Last week I finished:
I have complicated feelings about Circling the Sun. I abandoned listening to it only to pick it up again a week later and finish it. I do tend to have trouble letting plots hang without closure, but this was a little different, too. It had the added element of being a novelization of a person's life. Horse trainer and aviator Beryl Markham led a private life, and in her own masterful memoir West with the Night, she did not delve into her personal life. So to base a book on a life so many know by a fabulous memoir (one of the absolute finest memoirs in all of literature in my opinion), without a hint as to where the real ended and the fiction began was disorienting. I fight against a book like that. The fact is, what was added to the fictional account that was not in the memoir was Markham's two marriages, numerous lovers, and baby born with birth defects. I don't know where author Paula McLain came onto these salacious bits of biography, but the whole business left me feeling queasy. There's a fair amount of imagining Markham's sexual life here, and I just couldn't have been less interested. If you have a higher tolerance for fictionalized biography than I do (and that doesn't take much), if you don't need to know where fact ends and fiction begins, and if you don't mind a lot of adultery and sex, this is a beautifully written novel. Still, I'd suggest reading the memoir first. My rating: 3.5 stars.
Every now and then a book comes along that really surprises you with its generosity, sense of humor, and playful approach. You can never really predict where you'll find one, and that's why they're wonderful gifts. The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap is one of those gifts. I bought the book about a year and a half ago, and it had recently been relegated to the "Quarantine" box in the basement where I keep books that are likely on their way out of the house but I'm not quite ready to give up on getting to. After the Amy Tan book experience bottomed out (more on that below), I was facing readcation with no book. Nothing sounded good, so I decided to dig through the Q box and, boy am I glad I did. This is the story of Wendy Welch and her Scottish husband Jack opening a used bookstore in Big Stone Gap, Virginia (not to be confused with Adriana Trigiani's books about Big Stone Gap--same place, different author). This is an insular town in Appalachian coal country. It takes locals a long time to warm up to a stranger, and no one expected these overeducated strangers to stay long anyway. But over time, they learned to build a business and to become a community. This is a Hallmark movie waiting to happen, but it was wonderful. Welch is a fun person; it comes through in her writing. She's witty and quirky, and the whole reading experience was just lovely. If you're a bibliophile or you're looking for a pick-me-up book, get a copy of this one. You won't be disappointed. My rating: 5 stars.
I downloaded a copy of Laurie Colwin's Home Cooking for my Kindle awhile ago, and I found it a nice book to pick up and put down (the best kind for Kindle, in my opinion). Colwin was a popular writer in the 1980s, and her work enjoyed a resurgence in the 1990s following her untimely passing. I remember going to Waldenbooks (remember Waldenbooks?) in the 1990s to pick up a copy of her Happy All the Time and A Big Storm Knocked it Over, neither of which I liked a whole lot. Along the way I learned that she also wrote books about cooking, and it took me this long to try one. Never too late, I guess. The book is set up with short chapters on certain foods (Chocolate, Salt, Potato Salad, Red Peppers, How to Fry Chicken, etc.) She gets a little opinionated for a home cook, but somehow that's easier for me to take than an opinionated fancy cook (I'm looking at you, Ina Garten). The book was published in 1988, and I expected to find it quite dated, after all, think of how much cooking and eating has changed in thirty years, but it was surprisingly timely--partly owing to the fact that she was from the East Coast where so many food trends start. I enjoyed this book. It wasn't earthshattering, but it was comfy, and that's what the title promised. My rating: 3 stars.
Back in college I was a creative writing major. Poetry was my genre, and I wrote and published it by the fistful. I had the honor (I even knew it was at the time) of taking my poetry workshop with Max Garland, and his poetry and influence stayed with me. It's not merely that Max was my professor that made me appreciate his work (I had plenty of professors whose work I did not particularly love), but it's that Max's poems truly spoke to me. My style and subject matter have always been similar to his, and his work has always blown me away with its humble, nostalgic, and witty lines. This is his third collection, and it is as wonderful as his first two, Postal Confessions (he was a postal worker prior to teaching) and Hunger Wide as Heaven. This collection is like going home again, even though "home" in this case is right where I am. He became the Wisconsin poet laureate a few years ago, and I'm so proud that our city has his talent. We're richer for it. If you're looking for some approachable poetry with depth and lightness, pick up a copy of anything by him. You can also Google individual poems. My rating: 5 stars.
Last week I (temporarily?) abandoned:
I was so looking forward to Amy Tan's new book, but I had a tough time with the first couple of chapters, and I wanted something I really wanted to sit down with for hours at a time. So, I abandoned this one. But I don't think it will be forever. I just can't let an Amy Tan nonfiction book go unread. I think I'll try to get my hands on an audio copy so I can still "read" the book, but it won't feel so arduous.
What I'm reading this week:
This is another book from my Quarantine box. I love the cover, and I have a thing for birds, though I know very little about individual species. You know I love books about ridiculous feats, and in this one, Neil Hayward races to find the most birds in one year (in birding circles, a "Big Year"). Sounds fun, doesn't it?
Last week I started:
After finishing Home Cooking, which was supposed to be my December Kindle read, I was hankering for "literature" when I remembered I had a copy of My Antonia downloaded. So far, this has fit the bill.
And I'm finally getting around to If Bees Are Few, an anthology of bee poems. Since one of my aspirations in life has always been to edit a collection of bee poems, I have mixed feelings about someone beating me to it.
My next audiobook:
Next up on the audio front, book four of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, The Kalahari Typing School for Men. I'm so excited.
