Reading in 2023

I added twenty-three more titles to my Library Thing account during 2023, which brings my total number of books to 1,109. About six of these twenty-three titles are books of nonfiction that I picked up at library sales. Some books cost as little as twenty-five cents. I probably had good intentions when choosing these books, believing that I would quickly start reading them, but I haven’t yet started any of them as of yet, despite my battling a severe chest infection that has recently kept me housebound.

Early in the year, I started reading Saxophone Colossus: The Life and Music of Sonny Rollins on my phone when I had problems sleeping. I had downloaded a free sample through the Kindle app. It was a hefty sample, probably about a seventh of the book. My son gave me a cloth copy of the book for my birthday so that I could read the remaining six hundred and some pages. Sonny Rollins’s devotion to his craft was intense and admirable. I hadn’t fully heard the background information regarding his decision to spend a year practicing on the Williamsburg Bridge. One musical experiment of Sonny Rollins’ that I liked discovering was his inclusion of Rufus Harley, who played the bagpipes on one of Sonny's albums. The book itself is a great resource when listening to Sonny’s albums and when discovering previously neglected ones.

Sometime early in the year I also read Doug Peacock’s Walking It Off: A Veteran’s Chronicle of War and Wilderness. Peacock, by the way, was the inspiration for the character Hayduke in Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang. I particularly liked one of Peacock’s later essays when he describes hiking across a desert bombing range as the jet fighters occasionally flew overhead. It was a cathartic moment for him as he risked death during the few days that it took to cross the bombing range. 

Eight of the books that I added to my LibraryThing account were published by the press that my wife and I run—Choeofpleirn Press. Our nonfiction book contest selected Jacquelyn Shah’s Limited Engagement: A Way of Living. As a memoir, it describes the author’s early experiences and her decision to live life on her terms, without much concern for what her father wanted, what other men wanted, and what society as a whole wanted from her. 

We received about twenty selections for our poetry chapbook contest. Anita Skeen, our judge, selected Vivienne Shalom’s The Truth Is as the winning manuscript and Linda Enders’ Consider the Gravity as the finalist. 

My wife worked with a photographer from Wichita to create the book Wildflowers of Wichita, a combination of photos and text. 

Although technically journals but the size of books, we released our annual four collections, Coneflower Café (photos, short fiction, and poetry), Glacial Hills Review (photos, nonfiction, and poetry), Rushing Thru the Dark (photos, drama, and poetry), and Best of Choeofpleirn Press, the winning work that we published during the year. 

The capstone to our publication efforts was my wife’s Pitiless Bronze: A Postpatriarchal Examination of Prepatriarchal Cultures, the result of about seven years of research and a year or more of writing. Eventually, as she was engaged in research, I had to remind her of Eli S. Ricker, the Nebraska judge who spent ten years conducting research into the clash of cultures on the Great Plains during the 19^th century and who never got the writing done. Pitiless Bronze uses literature and archaeological history to reveal the dominant role of women before their power was usurped by men, once men discovered that they had a role in procreation, something that they only discovered through the careful examination of swans and their mating habits.

The remaining books that I acquired during the year were collections of poetry. Jody Stewart was kind enough to give me a copy of her This Momentary World: Selected Poems. I added Anita Skeen’s Outside the Fold, Outside the Frame and Never the Whole Story to the other books of hers that I own. From reading the anthology The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy, a kind of sequel to the previous anthology edited by James Crews—Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection, I discovered more work by Faith Shearin and ended up buying two of her books and ordering three other books of hers through Interlibrary Loan. I ordered a couple of books by two other poets through Interlibrary Loan as well.

Except for allowing myself to be tempted by the books found at library sales, I have done better at limiting how many books that I purchased during the year. I still need to glean through my books so that I can make a sizable donation to my local library. One problem I have is that getting access to some of my bookshelves requires moving several pieces of furniture. I have so much packed into one little room that accessing my books is not always easy.