Waywords Book Reviews
Quick Takes on My Reading SteveAtWaywords on Storygraph Steve Chisnell on GoodreadsEver since I retired from the public school classroom, I have voraciously been consuming titles new and those I regretted missing. And in keeping with my goals, I want to find the value of the widest range of reading. Here are many, rating them based upon their own purpose or ambition.
“The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.”
–Oscar Wilde
Quoted in Oscar Wilde, Art and Morality: A Defence of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Stuart Mason (ed.) (1908)
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“Adaptation” by Mack Reynolds
Reynolds offers an interesting if basic thought experiment on the development of civilization. A lot of 1960s-era problematic tropes and thinly-skinned machismo, but in some ways Reynolds skewers those very prejudices!
“The Memory Police” by Yoko Ogawa
Surreal and fragile, Ogawa’s narration is dystopian, but far more: psychological, linguistic, writerly, dysphoric, internal and external.
“The Bloody Chamber” by Angela Carter
Carter “re”-discovers the adult power of our fairy tales and blends additional layers of sensuality, the re-framing of power, ambiguous morality when we meet the biological.
“Eroding Witness” by Nathaniel Mackey
Poetry of incantation which, for me, offers only the smallest cracks into comprehension. What are readers expected to do? Maybe just to be swept up into a vibe, a moment, and then to let it go . . .
“Storyteller” by Mario Vargas Llosa
Llosa poses so many challenging questions for indigenous cultural protection in this dual narrative work. What is more sacred even than religion?
“Becket” by Jean Anouilh
A magnificent play of love and loyalty, hedonism and purpose, set upon the historical martyrdom of its title character, the real power of this work will lie in its performance more than its reading.
“Murder in the Cathedral” by T. S. Eliot
Eliot’s play in verse, based on the historical murder of Thomas Becket, is really about the tension between spiritual and worldly motives, the temptation to sainthood, and probably Eliot’s own challenges.
“The Secret Adversary” by Agatha Christie
A tale from more innocent days of the thriller, this early book by Christie has some amateurish moments and a fairly predictable twist, but is nonetheless an entertaining distraction.
“The Great God Pan” by Arthur Machen
Machen’s “gentlemanly” work of misogyny and implied eroticism is a pioneer of cosmic horror, of a vast evil beyond our own world, anticipating Lovecraft’s visions.
“The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge” by Jean-Francois Lyotard
While Lyotard’s work is now a bit less controversial, he anticipates the coming limits of knowledge imposed upon us by the very technologies we use to augment it. This brief, heavy reading remains a powerful premise for thinking about how we produce knowledge in science and in schools.
“The Dark Knight Returns” by Frank Miller
The impact of this psychological turn in the superhero genre is hard to measure; yet over time we can see how difficult it was for Miller to break free of overwrought tropes (just pile on more villains, for instance), problems that have partly been addressed by other works later.
“Three Apples Fell from the Sky” by Narine Abgaryan
Abgaryan’s quiet novel–an aging rural Armenian village slowly passing away–is open-handed simplicity, offering wonder on its own terms.
“There There” by Tommy Orange
An extraordinary first work by Orange who fortunately has more novels ahead. Here his complex characters and social commentary are spot on, thwarted a bit by Orange’s not trusting them to complete their stories on their own.
“The Voyage of the Sable Venus” by Robin Coste Lewis
Lewis’s work is lush, virulent, and at times suffocating, but a necessary and vibrant meditation on the uses of black women and the idea of beauty across history and in contemporary thought.
“Eleven Horror Short Stories” by Horacio Quiroga
These brief tales in the hands of a master storyteller speak to an early terror, that of the oncoming age of electricity and film, and how old horrors transform along with them.
“Skin Folk” by Nalo Hopkinson
Not merely a collection of horror tales, Hopkinson expands the genre, never forgetting that stories are about character, only underscored by the supernatural. Offering breadth and depth, the only thing wanting in these tales is room to stretch for more still.
“Horrorism” by Adriana Cavarero
Cavarero articulates a new framework for thinking about the acts we simply call “violent,” focusing here on aggression with the sole purpose of erasing the uniqueness of the individual. A disturbing and necessary read.
“Olio” by Tyehimba Jess
Jess’s poetry tests the limits of form, using those limits–just as that of black music does–as themselves meaningful reflections on African American ragtime and US reconstruction history, on the life of Scott Joplin and the strategies that counter cultural appropriation.
“Writing the Other” by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward
While fairly fundamental in its approach, this is a valuable book for writers who plan to (and should) engage character viewpoints from the perspective of the “Other.” The supplements, in particular, are valuable.
“Watchmen” by Alan Moore
Groundbreaking work by Moore is a complex interplay between characters and generations corralled by marketing and politics around questions of legitimacy, authority, and justice. And, just sometimes, it’s almost too clever for its own good.
“The Writing of Fiction” by Edith Wharton
Wharton’s advice is still solid–and stolid–for today, though heavy in a prejudice rooted in traditionally-crafted literature, much feels like a reaction to the arrival of modern literature.
“Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories” Vols. 1 & 2
While not every story is terrifying, the Valancourt project is unique and important, bringing new and veteran writers into the English-reading world for the first time. What results is a unique collection with a wide range of concepts of horror.
“Androids & Aliens” by J. Scott Coatsworth
An author still weak in style and over-anxious to establish sf settings still offers interesting scenes from the enviro-chaotic future with healthy and normalized LGBTQ characters.
“The Muse Learns to Write” by Eric Havelock
Not without controversy, Havelock’s work still is a powerful perspective on the cognitive and social shifts in civilization’s movement from oral to written culture.