Books Acquired Recently

I’ve been doing a bunch of retail therapy book buying as the result of the U.S.’s current political situation. This is a list of what’s come in over the past few days.

Agyei-Baah, Adjei. Afriku: Haiku & Senryu from Ghana. Winchester, VA: Red Moon Press, 2016.

I’m always interested in reading work by other haiku writers of color. I recently read an article about this collection and decided to buy it.

Beary, Roberta. Carousel. Ormskirk, UK: Snapshot Press, 2024.

Beary has been one of my favorite haiku writers since I began exploring the genre, so when I heard they had a new collection out I ordered it immediately.

Dorlin, Elsa. Self-Defense: A Philosophy of Violence. 2017. Translated by Kieran Aarons. London: Verso, 2022.

I read about this book by a queer philosopher in Maxwell Kennel’s Ontologies of Violence earlier this year, and decided that now might be a good time to read it.

Goldberg, Ariel. The Estrangement Principle. New York: Nightboat Books, 2020.

I recently heard about this book inspired by the phrase “queer art,” and put it on my list to buy immediately. Now felt like the time.

Guibert, Hervé. The Mausoleum of Lovers: Journals 1976-1991. 2001. Translated by Nathanaël. New York: Nightboat Books, 2014.

I read about this volume of journals in one of Sofia Samatar’s books and it sounded interesting, so I decided to buy it.

Kacian, Jim, et al., eds. Upside Down: The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2023. Winchester, VA: Red Moon Press, 2024.

This is an annual anthology of poems from the year in the title (unlike The Best American Essays and other such anthologies that name themselves after the year they are published, with work from the preceding year). It’s the first time I’ve bought it; I feel like I’m serious enough about haiku now that I should begin reading it each year.

Newman, Sandra. Julia. 2023. New York: Mariner Books, 2024.

This novel tells the story of Julia from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (a novel I have long loved) from her perspective. I began reading it on Wednesday after the election results came in and finished it last night. It’s a fantastic book, true to the spirit of Orwell’s (including by staying true to the details of Orwell’s narrative and even reproducing some text word-for-word), but also fresh and original with some twists that feel earned rather than gimmicky.

Smallwood, Christine. The Life of the Mind. 2021. New York: Hogarth, 2022.

I forget where I first heard about this novel, but a line from its blurb–“a book about endings–of youth, of ambition, of possibility”–is what got me interested because I feel like I am experiencing these endings myself.

van den Heuvel, Cor. At the Top of the Ferris Wheel: Selected Haiku. Winchester, VA: The Haiku Foundation, 2017.

van den Heuvel, who is one of the most important figures in North American haiku history, died earlier this year. I heard about this book from an obituary published in this month’s issue of the Haiku Society of America’s newsletter and ordered it immediately.