Monday, September 24, 2018

What I'm reading this week (9/24/18)

Last week I finished:

I've added Celeste Ng to my list of "automatic buys"--whenever the author come out with a new title, I'll buy it, no questions asked. Earlier this year I loved her Little Fires Everywhere, and after finishing it, I immediately bought a copy of her earlier novel, Everything I Never Told You. I wanted to put a number of months between them, but it was finally time this month to see if her first novel is as good as her second. And it was. Ng has a distinctive writing style; her books build and build and build, and they tell the story both in the present and in the past. This book opens with the disappearance of the middle child in the Lee family, Lydia. She seemed the perfect child, the perfect daughter, the perfect student. As more memories come to the surface of her family members' consciousness, though, we get a fuller picture of Lydia. I was fascinated by how the book shows the main character in absentia, through nothing but memory. I loved that it was both novel and mystery at once. While this book was a smidge less subtle than her second one, it was every bit as good. It did contain moments of adulterous sex, but I wouldn't avoid the book because of that alone. My rating: 4.5 stars.

Eve Chase's The Wildling Sisters was a good, moody book for the end of summer. A domestic mystery of Audrey Wild who went missing from Applecote Manor in the 1950s and was never found; four sisters--Audrey's cousins--piecing together what happened and keeping it a secret for decades; and the present owners of Applecote Manor, a young mother, father, daughter, and his teenage daughter from a previous marriage who are having trouble becoming a family. While I generally detest books that tell two stories, one in the past and one in the present, it didn't completely annoy me here. The writing and characters were good, and the mood and pacing were very good. While I did feel that the book ended two too many times, I enjoyed listening to the story unfold. I've added her earlier English mystery, Black Rabbit Hall, to my TBR now, too. My rating: 3.5 stars.

I hadn't planned on listening to another of Jan Karon's Mitford novels this year, but I was desperate to find something to listen to when my audio holds were taking forever to come in at the library, so I picked up the sixth book in the series, A Common Life. This book goes back in the series to tell the story of Father Kavanagh and Cynthia's wedding. Apparently fans were upset that Karon skipped over the wedding in the books, and this became Karon's favorite book in the series (at least at the time of the interview). My favorite part of the audio was that the last disc was an interview with Karon, who is even more wonderful and gracious and Southern than I'd hoped. The book was published in the early 2000s, and at the time of the interview Karon said it would be a seven-book series. Something changed along the way, because I believe there are 11 books now. I'm glad I'm only at the halfway mark. I kind of can't imagine my reading life without another Mitford novel to look forward to. Although this wasn't my favorite of the series by any means--it was a bit too flowery and sentimental--I'm glad to have it, because I, too, wondered why the wedding wasn't in the previous books. My rating: 3 stars. 

If you raise nine kids, then you have a whole lot of photos to share. I'd long wanted to get my hands on a copy of Rose Kennedy's Family Album, but it's been out of print for awhile. I finally ran across a copy at a used bookstore this summer, and I snapped it up faster than you can say "JFK." Showing hundreds of family photos from 1878 to 1946, you see each of the Kennedy children grow up. Included are essays of the various periods of their family history (I'm unsure who wrote them, although Caroline Kennedy wrote the introduction), and there are many letters written between Rose and Joe and the children over the years, reminiscences, and various essays and journal entries. There are tons of photos of the children all tanned and smiling on the beach. The book takes you only up until Jack Kennedy's Congressional run in 1946. I'd love to see a volume II with the presidential years, Jackie Kennedy, and the next generation of big-toothed Kennedy smiles, but I've never heard another volume was in the works. If you're a Kennedyphile, you'll want to go through this book some day--if you can find a copy. My rating: 4 stars. 

And lastly, more poetry. I grew as a poet seeing Linda Pastan in every poetry textbook and anthology I used. I've never really done a deep dive into her work, though. And A Dog Runs through It, isn't that either. I'd always assumed her work was similar to contemporaries Anne Sexton and Adrienne Rich, whose poetry I find a bit too fraught and feminist and difficult. But I think I probably have that all wrong. This is a book of her past poems (I don't think any are new) about dogs. Some just mention dogs in passing. It's a slim volume, just 59 pages, but it's fun. It includes a number of drawings of dogs, which is always a delight. While I didn't mark any poems here to return to, it spurred me to pick up a copy of Pastan's poetry in the future. My rating: 3 stars.
 

Next up:


Finally, finally, getting to this one.


My other reads:
 

Working my way to the end of The Two-Family House on Kindle. A wonderful read.

I'm also enjoying my re-read of Carry On, Warrior.

I'll finish both this week.
 
 
 
My audiobook:



I am loving this book. I'd forgotten just how good a writer Jane Smiley is.


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