Books Read: April

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More poetry than usual this month! It WAS National Poetry Month in April, so that makes sense!

Mission: to read 52 books in 2012
Status: 24/52
Books Read, April: 7

Notes on Books Read:


18) Threats by Amelia Gray
We read this for book club and everyone liked it. It had short, short chapters, something that I think appeals to modern readers. It's like-- if I am reading something with longer chapters, I am more inclined to stop once I reach the end of a chapter because then I won't have to worry about getting caught in the middle of one. Short chapters, however, do not pose the same threat, so I read more nonstop. The zany world that this book builds in-or-around (who knows!) the reality we live in is both believable and unbelievable at the same time. This novel will make you feel slightly insane and is worth reading. It just came out this year from FSG.

19) Culture of One by Alice Notley
I heard Notley read from this novel-in-verse at AWP in Chicago this year. She read some of the most moving poems from it out loud there, and I found myself anticipating those moments in the verse/plot. This slightly took away from the overall experience of the book as a whole, but I enjoyed many of the poems on a more individual basis.

20) Zirconia by Chelsey Minnis
This was one of my gifts from the Birthday Club I did, the first one, in fact, that I read. Minnis's poetry is still fresh, even though this collection was published a few years ago. It's not just the odd way that she composes them, thousands of periods in place of white space, but the way that she says things about nouns in ways that they have never been said before.

21) Partyknife by Dan Magers
This was a book of poetry that I won for ordering Carrie Murphy's Pretty Tilt before anyone else. I read it quickly in a day. It made me laugh at times, but the overall effect it had was odd. It made me slightly dislike the narrator, but then feel bad when he said something poignant or that I could relate to. I felt, also, that perhaps I was supposed to feel that way.



22) Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
I also read this novel in a day. In fact, the same day that I read the Magers book. I was on a roll. I thought this book was pretty adorable, though the characters' immaturity and inability to deal with certain things were frustrating at times. I want to see the movie, now.

23) Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy by Tao Lin
I've read/heard poems by Tao before, but I hadn't read a book-length of poetry until this one. What stuck with me the most about it was its repetition and how its repetition built the poems into something larger than they would have meant individually.  I liked the first half of the book better than the end, but I liked more individual lines and poems more towards the end. Like Minnis, Tao's work to me always seems fresh, seems like he is doing something  "important", though I'm not sure if it actually is or if it's just built to feel that way.

24) Remembrance of Things I Forgot by Bob Smith
We read this novel for book club. It also came out recently. It was completely ridiculous. Story of a gay man who travels back in time and breaks a whole bunch of time traveling rules in order to attempt to change the present that he was accidentally traveled away from. I wrote that last sentence in passive voice on purpose.

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