BOOKS

Books I'm reading this year (trust me, it'll take a year)

My reading habits this year have been abysmal. As a formerly avid reader, it has been wild to see my rate of book completion drop over the years. It’s just that, well, at the end of a workday it isn’t always easy to motivate oneself to read, especially when it’s so much easier to get comfy with a cathartic Asian drama haha. But I’m trying! And who knows, maybe the act of creating this post will keep me accountable. Hopefully I’ll finish these by the end of the year :)

Here are the books that Goodreads says I’m currently reading:

Solo Guitar Playing - Book 1 by Frederick Noad

  • This is one of the most well known beginner’s classical guitar books, especially for self-learners, which is why I picked it up.
  • I’ve found that it’s mostly solid, but it does need to be supplemented with other materials. Very light on technique and spotty with music theory fundamentals (scales are really only focused on in the last third of the book), so I’m not sure how most beginners without a teacher would fare with this book alone.
  • What’s also not great is that a good number of exercises are duets and so require an accompanying guitarist. I guess it’s fine learning both parts, but I’d rather just learn to play a solo piece with multiple voicings.
  • Still, there are some enjoyable pieces in this book and it overall provides a good learning structure that’s easy to follow.

The Renaissance Guitar by Frederick Noad

  • I picked this one up because of the cover, y’all.
  • The pieces in here are great! Lots of fun melodies, dances, and complex voicings. Growing up as a classical pianist, I never engaged with Renaissance-era music since it’s not really part of the repertoire. This has been such a blast to discover.
  • A good range of challenge, going from beginner to advanced pieces. So far there’s a lot to explore in the beginner and intermediate pieces.

Alchemy and Authority in the Holy Roman Empire by Tara Nummedal

  • I hunted down this book after I stumbled upon the wikipedia page for Anna Maria Zieglerin, saw that the article heavily referenced Nummedal’s book, and basically lost my damn mind over how crazy Zieglerin’s life was.
  • This book is an analysis of a widespread profession and industry that toed the line between fraud and “real” practice in early modern Europe. I really need to get around to finishing it, because it’s excellent so far.
  • I also got Daughters of Alchemy by Meredith K. Ray, which I’m hoping to read after this one!

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

  • Sometimes you gotta read something absurd just to feel something you know what I mean.

Carpentaria by Alexis Wright

  • This book has been challenging but extremely rewarding so far. It’s a postmodern Aboriginal epic that’s been called The Great Australian novel, and it deserves that praise.
  • The writing style is wonderful, after some effort to get into it – it’s textured, chaotic, syntactically complex, and also just really funny at times.

The kids stood close to the edge of the waters to watch the strange man walking across the kilometres of shallow mudflats before they joined the deeper waters of the ocean behind him. ‘He’s got mud-curls,’ they yelled, and the women who had been transfixed by the sight of his bare thighs replied in muffled voices, ‘That is because he is a miracle.’ It was the first time anyone in town had seen anyone with dreadlocks.

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

  • This book just won a Hugo award! And by all accounts, this book should be right up my alley. Yet it’s been in my “currently reading” shelf for ages, and I still haven’t made it past the first 15 pages or so… 🤷

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë

  • After watching a great BBC/PBS film called To Walk Invisible directed by Sally Wainwright, I became especially interested in Anne Brontë who has long been treated as kind of the “lesser Brontë”.
  • This is another book that should be right up my alley! It’s considered one of the first feminist novels and covers a lot of themes that are very interesting to me. I’ve read a couple chapters already but it fell by the wayside a long time ago. I hope to pick it up again soon though.