a bit of a tricky aspect to the storytelling, which brings to mind a book that messes with your head in the best possible way…twice! Trust Exercise by Susan Choi.

1. Weyward by Emilia Hart
2. Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World by Barry Lopez
3. Timefulness by Marcia Bjornerud
4. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
5. Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman

Rebecca W. - Eugene, OR

Rebecca seems to like at least a little bit of unreality mixed with in her fiction. The Trees by Percival Everett feels like a good fit here.

1. American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis by Adam Hochschild
2. Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
3. Be Mine by Richard Ford
4. The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America by David Gelles
5. Sideways: The City Google Couldn’t Buy by Josh O’ Kane

Matt C. - Cleveland, OH

For Matt, I’m recommending a book that I think may tie together some of the other subjects he’s been exploring, and that also paints a way forward for all of us, should we be able to pull together, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee.

All books (with a couple exceptions) linked throughout the newsletter go to The Biblioracle Recommends bookstore at Bookshop.org. Affiliate proceeds, plus a personal matching donation of my own, go to Chicago’s Open Books and an additional reading/writing/literacy nonprofit to be determined. Affiliate income for this year is $1.70.

If you’d like a chance at a custom book recommendation of your own, that process is illuminated at the link below.

Hope to see you all this weekend. Back to the (virtual) mines.

John
The Biblioracle