July Reading Wrap Up

What a month! I read Moby-Dick for the very first time (more posts on that to come, I’m sure), finally got my hands on Saga Vol. 4, and read some damn good poetry collections. Let’s dig in!

Moby-Dick or, The Whale by Herman Melville

I’m not sure exactly what convinced me one day this past April that I needed to pick up a copy of Moby-Dick and read it before the end of 2015. I’ve always just kind of assumed that it was dense, lengthy, and not worth my precious reading time. Looking back, it was probably this video by Ron Lit that finally convinced me this was a book I needed to read. I follow several bookish people and communities on social media, browse bookish websites, and have as many bookish conversations out in the real world as I can, and have been stumbling over several Moby-Dick references/articles/etc that I couldn’t understand or appreciate as someone who hadn’t read the book. Since finishing this book a few days ago, I’ve already stumbled across 3+ Moby references that would have been useless to me otherwise. It took me exactly a month to read, and the weekends and evenings diving into this novel have already paid off tremendously. I’ll be blogging about this book in more detail in the coming weeks, but for now I’ll just say that it’s been a month well spent.

Saga Volume 4 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples

 

I’ve been expecting this volume as a birthday present (I celebrated on the 25th) for months now, so I absolutely devoured it on my birthday. I would literally go into comic stores, pick the volume up, hold it in my hands, and regretfully replace it on the shelf because I knew I’d get it as a gift. Silly, I realize, but this volume was definitely worth waiting for. I won’t give any spoilers away, but it’s every bit as beautiful as the preceding volumes. I’m thrilled for volume 5’s release. If you haven’t read Saga yet, do yourself a favor and grab volume 1 of this action-packed, space-epic tale of forbidden love and new parenthood.

Deer Hour by Khaty Xiong

 

This stunning (inside and out) chapbook of poetry is tiny (29 pages), but the poetry kept my attention for days. I reviewed this book for NewPages and will post a link once it’s live on the site.

6X6 Issue 32 | Summer 2015 featuring James D. Fuson, Lyn Hejinian, Barbara Henning, Tony Iantosca, Uros Kotlajic, and Morgan Parker

Another piece that I reviewed for NewPages is this literary magazine. I’ll post a link to this review, too, once it’s available on the site.

That Winter the Wolf Came by Juliana Spahr

 

I am so pleasantly surprised to admit that I thoroughly enjoyed this book of poetry. I began reading it with a little skepticism for a couple reasons… for one, the subject matter focuses on social issues (I sometimes struggle with how to approach poetry that might be labeled “political”), and second, scanning this book proves it to contain pages-long prose poems that look more like essays or novel excerpts than poems (I also sometimes struggle to approach prose poetry). Fortunately, I loved this book, and hope that it will help me to approach similar books with a more positive mindset. The subject matter here covers the Occupy movement, extinction, the BP oil spill, and other important topics. Definitely happy I read this one.

What have you been reading lately?

 

Advertisement