Summer Reading

Here’s a slight update on the reading list from the previous post. I have the time to get down to reading from my own library now that summer is kicking in.

I just finished Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. It’s great, but depressing as hell. I had a similar albeit compressed reaction to Apocalypse Now!. Well worth the emotional anguish.

Now I’m reading Genesis, Part I of the Memory of Fire trilogy by Eduardo Galeano, a healthy mix of history, fiction and myth spanning the entire recorded history of the Americas. I also recommend his book Upside Down.

I’m still hacking my way through Lyn Hejinian’s My Life, too. Dense, beautiful prose poems from the 1980’s. I don’t know why, but they remind me of Mindy for some reason. I would recommend it.

Upcoming: John Edgar Wideman’s (photographed above) Homewood Books [Damballah, Hiding Place, and Sent for You Yesterday]. If you haven’t read anything by him, you really should. He came to the U of I five years ago and gave a reading that I don’t believe will ever be topped for me. Amazing, spellbinding prose.

And coming up, Overlord by Jorie Graham, Spring Comes to Chicago by Campbell McGrath, and possibly Russell Banks’ Continental Drift.

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