Reading Log: June 2013

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Books acquired: none

Books read: “Ellison Wonderland,” “Paingod and Other Delusions,” “The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World,” “Love Ain’t Nothing But Sex Misspelled” and “Stalking the Nightmare,” Harlan Ellison; “The Kinks: The Official Biography,” Jon Savage.

There is a theme of sorts in the list above, and it’s not just that five of the six are written by the same guy. All six date to my youth in Illinois and either had not been read by me since then, or had never been read at all.

I made a list of these books a couple of years ago, as best I could determine it from memory or used-bookstore stamps inside (either unread/unfinished books, or ones by Bradbury, Dick and Ellison, whom I’m rereading), and have whittled the list down a bit, one now and then. It occurred to me to devote a whole year to them, there being about the right number for that, but that seemed impractical. Do I really want to spend a year reading nothing but books three decades old? Also, there might be a good reason I didn’t read them before now.

So, here’s one month. As I have more Ellison books from that period of my life than anything else, and I was getting into them again, I decided to just go for it and focus on him, while also reading a biography of the Kinks (God save the Kinks!), also unread all these years, during odd hours. It worked out well for me, although as a reader of this blog, your mileage may vary. In the case of Ellison, I read four of his 1960s story collections, plus one from 1982. I had read about 2 1/2 of the above back then. (Story collections are easy to stop reading.)

Am not sick of him yet, and will do more of the same during July.

Liven this post up, please, by telling me the more varied reading you did during June!

Next month: more of the same, God help us.

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