The Books of September 2024
The books were good again this month
I finished a cool half-dozen books in September, and it looks like a nice array of genres and styles. I do not go into any month with a goal or theme in mind; I read what I read, and The Storygraph makes pretty collages out of the covers. But it’s a good way to remember what I read, so let’s recap.
Takaoka’s Travels, Tatsuhiko Shibusawa. Sometimes it takes a while for an author’s work to make it into translation, and that was the case for Shibusawa. This was his only novel, I believe, and it was written in the 1980s. It was only translated into English this year, and that’s how I came across it. It’s the story of a Japanese prince-turned-Zen-monk whose lifelong dream is to visit the Buddha’s homeland. After sailing along the rivers and seas of Southeast Asia, he reaches his destination, but not in the way you might think.
The World She Edited, Amy Reading. Nominative determinism at its best for Katharine White’s biographer. Reading 500 pages about an editor of The New Yorker takes a particular kind of interest and level of nerdery, but I am in the center of that diagram. Special Kudos to Reading for maintaining focus on Katharine and not letting her more famous (and already well-documented) husband E. B. White pull attention her or the reader’s attention away. The bio is detailed without being draggy, but you do have to want to read about editing to make it all the way through.
Picture This, Molly Bang. I’m dipping a toe into design, and this is the first pool I tried. Bang uses simple shapes and a limited color palette in a storybook layout to make design principles clear. This was exactly the right book to gauge my own interest, and I have since signed up for an online graphic design class.
Only Here, Only Now, Tom Newlands. I’ve read this as an ARC for review, and honestly I don’t know how I’m going to review it. I was absolutely engrossed and did not take a single note as I read because I didn’t want to pause. It comes out in the U.S. in November and I have a review slated for posting, so let’s all find out together what I manage to write about this book.
The Design of Books, Debbie Berne. This is not a how-to at all. But it does explain how designers make their choices—covers, fonts, ebooks, all of it. Berne lays out her process and the typical industry terminology and timelines so that authors, editors, marketing people, and anyone publishing-curious or -adjacent can understand their wizardry. I paired it with Picture This, and the combo was compelling enough to make me want to up my own design game.
The Little Book of Zen Healing, Paula Arai. I read an excerpt of this somewhere, and I liked what I read, so I got the book. Does what it says on the tin: Arai writes short chapters on themes that touch everything from grief to housecleaning with humor and compassion, if you’re into that kind of thing.
KHG’s latest translations, Memoirs of a French Courtesan Volume 1: Rebellion and Volume 2: Spectacle are available now at her website or via Bookshop.org.