2024: What I'm Reading
This article will be updated all year long and contains links to the Deeper Stories Bookshop.
You’ll find the books I’m analyzing, as well as my personal reading list, at The Deeper Stories Bookshop.
I’m currently reading The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton with Closely Reading. Join me in his group reading, analysis, and discussion.
May 8, 2024: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce. If my Twitter was any indication, this is the era of the exvangelical, and if that’s you I have a classic books recommendation / warning for you: James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
The retreat sermons (read “revival”) just past the middle of the book seem to go on forever, but I thought Midnight Mass had the best fictional sermon ever. This beats it, but… trigger warning. My goodness does this bring back memories. I cannot remember the last time I connected so hard with a book. A hate it a little and love it so so much.
April, 2024: The Birds by Daphne du Maurier, just the one short story on audiobook. It can be found in the collection, Don’t Look Now. Other single short stories so far this year, The Doll by Daphne du Maurier, The Repairer of Reputations from The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers, and The City of the Singing Flame by Clark Ashton Smith.
April, 2024 Just before deciding to begin this site, I read Dubliners and continue to re-read it as I work on the analysis of each story.
Choose from a selection of editions of Dubliners at The Deeper Stories Bookshop.
4/5/2024: My first exposure to Solaris was the Soderbergh / Clooney film which I don’t remember very well, but I understand it reduced it down to a romance story. On the third try, I was the russian film version by Tarkovsky, and I really love that movie. I just had to age to a point where I could love that movie. Now, I’ve read the book, and it frightened me more than the movies did. Don’t take that to mean this is horror. It’s not. It was a great reading experience.
3/31/2024: I listened to this on tape and there are sections of history / conspiracy theory where I got distracted and missed much of the side trip… and I didn’t care. I loved this book. That’s really weird to say. I bought it in hard cover just before I listened to it, and I’m looking forward to reading this mammoth book again. This might be one of my all-time favorites.
In hardback and paperback at The Deeper Stories Bookshop.
3/26/2024: I’ve been surprisingly silent on The Son since finishing it. I can’t say it’s not fantastic, and there are elements, such as Eli’s life among the Native Americans, which are just amazing. Ultimately, it’s a brilliant but depressing book.
3/6/2024: I’d tried to read this a couple times before and finally forced my way through, on audiobook. In the end, I had it on double speed. What I can say is that Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath is the same book in many ways and carries through to an end that Salinger only hints at. I love The Bell Jar. This one was difficult.
Choose between Catcher in the Rye and Bell Jar at The Deeper Stories Bookshop.
1/23/2024: I started reading The Son at the beginning of the year, but it was taking a while. I was desperate to finish something, and I’d been wanting to read something by Don DeLillo. This was in the library, and it was short. I have to say, this is not the book to introduce yourself to Delillo. However, there are aspects of it I really enjoyed, especially the husband who sat in front of the dead televeision set, calling out the imagined plays of the big game he was missing.
My last book of 2023 was The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy, and I am am a huge fan of McCarthy. I really like this book. I’m not ready to say love. As of April, I’ve read a couple chapters of Stella Maris before returning it to the library. I’ll read it this year, but it’s format was frustrating me. Eager to move on, I’d just bought a collection of Sammuel Becket and began Molloy. If you know that book, this is where you laugh at me, and I deserve your laughter. I’ve set it aside as well, for now. I will read it, though. What can I say about The Passenger? I don’t know. I need more time, however, it is a much, much better late-life effort than my first book of 2024.
Pick up a boxed set of The Passenger and Stella Maris at The Deeper Stories Bookshop.
This page is a work in progress.
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