Reading Report for November 2023

from Jeff Baker.

November 23, 2023 (Thanksgiving!)

This, the first of these monthly reading reports, is being written in my Brother’s guest room, early in the morning of Thanksgiving Day, November 23, 2023. I can’t think of a better day to start off on this as reading is something we should be thankful for, especially in this era when books are under assault.

I’ve been chronicling my writing progress in monthly reports and so I decided to do this, influenced by the You Tube vlogger Michael K. Vaughn whose entertaining recountings of his reading adventures (including a near-weekly “Reading Report”) are regular and highly entertaining features of his vlog. (And I’ll post a link to the videos at the end of this long-winded prologue to my own report.)

Another reason to do this is simply to motivate myself to read more. I’ve been doing a lot more writing (I have a lot more time to do it in!) and I need to read more. I became a writer because I’m a reader. I consider my pouring over anthologies of short stories during the late ‘80s and through the ‘90s as essential training for my writing career. I’m mainly talking about reading fiction and doing it for pleasure, but since when do I follow rules?

As I haven’t been taking notes and am away from my books I’ll just list the ones I can recall. If there’s a short-story or such I read other than these I don’t remember. I haven’t done a lot of reading in the last, hell, I’ll say month-and-a-half.

So here’s what I read, fiction-wise.

“Travels With Charley”/”The Portable John Steinbeck.” I’ve just been dipping into these the last few months, mainly because I’m working on a story for an anthology call in the style of Steinbeck. I hadn’t read a lot of him and my copy of “Charley” was given to me by my Dad in Grade School. I may have read some of it then, but I don’t recall. Steinbeck has a sort of mater-of-fact prose style. Like Twain he probably blends fact and fiction in his travelogue.

“The Gay Detective” by Lou Rand. Read it to review for Queer Sci-Fi but still counts as reading for pleasure.

And now two stories by Robert A. Heinlein.

First “The Man Who Traveled in Elephants,” a story recommended by a World Fantasy Convention panel on Heinlein’s Fantasy stories, one of the panelists called it “a favorite.” It’s a sweet and sentimental story, with prose reminiscent of Ray Bradbury. There’s even a carnival! I may have seen the ending coming but it was fun getting there!

It’s in a re-titled paperback called “6 X H,” (originally “The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag”) and has a couple of his stories I hadn’t read yet including one that first appeared in Weird Tales!

Second, a novel not a story. I’d started reading Heinlein’s “The Rolling Stones” several months ago and got sidetracked (Read: Drank a lot instead of reading.) The book is one of Heinlein’s “Juveniles,” what we would call a Y.A. book today. That WFC panel called those books some of Heinlein’s best work and I agree! I’m a third of the way through and it’s a blast! Oh, and I imagine the Grandmother as being played the way Ellen Corby played Grandma Walton.

I also started (and got sidetracked again!) reading “A Canadian Ghost in London,” the final story in James K. Moran’s fine collection “Fear Itself,” the story I hadn’t read yet. (The book is fun! Get it!)

Of course, I’ve been reading “Rise,” the new QSF anthology which includes a story of mine and a lot of other wonderful stories, all of them 300 words or less!

I also read one of the legendary Edward M. Cohen’s stories in Steve Berman’s anthology “Brute.” The book described as “Stories of dark desire, masculinity and rough trade.” Other authors in this NSFW tome include Tom Cardamone, Berman himself and Tennessee Williams (!)

Of course, I never miss the weekly story by Kaje Harper which is posted on her website or Facebook page, usually around Sunday.

I also read a couple of the stories in “Orchard of the Dead,” a new collection of translated stories by the Polish writer Stefan Grabinski (1887-1934.) He is compared to Poe or Lovecraft but he is so much more than that.

On my “to-be-read” pile is “The Abyss,” another translated collection, this by the Russian writer Leonid Andreyev (1871-1919.) I’d read his story “Lazarus” in a horror anthology about thirty years ago and I found this book online one night. He’s a writer who was actually influenced by Poe.

When I started typing this I didn’t think I had read much but I read more than I thought!

I also didn’t remember I’d brought a bunch of books with me,, so I was able to reference them!

So, that’s about it for now and I’ll keep you posted!

Happy reading!

Oh, I should mention the translators of the last two books: Anthony Siscone for the Grabinski and Hugh Aplin for the Andreyev.

Here’s a link to Michael K. Vaughn’s You Tube videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rtcws4-WlMM

Here’s Kaje Harper’s blog: https://www.kajeharper.com/

And one to my Queer Sci Fi review of “The Gay Detective”: https://www.queerscifi.com/jeff-baker-boogieman-in-lavender-lou-rands-the-gay-detective/

——jeff