Books read in 2020

Another year of reading whatever seemed interesting or pertinent. Not enough in Portuguese, as usual.

January

Tristessa, Jack Kerouac (1.8.20)
This short, woeful tale of addiction and love lives up to its name. Kerouac is in full swing here, lyrical and all-encompassing, idealizing/fetishizing Mexico and Mexicans and poverty in the process. It's not a simple or cruel kind of idealization, though, since seemingly everything in his cosmology gets elevated to the sort of beautiful, earthy, divine status we see here in Kerouac's Mexico City and Tristessa herself. I dug it.

Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein (1.12.20) (reread)
Dave's sci-fi book club pick, which I read in 2005 or 2006 and barely remembered. Everyone's heard about this book's militarist, might-makes-right politics, but they didn't totally dominate the plot, which is pretty thin. That thinness isn't necessarily a failure, since the real story is Juan Rico's development as a soldier (although not as a character; man, he's boring). And for a book set during a galactic inter-species war, it's strangely dull. Heinlein's a decent writer, which makes it all the more disappointing.

Earth House Hold, Gary Snyder (1.25.20)
I've had this for over a decade and only now read it all the way through. Good stuff, especially the travelogues and musings on Buddhism. Snyder's ecological consciousness is interesting too; while the romanticizing of prehistoric traditions and mythologies isn't really my thing, he makes a pretty good argument as to why re-adoption of certain such behaviors would be good for humanity. Decades later, alas, here we are, going full-tilt in the opposite direction.


February

Marx's Capital: An Introductory Reader, various contributors (2.2.20)
Exactly what the title proclaims it to be, this collection of seven essays by seven Indian writers lays out the basic ideas of Capital, in addition to offering deeper perspectives on parts thereof. A little dry here and there, but overall a clear, readable introduction. I especially liked the essays by Jayati Ghosh and Prasenjit Bose.

Recursion, Blake Crouch (2.8.20)
Natalia's sci-fi book club pick. I'm burned out on time travel (says the dude who's gonna read William Gibson's newest soon), the characters were snoozy, and I couldn't shake the feeling that it was written with movie options in mind. I didn't hate it by any means, but I will probably retain only dim memories of reading it.

Wild Ivy: The Spiritual Autobiography of Zen Master Hakuin, Norman Wadell (trans.) (2.16.20)
Brandon from the Houston Dharma Collective recommended this. Aside from being a unique look at the development of one of Rinzai Zen's most famous teachers, it's a neat historical document, copiously footnoted and well-translated. What I didn't expect was a section that read almost exactly like a Daoist tract on longevity! Pretty cool.

That Option No Longer Exists: Britain 1974-76, John Medhurst (2.29.20)
A clear-eyed leftist look at the Labour government of the 1970s, focusing on attempts to increase industrial democracy and shift the British economy in a socialist direction. The tooth-and-nail willingness of the right and even the civil service to undermine any such efforts was shocking, and via Medhurst's discussion of Britain's original entry into the EEC I better understand why such a move was opposed by some on the left. Art, music, feminism, and other aspects of working-class culture are also discussed. A fine book indeed.

March

Agency, William Gibson (3.18.20)
Reading Gibson is one of my favorite things to do, and I was not disappointed. A solid follow-up to The Peripheral, I did find some of the alternate-history politics a little cloying, but it was such a minor aspect that it didn't matter (and they're pretty understandable, too). One thing that struck me was the deployment of violence in the book, which was deliberately minimal, and the emphasis on networking and relationships.

Ssu-K'ung T'u: A Poet-Critic of the Tang, Wong Yoon Wah (3.19.20)
One of the few English-language books about Sikong Tu, some of whose poetry I'm translating with a friend. Short, interesting, and useful, it made me wish my Chinese was better so I could read the sources.

Passion in Paradise: Modern Day Catholicism in Goa, Christina Fernandes (3.25.20) A short but nicely descriptive introduction to Catholic life in Goa these days (well, 2012). The real strong point is the photography, which is lovely and evocative.

The Art of Chinese Poetry, James J.Y. Liu (3.30.20)
My friend Ana Katryna Cabrini recommended Liu's work, and this short but densely-packed (and quite readable) book was one of the best introductions and guides to Chinese poetry I've come across. It will prove to be a useful reference, I'm sure.


April

The Soviet Century, Moshe Lewin (4.4.20)
I picked this up after the Cosmonaut podcast covered another of Lewin's books. This is not a straightforward history of the Soviet Union, but an analysis of various aspects of its economy, society, administration, and politics. Lewin's even-handed, sober approach makes for good reading, even if it can be dry at times, and I'd highly recommend this book to anyone.

The Monkey King, Timothy Mo (4.6.20)
I read Mo's 'An Insular Possession' five years ago and loved it, so I was pleased when I found this, his first novel, sometime last year (at Kaboom Books, I think). It was quite good, and very evocative of postwar Hong Kong. The near-pidgin English might turn off some readers, but I think it's Mo's way of staying faithful to HK English as it was spoken at the time.

Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of '70s and '80s Horror Fiction, Grady Hendrix (4.18.20)
This ruled. I read a few of the books mentioned in here when I was younger (John Coynes' Hobgoblin is still on my shelf), and Hendrix' hilarious descriptions of insane plots makes me want to read others. Maybe.

Story of Your Life and Others, Ted Chiang (4.22.20) (reread)
Tracey's sci-fi book club pick. I read this about ten years ago and didn't remember a whole lot, other than that I liked it, so reading it again was fun. Solid stuff; the sort of writing that defines what science fiction is and can be.

The Soft Machine, William Burroughs (4.26.20)
I've been a big Burroughs fan for years, but this is the first of the cut-ups novels I've read in its entirety. At its best, the technique here can induce a quasi-hallucinatory state; at its worst, it's repetitive as hell. What little plot there is seems to revolve around (mostly sexual) exploitation and degredation practiced by humans, insects, Uranians, Venusians, and Central/South American gods against their own kind and others. Wild shit when it was published, and still wild today.


May

Brother Termite, Patricia Anthony (5.17.20)
I heard about this from John at Kaboom and from Andy, so I picked it for sci-fi book club. The premise (in part, "aliens in the White House with the ghost of JFK as VP") seemed right up my alley, but in the end I didn't know what to make of the book as a whole. In some ways it fell flat, and in others was surprising; in pretty much every way it was not what I expected. I look forward to reading Cradle of Splendor by the same author and seeing how it compares.

Awakened Cosmos: The Mind of Chinese Poetry, David Hinton (5.19.20)
This is one of those books I read at the right time. Hinton's deep grasp of Chinese poetry is evident at every turn, and I really like how he uses Du Fu's work to explore Taoist and Chan Buddhist concepts, and vice versa. I don't care for his use of English names for Chinese places, which feels unnecessary and kind of goofy, and he leans too heavily on the pictographic value of Chinese characters sometimes and gets kinda mystical; nevertheless, this gave me a lot to think about, and is a great exposition of the lasting vitality of classical Chinese poetry.

Red Star Over the Third World, Vijay Prashad (5.20.20)
A short look at the impact of the October Revolution in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Prashad doesn't shy away from the shortcomings of the Comintern or the Soviet Union, but as the title proclaims, his emphasis is decidedly not Eurocentric, which makes the book even more worthwhile.

Poems, François Villon (David Georgi, trans.) (5.27.20)
Tracey got me this for my birthday or Christmas in 2018, when we went to Paris in 2018. I like Ezra Pound's 'villonauds', so it's no surprise that I thoroughly enjoyed this. Georgi's translation is very readable, and I appreciate his extensive notes, which make Villon's world come alive.

June

Kūkai: Major Works (Yoshito S. Hakeda, trans.) (6.14.20)
This was pretty dense reading, which is no surprise coming from the founder of esoteric Shingon Buddhism. That said, it wasn't exactly impenetrable, and I enjoyed getting a different view of Buddhism. I'd like to experience Shingon firsthand, but that's not really an option in Texas.

The ABC of Communism vol. 1, Nikolai Bukharin and Yevgeni Preobrazhensky (6.18.20)
A pretty succinct summary of Bolshevik-style communism, written in 1919. The contemporaneity with the First World War and the Russian Revolution makes for interesting reading (or dates it badly, depending on how you look at it) and provides a sense of urgency. The awful ebook version I have only included volume 1, so I suspect there's a lot more detail that I haven't seen.

A Pallid Wave on Shores of Night, Adam S. Cantwell (6.23.20)
A friend alerted me to a free e-book version of this, which I'd never be able to get my hands on in its tangible form, which came into being via Ex Occidente Press. Weird tales at their finest, revolving around music and the beckoning myth of Europe. Great stuff.


July

The Rinzai Zen Way: A Guide to Practice, Meido Moore (7.1.20)
I didn't know much about Rinzai, so I picked this up last year. What a welcome change from a lot of Buddhist writing from the west! Moore is a straightforward writer, and this is an excellent introduction to Rinzai practice, which differs from Soto Zen practice in some notable ways. Highly recommended.

The Assimilated Cuban's Guide to Quantum Santeria, Carlos Hernandez (7.15.20)
Scott's sci-fi book club selection. The title is awesome, and the stories are pretty good, though there's something about the writing I can't put my finger on. I think it's that sometimes the sci-fi or Cuban cultural elements seem tacked on? I'm not sure. Anyway, worth reading.

Novelas Policiárias: uma antologia, Fernando Pessoa (Ana Maria Freitas and Fernando Cabral Martins, eds.) (7.19.20)
In addition to poetry, Fernando Pessoa wrote some detective stories. They feature Dr. Abílio Quaresma, a "decifrador," and they're not bad. Heavy on contemporary criminal psychology, and formal Holmesian kinds of cases, I wonder what English-speaking mystery readers today would think.

Stray Mango Branches and Other Stories with Goan Sap, Fatima M. Noronha (7.26.20)
Part fiction, part memoir in the form of short stories. I really liked this; the author has a plain, warm style, and the life she's led makes for some good stories.

August

The Prison Notebooks of Ricardo Flores Magón, Douglas Day (8.22.20)
A novel, despite the title, and a good one at that. I've got a collection of Magón's translated writings I intend to read as a companion piece to this.

Introduction to Zen Training, Omori Sogen (8.23.20)
Meido Moore is part of Omori Sogen's lineage, so I decided to check this out. I found it quite useful, if a little old-fashioned (i.e., very 1960s Japanese) in some ways, and I'm sure I'll return to it again.

Exhalation, Ted Chiang (8.30.20)
It's Ted Chiang, man. Great stuff.

September

The Fur Person, May Sarton (9.12.20)
A lovely story about a cat that made for a pleasant read on a sunny Saturday afternoon. I really like May Sarton, and here she shows deep, loving understanding of the relationship between humans and cats.

A Thousand Moons on a Thousand Rivers, Hsiao Li-Hung (Michelle Wu, trans.) (9.12.20)
A meditative novel about a young woman growing up in Taiwan in the '60s and '70s and her arm's-length romance with a certain young man. Lots of nice details, slow but steady pacing, and a reluctance to reduce emotions and actions to narratively convenient pieces made for a really satisfying book. Michelle Wu's translation is smooth and perfectly suited to the story, too.

Black Hole, Bucky Sinister (9.16.20)
I don't remember why, or when, this ended up on my list of library books to read, but I finally checked it out and devoured it in a day. Sinister counts PKD and Burroughs as inspirations, and it shows: fucked-up drugs, San Francisco lowlifes, cascading reality failures, no-bullshit writing. This book will make you want to do drugs and also stay far the fuck away from drugs. Mostly the latter.

Pomes All Sizes, Jack Kerouac (9.20.20)
The title pretty much sums it up. Some good stuff in here, and some dross, too. Kerouac's fondness for playing around with sounds and words isn't always my bag, but I'm trying to open up to that sort of approach, and this was a good place to do so.

Un Ramo de Poemas/A Bouquet of Poems, Haim Vitali Sadacca (David Fintz Altabe, trans.) (9.28.20)
I came across this book on the website of the Foundation for the Advancement of Sephardic Studies and Culture; how I ended up there, I can't recall. The poems are written in Ladino, AKA Judeo-Spanish, by a fellow who grew up in Turkey, which is where many Jews from Spain and Portugal ended up after being expelled by Ferdinand and Isabel in 1492. The poetry itself is rather sentimental, but it's a pleasant read. (Obviously I don't speak Ladino, but I know enough Spanish to read the poems without much trouble.) The translations are serviceable, too. Definitely a neat find, and I hope this language survives.

October

Blackfish City, Sam Miller (10.6.20)
Linda's sci-fi book club pick. Pretty good; reminded me of Autonomous in some ways and Snow Crash in others. There's a cyberpunk vibe to the city, Qaanaaq, that makes for an interesting setting, even though I wouldn't classify this as cyberpunk. The politics are generally good, but I'm a little more ambivalent about the concretization of blood ties. Overall Miller did a solid, if maybe ultimately somewhat underwhelming, job here.

Move Under Ground, Nick Mamatas (10.7.20) (re-read)
I read this I don't know how many years ago—it doesn't appear on any of my yearly lists starting from 2009, and I don't know where my hard copy went—and dug it, since I like Lovecraftian stuff and the Beats. It held up well; the epilogue was especially sad this time around.

Death of a Trickster, Kate Borden (10.23.20)
I know cozy mysteries are on the tame side, but man, this was corny even by cozy standards. On top of that, it was badly edited, the characters were one-dimensional, and the plot was as threadbare as a Victorian street urchin's jacket. I'm glad this was only 200 pages, and sad that it contributed little to the Halloween atmosphere. Oh well.

Hawkwind: Days of the Underground, Joe Banks (10.26.20)
While the structure of this book—reviews, chronologies, essays, and interviews pertaining to each Hawkwind album between 1970 and 1980—makes the narrative a bit choppy, it works pretty well, especially if you want to read about a particular record or period. I really dig Hawkwind, and this book just made me appreciate them more. The special edition, which I somehow got instead of the regular one, comes with a whole other book of interviews, which I'll get around to reading soon.

The Last Gold of Decayed Stars, Colin Insole (10.28.20)
Another strange little Ex Occidente book about a semi-mystical European locale being eroded by modernity. Lots of neat images and just enough narrative connections to hold it together. Very Chambers-esque in a way, this generally would count as weird fiction. Good bedtime reading for this time of year.

Shingon: Japanese Esoteric Buddhism, Taikō Yamasaki (Richard and Cynthia Peterson, trans., Yasuyoshi Morimoto and David Kidd, eds.) (10.29.30)
I didn't know until relatively recently that Japan has its own long-standing vajrayana tradition, Shingon. There's not a ton about it in English, so this book is exceptionally useful. While the concepts are pretty heavy, the writing is clear and straightforward. Highly recommended if you're interested in seeing another side of Buddhism.

November

The Deng Xiaoping Era: An Inquiry Into the Fate of Chinese Socialism, 1978-1994, Maurice Meisner (11.8.20)
Meisner argues that the PRC was never really a socialist state, and that Mao built the foundations for Deng's economic reforms, which ultimately resulted in what he calls a "bureaucratic capitalist" nation. I think it's a pretty good assessment, and 24 years after this book was published, there's not much evidence that China is pursuing a truly (or even somewhat) socialist path, only a nationalist one. There's a whole lot to digest here, but it's worth the time.

Middle Men, Jim Gavin (11.24.20)
Jim Gavin created my favorite TV show of the last few years, Lodge 49, so I had to read this. These are some fantastic short stories that share the same vibe as Lodge 49, full of day-to-day Southern Californian sun, freeways, and fuck-ups, but without the element of magical realism. They don't need it, though. Man, I loved this book.

HWJN, Ibraheem Abbas and Yasser Bahjatt (11.26.20)
Saad's sci-fi book club pick. Terrible: not science fiction, paper-thin characters and story, awful writing, uninspired translation. How people keep talking about this as sci-fi, or even worth reading, is a mystery. It's a shame, too, because I was totally into the idea of Islamic science fiction. At least it provided some kind of insight into Saudi culture.

December

The Feral Detective, Jonathan Lethem (12.3.20)
I keep hoping I'll like Lethem's more recent output more than I do. I like his stuff, but something doesn't quite click with me. This book was no different in that regard. The protagonist and the titular detective both annoyed me, but I applaud Lethem's attempts to pick at the scab of modern American culture, particularly its growing polarization. And you can't go too wrong with anything set in the California desert.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Francesca Fremantle and Chögyam Trungpa (trans.) (12.14.20)
A fascinating read. I don't give much thought to what may happen after we die, so it was interesting seeing death treated as a series of liminal states, not to mention the ways one can deal with them. Some of the imagery is absolutely nuts; the blood-drinking wrathful deities are especially metal. Of course, there's solid Buddhist philosophy underlying everything here, but I can see how this book captured a lot of heads' imaginations in the '70s. Maybe someday I'll get to read this at someone's deathbed, or have it read at mine.

Díli, a cidade que não era, Dom Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo, SDB (12.17.20)
A brief history of Dili, the capital of Timor-Leste, written by the former bishop of said city and 1996 Nobel Peace Prize winner (a detail I did not know when I bought this in Lisbon a couple years ago). It's a little bare bones, but still a good read; the descriptions of Dili by former visitors are especially noteworthy.

A Dark Muse: A History of the Occult, Gary Lachman (12.27.20)
My friend Brad recommended this, which is a sort of literary history of the occult told through biographical sketches of various figures over the last couple centuries. (There's also a selection of texts from some of the individuals covered, but I didn't read them.) Lachman is sympathetic but not credulous, and talks about some pretty obscure writers that I'll have to check out.


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