Glendos Fen

@glennmuir.bsky.social

965 Followers 260 Following

Graduate of WVU. Lover of Theatre, the Arts, etc. Bookworm. ADHD. Just trying to survive in a crazy, messed up world. Anti-Vaxxers NOT TOLERATED HERE!!! He/Him. Gay 🏳️‍🌈

Moses, Man of the Mountain by Zora Neale Hurston
A snapshot of a For You page showing a Twonks comic at the top depicting a tree guessing his friend's been turned in a park bench, and below and someone quote posting an article about the disappearance of public benches.
From wikipedia article on Santa Monica, CA, specifically subsection on North of Montana neighborhood. Example of a home there.
My Àntonia (1918) by Willa Cather. This book and its author got me back into reading again over 2 and a half years ago. Especially since its sympathetic pro-immigrant story makes it feel very needed for today.
DC: The New Frontier by Darwyne Cooke (2004)
My cat Tommy, sleeping on my bed, adorable as ever!
Well, I just finished last night Cry, The Beloved Country (1946) by Alan Paton last night and what a debut novel! A story set in South Africa just on the cusp of Apartheid, a heart rending story of fear, faith, and forgiveness that made me tear up a bit at times. Hope to read more of his stuff! 👍
'Salems Lot by Stephen King (1975)
One of Ours (1922) by Willa Cather
The Moonstone by Willie Collins (1868)
The Martian Chronicles (1950) by Ray Bradbury
Winesburg, Ohio (1919) by Sherwood Anderson
Wanted to give a shout-out to @remembrancermx.bsky.social for her admiration for the Broadway musical adaptation of E.L. Doctoro's novel, and I wanted to read the actual source it was based on for this July. Ragtime (1975), a lyrical panorama of 1910s America that I finished this night. A classic! For me, it was the narration that was Cruz of the whole work that I really enjoyed. I was astounded by how Doctorow shifts from true omniscient third-person to what I felt was limited third-person narrator of the boy in his upper-class white New Rochelle family remembering his childhood. How it weaves historical and fictional events and characters almost seamlessly like a rich tapestry . . . or a really good ragtime composition that would make Scott Joplin envious of. I thought I'd be put with the lack of traditional "" setup for dialogue, but once I got with its rhythm, I felt like such a breeze of history sweeping in and out of turn of the century New York and the larger world. Seriously , from this and The Book of Daniel, I'm hungry to read more of E.L. Doctorow's work. He's one of those authors (like fellow New Yorker James Baldwin) that you read his works and wonder why he never won a Pulitzer Prize. Sure, he's won several National Book awards, and the works (critical and commercial successes) clearly speak for themselves, but it feels like he still gets unfairly overlooked by the general reading public. I feel so grateful for discovering his work as a result of my peers expressing their love for works that touched them in special ways as well. So pick it up when you get the chance and give it a read!
The Trumpet of the Swan by E. B. White (1970) Starting off with perhaps my first ever favorite novel growing up. I feel a classic for any kid's library. A touching story of a mute trumpeter swan who discovers his voice by learning to play said trumpet held my ADHD-addled attention like nothing before. We were assigned this back in fifth grade and this was the first traditional chapter book I enjoyed reading! E. B. White always had a knack for humanizing his animal characters, even where I found they sometimes felt more real than the some of his actual human characters.
Our Story Begins by Tobias Wolff (2008)
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby (1997)
The River Between by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1965)
Men Without Women by Ernest Hemingway (1927)
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (1952)
The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington (1918)
For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
Native Son by Richard Wright
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
Books written by African American authors for Black History month: The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin Native Son by Richard Wright Their Eyes were watching God by Zora Neale Hurston Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave by Frederick Douglass & Incidents in the Life of Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Candide by Voltaire *This is a 1981 Bantam Classics paperback edition
The Book of Daniel by E.L. Doctorow
MY ÀNTONIA HARD ❌ Cautiously I slipped from under the buffalo hide, got up on my knees and peered over the side of the wagon. There seemed to be nothing to see; no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields. If there was a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made. No, there was nothing but land—slightly undulating, I knew, because often our wheels ground against the brake as we went down into a hollow and lurched up again on the other side. I had the feeling that the world was left behind, that we had got over the edge of it, and were outside man’s jurisdiction. I had never before looked up at the sky when there was not a familiar mountain ridge against it. But this was the complete dome of heaven, all there was of it. I did not believe that my dead father and mother were watching me from up there; they would still be looking for me at the sheep-fold down by the creek, or along the white road that led to the mountain pastures. I had left even their spirits behind me. The wagon jolted on, carrying me I knew not wither. I don’t think I was homesick. If we never arrived anywhere, it did not matter. Between that earth and that sky I felt erased, blotted out. I did not say my prayers that night: here, I felt, what would be would be. EASY ✅ There was NOTHING in Nebraska!
In Our Time (1925) by Ernest Hemingway
Shadows on the Rock (1931) by Willa Cather
Belatedly finished my debut Novel November read (albeit one book short of goal) with A Country Doctor by Sarah Orne Jewett, about a young woman in rural Maine bucking convention and obstacles to be a doctor. A real slow burn (wished it was more focused on her medical work), but an interesting read. I know I was planning to do The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens (and am three chapters in), but I think I'm gonna go easy on the self imposed assigning of texts to cover. Let my interest wonder naturally so that it doesn't feel like self-imposed homework. I do wanna do some Christmas/winter related stuff for December. But for now, sometimes going with your gut on what to read next can feel like the best choice. And don't be afraid to start one book while you're part ways through another! Like switching from tv show to another, it's natural and you want to expand your palate.
Finished another debut novel and it might be the best novel I've read since My Àntonia by Willa Cather that started my renewed love of reading over a year ago. The kunstlerroman A Portrait of the Art as a Young Man by James Joyce made me rethink what language can do. I highly recommend this one!
From the plains of Spains to the Magnolias of Mississippi, I return to the South for my next November debut novel read of William Faulkner's Soldiers' Pay, a heartbreaking drama where a WW1 returns to his hometown that long thought him dead and the whirlwind of drama it sets off. Melodramatic in plot, for sure, yet this being my exposure to Faulkner, I appreciate his ability to ground the said absurdity with real pathos and vivid descriptions of the hometown and its characters. You feel the dust under your feet. The character of Januarius Jones sticks out to me the most. I have several other books of his, including his most famous work with even more, now immortalized characters, and I hope to see them for myself what made him arguably the greatest novelists the American South had ever produced (at least that's what other readers, authors, and critics have said). My next debut novel will travel back several years across the ocean to the Emerald Isle of Ireland with James Joyce's The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. I've read his naturalist short story collection Dubliners in anticipation, so now I'll get to see how he breaks it in crafting what we now know regard as literary Modernism.
I finished last night James Joyce's Dubliners, a collection of fifteen stories Set around the turn of the century Dublin, Ireland, and the lives and struggles of all walks of life there. Such vivid, poetic short stories such as these. I knew he was more known for his experimental Modernist, but I feel you need to read this before starting Portrait, Ulysses, or Wake. In a way, the best abstract artists were once some of the best realists, to first master the fundamentals before breaking them to see what effects it would have and what they were trying to achieve. I believe Dubliners showcase Joyce's mastery of Naturalism and give you a glimpse of what he would later expand upon in his more famous and controversial works. A hell of an introduction to one of Ireland's greatest authors.
Taking a break from so personal stuff to post that I finished today Ernest Hemingway's debut novel The Sun Also Rises. The book that captured the driftless, angsting, restless decadence of the Post WW1 Lost Generation in such lean, masculine style. The spirits flowed and the bulls rampaged onward. I never experienced Hemingway's verb in novel form, just from one or two of short stories and his lean, but deep prose gives the book a kind trapped in energy, that, like the bull in the ring, just burst out at you sudden. I will say it made this a breeze of a read. Especially the dialogue scenes which I felt he had quite a natural grasp on (though I was really jarred by how casual one character, Bill, utters the n-word 14 times [!!!!] on one page). Still, the camera-eye like detail Hemingway uses to bring France and Spain to life felt fresh and alive. My next debut novel read, much like this one, will also debut to me another titan of 20th century American letters when I go back to the South (along with parts of Continental Europe) by diving into William Faulkner's work.