What are you reading in November?
Dave Grohl’s memoir, Michael Imperioli and Steve Schirripa’s Sopranos oral history, and a critic’s attempt to read all 27,000 Marvel comics
Aux Features Alex McLevy
In our monthly book club, we discuss whatever we happen to be reading and ask everyone in the comments to do the same. What Are You Reading This Month?
Woke Up This Morning: The Definitive Oral History Of The Sopranos by Michael Imperioli and Steve Schirripa
The Sopranos oral history by Michael Imperioli and Steve Schirripa is an extension of their popular podcast, Talking Sopranos, and don’t you forget it—not that you could. Woke Up This Morning (November 2, William Morrow) reads like a transcript of the podcast or, at the very least, outtakes from it. That’s not to say it’s boring. Imperioli and Schirripa’s interviews with the show’s cast and crew, including heavy hitters like Edie Falco, David Chase, and Steve Buscemi, are frequently funny and insightful. There is no shortage of late-night tales from the production or moving tributes to James Gandolfini here. While not wholly essential for fans of The Sopranos or Talking Sopranos, Woke Up This Morning will probably end up under the tree this year anyway, and with it, a handful of hilarious Tony Sirico stories that make the whole thing worthwhile. Still, of all the ways to hear these two talk Sopranos, which includes the podcast, speaking tours, and fan conventions, Woke Up This Morning doesn’t feel like the optimal one. [Matt Schimkowitz]
All Of The Marvels: A Journey To The Ends Of The Biggest Story Ever Told by Douglas Wolk
All Of The Marvels (October 12, Penguin) is Douglas Wolk’s attempt to read all 27,000 or so in-continuity Marvel comics published since 1961, and then cogently explain them to the reader. It could have been an exercise in any number of nerdy indulgences: snobbery, gatekeeping, masochism, navel-gazing, take your pick. Instead, longtime comics and music critic Wolk has penned a love letter to the best that the thousands of people who’ve contributed to this gargantuan serial narrative have had to offer (while keeping a firm eye on the missteps that have dotted the company’s near-century in operation). Warmly written and informative without being overwhelming, Wolk’s book operates both as a primer on characters ranging from the obvious to the obscure—if you’re curious about the origins of this fall’s break-out star, Shang-Chi, Wolk has you covered—as well as a log of insightful ruminations on what the Marvel story, in all its far-flung, digressive glory, is actually “about.” [William Hughes]
The Storyteller by Dave Grohl
The title is a bit of a misnomer. Dave Grohl, former Nirvana drummer, current Foo Fighters frontman, and one of the last remaining old-guard rock star dudes, certainly has stories to tell. And the ones he does share in his memoir, The Storyteller (Dey Street, October 5), can be pretty entertaining at times: stranger-than-fiction experiences from the touring life, the surreal nature of fame and the access it grants you (not one, but two U.S. presidents make appearances), and the unique day-to-day of life as a world-famous musician.
But terming yourself “the” storyteller suggests a definitive role as the chronicler of your life, and there are some pretty big gaps here. Anyone hoping for a revealing and open recounting of the last tumultuous years of Nirvana, recording In Utero, or the group’s final tours, is out of luck: After just 40 pages (out of nearly 400) largely dedicated to joining the band and recording Nevermind, Grohl jumps to after Cobain’s death. And for someone who writes as though he casually treats his personal life like an open book, Grohl really doesn’t: At one point he references being in the middle of a divorce—which, given he never even mentions his ex-wife’s name, let alone anything about their relationship or the existence of his marriage, can make the reader go, “Wait, what?” His writing is exactly as you’d expect—loose, easy to read, riddled with clichés and fatherly platitudes about family and what’s really important in life—it certainly seems to capture his voice. If only that voice were a little more forthcoming about things besides the life-changing nature of music, dude. [Alex McLevy]
25 Comments
As it happens, I’ve mostly been reading Marvel comics this month (but not ALL of them!). They are easy to jump in and out of and my kids have been extra extra this month, so little snatches of time for reading vs trying to get into a novel has been the way to go for my escapism.
I recently finished Heinlein’s “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”, next up is E. O. Wilson’s “Anthill”.https://entitledtoanopinion.wordpress.com/2021/11/11/the-moon-is-a-harsh-mistress/
A few months ago I read this ‘Treasury of Science Fiction (vol. 2)‘ from 1959 that includes ‘The Man Who Sold the Moon’. I’m mixed on Heinlein generally but this was all right, not brilliantly written but falling in well with a lot of other 40s-50s style that also appeared in the book.The collection is primarily that sort of thing but has some interesting outliers including a couple of women writers. ‘Letters from Laura’ by Mildred Clingerman is a time-travel story from a woman’s view and also, unlike everything else, comedy! There’s a pretty good Arthur Clarke story but the one to look for is ‘The Stars My Destination’ by Alfred Bester. I don’t think I ever heard of him. The editor of the collection definitely chose right to put this at the end.
A tumblr dedicated (mostly) to A Song of Ice and Fire clued me into another of Heinlein’s stories set on the moon, “The Menace From Earth”. It wasn’t the sort of thing I expected from him.
The Heinlein that has really stuck with me all these years is, somewhat shamefully, ‘Friday’. I was like thirteen years old, so a killer sex machine was very exciting.The Treasury book also has a story by EB White (Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little and so on) which was a surprise, and coincidentally I just finished ‘One Man’s Meat’, a collection of his monthly essays from the 30s and 40s. All elegant and observant, though mostly mundane about his farm and rural society. But a few are really striking with his thoughts on nationalism and what he calls supra-nationalism. It was of course the war years.
As a kid (well, pre-teen?) I loved Heinlein’s “adolescent Sci-Fi” like “Have Space Suit, Will Travel” and so forth. His adult works I never enjoyed as much for some reason: I remember getting Stranger in a Strange Land and being vastly underwhelmed by what was supposed to be this huge, life changing book. Maybe I just don’t Grok it.
Then again, as I got older I replaced Heinlein with Ellison and that 60’s wave of Sci-Fi/Fantasy (or as Ellison would say, speculative fiction) so it’s probably just more my tastes changing.
The World According to Fannie Davis by Bridgett M. DavisBilly Summers by Stephen KingNothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw
Last night I started Maria Judite de Carvalho’s Empty Wardrobes, which is November’s “read more books by WOC and/or non-American writers” project. It’s not terrifically interesting, but it’s not very long so I’ll finish it.On audio I’m still plowing through Michael McDowell’s Blackwater. I’m on volume 4 (of 5), The War (because most of it takes place during WWII).Also read in November: The Last Days of Night by Graham MooreLords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire by Jason Goodwin
And the first 3 volumes of Blackwater, The Flood, The Levee, and The House
I finished Anthony Doerr’s Cloud Cuckoo Land (basically his version of Cloud Atlas), and am now starting Lindsay Ellis’ Truth of the Divine.
Buckaroo Banzai against the World Crime League. Comes out tomorrow!I might get the Aleister Crowley returns to England book but I don’t know if I have enough energy for that right now.
More ‘Best of Tor.com’ books until the new Expanse book comes out. I was going to reread the series again but I just didn’t feel like it, pretty sure I remember most of what goes on.
Earlier in the month I finished Barbara Hambly’s Those who Hunt the Night (billed as a vampire book for those who hate Twilight) and enjoyed it quite a bit. I especially appreciated that while the vampires come on strong with their super speed and super strength, the story makes clear just how fragile they are in other ways.
I’m finishing up Patricia McKillip’s Ombria in Shadow (love her take on lyrical fantasy), and I just checked out of the library Crossings by Alex Landragin (excited to read it!) and Fossil Men by Kermit Pattison. I don’t generally read nonfiction, but I make exceptions for paleo-anthropology.
But terming yourself “the” piano man suggests a definitive role as the chronicler of your piano, and there are some pretty big gaps here.
Peace Talks and Battle Ground in the Dresden Files series
A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry: I’m still reading through ACOUP, an excellent history blog (by an actual history Ph.D) that uses pop cultural depictions of historical (or historically-inspired fantasy) events as a jumping off-point to explain how things really worked. (He doesn’t take a “this is bad art because it’s inaccurate” approach; he really likes a lot of the art in question, but he also notes that the public typically absorbs a lot of what they see as “realistic” even if they consciously know it’s fictional, and intends his explanations as a corrective. Like, it’s fine that Game of Thrones’ depiction of “medival” European politics and social elites isn’t really accurate to how things worked; nobody’s going around saying that dragons were real. But people do come away with inaccurate impressions about how the more grounded elements works, e.g. the way armies, logistics, the nobility, or farming worked.)
I’m almost caught up, at which point I’m going to start on the latest Penric novella, and then Truth of the Divine, the sequel to Axiom’s End.
Just finished Chloe Gong’s “These Violent Delights” which is a reimagining of Romeo and Juliet set in 1920s Shanghai, where a violent plague is sweeping across the city. The sequel is set to come out this month. I’m currently palate cleansing with Ben Cohen’s “The Hot Hand” which is a fun look at the science behind streaks.The final book in the Expanse comes out this month, and despite only rereading book 1 in my rereading the series goal (I failed), I can’t wait to listen, along with the final season of the show coming out soon. I also finished Vol. 4 of “Ascender” which including “Descender” ends the 10 volume sci-fi/fantasy epic saga. My second favorite comic ever.Fonda Lee’s “Jade War’ is coming out soon, ending the Jade series saga, which is awesome. Ken Liu’s “The Veiled Throne” is the 3rd book in what is now a quadrilogy, and I’m excited to continue the silk-punk saga. Robots of Gotham, Neverworld Wake, The Bone Ships, Wolf in the White Van, Star Wars Visions: Ronin, My Heart is a Chainsaw, and Sorrowland are on the “to-read list.”
Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. Not typically a hard sci-fi reader but this has held my attention with no problem and I’m about a third through and really enjoying it.Also started reading Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. Nearly finished part 1. Not sure how I feel about it yet. There are aspects of it I like such as the tinges of horror and strange fighting techniques but the strictures of it being a shonen can make it a bit twee. Not sure of the art yet either, sort of Fist of the North Star if drawn by Masami Kurumada. Not bad, just not so appealing to me. I will continue because i think it has some potential, though not sure how much of me thinking that is because I’ve been told it gets better.
I refuse to believe William Hughes has ever read a book in his life
i finished “the last graduate” by naomi novik, the sequel to “a deadly education”. definitely worth the short wait, though i am not really sure that it was the end of the series or the bridge between a trilogy.
currently reading the “two towers’ in french, which is a sort of a slog because there has not been a good translation in a long time, or at least that is available at the library. i recently met a friend of my SO, who did the latest translation of the dune series, because of the recent film. the old was a terrible translation and horrible to try to read. i may have to try it again, though i have read the original at least 5 times. 🙂
Seriously, is there any way to be ‘un-grayed’ here? If you can, tell your masters that whatever this system is for, it actively frustrates user engagement. Great Job, Kinja. Mr WH is of course famously unknown and unresponsive to the most plaintive verses…Anyway I’ll throw this futile effort at conversation into the ‘Pending’ abyss. I am still working through ‘Black Lamb, Grey Falcon’ cause it is a monster — you would know this if the alleged tool for conversation allowed anyone to hear what I’ve been talking about for the last few months — but I keep detouring off to other books.I’m just coming to the end of ‘Barkskins’ by Annie Proulx (of Brokeback Mountain, Shipping News fame). I haven’t read any of those famous ones though I recognize the author’s name.Anyway this is a big like soap-operatic history of these two family lines that begin with a pair of poor indentured types emigrating from 17th-century France to what will eventually be Québec. Their work is to clear trees in the new world of vast forests. Their fates diverge, one siring a métis family that becomes generations of sawyers and fellers, losing slowly or abandoning intentionally the old native ways. The other builds a rapacious timber dynasty by hook and crook exploiting the woods. The story alternates between these two threads and though I haven’t finished it’s clear the threads will be drawn together in the end.The writing is flat, kind of this happened and that happened, and this and this and that. Characters are superficial, though well-drawn — caricatural I guess, like Dickens. You easily see what they’re going to do. But it’s engaging, I keep reading to see what disaster will next arrive.
I’m back to sci-fi/fantasy this month after an October of horror reads. I just finished up my first George R.R. Martin book, Fire and Blood. It was actually pretty good until it got to the Dance of Dragons and then it started to drag for me. I’m interested to see how the new show treats the material next year. I’m currently reading N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season. This is my first time getting into her work and I love it. Her world building and writing style are refreshing and a fun contrast to the GRRM style I just finished with. I can see myself reading to rest of the trilogy within the next month or two. Possibly finishing up Dune this month. It’s such a hard read for me. The movie is motivating me to jump back in.
I’m trying to read more ‘classic’ works and right now I’m tackling the 50’s behemoth “From Here To Eternity”. I’m about 400 pages in and it’s a bit of a slog, although parts are pretty great admittedly. I’m real curious as to the author (James Jones) history with gay life, cause for it’s time there’s a LOT of references to it. Surprisingly so.
I’m also reading some 50’s “Chick Lit” from Rona Jaffe called “The Best of Everything” and it’s…okay, but much like the Susann novels of the 60’s it feels like all women back then want is to have a man OR a career and God Forbid a woman is happy with both. It’s not bad, but parts of it made me cringe.
Ciaphas Cain: Defender of the Imperium. I want to get into 40K but I lack the budget or time to actually play the game, so I’m settling with reading about the story.
I’m just about to finish The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward, which is a really good literary thriller with some heavy Shirley Jackson vibes. I don’t want to give anything away here, but the novel asks a lot of the reader at the beginning, but as you continue things start to become clearer, and there are naturally a few twists along the way.This month I also finished The Ghost Map about physician John Snow’s attempt to use data and mapping to determine the source of cholera in Victorian London. It’s a great historical anecdote, but the padding on the end of this book was insane. The author just sort of rambles for pages in what I assume was an attempt to meet some sort of minimum length. The other book I finished so far in November was The Final Girl Support Group, which wasn’t very good. But it read quickly.
I’m reading… my book. Over and over again.
People should tell aspiring book writers that completing a book is only like a third of the job done. Then come the endless revisions and poring over every last sentence, word and comma. Then in the process of doing so, you get these freak-out episodes where all of the sudden just from the overexposure you start thinking to yourself ‘Well, maybe my book isn’t really all that good.’ This is even in situations where you’re quite pleased with your book, like I am. In other circumstances, you freak out about oversharing, since every book is on some level a reflection of the individual and you ask yourself ‘Do I even want my book to do well?’