Mid-Year Book Tag

I know that we're looking at the halfway point of 2017 in the rear-view mirror, but I couldn't resist taking on the "Mid-Year Book Tag" challenge.  As I work toward fulfilling my reading challenges, it's nice to take a step back and look at all the books I've read so far this year, in toto.  It gives a different perspective, stepping away from focusing on ticking boxes and meeting goals. 

The Best Book You've Read So Far

This is really hard, for a few reasons.  First, I've read a lot of books this year - over 100.  Many of them were new releases/new-to-me, but there were a few re-reads sprinkled in there as well.  Second, I'm not sure how I want to define "best".  Is it the quality of the writing?  The subject matter?  The character development?  The feelings I had when I read it?  Third, I've read fairly widely so far in 2017, and how do I compare a book of poetry to a translated novel to deep-dive of non-fiction?  I struggle and I flip-flop...which is why I took the easy (non-committal?) way out.  With that in mind, here are what I'll call the "best" from each of the categories (as I haphazardly selected them) at this point in the year:

• Best Novel - Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte
• Best Poetry - My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter, by Aja Monet
• Best Short Story Collection - Things We Lost in the Fire, by Mariana Enriquez
• Best Essay Collection - The Mother of All Questions by Rebecca Solnit
• Best Memoir - M Train, by Patti Smith
• Best Non-Fiction - Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong - and the New Research That's Rewriting the Story, by Angela Saini
• Best Graphic Novel/Memoir - Bitch Planet Volume 1: Extraordinary Machine, by Kelly DeConnick and Valentine De Landro

The Best Sequel You've Read So Far

In looking over my reading, I haven't actually read any sequels in 2017.  I don't often read books that aren't stand-alone, so this isn't terribly surprising.  I do tend to read companion novels, however, and that's how I decided to approach this prompt.  The best companion novels I've read so far are the three translated works from Yuri Herrera - Signs Preceding the End of the World, The Transmigration of Bodies, and Kingdom Cons.

All three are allegorical stories of illegal immigration, drug trade, corruption, and organized crime - between Mexico and the United States.  None of the characters, settings, or plots recur between the three novels, but they fit together so seamlessly that it's impossible not to link them together.

A New Release You Haven't Read Yet, But Want To

I have a copy of David Sedaris' published journals, Theft By Finding, but haven't had a chance to read the tome yet.  Actually, at over 500 pages, it might be more enjoyable to read a few days' entries at a time, rather than read the whole thing in one go.  I'm excited to read it, loving the author's oeuvre, but just haven't decided how I want to approach it yet.

Most Anticipated Releases for the Second Half of 2017

There are three authors, all of whom I completely love, who have new works being released in the second half of 2017: Jesmyn Ward, Toni Morrison, and Jeffrey Eugenides.  When I refer to publication dates, they are all for United States publishers.  I cannot guarantee that publication in other countries will take place in the second half of 2017.

Jesmyn Ward has a new novel being released on 5 September called Sing Unburied Sing.  I'm a huge fan of her memoir Men We Reaped, and her novel about New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina called Salvage the Bones.  They're amazing, heartbreaking stories, full of powerful writing and personal struggle. 

I am completely gobsmacked that we're getting something new from Toni Morrison - a collection of her lectures called The Origin of Others.  The topics range from race, to fear, to isolation, to wall-building, to refugees, to belonging.  It's being released on 18 September.

On 3 October, Jeffrey Eugenides is having his first short story collection, Fresh Complaint: Stories, published.  I absolutely adored his epic family saga Middlesex, and his novel The Virgin Suicides.  I can't wait to see how he treats the short story format.

The Biggest Surprise

My biggest surprise of 2017 thus far was the non-fiction book Word By Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries, by Kory Stamper.  Before hearing about this on a Book Riot podcast, I would never have considered a book about dictionaries being something that I needed to read.  But I did - oh I did!  It was brilliantly written, part memoir and part research project, and hilarious to boot.

The Biggest Disappointment

So far in 2017, the biggest disappointment was the novel The Guest Cat, by Takashi Hiraide and translated from the Japanese by Eric Selland.  It had an adorable premise - a lonely couple is visited every day by a neighbor's cat.  The novel is a meditation on relationships and humanity's interaction with the natural world.  However, for my tastes, the novel veered too far into the realm of prose poetry.  There was very little focus, and it read as though the author was trying to reach some grand conclusion, or make a prolific point, but the writing just never got there.  This was disappointing, and took away from my enjoyment of the work overall.  Not even inclusions of cats, normally something I'm drawn to in literature, was not enough to make this story come alive for me.  I was wrapped up in the poetry of the novel, and it's beautiful imagery, but the rest of it fell flat.

Favorite Debut/New-to-You Author

My favorite new-to-me author is Claire Fuller, author of two novels thus far - Swimming Lessons and Our Endless Numbered Days.  I read Swimming Lessons earlier this year, and was completely enraptured by her beautiful, atmospheric writing and her captivating characters.  I plan to read Our Endless Numbered Days before the end of 2017, and I'm hoping to love it just as much.

Newest Fictional Crush

While I haven't had a crush on a character in a book for quite a long time, I could see my younger self getting a little moony over the main characters in Sandhya Menon's delightful When Dimple Met Rishi.

Newest Favorite Character

Out of the books I've read so far in 2017, there are a few characters I've been drawn to.  Some are endearingly grumpy, like a beloved grandparent.  Others are so over-the-top unbelievable that you can't help but be drawn into their drama and watch what unfolds.  Still others tug at heartstrings or moral compasses, and engage your humanity.  The last of these categories is into which falls my pick for newest favorite character - Samuel Long, the titular character in Norman Lock's A Fugitive in Walden Woods.  Long is a runaway slave, rescued by an abolitionist family and then smuggled to a tenuous freedom along the Underground Railroad, until he is hidden amongst the literary elite in Concord, Massachusetts.  He encounters Henry David Thoreau at his shack on the banks of Walden Pond, and the two of them educate each other about humanity and the world around them - Thoreau talks of metaphysical and spiritual matters, while Long explains the concrete realities and the violence of slavery.  It's a beautifully imagined piece of historical fiction, and the character of Samuel Long is so strong that I couldn't help but consider him my favorite.

Book That Made You Cry

I cried throughout We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby.  Not because it was tragic, although at times it was, but because I laughed so hard.  There is such a raucous, vulgar hilarity throughout each and every one of the essays in this collection - I laughed until I cried.  Sometimes in public.

Book That Made You Happy

It's rare for me to read a book that gives me warm-fuzzies, but I read a book in July that I would describe as just so.  The Nakano Thrift Shop, by Hiromi Kawakami is chock full of quirky characters,  heartwarming plot-lines, romances, and the kinds of oddities that you might expect to find in a secondhand goods shop.  I compared the reading experience of this book to drinking a cup of hot tea on a dreary day - comforting and uplifting. 

Favorite Book-to-TV/Film Adaptation

It's been a few years since I last re-read Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.  Once I learned that Hulu was developing a miniseries based on it, I figured that was the catalyst for diving back into the world of Offred and Gilead.  I decided to wait until the series was fully released, so that I could binge it one after another.  I also decided to wait to watch the series until I had finished my re-read, so that the original characters and plot points were fresh in my mind.  It was a great decision, and I can honestly say that the TV adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale is one of my all-time book-to-tv/film favorites!

Favorite Book Review You've Written This Year

I'm most proud of the review I wrote for Elena Ferrante's Frantumaglia - a published collection of letters, interviews, and other correspondence between the author, her publishers, and artists/fans/the press.  I finished the book in mid-March, and it was around that time that an article came out from an Italian journalist who, using ethically questionable methods, claimed to have "uncovered" the identity of Elena Ferrante.  It's widely known that Elena Ferrante is a pen name, used so that the author can maintain anonymity in her work.  In my review, I not only outlined my opinions of the tome, but also explored the problematic cultural voracity toward "unmasking" the true identity of the author.  

Most Beautiful Book You've Bought/Received So Far

One of the most strikingly unique books is the poetry collection The Abridged History of Rainfall by Jay Hopler.  It has an iridescent cover that refracts rainbows in the light; it's absolutely hypnotic.

What Books Do You Need to Read By the End of 2017?

I must finish the rest of the books in the Penguin Drop Caps series, which are classics (modern and not-so-modern) of the Western Canon.  I set this challenge back in January, and I've been making some progress, but not nearly enough.  So far, I've read 6 of the books, which means there are 20 remaining, and 4 months in which to read them.  Two of the books are Middlemarch and Moby-Dick, both are close to 1000 pages long.  Eeeeek!



And that's it for the Mid-Year Book Tag!   What are some notable books and characters from your reading thus far?  If you're interested in analyzing your reading through these prompts, then consider yourself tagged.




Librorum annis,