Series: 2022 Reads

Hidden Folk, by Eleanor Arnason

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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

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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

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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)

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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

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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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