Reading Roundup: February 2022
I’m continuing my monthly series reflecting on my reading list throughout 2022. This belated entry for February 2022 will cover the reading I managed to accomplish before I became obsessed with playing Horizon: Forbidden West. If you’re interested in seeing my top ten books from last year, or reading about the books from January 2022, please see the following links:
A Word on Method
I average about two hours of reading per day. One hour I spend reading works from Martin Seymour-Smith’s “The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written”, beginning in 2022 near the middle of Philo’s complete works. Another hour is spent at night before bed, reading from a stack of books on my nightstand I replenish as needed. Each stack contains about fifteen regular authors I’m reading chronologically, and five other works from whatever I happened to find in used bookstores or thrift shops or has been sitting on my shelf waiting to be read for a long time. As of the beginning of this year, I’m also working on an historical fiction work of indeterminate size, which will require re-reading a few classics, as time permits.
Philo Studies
I’ve continued my studies in Philo during February with “On Joseph, “On the Life of Moses”, and “The Decalogue”. The first two works are mostly narrative looks at Joseph and Moses, like last month’s narrative look at Abraham. Philo treats both stories like historical events, eschewing his allegorical interpretations of scriptural events for the most part, which makes for much easier reading. Moses’ story comes in two parts: his childhood/upbringing and the exodus. “The Decalogue” begins Philo’s look at Mosaic law, starting with the Ten Commandments, which brings back his numerological and etymological reasoning. I also began “The Special Laws” in February, which taken together is Philo’s largest work, about an eighth of his total output. More on that massive set of treatises next month.
Don’t forget to check out my essay on Hagar and The Handmaid’s Tale!
Nightstand Reads
Here are three other books I finished in February 2022.
Ursula K. Le Guin — The Eye of the Heron (1978)
Ursula K. Le Guin is a forerunner for what I like to call “leftist fiction”. In The Dispossessed, one of my favorite books, Le Guin weaves a tale of two worlds: one built on capitalist principles, another built on anarcho-communist principles, seen through the eyes of someone who fits neither. The Eye of the Heron presents a similar confrontation of communities, this time on a combination prison and exile planet named Victoria. The prisoners have established a hierarchical community with their families. The political peaceniks in exile have established a decentralized community utilizing consensus building. Le Guin brings the two communities to a head, in disputes over ideology, resources, and their possible futures, while questioning ideas like the usefulness of non-violence and the role of the individual in both communities. I especially appreciated the sensible, slightly open-ended conclusion, which hints at perhaps other modes of organizing ourselves and our communities.
The Subutai Corporation — The Mongoliad: Book One (2012)
In the year 1241, while most of the European continent was engaging in crusades to the Holy Land, the Mongol Empire had begun its invasion of the European world. The Mongoliad is an epic work of historical fiction set during this time period, written by The Subutai Corporation, a collection of rotating writers and scholars including: Erik Bear, Greg Bear, Joseph Brassey, Nicole Galland (writing as E.D. deBirmingham), Cooper Moo, Mark Teppo, and the reason for my interest, Neal Stephenson. The Mongoliad was originally an online collaboration between the participants, each contributing their expertise and/or writing to the characters and setting, with an emphasis on medieval combat. It has since grown to five collections, with quite a few short stories available online. Book One is split between two narratives: the first set within the Khan’s palace at Karakorum centered around a warrior’s disillusionment with imperial politics; the second set within and around the devastated rubble of Kyiv, which was annihilated by the Mongol invasion after being sacked by a Russian invasion. I finished reading this novel just prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the parallels between the two narratives have gotten closer and closer each day.
William Rodney Allen — Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut (2001)
Allen collects a wide variety of press interviews with Kurt Vonnegut from 1969 to 1988, with a follow-up interview in 1999 for the 2001 edition, which thankfully didn’t spoil too much about Timequake, the only Vonnegut novel I have yet to read. I have read just about everything else that’s easily available from Vonnegut up until around 1988, so reading these interviews in chronological order gave me a new perspective on his thought process and narrative development, along with a new appreciation for how the press and the public influenced his writing during his slump in the late 70s and 80s. The reader sees Vonnegut move with almost manic like focus from novels to plays to television to films before returning to writing. This collection includes two neat experimental interviews. Greg Mitchell’s “Meeting My Maker: A visit with Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. by Kilgore Trout” uses actual interview response from Vonnegut weaved into a narrative format, which introduced me to the controversy surrounding Philip Jose Farmer. The Paris Review’s “Kurt Vonnegut: The Art of Fiction LXIV” is a composite of four interviews that were postponed for various reasons and later stitched together by Vonnegut himself to create an almost self-interview. Finally, I was also surprised to learn about a script/photo book called Between Time and Timbuktu, or Prometheus-5 which I was able to track down and will be discussing next month.
Next Month
I’ll be continuing my trek through Philo’s complete works, along with works from Christopher Moore, T.C. Boyle, Robert E. Howard, Nikki Giovanni, Neil Gaiman, Jack Kerouac, Kurt Vonnegut (again!), Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and Octavia E. Butler. A nice assortment of works to make up for the lack of nightstand reads for February.
