September TBR, a bit late

    I used to be a very punctual person. Then I had children. I never seem to get anywhere on time any more, and I do things like post my monthly TBR a week into the month in question. I suppose I should be glad I'm posting it at all. I have the unfair habit of ignoring my blog when I get tied up with other things.
    So here are my planned books for the month of September. I kept my ambitions REALLY low, only ordering four titles from the library. I have reading I will have to do for my classes, and I am still working on one I started at the beginning of the week.


Current read:
The Written World: The Power of Stories to Shape People, History, Civilization by Martin Puchner
I am a word nerd. I love words, stories, and the power they hold. I'm only about 36 pages in so far, but it looks to be an engrossing read.

Martin Puchner leads us on a remarkable journey through time and around the globe to reveal the powerful role stories and literature have played in creating the world we have today. Puchner introduces us to numerous visionaries as he explores sixteen foundational texts selected from more than four thousand years of world literature and reveals how writing has inspired the rise and fall of empires and nations, the spark of philosophical and political ideas, and the birth of religious beliefs. Indeed, literature has touched the lives of generations and changed the course of history.

Library Orders:
The Better Angel: Walt Whitman in the Civil War by Roy Morris, Jr.
I love Whitman's work. A long-ago English professor spoke about Whitman's service as an ambulance driver during the Civil War, but I never followed up on that lecture. GoodReads recommended this because of a poetry volume I was reading, and I thought Why not?

In The Better Angel, acclaimed biographer Roy Morris, Jr. gives us the fullest accounting of Whitman's profoundly transformative Civil War Years and an historically invaluable examination of the Union's treatment of its sick and wounded. Whitman was mired in depression as the war began, subsisting on journalistic hackwork, wasting his nights in New York's seedy bohemian underground, his "great career" as a poet apparently stalled. But when news came that his brother George had been wounded at Fredericksburg, Whitman rushed south to find him. Though his brother's injury was slight, Whitman was deeply affected by his first view of the war's casualties. He began visiting the camp's wounded and, almost by accident, found his calling for the duration of the war. Three years later, he emerged as the war's "most unlikely hero," a living symbol of American democratic ideals of sharing and brotherhood.
Instead of returning to Brooklyn as planned, Whitman continued to visit the wounded soldiers in the hospitals in and around the capital. Indeed, several soldiers claimed that Whitman had saved their lives. But if Whitman gave much to the soldiers, they in turn gave much to him. In witnessing their stoic suffering, in listening to their understated speech, and in being always in the presence of death, Whitman evolved the new and more direct poetic style that was to culminate in his masterpiece, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd."

Mistress Bradstreet: The Untold Life of America's First Poet by Charlotte Gordon
While I am not much of a fan of Bradstreet's work, probably because of the time period in which she wrote and the influence it had on her work, I cannot deny that she is one of the foremothers of the female writer today. I know nothing about her outside of the work that she produced and that she was a Puritan. That's bad.

An illuminating biography of Anne Bradstreet, the first writer--and the first bestseller--to emerge from the wilderness of the New World. Puritan Anne Bradstreet arrived in Massachusetts in 1630, 18 years old and newly married to Simon Bradstreet, the son of a minister. She was accompanied by her imperious father, Thomas Dudley, and a powerful clutch of Protestant dissenters whose descendants would become the founding fathers of the country. Bradstreet's story is a rich one, filled with drama and surprises, among them a passionate marriage, intellectual ferment, religious schisms, mortal illness, and Indian massacres. This is the story of a young woman and poet of great feeling struggling to unearth a language to describe the country in which she finds herself.

Bellman & Black by Diane Setterfield
I am planning to read this one as a read-along with the September Read Along on Goodreads. If you are interested in joining, I have included the link below the photo. I have never read Diane Setterfield, but this looks like just the right kind of fiction for me, especially when I am reading all non-fiction otherwise.

Bellman & Black 's hero is William Bellman, who, as a boy of 10, killed a shiny black rook with a catapult, and who grew up to be someone, his neighbours think, who "could go to the good or the bad." And indeed, although William Bellman's life at first seems blessed—he has a happy marriage to a beautiful woman, becomes father to a brood of bright, strong children, and thrives in business—one by one, people around him die. And at each funeral, he is startled to see a strange man in black, smiling at him. At first, the dead are distant relatives, but eventually his own children die, and then his wife, leaving behind only one child, his favourite, Dora. Unhinged by grief, William gets drunk and stumbles to his wife's fresh grave—and who should be there waiting, but the smiling stranger in black.

https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1005181-september-readalong-of-bellman-black-bellman-blackalong

I got word of this read along from Olive at the YouTube channel A Book Olive. If you haven't checked out her reviews, I highly recommend.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6wKgH6YIKKfNX9-EN0dxIA 

Educated by Tara Westover
People have been talking about this one since it was released in 2018. I am looking forward to reading about this determined woman's journey to find what was best for her and how she achieved it.

Tara Westover was 17 the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her "head-for-the-hills bag". In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged in her father's junkyard. Then, lacking any formal education, Tara began to educate herself. She taught herself enough mathematics and grammar to be admitted to Brigham Young University, where she studied history, and continued on to Harvard and to Cambridge. Educated is an account of the struggle for self-invention. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one's life through new eyes and the will to change it.

Educated is still in transit; the other three are at my library waiting to come home with me. Good thing I'm going tomorrow. (They're having a book sale!!!!! O joy!)

College Reads:

I don't know if we are going to start on these this month; my professor hasn't posted anything as yet. But here they are, because I may get a head start on them. Just in case.

The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers by Bhanu Kapil Rider

I read this in my previous college days and LOVED it. It struck such a tone with me; I don't know why. I have never felt displaced within my own country as Kapil writes of, but her words just jumped out at me. I made annotations all over my copy (which I kept) and those annotations became the foundation for an almost book-long poem I am preparing for publication with added poems. I am hoping to get this out this winter. In the meantime, I am very much looking forward to re-exploring this with a different professor and classmates.

The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers blends the narratives of the travelog and the coming of age novel. It is written by a young Indian woman whose travels take her between homes in two countries, India and England, and through parts of the United States. These short pieces reveal new ways of belonging in the world and possibilities for an art grounded in a localized cosmopolitan culture.

The Lover by Marguerite Duras

I hope this is more interesting than it sounds. But it's for school, so it doesn't matter if I like it or not. Hafta read it.

Saigon, 1930s: a poor young French girl meets the elegant son of a wealthy Chinese family. Soon they are lovers, locked into a private world of passion and intensity that defies all the conventions of their society.


Lying: A Metaphorical Memoir by Lauren Slater
This one looks very interesting. I ordered it from Amazon (with The Lover) but it has not arrived yet. Hopefully I don't need to start reading it for class anytime soon

 Lauren Slater forces readers to redraw the boundary between what we know as fact and what we believe through the creation of our own personal fictions. Mixing memoir with mendacity, Slater examines memories of her youth, when after being diagnosed with a strange illness she developed seizures and neurological disturbances-and the compulsion to lie. Openly questioning the reliability of memoir itself, Slater presents the mesmerizing story of a young woman who discovers not only what plagues her but also what cures her.


    SO! There you have it, my September TBR. If anything looks interesting to you or you have read some of these leave me a comment; I'd love to know your thoughts.