Reading continues to get done! These are July’s books. The stack looks higher than usual because there are three books in there that have pictures: Blind Spot, writer and photographer Teju Cole’s book of photography from all over the world; Yoshiharu Tsuge’s comic book, The Man without Talent, a man who is the paragon of the unsuccessful man genre, a Japanese genre which actually has a name that I’ve forgotten, or, rather, failed to remember, because in this genre it is always appropriate to note failure; and Nanotecture, a book of photos of very small buildings. I grew up sleeping in a large room in a large house, but moved into my closet when I was 10 or 12, so I really appreciate being cramped. Better for thinking. And also reading. There’s a lot of poetry in this stack too, most of it good. And even some missing from the picture (Dark Matter by Aase Berg, Toxicon and Arachne by Joyelle McSweeney) But I found Fiona Benson’s Vertigo and Ghost absolutely stunning, indispensable, potent. Absalom Absalom was the perfect book for the era of Black Lives Matter, which I mentioned before, and is not my favorite for being long-winded, racist and repetitive. I do prefer Light in August and As I Lay Dying, but I felt AbAb had to be reread.
Caterina.net 