Hidden Folk, by Eleanor Arnason

This entry is part 11 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

As with other posts in this series, these #booksread2022 posts go anywhere from a few weeks to a month after I’ve read them. I read this particular book last week, though!  Eleanor Arnason is a longtime speculative fiction writer: she’s been publishing since the 1970s, and her work spans SF, fantasy, and poetry, but this is the first thing I’ve read by her. I was attracted by two things: a positive comment about another book of hers by a friend, and the fact that Hidden Folk explores the mythic landscape of Iceland. At the time, I was finally reading some …

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The Wages of Whiteness (Revised Edition) by David R. Roediger

This entry is part 12 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

As with other posts in this series, these #booksread2022 posts go anywhere from a few weeks to a month after I’ve read them. I read this particular book last week, though!  The Wages of Whiteness is a book that’s been on my shelf since I read John Strausbaugh’s Black Like You: Blackface, Whiteface, Insult & Imitation in American Popular Culture back in Bucheon, years ago when I was preparing to teach a course in American Popular Culture. That was a book that yielded up a few fascinating-sounding references: I read Nick Tosches’ Where Dead Voices Gather pretty soon after (and …

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The Katurran Odyssey by David Michael Wieger, illustrated by Terryl Whitlatch

This entry is part 13 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

As with other posts in this series, these #booksread2022 posts go anywhere from a few weeks to a month after I’ve read them. I read this particular book last week, though!  This year, I’ve decided it’s time to start reading longer stories to my son. I’ve been reading to him since before he could speak, but until now, it’s been shorter books. He’s gotten into some longer things on his own, despite being unble to read for himself as yet—the Dog Man comics are a big hit, as are Captain Underpants, but until now I hadn’t read anything longer to …

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Dragons (Time Life Enchanted World)

This entry is part 14 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

As with other books of 2020, this comes a while after I read it.  We visited my grandmother’s house in Quebec when I was a kid. That was the trip when I discovered one of my cousins shared my interest in RPGs. It was also the trip when I noticed our uncle’s book collection. He had piles of graphic novels—all in French, of course—but he also had what I remember as a full set of the Time Life Enchanted World books. If you were growing up in the 1980s, you probably knew someone who had them, or at least saw …

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May We Borrow Your Husband? and Other Comedies of the Sexual Life by Graham Greene

This entry is part 15 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

As with other posts in this series, these #booksread2022 posts go anywhere from a few weeks to a month after I’ve read them. I read this particular book last week, though!  May We Borrow Your Husband?  is a 1967 collection of short fictions—in some cases, they’re in fact extended vignettes, and Greene himself called them “entertainments”—by Graham Greene. The subtitle—”And Other Comedies of the Sexual Life”—isn’t printed on the cover of the Penguin edition I have, but it pretty much sums up the book. It reminds me a bit of Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City except it’s much grittier …

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Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada by Anna Brownell Jameson

This entry is part 16 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

As with other posts in this series, these #booksread2022 posts go anywhere from a few weeks to a month after I’ve read them. I read this particular book last week, though!  This is a book I’ve had for ages, but from which I only read a little bit. I figured I’d resolve that, and… quickly remembered why I had never read much of it. Anna Brownell Jameson was long-winded in the way of many people from her era—she was born late in the late 1700s, and this book is an account of her travel to Canada in the 1830s.  Notably, …

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The Cursed Chateau by James Maliszewski, illustrated by Jez Gordon

This entry is part 17 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

As with other posts in this series, these #booksread2022 posts go anywhere from a few weeks to a month after I’ve read them. The Cursed Chateau is an adventure set in a castle in the south of France, haunted by the ghost of a sadistic maniac and many of his victims. This is an adventure that James Maliszewski had published previously: there’s a Rogue Games edition listed online from 1999, and the author mentions having run the game many times over the years and noted player responses and feedback. The edition I’m looking at is the 2016 edition.

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Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention—And How to Think Deeply Again by Johann Hari

This entry is part 18 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

As with other posts in this series, these #booksread2022 posts go anywhere from a few weeks to a month after I’ve read them. I read this particular book last week, though!  Stolen Focus is a book about something a lot of us have been struggling with for years, but which a lot of people I know have found surging to the fore during the pandemic: a growing sense of difficulty paying attention, reading, and disengaging from the digital world. We all seem to be well aware of this problem—google the word “doomscroll” for one indicator of how powerless and trapped …

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Dinotopia: A Land Apart From Time by James Gurney

This entry is part 19 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

As with other posts in this series, these #booksread2022 posts go anywhere from a few weeks to a month after I’ve read them. I read this particular book last week, though!  Back when I made a trip to the United States in 2019, I asked at several bookstores about James Gurney’s Dinotopia books, and the response was always the same: the shop owners knew exactly what I was talking about, but told me that they hadn’t seen a copy in quite some time. The only way to get copies was online, as it turned out, but knowing my son’s obsession …

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Mouse Guard: Baldwin the Brave And Other Tales by David Petersen… and a song!

This entry is part 20 of 56 in the series 2022 Reads

As with other posts in this series, these #booksread2022 posts go anywhere from a few weeks to a month after I’ve read them. I read this particular book back in April, though! I’ve just been busy! I’ve recently mentioned how I introduced my son to the Mouse Guard comics via the short tales in the Legends of the Guard series. After we finished those, I noted that there were two other Mouse Guard volumes available that we didn’t already have, as well as a single issue comic from this year titled The Owlhen Caregiver and Other Tales and the Mouse …

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