Autumn Reading List - 2020

Books are a uniquely portable magic.

~Stephen King

Hello one and all! Welcome to The Art of Caesura!

Last year around this time I started a new type of post that I was hoping I could turn into an annual affair, it was my Autumn Reading List. I explained at the time, that many people make a summer reading list, but with the days getting shorter and the rain getting more intense (in Ireland, anyway) I think autumn is the perfect time to cozy up with a good book. 

For some semblance of structure, I will restrain myself to one fiction, one nonfiction and one graphic novel that I have read in the past year. 

One last note before we launch in, if you like books check out my literary analysis of Bizzy Bear Zoo Ranger. It was a lot of fun to write, and I hope to do more in the future. Now, onwards!

Fiction:

The Porpoise (2019) - Mark Haddon

When I pondered doing this list again this year, the first thought that came to mind was "well, I have to include The Porpoise" and the second thought was "but how the hell am I going to write about it!?" The true meaning of my second thought will be clear to anyone who has read this book. The book takes you to places in ways that I have never experienced in a book before. And it is this journey that really makes up the sense of wonder and exploration that you get from reading the book, so I don't want to spoil that. 

In interviews, the author Mark Haddon (of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" fame) says 

I was tired of reading those polite, beige stories about people like myself, who could realistically receive a Boden catalogue in the post. I was bored of writing novels where nothing happens and short stories where everything happens. I thought, why not write a novel where everything happens?

And everything does happen in this novel! He was also inspired to write this story because he was unimpressed with the female representation in Shakespeare's little known play "Pericles". The epic tale that Haddon has crafted in his novel is equal parts tragic (in the lower- and uppercase senses of the word) and cathartic. While the novel does not hit every note perfectly, it still strikes a chord - one that is likely to stay with you for some time afterwards. 

Here are a few quotes to whet your appetite:

“Poetry scares her, with its glimpses of the abyss between the slats of the swaying bridge.”

"The swell is higher and has a longer wavelength out here. This water is a different kind of substance. The sky is enormous...He looks at the long rip of absolute black between the stars and the starlit chop of the waves, and this is when he sees what has happened while he was asleep."

"The hissing stops. Their eyes are on him but their mouths are no longer moving. In front of the prow the crowd of women separates, not stepping sideways but sliding smoothly apart. This is the denouement. For years everything has been travelling steadily towards this terrible moment."

Nonfiction:

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010, updated in 2019) - Michelle Alexander

I was going to read Robin DiAngelo's "White Fragility" but a friend who I was going to read it with recommended The New Jim Crow instead - partially because he'd already read DiAngelo's book, but also because this one was written by a black female lawyer. And WOW this book opened by eyes. I feel like I've taken the red pill. 

Like my nonfiction choice last year, this book is necessarily very dense and it rewards the engaged reader by opening our eyes to another parallel universe running right alongside our own - I'm speaking as a white, straight, male - so your eyes might have already been more open than mine depending on your background. The book has to be dense because the facts she reveals sound so hard to believe at times that she spends adequate time supporting them. 

The primary thesis of the book is that African Americans are disproportionately targeted by the police, are disproportionately charged, causing them to come under the control of the criminal justice system in a disproportionate number (prison or probation) which labels them criminals which excludes them from many basic rights and privileges, thus creating a caste system. 

I was interested to read that America has by far the highest incarceration rates in the world! For comparison, China and Russia aren't even close!

"By the end of 2007, more than 7 million American - or more than one in every 31 adults - were behind bars, on probation or on parole."

Listen to the "drug-courier profiles" used for drug sweeps on highways:

"The profile can include traveling with luggage, traveling without luggage, driving an expensive car, driving a car that needs repairs, driving with out-of-state license plates, driving a rental car, driving with 'mismatched occupants,' acting too calm, acting too nervous, dressing casually, wearing expensive clothing or jewelry, being the first to deplane, being one of the last to deplane, deplaning in the middle, paying for a ticket in cash, using large-denomination currency, using small-denomination currency, traveling alone, traveling with a companion..."

This is not an easy book to read, but it is an important book to read. 

Graphic Novel (Series):

Sláine (1983-present) - Pat Mills

As a Canadian living in Ireland, something I love about the Emerald Isle is its deep-rooted folklore. Pat Mills borrowed many elements of this folklore mixing them with Conan the Barbarian to create his character Sláine (in Irish this name would be pronounced "Slahn-yeh" but in an interview Mills pronounces it "Slain"). 

I have only read two collections of Sláine: "The Horned God" and "The Lord of Misrule" and both are steeped in elements of Celtic mythology. While the character of Sláine is not lifted from folklore, he has many attributes of the mythical Irish warrior Cú  Chulainn ("Coo-cullen") including his barbed spear and his "warp spasm" (riastrad) power where he transforms into a beast of immense power when he enters a berserker frenzy. 

Sláine is a fun romp through a mystical Celtic setting with all the beheadings you'd expect from a good barbaric hack-n-slash!

Check out some of these phat panels:

If you're interested in Celtic mythology, there's a good podcast that can recommend called "Candlelit Tales", you can find it here. 

Thank you for perusing my second annual Autumn Reading List, I hope you found some new reads to check out this autumn / winter. What are you reading at the moment? Let us know in the comments below. 

See you next Friday on The Art of Caesura!

Reading: Soulbound - Cubicle 7

Listening: 9 Crimes - Damien Rice

Watching: The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020) - Mike Flanagan

Next Week:

Put on your Hallowe'en thinking caps!