Tag: books

My Summer Reading

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SUMMER READING ROUND-UP

 Following the lead of another blogger (The Book Stop), who got it from another blog, I set myself the personal challenge of reading 20 books between June 1 and Sept. 1.  In my June 3rd blog post, I listed ten of the twenty books I intended to read.  How did I do?  Overall I met my goal of twenty books and I read 8 of the 10 titles I listed in June.  The breakdown of genre is 14 novels (six were historical novels), three memoirs (two political ones), two nonfiction titles, and one book of short stories.

I liked most everything I read, but Westover’s memoir was amazing, Manhattan Beach fascinating, but a bit too long; Lincoln in the Bardo weird but so inventive; and Bad Blood, a sit-on-the-edge-of-your-seat tale of lies and hubris.  I also enjoyed the immigrants’ stories in The Leavers (timely), the political dramas shared so very differently by Comey and Dorey-Stein, and the spare and exquisite prose as represented by Strout, Egan, Halliday, and Ford.  Very hard to pick a favorite.

What was the best book you read this summer?  Or your personal favorite?  So much good literature and juicy political commentary available now.

Here’s the complete list.  Titles are linked to the blog post with my review.

  1. We Were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter
  2. The Wife by Meg Wolitzer
  3. Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout
  4. Educated by Tara Westover
  5. Pachincho by Min Jin Lee
  6. Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday
  7. The Heart is a Shifting Sea by Elizabeth Flock
  8. Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan
  9. My Dear Hamilton by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie
  10. Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
  11. .Love and Ruin by Paula McLain
  12. From the Corner of the Oval by Beck Dorey-Stein
  13. The Leavers by Lisa Ko
  14. The Address by Fiona Davis
  15. Lilli de Jong by Janet Benton
  16. The Tea Planter’s Wife by Dinah Jeffries
  17. Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
  18. A Higher Loyalty by James Comey
  19. Bad Blood by John Carreyrou
  20. This Time Might Be Different by Elaine Ford

Note:  Header image is from www.readersdigest.co.uk

Thoughts on Summer Reading

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SUMMER READING

Like the proverbial “eyes bigger than her stomach,” I always have ambitious plans for how many and which books I will read over the summer.  Several stacks of them in fact.  They are a mix of novels, mysteries, biography, and general nonfiction.  And I have aspirations of re-reading some classics like Austen’s Persuasion and the last three novels in Galsworthy’s Forsyte Saga.  Then I stock up on books in paper (can’t read everything on my Kindle, what fun is that?) and every year for the past several, I’ve posted a box of said books to our Maine address.

I also confess to getting carried away and purchasing bunches of bargain-priced novels for the Kindle.  It’s far too easy to be seduced by the daily e-mails from BookBub, Bookperk, Harper Collins and Random House of titles one shouldn’t miss.  Finally, I succumb and treat myself to one or two literary works from my ever growing Kindle Wish List.  All in all, sufficient reading for many months, perhaps years!

What are your summer reading plans?  You can comment below.

LATEST READING

 The Wizard of Lies:  Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust by Diana B. Henriques 

While the details of the financial maneuvering and chicanery Madoff indulged in were beyond my understanding, I found this a chilling read.  Made me want to re-check my own financial advisor’s credentials (subsequent conversation with said advisor was most reassuring!) Painstakingly detailed, the book gripped me and I read it quickly, mostly for the timeline and scenario of how his lying and scheming developed and who of his team was complicit.  I would have liked more probing analysis of Madoff’s psyche and his early life.  The book was made into a movie which I’ve not seen.

A House among the Trees by Julia Glass

I have read every one of Julia Glass’s previous five novels and enjoyed them all, some a bit more than others.  And I had the pleasure of seeing and hearing her at a reading in a Bay Area bookstore several years ago.  I found this new novel, A House among the Trees, equally satisfying. Her works are not heavily plot driven, and some readers might find the pacing slow as the characters are revealed through their conversation, their thoughts and their own writing.

Glass has a fondness for the theater and at least one earlier work had elements of the theater and performance in it.  Here we have an award-winning aging children’s book author, Mort Lear, mostly keeping close a secret from his childhood, and a handsome boldface actor, Nicholas Greene, who will play Mort in an upcoming film.  Both of these characters have well developed public faces, facades that protect who they really are.  Linking these two is Tomasina Daulair, a middle-aged woman who has, in essence, given over the entirety of her adult life to serving Mort.  She is coordinator of his daily life, protector of his privacy, negotiator with his publisher and fans and yet neither lover nor wife.  When Mort dies before Nicholas gets to meet him, Tommy becomes the guide to Mort’s life.  In the process, she and Nick learn new things about themselves as they deliberately or inadvertently shape Mort’s legacy along with their own futures.  I like Glass’s writing a lot; to me it’s rich and juicy, full of yummy detail.

Reading Round-up & Favorites: 2017, Apr.-June

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READING ROUND-UP–2017, April through June

Here are the books I’ve covered in this blog in the past three months.  Followed by my top five favorite books so far this year.  Happy reading!

MYSTERIES

In this Grave Hour by Jacqueline Winspear

NOVELS

Flight Patterns by Karen White

Georgia by Dawn Tripp

Glory over Everything:  Beyond the Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom

The Heart by Maylis de Kerangal

Signs for Lost Children by Sarah Moss

The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck *

MEMOIRS

Guesswork:  A Reckoning with Loss by Martha Cooley *

NONFICTION

No One Cares about Crazy People:  The Chaos and Heartbreak of Mental Illness in America by Ron Powers

FIVE FAVORITES FOR 2017

Two of my five favorites for the first half of this year are asterisked above:  The Women in the Castle (historical novel with complex characters) and Guesswork (an exquisitely drawn memoir of reflection).  The others are:

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead, an inventive and compelling historical novel about slavery.

Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult, an absorbing and thought-provoking novel about racism by a popular author.

Before the Fall by Noah Hawley, a thriller about the back stories of the passengers on a doomed flight, great for the beach!

Note:  Book photo from wired.com; header photo of cordyline plant ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).

Book List: January-May 2016

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By popular request and for your reference (as well as my own), I’ve created an alphabetical list of all of the books I’ve mentioned or commented on since the beginning of the year; i.e. January through May, with one title that will appear in another posting this month.  List includes the genre and the date of the blog post in which it appeared.

It is possible to search my blog by the tags, “books” or “reading,” for example, and get the posts that have those tags, but this does not provide an organized list.  And you can see all the posts that are categorized as Books or Reading, but that again just gives you the entire post.  So here’s the first list of authors and titles.  I’ll do this periodically throughout the year.

BOOKS CITED 2016, Jan-May

Addair, Lynsey           This is What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love & War

(memoir) 3/20/16

Coutts, Marion           Iceberg (memoir)  2/20/16

Fair, Eric                     Consequence (memoir) 5/18/16

Fechtor, Jessica         Stir: My Broken Brain & the Meals That Brought Me Home (memoir) 5/18/16

Gawande, Atul           Being Mortal (nonfiction) 2/20/16

George, Elizabeth      Banquet of Consequences (Inspector Lynley mystery) 5/18/16

Groff, Lauren             Fates and Furies (novel)   2/14/16

Harrod-Eagles, C.     The Dancing Years (historical novel, Morland Dynasty) 4/29/16

Haslett, Adam            Imagine Me Gone (novel) 5/30/16

Kalanithi, Paul           When Breath Becomes Air (memoir)

Kinsley, Michael        Old Age: A Beginner’s Guide (memoir) 5/22/16

LeBan, Elizabeth       The Restaurant Critic’s Wife (novel) 5/18/16

Lee, Janice Y. K.        Expatriates (novel) 3/5/16

Markham, Beryl        West with the Night (memoir) 2/14/16

Newman, Janis C.    Master Plan for Rescue (novel) 1/29/16

Ng, Celeste                Everything I Never Told You (novel) 3/5/16

Norris, John              Mary McGrory, The First Queen of Journalism (biography) 1/22/16

Nuland, Sherwin       How We Die (nonfiction) 2/20/16

Nutt, Amy Ellis          Becoming Nicole (nonfiction) 1/9/16

Redniss, Lauren        Radioactive (graphic biography) 4/23/16

Reisman, Nancy        Trompe L’Oeil (novel) 1/9/16

Sansom, C. J.             Dissolution (Tudor mystery) 5/22/16

Strout, Elizabeth        My Name is Lucy Barton (novel) 4/23/16

Tallent, Elizabeth      Mendocino Fire (short stories)

Traister, Rebecca       All the Single Ladies… (nonfiction) 4/15/16

Walker, Walter          Crime of Privilege (mystery) 2/20/16

Warlick, Ashley          Arrangement (historical novel) 3/20/16

Winspear, J.                Journey to Munich (Maisie Dobbs mystery) 4/23/16