My June reading list

From the Little House on the Prairie to Iron Maiden, with some frozen soldiers thrown in.

Image: Suzy Hazelwood

This month has been a “murder your darlings” month. Well, maybe not my darlings exactly, but it’s involved a lot of ruthless application of the Delete key. Write a chapter of The Yellow Flowers, scrub it, and repeat. The story wasn’t the problem: I just didn’t like the way I was telling it. But having completely deleted and rewritten the entire middle third of the book, which goes all the way back to my very first draft in about 1989, I think I’ve finally got the feel I was after: instead of trying to be epic, I focused down on a more small-scale, more intimate style of narration. It works better, and I’m much happier with it.

I really need to get Yellow Flowers finished: I’ve been accepted to the inaugural Lithgow Author Fair at the State Library in Augusta, and I’d really like to have my novel there alongside my short story collection. I have about 120 days to write the final third of the book. I can do it, I can, I can...

I’ve also found myself doing some professional creative work again, which makes a nice change from corporate marketing. I’m working on the pilot for a kids’ Web series, and I’m getting involved with both writing the script and creating some animated clips. It’s astonishing what you can do with Higgsfield now - in many ways it’s what we always wanted Moviestorm to be, but the technology is so much better than it was in 2005.

In other news… there is no other news. It’s been one of those months. I read a lot. I learned that I have no time for Heidegger, or indeed most other philosophers, especially metaphysicians. I learned that Leonardo painted a lot fewer pictures than I realized, and I find the backgrounds far more interesting than the subjects, and his drawings are more interesting than his paintings. I discovered that Nad Sylvan has an incredible ability to sound like Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins at the same time. I got very bored with season two of several shows that had had great first seasons. Project Hail Mary was good. So was Project Hail Mary. No, that wasn’t a typo. I spent a happy afternoon hunting down locally made spiced rum for an 18th century cookie recipe. I walked down the hill from my house and back up several times, and can now do it without feeling like I’m going to expire. (Next milestone, do it without having to stop for a breather.) We had a few really hot days so the compost pile finally got up to temperature and is now composting merrily, but most of my tomato seedlings died. The deer ate all our hostas the day after I doused them in deer repellent, and there’s a fat squirrel called Mister Squizzle who keeps stealing the bird feeder and running off into the woods with it—not the food out of the bird feeder, the whole damn thing! (Don’t tell him, but they’re all called Mister Squizzle. He might be Mrs Squizzle for all I know. Or a gang of squizzles taking turns.) I ran out of Marmite and it’s getting really expensive to import it, so I tried a strawberry rhubarb jam from a local farm and it’s already nearly gone. Oh, and I made a really good Thai beef curry last week.

I’m not sure if any of that actually counts as news, but I won’t be surprised if some of that doesn’t make it into a story at some point.

Enough waffling - let’s check out some books!

• Iron Maiden: Piece of Mind, (and maybe What Does This Button Do? by Bruce Dickinson). I like Iron Maiden, and I have a lot of respect for Bruce. As a young man, I spent several very pleasant evenings with him, talking about “anything except fucking heavy metal”, which led to fascinating discussions about fencing, WW1 aircraft, Crowley, and more. A comic based on one of my fave Maiden albums and his autobiography seem like some suitable light entertainment.

• Little House on the Prairie, by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I’ve never read any of these books or even seen the TV series. The copy I’m getting from the library actually includes the first four books (Little House in the Big Woods, Farmer Boy, Prairie, and On the Banks of Plum Creek), so I may well end up reading them all. They’re all short, too: Big Woods is just 90 pages. The librarian’s face when I picked up this one and the Maiden book, and she realized they were both for me, was a delight. New librarian: the others are used to my unpredictable choice of reading matter by now.

• Airman’s Odyssey, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. This includes three of his novels, Wind, Sand, and Stars, Night Flight, and Flight to Arras, and has an intro by Richard Bach, one of my favorite writers. I’m fascinated by flying stories, and still wish I’d learned how to fly. I would have done if I hadn’t moved to Maine.

Flying a Cessna in Florida with my friend Rick in 2020, right before lockdown. A few days later, he got his instructor’s license. I would have been his first pupil if I’d stayed in Orlando.

• Centroeuropa, by Vicente Luis Mora. I stumbled across this thanks to several people, including Lincoln Michel, posting about it here on Substack. There’s something about the image of digging up frozen Prussian soldiers that’s delightfully creepy.

• The Walking Drum, by Louis L’Amour. Another not-a-Western. This one is set in 12th century Europe, and follows our hero on his wanderings from Brittany to Russia. L’Amour is a terrific storyteller, though when he strays outside the Western genre, they can be pretty hit or miss.

• The Memory Police, by Yoko Ogawa. As recommended by Ricky Lee Grove in our year-end roundup of our favorite books for The Paperback Show. “A surreal, dystopian novel about an unnamed island where objects mysteriously disappear, and a totalitarian force called the Memory Police ensures they are forgotten.” My kinda novel.

• The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel, by Douglas Brunt. I had no idea there was a mystery here. Right before WW1, Diesel, the engine guy, vanished during a sea voyage from Antwerp to London. A body believed to be his was found in the sea some days later. Suicide, accident, or murder? It’s still unsolved. Conspiracy theories abound.

• The Prodigy (aka Beneath the Wheel), by Hermann Hesse. Haven’t read this for 40+ years. It was the first Hesse book I really liked, largely because it was about the pressures of being a gifted kid and feeling unable to enjoy your childhood. I wonder if I’ll still like it.

• And I’m still working through The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas and Auguste Maquet. To be honest, this is turning into a slog. There’s far too much dialogue (whole chapters that read like a screenplay) and far too much tedious description (page after page of detail about exactly what people are wearing, or the exact layout of a room). Dantès has finally escaped but it’s still painfully slow, almost as if they were dragging out each episode as long as possible like a modern TV series. (Which they were. And I say “they”, because Dumas had a whole team of writers working for him.) Maybe I should give up and go for Man in the Iron Mask instead. That’s only 600 pages.

Audio-wise, I’m still trying to catch up with The Fallen Cycle, Achewillow, and a few other bits and pieces left in my playlists from last month, so nothing new there.

What’s on your reading/listening list?