Thanks to everyone who responded a couple of weeks ago to my call for book ideas.

It worked so well I might put out another, but I think for the immediate future I have a couple of ideas to go with.

As for what I chose to read as my first book of the new year - I went with A Visit From The Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan.

“Egan” shows up often as a crossword answer…and I’d always been interested in reading one of her books. I was about to say that I’d never read anything she’d written, but then I read her author blurb in this book and it said that her stories have been published in The New Yorker, so I’m almost positive I’ve read some of her work there.

Speaking of The New Yorker, one of the things that worked out well here is that the magazine starts the year with a double issue, which I finished within the first week. So I had a wide-open week to dedicate to this book, which is why I acted so quickly to get this read. We’ll see how well I do with books as the year goes on. (Though it should be noted that my subscription fee looks like it’s doubling at renewal time so maybe I won’t have the problem of ‘too much to read’ for too much longer.)

Like I told you about with “No Good Deed” and some TV series, recently I haven’t done much homework on the books I read. This one was no different. Other than the Instagram suggestion I got that it’s ‘a true pleasure read’ - which sounded like just what I needed - I didn’t know what the book was about.

That’s kind of a deterrent sometimes in my brain. I get a preconceived notion and keep waiting in the book for, for example, the goon squad to show up. And, you know, metaphors and all - sometimes it doesn’t happen and I have to re-arrange my thinking halfway through the book.

Also, you start reading from a character’s point of view and think, “OK, this is the main character.” In this book that was kind of true, but it also kind of wasn’t.

(And I’m glad I didn’t read the jacket blurb of this book ahead of time, for what that’s worth. It’s a very good summary of a very complex book to summarize [I read it after I had finished] but it would have spoiled the little details I liked that popped up as I read.)

The first character we meet was kind of just a launching-off point to other characters and points in time and we meet a bunch of different people and they’re all kind of related to one another either in the moment or in the future or they were connected to one another through other people in the past.

Which all sounds pretty confusing, and it can be until you orient yourself in the book.

Part of me wants to read it again knowing what I know about how the story unfolds.

But I don’t really need to.

It served its purpose for me. It gave me some inspiration to write a little bit - because it’s really well-written, characters are described so well, and the differing viewpoints and storytelling methods are all good writing fodder.

It also simply got me back in the habit of picking up a book and reading a little every day - in the car at school pick-up, at night before bed, in stolen moments during the day.

I have a couple of other ideas about what to read next - I was talking to somebody recently about George Saunders and I might re-read some of his short stories because I love them that much and it’s been a while.

But I’m thinking I’d like to read another of Jennifer Egan’s books and get a sense of how she writes there - this one was written in such a unique way that I’m curious what else she’s done.

This book mentions Jennifer Egan as “the author of The Keep.”

I don’t know anything about that book…which probably makes it a perfect choice for my next read.