The OF Blog: March 2012 Reads

Sunday, April 15, 2012

March 2012 Reads

Read more in March than I did the previous two months.  Forty-eight books in total.  Only four of these were re-reads.  Thirteen were in Spanish, two others in Portuguese.  Twenty were written or co-written by women.  Only four might be found in the SF/F aisle of a bookstore. 

64  Don DeLillo, The Angel Esmeralda:  Nine Stories (PEN/Faulkner Finalist; very good collection.  This might be reviewed later on Gogol's Overcoat)

65  Dawn Lundy Martin, Discipline (poetry; very good)

66  Jim Harrison, Songs of Unreason (poetry; excellent)

67  Rahul Bhattacharya, The Sly Company of People Who Care (Man Asian Prize finalist; very good)

68  Eowyn Ivey, The Snow Child (good, but there were a few spotty narrative areas)

69  Dana Spiotta, Stone Arabia (reviewed at Gogol's Overcoat)

70  Amitav Ghosh, River of Smoke (Man Asian Prize finalist; very good)

71  Yan Lianke, Dream of Ding Village (Man Asian Prize finalist; reviewed at Gogol's Overcoat)

72  Andrea Hairston, Redwood and Wildfire (will say more about this year's Tiptree Award winner later)

73  Jo Walton, Among Others (Nebula and Hugo finalist; more later)

74  Jahnavi Barua, Rebirth (Man Asian Prize finalist; very good)

75  Lászlo Krasznahorkai, Satantango (very, very good novel)

76  Gonçalo M. Tavares, Joseph Walser's Machine (excellent)

77  Ander Monson, The Available World (poetry; very good)

78  Javier Negrete, La Espada de Fuego (re-read; Spanish; good to very good epic fantasy opener)

79  Juan Gabriel Vásquez, El ruido de las cosas al caer (re-read; Spanish; 2011 Premio Alfaguara winner; very good)

80  Steven Millhausser, We Others:  New and Selected Stories (PEN/Faulkner finalist; outstanding collection)

81  Lars Iyer, Spurious (fairly good story that involves philosophy and fungi)

82  Graciela Montes and Ema Wolf, El turno del escriba (re-read; Spanish; 2005 Premio Alfaguara winner, very good)

83  Alberto Fuguet, Aeropuertos (Spanish; excellent)

84  Gonçalo M. Tavares, Jerusalén (Spanish; outstanding)

85  César Aira, El congreso de literatura (Spanish; outstanding)

86  José Saramago, Claraboia (Portuguese; his long "lost" first novel; good to very good)

87  Ignacio Padilla, Los anacrónicos y otros cuentos (Spanish; good)

88 Various, Testigos del Horror (Spanish; non-fiction; charity anthology of writings about Doctors Without Borders and what the authors witnessed)

89  N.K. Jemisin, The Broken Kingdoms (good, but the first half was weak)

90  Jorge Volpi, Leer la mente (Spanish; non-fiction; very good)

91  Jordi Soler, El Estrangulador (Spanish; very good)

92  Colson Whitehead, The Intuitionist (very good)

93  Hernán Rivera Letelier, El fantasista (Spanish; very good)

94  Mira Bartók, The Memory Palace (National Book Critics Circle Award winner; moving, very good)

95  Steve Erickson, These Dreams of You (already discussed in mini-review)

96  Zora Neale Hurston, Novels and Stories (first three novels already reviewed at Gogol's Overcoat)

97  Aimee Bender, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (devastating; excellent)

98  Daniil Kharms, The Plummeting Old Woman (good translated story collection)

99  Yasunari Kawabata, The Old Capital (very good)

100 Kelly Barnhill, The Mostly True Story of Jack (good to very good in places)

101 Leopoldo Brizuela, Los que llegamos más lejos (very good)

102 Elfriede Jelinek, The Piano Teacher (very good)

103 Melanie Rae Thon, The Voice of the River (good)

104 Mauren F. McHugh, After the Apocalypse (good)

105 Matt Bell, Cataclysm Baby (review within the next week or so)

106 Wisława Szymborska, Here (poetry; excellent)

107 Maya Jasanoff, Liberty's Exiles (National Book Critics Circle Award winner; history; outstanding work that could be a landmark in the field of studying the Loyalists from the American Revolution)

108 Alex Shakar, Luminarium (very good)

109 Giannina Braschi, El imperio de los sueños (Spanish; very good)

110 Leah Bobet, Above (average)

111 Gonçalo M. Tavares, Histórias Falsas (Portuguese; very good)

112 Greg Bear, Hull Zero Three (Clarke Award finalist; more later)


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