A Year in Reading (Take Two)

How has the first month of the year already passed? So much has happened in those short 31 days.

I kicked off the New Year spending a few days re-reading the first four books in A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Beginning, The Reptile Room, The Wide Window and The Miserable Mill. I’m quite sure I’ve read them all three or four times already, but I wanted to have them fresh on the mind when I watched the new Netflix series so I could be appropriately disappointed and/or impressed. (Verdict: it was okay. I found the first four episodes better than episodes 5-8).

I stayed on the children’s book kick for another week, reading The Magician’s Elephant and Raymie Nightingale by Kate DiCamillo. I’m hoping to meet her at a conference in April, and I hadn’t read these two of her titles yet. I liked them both, but Raymie Nightingale better; they’re both sad.

Throughout the month I made my way through The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander’s in-depth, well-researched, incredibly convincing and convicting book tracing the development of America’s caste system from slavery to today’s mass incarceration. And since this was a month of book-movie comparisons, I have to mention Ava Duvernay's documentary 13th to pair with this book. They don't tell quite the same story, but their stories fit hand-in-hand. If you don't have time to read the book, stream the movie. It's on Netflix and you won't regret it.

I really tried to cheer things up at the end of the month, reading another kid’s book, but Penny from Heaven was sad too! Then of course I wanted to see the new Scorsese film so I re-read Silence, which I think actually broke my heart more this time, which I didn’t know was possible. (Verdict: the movie was amazing and everyone should see it, even though it’s over 2 ½ hours long). And then for class I read The American, which was hilarious at first and I was totally loving it, and then in the second half there were about 18 plot twists and I ended up devastated (minor spoilers there? Sorry about that.).

So: maybe it’s just the luck of the draw, maybe it’s my projection of life’s general state of affairs onto whatever story I’m reading, and most likely it just has a lot to do with my taste in books… I’d say here’s hoping for more cheerful reads to come, but I’m in a class on the Modern American Novel now, with Hemingway, Faulkner and Fitzgerald in my future, so probably not.

Maybe by the time May rolls around I’ll read something with a cheery ending. Until then, I hope y’all enjoy hearing about Modern American Novels, because that’s all I’ll be doing this semester!