What I was reading from in August
Ayanna Lloyd Banwo’s When We Were Birds (2022)
Novel takes place in a fictional version of Trinidad. Really liked the opening passages. Have bout forty to fifty pages to go. Last ten or so pages I’ve read went off the charts with Bruce Springsteen and Sherwood Anderson vibes. Feels like reading a novel that should be a movie starring Harry Belafonte and either Ruby Dee or Diana Sands. Movie would obviously get regular play on TCM. And all of this would be true except the novel was published only two years ago.
John Brandon’s Ivory Shoals (2021)
Okay, it never grabbed me grabbed me, but Brandon’s descriptions of the Florida swamp made me slug through it to the end. Might be more excited for his Tampa noir coming out in 2025.
Johnnie Christmas’ Swim Team (2022)
Have read this graphic novel with both girls multiple times. They love it. When we go to the pool now, we do pretend swim practices. That could also be the Olympics. Whatever it is my kids are yelling at me to swim more laps.
Michael Lynn Crews’ Books are Made out of Books: A Guide to Cormac McCarthy’s Literary Influences (2017)
The Introduction talks about all the different ways one could tackle this book out of order, but I’m simply reading it in order. Finished the section on The Orchard Keeper and am probably wrapping up The Outer Dark portion by the start of September.
Lee Durkee’s The Last Taxi Driver (2020)
I’m not sure the attempted gut punches quite landed for me, but I would recommend this to anyone who wants a read with dark humor, grit, and the smother of humidity. The voice is worth it. The ghost motif too.
David Maraniss’ They Marched into Sunlight: War and Peace Vietnam and America, October 1967 (2003)
The last chapter I read has me thinking I might just knock this one out in September. History by Maraniss always ends up being more.
Charles Portis’ Masters of Atlantis (1985)
The Summer of Portis marches on. Probably not going to read Gringos until October or November. Could still be hot out. Who knows? But I’m saving that last Portis novel like the last piece of good candy after Halloween.
John Elizabeth Stintzi’s My Volcano (2022)
Two Dollar Radio doesn’t miss in my experiences with their books, which can admittedly be counted on one hand. Stintzi’s novel exists in multiple places and crosses multiple genres. Lots of buzzwords are applicable. The reading experience is most akin to what I frequently felt when first reading the novels of Karen Tei Yamashita, specifically Tropic of Orange and Through the Arc of the Rain Forest. A third grader asked me to make a prediction about the book and I’m still not entirely sure where it’s headed. That’s kind of why I picked it up in the first place.
J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Two Towers (1954)
Althea and I are about to leave Rohan, hop over that big river on the map, and hone in on Sam and Frodo. Mainly, though, we’re interested in seeing what’s up with Gollum. That’s what the kid tells me anyway.
[Autocorrect really wanted to hone to be home, but I really wanted to go with hone. What Autocorrect doesn’t understand is that as readers we’re not actually leaving Rohan, were never in Rohan, and are not hopping over an actual river. God, Autocorrect, get a grip on what’s figurative.]
Yaroslav Trofimov’s Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine’s War of Independence (2024)
About a hundred to go.
