Checkout Time

Hemet Library book dispensary. I visit weekly.

Reading was one of the few things I could do this summer. I read books, 34 of them. (Some of the books I’ve blogged about previously.)

By category: 27 works of fiction, 6 nonfiction, and one poetry collection. English was the original language of 33 of the books, 1 was an English translation of a French original.

Fiction

Of the 27 fiction books, 26 were novels, one was a collection of stories; 18 of the 26 were written/published in or after 2010, and of those, 5 in 2019 or 2020.

Of the authors at time of publication, 17 were female, 10 male; 14 were of color, 13 white.

Non-fiction

Of the 6 books, 2 were collections of essays, 2 were memoirs, 1 was an autobiography, and 1 was reportage; 3 of the 6 were written/published in the last decade, and of those, one was published in 2020.

Of the authors at time of publication, 3 were female, 3 male; 4 were white, 2 of color.

Poetry

The book of poetry was from 2020 by a female, white.

Name dropping

Baldwin (essays) 1950’s-1970’s, Mailer 1948, DuBois (essays) 1917- 1920, Merton 1948, Saunders 2017, Eggers 2019, Forche (poetry) 2020, Duras 1984, Rhys 1966, Morrison (1992, 2015), Mosley2020, Harlan 2020, Strayed 2012, Washburn 2020, Vuong 2019, Orange 2018, Ross 1974, Oyeyemi 2014, Ezemi 2018, Machado 2017, Fitch 2006, Berlin (stories) 1960-1980, Rivero 2019, Davis 2017, Moshfegh 2018, Ondaatje 1992, Ozeki 2013, Cusk 2016, Skloot 2010, Wilkinson 2018, Mitchell 2014, Shirazi 2010, Coetzee 1999