{"id":24468,"date":"2026-06-14T15:10:25","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T20:10:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/?p=24468"},"modified":"2026-06-07T15:11:59","modified_gmt":"2026-06-07T20:11:59","slug":"reading-report-mid-june","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/?p=24468","title":{"rendered":"Reading Report: Mid-June 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For a while it seemed like book critics everywhere were talking about On the Calculation of Volume<\/em> by Solvej Balle. I am a sci-fi fan, and I never met a time-travel story that didn’t entertain me in some way, so I was an easy sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this story, bookseller Tara Selter suddenly finds herself repeating a day over and over again, a la Groundhog Day<\/em>, except that it’s November 18th and she is not Bill Murray. She doesn’t know how she became stuck in this day or how to escape. She is away from home when it happens. When she returns home and tells her husband, he believes her. Every day when she awakes, she has to explain it to him again, because only she remembers the events from the day before. Imagine being to so fortunate as to be married to someone who believes you without question, only to feel them slipping farther and farther away from you as your days and theirs do not align. She explores the day as if it were a place. She learns the weather’s daily patterns, the day’s sounds and its silences. It is all intensely, hypnotically repetitive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why does does this lonely, introspective book feel so suited to the present time? Perhaps for some of us it’s feeling like we are quietly trying to exist in the spaces between crises, unsure how we got into this predicament, desperately struggling to get back to normalcy but unable to, and ultimately focusing on whatever joy we might be able to salvage from the situation. We may not have Tara’s specific problem, but we understand what she’s going through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Currently Reading: I’ve finished volumes 1-3 of On the Calculation of Volume<\/em> and have started on the 4th. I think I might take a break from the series and read something else for a while, but I’m not sure what. It’s so hard to find books that keep my attention, and these days I tend to bail on a book if it heads in a direction that I don’t like. My emotional state is such that I dare not to read anything disturbing. Even fictional trauma is too much to manage now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For a while it seemed like book critics everywhere were talking about On the Calculation of Volume by Solvej Balle. I am a sci-fi fan, and I never met a time-travel story that didn’t entertain me in some way, so … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24468"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24468"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24561,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24468\/revisions\/24561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bluefootedmusings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}