Nudity is Only Skin-Deep

Sunday book summaries are my casual log of what I’ve been reading this week. These are not formal reviews. They’re more my reactions and musings as taken from my journal when I complete the reading, and at times will contain notes about how they influence my thoughts on what I’m writing.

This week’s version includes several weeks’ worth of reading, due to a busy life schedule of late. That’s why I call this series “periodic.”

It’s been a few weeks since I last put up one of these posts, due in part to a significant, time-dependent, non-writing business project that is (hopefully) winding down before we begin the next, bigger, and final one.

So. Let’s dive right in.

First of all, I finished reading all of the Earthsea books. The Tombs of Atuan sticks in my memory much better than Wizard, even though like Wizard I came to it as an adult. I had to put it down for a day or so because I read it on the day that Liam Conejo Ramos was kidnapped by ICE, and…there were just too many resonances for my comfort.

The Farthest Shore, however…that was my very first Le Guin, read when I was still in junior high. Pieces of it stick in my mind, such as the village witch who screamed her true name to the world. I liked the name Akaren, and ended up naming one of our hens that. The chicken Akaren—a black Bantam Cochin—never lost her magic but after she developed a habit of setting on a clutch of eggs, we gave her some duck eggs. Despite the trauma of seeing her days-old babies happily jump into a small special pond we made for them, she was a good mama to her duck babies. At one point she had to crowd herself into a corner in the safe roost we established for her, so that the ducklings could crawl underneath her—and she was not touching the ground.

The part from The Farthest Shore that didn’t really stick was Kalessin and Ged at the end. I’m not sure why. The wall remained in my memory. Arren’s true name stuck in my memory. But not the ending. Still…oh, Orm Embar. And oh, Akaren.

Tehanu is always worth the revisit, as are The Tales of Earthsea, The Other Wind, and the remaining stories included in The Books of Earthsea. I bought the fancy edition for myself years ago, and don’t regret the purchase. But reading this big volume is one where I have to sit down and make time to work my way through it. However, it’s quite calming and gives me some perspective overall about life, power, and changes.

I read The Tsar of Lore and Techno by Anthony Marra a few weeks ago. It’s an interesting collection of interrelated short stories that progress from the early days of the Soviet Union through to the early days of Putin. The threads of story progress, yet circle around to provide an interconnected web that ends up linking the very first story with the last one. It’s rather interesting in style and concept, and the Stalinist-era stories have…a somewhat uncomfortable resonance.

After Tsar I definitely needed a palate cleanser, so I dove into romances. Courtney Milan is always reliable, and I hadn’t read her “Song of the Crocodile” before now. I followed up with a collection, Midnight Scandals, three novellas by Courtney Milan, Sherry Thomas, and Carolyn Jewel. While I’d read the Milan, I hadn’t read the other two before. And I ended up reading another Thomas, Tempting the Bride.

I had two other big books that I’ve been reading. One was Joyce Carol Oates, The Accursed. Now that was interesting. I haven’t read much of Oates’s work, but it’s definitely a well-crafted piece of alternate history Gothic horror. The opening pages initially reminded me of H.P. Lovecraft’s work, albeit not so purpleish with the prose. It twisted around nicely and had an ending that somewhat surprised me. Will I check out more of Oates’s books? Hard to say. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t.

The other BIG book I’ve been wading through was Gayle Feldman’s Nothing Random, a biography of Bennett Cerf and, to a certain degree, a history of Random House publishing. I knew that publishing had changed quite a bit during the early 20^th century but I did not realize the degree that it had until reading this book. Much of the early day history of Random House/Cerf in publishing resonated with me as a model for modern-day independent ebook publishing—Cerf et al saw openings for expanding readership by developing new markets and…it made me realize that perhaps I need to find some more histories about that era of publishing, focusing on how different publishers developed a popular readership.

It seems to me that those of us writing in the indie space, dealing with massive competition due to generative AI and other entertainment mediums, might benefit from looking at how publishers in the early twentieth century expanded their markets. My gut keeps telling me that the most accurate comparison is with the pulp era.

Is that so? Perhaps. Time to do some more digging, and I’ll accept any suggestions.

Meanwhile, that’s it for this installment. Hopefully real life calms down enough that I can return to a somewhat weekly schedule. I’m currently reading a book about Yellowstone and a Terry Pratchett that had been hidden in my collection until I did some bookshelf rearranging.

That’s it for this week. If you like what you’ve read, please feel free to check out my books or drop a tip at my Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/joycereynoldsward