What are you reading the week of July 28, 2018?

I spent the week watching a lecture series from the Great Courses called Apocryphal Jesus, so no reading to report on from me. 2018 is turning out to not be a very good reading year for me. It's been way too busy.

Still reading Annex (The Violet Wars), Record of a Spaceborn Few, and Quicksilver.

I am reading The Same Night Awaits Us All and listening to My Year Of Rest And Relaxation.

Reading Stephen McCauley's new book My Ex-Life. Always enjoy his books and this one is no exception.

Right now I'm playing a little catch-up with my "between books" (anthologies and such that I read one entry at a time between the books I read straight through). Today's action will include an essay from Joan Didion's classic Slouching Towards Bethlehem and a chapter from The Apostle by Sholem Asch. Coming up soon will be N.K. Sandars' English version of The Epic of Gilgamesh, which somehow I have never studied or read. This is a Penguin Classics edition from 1976.

I"m still reading The Heretic's Daughter by Kathleen Kent. I like the story but it's been a busy week so I'm still only about halfway through.

Finished Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers. Liked it slightly less than the first two books.

Next into the reading rotation is Dead Water by Ann Cleeves,

The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
4****

Rawlings’s 1938 Pulitzer-winning novel focuses on the boy Jody, his parents Ora and Penny Baxter, their neighbors the Forresters, and their hard-scrabble lives in central Florida in about 1870.

I first heard of this classic of children’s literature when I was about 10 years old, but I never read it. I hadn’t even seen the movie. I had only a vague notion about the plot – a boy and his pet deer, “the yearling” of the title. I’m so glad that I finally read it.

Rawlings tells the tale from Jody’s perspective. He’s twelve years old when the novel opens, and still spends much of his time roaming about the woods, exercising his imagination and connecting with nature. Yes, he has chores – what farm-child doesn’t – but he frequently gets distracted in the middle of hoeing a field, following a squirrel or just getting lost in his thoughts when he takes a brief break to get a drink from a nearby stream.

His father, Penny, grew up with stern parents and had hardly any childhood, saddled with responsibility at a very young age. As a result, he is willing to work twice as hard to keep his boy a “boy” for a longer period. This is a source of disagreement between Penny and Ma, who feels that Jody is past the age for greater responsibility. He is, after all, their only child, and if they are to survive (let alone prosper) Jody must take on a greater share of the work.

When Jody and his father meet disaster while out hunting, they are forced to kill a doe with a new-born fawn. Once they are back home, Jody prevails upon his father to let him retrieve the fawn, who, Jody argues, is an orphan only because of their actions. Jody dotes on Flag and treats the animal as a brother. But as Flag grows to a yearling, his natural instincts coupled with tameness and Jody’s indulgence, lead to troubling behavior. The difficult decisions that are required show how everyone has matured and grown over the course of the novel.

I could not help but equate Flag’s “growing up” to Jody’s. Both are indulged and left free to roam and both have to endure pain and suffering as a result of growing towards adulthood. I could not help but wonder if the title was more a reference to Jody than to the fawn.

What really shines in this novel is the connection to nature. I was reminded of the many times I was in the woods with my father, and the way he taught me and my brothers about plants, animals, hunting, and fishing. I feel sorry for modern urban children who have no such connection in their lives.

I particularly loved this passage:
The cranes were dancing a cotillion as surely as it was danced at Volusia. Two stood apart, erect and white, making a strange music that was part cry and part singing. The rhythm was irregular, like the dance. The other birds were in a circle. In the heart of the circle, several moved counter-clock-wise. The musicians made their music. The dancers raised their wings and lifted their feet, first one and then the other. …. The birds were reflected in the clear marsh water. Sixteen white shadows reflected the motions. The evening breeze moved across the saw-grass. It bowed and fluttered. The water rippled. The setting sun lay rosy on the white bodies. Magic birds were dancing in a mystic marsh. The grass swayed with them, and the shallow waters, and the earth fluttered under them. The earth was dancing with the cranes, and the low sun, and the wind and sky.

Rawlings uses the vernacular dialect of the time and place, and there are some uncomfortable uses of the “n” word. It’s appropriate to the time, place, and socio-economic status of the characters, and it’s not frequent (maybe six times in the 400-page book), but it is nevertheless jarring to today’s readers.

I finished the second book co-authored by Swedish crime writer Camilla Grebe, and her psychologist friend Åsa Träff. It's called More Bitter than Death and was almost as good as their first book Some Kind of Peace.

I decided then that I was reading too much Scandinavian crime writing, and that I should read something else. So I read about ten pages of Catch 22 before desperately missing my Nordic crime, so I''m reading Marked for Life by Emilie Schepp, an Swedish author whose works I've not read before.

Working on Just Mercy bu Bryan Stevenson: The Myth of Perpetual Summer by Susan Crandall;Enemies In Love by Alexis Clark; and The Angel,of Hitory by Rabih Alameddine

I finished Amsterdam: A Novel by Ian McEwan. I've read little or no other books by him but thoroughly enjoyed this one. It's a very tightly woven story of two poor selfish decisions that spiral into disaster.

>11 snash: I like McEwan. I enjoyed that book but my favorite (so far) of his was Nutshell. On Chesil Beach and Atonement are also very good.

>12 JulieLill: Thanks, I added them to my list. There are a few others on the list so it might be a while.

Am reading Ray Bradbury's book on writing called Zen in the Art of Writing, which is good, humorous, and a lot about his books and articles and how they came to be. Many flash back stories of his childhood and how experiences led to "Something Wicked This Way Comes" and some shorter pieces. Very interesting and quite a different read for me. I have read McMurtry's "Books" (maybe the title is off...) and another by Pat Conroy on writing, I think. But nothing like this in a long time. My usual is mystery/suspense, etc. the last several years. But I do write, and trying to finish an article, so reading is still my favorite getaway....

Currently reading The Woman Next Door. I'm on a thriller kick.

I finished listening to My Year of Rest and Relaxation, which I tried and failed to like. Next up is the 15th (?) installment of the Mary Russell/ Sherlock Holmes series, Island of The Mad by Laurie R. King.

>16 hemlokgang: That book is on my list. I enjoyed Ottessa Moshfegh's earlier novel Eileen.

Put aside Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson. Just not my cup of tea.

Next into the rotation is The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang.

Finished Dead Water by Ann Cleeves. Liked it.

Next into the rotation is Witchmark by C. L. Polk.

I just finished Shine, Shine, Shine by Lydia Netzger, and I started House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea.

House of broken angels is outstanding

I finished A Lazy Eye: Stories which was series of stories about people on the fringes, in sad lonely lives, trying desperately for some attention often in destructive ways; A generally sad book but excellently written.

Just finished listening to the very b.c satisfying Island of the Mad. Next up for listening is The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller.

The Professor and the Madman - Simon Winchester
Audiobook narrated by the author
4****

The subtitle is all the synopsis you need: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary

James Murray is the professor, a learned man who became the editor of the OED. Dr William C Minor is the madman, an American Civil-War veteran and surgeon whose paranoid delusions caused him to commit murder and resulted in his life-long commitment to an asylum for the criminally insane. Yet …

Simon Winchester crafts a compelling non-fiction narrative. I previously read his book on the explosion of Krakatoa, which was interesting, but I felt bogged down in detail. This is a much shorter book. Though it’s clear that Winchester did significant research and he includes details of how the OED was conceived, and the laborious efforts to get volunteers to submit citations to support word usage definitions, he never lost the story arc of these two remarkable men. He captured my attention on page one and held it throughout.

Winchester narrates the audiobook himself and he does a fine job. I could listen to his British accent all day, especially pronouncing the marvelously rich vocabulary he employs. As a bonus, at the end of the audio book there is an interview between Winchester and the OED’s current editor, John Simpson. THAT was equally as interesting to me as the main story.

The Amber Shadows
By Lucy Ribchester
3.5/5 stars
Set during WWII, Honey Deschamps is working at Bletchley Park working on decoding messages. She is alone in England and one day a young man with a greyhound comes to her home to drop off a package delivered to him by mistake. In the package is a piece of amber. A few more pieces arrive and she is desperate to know what is happening. Are they coming from her brother and who is the man with the greyhound who keeps reappearing? Good but at times I was lost in what was happening.

Finished Witchmark by C. L. Polk. Enjoyed it.

Next up is Thin Air by Ann Cleeves.

Finished The Orphan's Wish by Melanie Dickerson
New novel and #8 in her "Hagenheim/Medieval Fairy Tale" series.
In her latest newsletter to readers/subscribers, Mrs. Dickerson says she has additional novels forthcoming in the series.

Up next: The Lady of Tarpon Springs by Judith Miller
The novel is set in Tarpon Springs, Florida, 1905 featuring sponge diving.

Someone Knows My Name – Lawrence Hill
Digital Audiobook performed by Andenrele Ojo.
5*****

Originally published in Canada as The Book of Negroes, Hill’s novel tells the story of Aminata Diallo from 1745 to 1802. Born a free Muslim in Guinea, she is kidnapped and sold into slavery, transported to the province of South Carolina to work the indigo fields. Her skill as a midwife makes her valuable and when she is sold to a wealthy Jewish merchant, she moves from the plantation to a city life in Charles Town. Eventually she travels to New York and gains her freedom, moving first to Nova Scotia, thence to London and traveling back to Africa, before finally settling in London.

What marvelous story telling! I was engaged and interested from beginning to end. I loved Aminata (a/k/a Meena). She’s intelligent, resourceful, emotionally and mentally strong. She’s also a keen observer and a good judge of character. She has the advantage of having been educated by her parents, so she knows how to read and write (in Arabic), and helping her mother as a midwife, she learned some of the other dialects / languages of her area of Africa. On the ship she learns English, then quickly picks up the Goolah dialect when she is on the indigo plantation. She never stops working toward her freedom and takes advantage of every opportunity that presents itself to achieve her goal for herself and her family. She always conducts herself with dignity and a fierce determination.

Hill does not sugarcoat the atrocities of slavery, nor the ingrained prejudices against and mistreatment of people of color. Aminata is blessed by relationships with some whites who are sympathetic, but her place as a slave and/or “lesser Negro” is always evident. Her skill as a midwife, coupled with her ability to read and write and keep books are assets that will help her navigate this new world, but she will not have an easy time of it. There are sickening scenes of brutality, but there are also scenes that show a loving family unit.

Hill populates the novel with a cast of memorable characters: the plantation overseer, the Jewish Lindo family, a free black tavern owner in New York, British officers, a ship’s surgeon, abolitionists and many slaves.

The book is based on historical events. There is a “Book of Negroes” in the archives of Canada and the United States, that lists the African men, women and children who worked for the British or behind British lines during the Revolutionary War. They were promised freedom for their services to the crown, and were transported to various colonies, but most went to Nova Scotia. From there, after years of bad treatment, Black Loyalists gathered to sail to Africa, where they founded Freetown, Sierra Leone. I’m glad I had the text available to read through the author’s notes and list of references, which are not included in the audio

The digital audio was performed by Andenrele Ojo, who did a marvelous job. I really felt as if Meena was telling me her story.

Started Behind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris today. This is the 3rd suspense thriller I've read in a row. It's gotten me over the mild reading slump I was in. Good, fast-paced entertainment.

The new thread is up over here.