Whew! You had quite a nice book haul. I would say that you should follow your heart's desires, but I have had to cut back on buying books, simply because of space. I have some book hauls coming up, but I have only been visiting bookstores when I am going with a friend or on a special occasion, like when I was in Asbury Park for a Silent Book Club. On one hand, I wish that you shared the bookstores that you visited, but if you did not want to do so because of location purposes, I understand completely. I love being able to chronicle visits to particular bookstores in my videos, especially those that are independently owned. I love many of the books that you selected or at least they fulfill my tastes. I did not get into poetry until college, but then it started to grow on me. Keep in mind that poetry should hold no boundaries and it is an ability to delve into the psyche of whomever it is that is writing any given poem. You learn more about who they are, what they are thinking, what interests them, sometimes their political thinking, and you can even get a direct reference or reflection to their culture and where it is they lived. I own books from quite a few Polish poets and one that is a collection of Polish poetry from the last two decades of Communist rule. I have heard of Olga Tokarczuk and would like to read one or more of the works she has written. I will often times have to look up how they pronounce their names. Mary Oliver's poetry is brilliant! Wild Geese is one of my all-time favorite poems, because it gives me an ecstatic feeling. Mark Kurlansky is such a good writer and has done a fine job with microhistory. I read Cod five years ago and was impressed! He also wrote about Paper, Salmon, 1968, and the song "Dancing in the Street" by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas. He has written plenty of other books, too. Vampires have come and gone in popularity, I have noticed. I like good vampire literature, but I prefer when they are more horrifying, like Vlad the Impaler, Nosferatu, or sometimes even zombie-like as they are depicted in I Am Legend. I read Bunny by Mona Awad and did not like it! It feels like it has become the Repo: The Genetic Opera of books with its cult enthusiasm, but I was incredibly turned off. I read it for the Booktube Prize. I own quite a quite books from New York Review Books. I read their editions of Jakob von Gunten and Stoner. I would like to read more! Thank you for sharing and I am eager to hear about your thoughts to each of these! -Josh
The struggle was real in this one. Don't worry about not getting into poetry, I also try and mostly fail. Maybe I'll love one out of twenty poems I read, it's often a lucky mix of being in the right mindset, getting the references, metaphors, etc. Probably the worst mistake is force reading poetry books and forcing yourself to enjoy it. Keep searching and I'm sure you'll find poems that speak to you.
