Jenny's Library Books Mid-November

I checked out so many books from the library this past month, I had to make two piles. And since there are so many, I will discuss them in chunks!  One book pictured can be ignored, the Blue Plate Special.  I've had it checked out from the library for two months and I felt like I hadn't done anything with it!

Ravel According to Ravel edited by Vlado Perlemuter
The Cambridge Companion to Ravel edited by Deborah Mawer
Irony and Sound: the Music of Maurice Ravel by Stephen Zank
Unmasking Ravel edited by Peter Kaminsky
Ravel by Roger Nichols

In my Creative Non-Fiction class, I am working on an essay about preparing for a recital. I was also experimenting with incorporating research into that style of essay for the first time, and went out in search of what Ravel thought about Jeux D'eau, one of his earliest pieces for piano. That should explain the subset of books on Ravel!

This Perfect Day by Ira Levin
Why I Read: the Serious Pleasure of Books by Wendy Sesser

Almost all the books pictured have been returned to the library.  These are the only two I have not yet read!  I will read the Levin for an SFF Audio readalong discussion. I've been promised dystopia! Why I Read was a whim from the library leisure reading collection and I'm not sure if I will read it or not.  I am always interested in seeing how people write about reading, but don't always connect with them.

The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit
Icelanders in the Viking Age: The People of the Sagas by William R. Short
Soldier of the Mist by Gene Wolfe
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra
Of the remaining books, four were for book clubs.  The Solnit and Short were for the World Literature group in GoodReads, both having something to do with Iceland (however the Solnit also fits nicely into all the Creative Non-Fiction reading I've been doing, so that was a nice bonus.)  The Gene Wolfe is for an upcoming discussion for the League of Extraordinary Dorks Book Club, and the Marra was my pick for the in-person International Book Club.  (I can't say enough about that book. It was even better on the second read, and we had a great discussion!)

Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever's Search for the Truth about Everything by Barbara Ehrenreich
A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny
Blue Horses: Poems by Mary Oliver
An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine
In Short: A Collection of Brief Creative Nonfiction edited by Mary Paumier Jones and Judith Kitchen

The rest is a bit of a grab bag! Reading tends to be. I had come across a review of the Ehrenreich somewhere, probably Publishers Weekly, and was interested in the child raised by atheists having her own private spiritual experiences. Ehrenreich goes back to her journals and reflects on them, but I couldn't get through it.  My review reflects that this might be a fault of the book itself, but it could also be the fact that I found the book in large print.  (Does this happen to anyone else? Format interfering with reading?)

The Zelazny was because of a reading goal and because it was October, the Oliver was a whim because I didn't know she had another book of poems out and I can't ever pass her up, the Alameddine is one of the finalists for the National Book Award announced this week, and the Jones/Kitchen had been mentioned in one of the texts we are reading for the Creative Non-Fiction class, so I read it too!

It is a good thing I have such good libraries at my fingertips.  I just passed 200 books read this year, and how could I ever do that without libraries?