Top Books Read 2021

BY C.M. MAYO — December 20, 2021
UPDATE: This blog was then entitled Madam Mayo (2006-2022).

One of Ours by Willa Cather
Brilliant and profound, One of Ours is the American novel about that episode of madness known as the First World War that will ring through the centuries. It has been a few years now that I’ve been working through Cather’s oeuvre (so far: The Professor’s House, O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, Death Comes for the Archbishop); my main wonder is why I didn’t start sooner. (For those whose children attend high schools which faculty have seen fit to remove Cather from the English class syllabi, I point to Jonathan Leer’s Radical Hope, listed below.)



Willa Cather Living by Edith Lewis
An exquisite memoir that has been wildly underestimated.

The Hidden Teachings of Rumi, and Lenses of Perception by Doug Marman
These two books spoke to me, as a novelist, very directly.

Child of the Sun by Lonn Taylor
Historian Lonn Taylor’s last book, a beautiful and moving memoir of his childhood in the Philippines.
P.S. You can listen in to my interview with Taylor about Far West Texas here.

The Kingdom of Speech by Tom Wolfe

The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health by Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy, Jr.
Uncomfortable reading, and alas, more than amply documented.

TechBondAge: Slavery of the Human Spirit by James Tunney
“We are relinquishing our sovereignty on the basis of our convenience”—a meditation on that by the Irish artist, barrister, and mystic.

Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation by Jonathan Lear
The lessons of Plenty Coups.

Born to be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey by Mark Dery
This prompted me to waste a ridiculous amount of time looking at vintage raccoon coats on Etsy. And to read E.F. Benson’s Mapp and Lucia novels.

Hidden Nature: The Startling Insights of Viktor Schauberger by Alick Bartholomew
By Jupiter! Schauberger’s concepts about water flows fixed my email.

The City of Hermes: Articles and Essays on Occultism and The King in Orange by John Michael Greer
It was during and after writing my own work, Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution, that I came to appreciate how rare and excellent a scholar of the history of metaphysical religion and of the occult we have in John Michael Greer.

The Secret Art: A Brief History of Radionic Technology for the Creative Individual by Duncan Laurie
This one is waaaay out, but I would recommend it for, as the title says, creative individuals. I’ve added it to my list of recommended works on creative process.

Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín
A great American novel by an Irishman.

The Complete Mapp and Lucia, Volume I., by E.F. Benson
The first three novels, Queen Lucia, Miss Mapp , and Lucia in London. Light stuff, but wickedly funny and ah, the language!

Guarded by Dragons: Encounters with Rare Books and Rare People by Rick Gekoski

This is by no means a complete list. Stay curious!

P.S. Be sure to have a look at the many outstanding works by those authors featured in my fourth-Monday-of-the-month Q & A.

I welcome your courteous comments which, should you feel so moved, you can email to me here.

Top Books Read 2020

Top Books Read 2018

Peyote and the Perfect You

Newsletter & Cyberflanerie (Way-out Artists & Ideas Edition)

This blog posts on Mondays. As of this year, whenever the month happens to have a fifth Monday, I offer my news plus cyberflanerie.

(You can subscribe to my blog by email on the signup form to the right or, if you’re on a smartphone or tablet, scroll on down, you’ll find the signup for at the bottom of the screen. For the very once-in-a-while emailed newsletter only, just send me an email, cmmayo (at) cmmayo (dot) com and I’ll add you to the list.)

Podcast

Marfa Mondays Podcast #22, an interview with Bill Smith in Sanderson, Cactus Capital of Texas, is alllllllllllmost ready. I’m working at a snail’s pace this summer, transcribing notes on my wanderings around the Permian Basin. Meanwhile, listen in anytime to the 21 other Marfa Mondays podcasts here.

Blog Posts

Selected Madam Mayo posts since the previous newsletter:

Q & A with Katherine Dunn on White Dog and Writing in the Digital Revolution

Doug Hill’s Not So Fast: Thinking Twice About Technology

The Book As Thoughtform, the Book As Object: A Book Rescued, a Book Attacked, and Katherine Dunn’s Beautiful Book White Dog Arrives

Infinite Potential: The Life and Ideas of David Bohm

Workshop & Reading

Women Writing the West doing a Real World thing back in the time of BC (before corona)…. sigh… Note my book of poetry, Meteor, second row back from front, far left. Book PR…. WAHHHH

Originally to be held this October in Colorado Springs, Colorado, the annual Women Writing the West conference has gone virtual. As originally scheduled, but now via Zoom, I’ll be teaching a break-out workshop on powerful yet often overlooked poetic techniques for novelists and writers of creative nonfiction.

Saturday, October 17, 2020 
9:10-10:10

8:00 – 9:00 AM (Colorado time)
POETIC TECHNIQUES TO POWER UP
YOUR FICTION & NONFICTION
C.M. MAYO

For writers of fiction and narrative nonfiction (whether biography, nature writing, or memoir), award-winning poet and writer C.M. Mayo’s workshop gives you a toolkit of specific poetic techniques you can apply immediately to make your writing more vivid and engaging for your readers.

Using handouts, first we’ll cover specificity with reference to the senses, a technique, basic as it may be, that many writers tend to underutilize. Then, in supersonic fashion, we’ll zoom over alliteration; use of imagery; repetition; listing; diction drops and spikes; synesthesia; and crucially, how to work with rhythm and sound to reinforce meaning. 

The goal is for your writing to take an immediate step up.

P.S. You can find my book of poetry, Meteor, on amazon.com, et al.

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And at the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) conference also this October, also gone virtual, I’ll be reading from my translation of one of Mexican writer Rose Mary Salum’s haunting short stories, “The Aunt,” which appeared in the beautiful Catamaran Literary Reader in 2019.

For those of you writerly readers who happen to be translators, or who might fancy to dip a toe in such waters, there’s still time to register for the conference, if you feel so moved. I can tell you that I have always found the ALTA conferences well worthwhile– old friends, new friends, everyone is friendly and encouraging, there are magazine and book editors, scads of thought-provoking panels, and readings galore of translations from an untold number of languages. (My own thing is Spanish, always amply represented in ALTA.) The most fun of all is the traditional “Declamation,” at the end. Thanks to the covid, rather than meeting for a weekend in Tucson, Arizona, this will be ALTA’s first ever virtual conference, spread out over three weeks. You can view the conference schedule here.

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Cyberflanerie

B. Traven’s last novel, Aslan Norval, has been published in English in Kindle. Much more about this unusual novel and news anon.

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Susan Brind Morrow’s essay for Lapham’s Quarterly “The Turning Sky: Discovering the Pyramid Texts” — and about her astonishingly beautiful and important work, much more anon.

Mexico Cooks! blog offers a fascinating and detail-packed post about Mexican vanilla.

Rick Black on The Amichai Windows:

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Michael Minard’s 2 minute film Shiela Hale– Book Lover, Art Maker (hat tip to Deborah Batterman, who wrote about Hale’s work with her dictionary in this blog post, and supplies this link to an installation Hale did with a musician):

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William Zeitler plays the glass armonica:

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The Sociological Eye on the sociology of masks and social distancing.

Lady Evelyn Gray is just one of the many, many richly illustrated posts on the history of figure skating over at Ryan Stevens’ excellent Skate Blog. Tip of the sombrero to A. for this link.

“Viktor Schauberger: Comprehend and Copy Nature,” a documentary film.

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To my delighted surprise, in this video below, Rev. Steve Hermann, author of Mediumship Mastery, warmly recommends my book (and my translation of Madero’s book), Metaphysical Odyssey into the Mexican Revolution: Francisco I. Madero and His Secret Book, Spiritist Manual. (You can read my Q & A with Hermann about the mediumship of Francisco I. Madero, one of the more interesting of the many interesting interviews I’ve posted here on Madam Mayo blog, at this link. )

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Life is wacky good. Charlie Chaplin’s “The Pilgrim,” a masterpiece of early silent cinema– set in Texas!–is now in the public domain.

Newsletter: Podcasts, Publications, Workshop,
Plus Cyberflanerie (Extra-Eclectic Edition!)

Using Imagery (The “Metaphor Stuff”) 

Biographers International Interview with C.M. Mayo:
Strange Spark of the Mexican Revolution

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Find out more about
C.M. Mayo’s books, articles, podcasts, and more.