I read the concluding story in Ben Shattuck's The History of Sound, "Origin Stories," this morning and am counting it as my first read of 2025. The collection covers a lot of the same territory as North Woods, although I prefer this one to that, and has a structure faintly reminiscent to Cloud Atlas. I listened to several chapters while traveling in December and read the remaining on the kindle. I gave it five stars on Goodreads, which indicates that I want to read it again at some point. Perhaps I can convince book club to read it since everyone loved North Woods.
I'm starting the year surrounded by stacks: of scifi/fantasy informed by Jo Walton's list of iconic books of the 21st century; of a selection of Tournament of Books shortlist fare; of Jane Austens to read with Bluestalking's Austen 250 in 2025 project; and random other books I'd like to read sooner than later. I want to reread Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground before reading Edwin Frank's Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel.
I read a few novels back to back last year that either had a dead narrator or dead main characters; I'm intending to repeat that experience this year just for the fun of it. I'm hoping I won't encounter as many endings that simply didn't work for me as last year--really, authors, don't write yourself into a hole and go all Alice In Wonderland on us instead of having the guts to just let the chips fall where they may.
Happy reading, everyone.
