As summer is quickly sizzling along, perhaps there are other folks out there looking for something to read. I thought I would shout out some of the older books I have read with my much loved book club. Bear with me in my opinions as I am slightly ill equipped to recall all these books from years past. I will try my best to remember what I thought about these, and in doing so, hope to help you find something you will love.
July/August
2006
Book:
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester
I
am not a huge reader of nonfiction. There. I've said it. I love characters best. And if a piece of nonfiction can give me a great story of someone's life, then count me in. While not my very most favorite of books, if
you are a lover of words, this might be the one for you. Mr. Winchester tells the story of the making of the Oxford English Dictionary through the lives of the two men who contributed the most to its completion. One of the gentlemen ends up being a resident of a Criminal Lunatic Asylum as a convicted murderer who is also a genius. Not the story you would expect.
June
2006
Book:
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
I
picked this selection for our group. It is a favorite of mine. I've read it a
couple of times and have pushed it into the laps of my husband and several friends. I especially love the themes in this book. They
fascinate me. It is a love story, on one level, and also a work of science fiction. But it is also a book about fear, about family, about what becomes of love when the one you love is no longer there. The author is an artist who long made hand-painted books (usually in original copies of ten). So to read her novel and know her love of books makes it even more special to me. Also, it is soon to be released in film version starting Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams. Be sure to read it before you hit your cineplex.
May
2006
Book:
An Unfinished Season by Ward Just
An Unfinished Season, written in 2004, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and winner of the Heartland Prize for Fiction. It is a coming-of-age novel set in 1950s Chicago. I remember it having a quiet, subtle rhythm that I enjoyed. The central character is Wilson Ravan, a young man who is stepping into adulthood for the first time. He is learning about his father in a way he hasn't known him before as he deals with a labor dispute at his business and receives threats to his home. He is discovering the class system as well as himself.
The author writes his dialogue in an unusual fashion, which may be off-putting to some at first. He writes his dialoge with no quotation marks and has done so in several of his books. He explains, "I was working on a theory of dialogue: that if you elminate the quotation marks, what you're getting to is kind of the deep structure of the dialogue, almost like the pentimento of a painting. You're not listening so much for the regional accents, the way the late George Higgins used to write dialogue; [he was] the modern master of that. This dialogue, the way I see it, it's quite straightforward; and if you take the quotation marks out of it, you can sorto f see through it like a pane of window glass, to what's going on underneath and what's going on between the lines....I've had a couple of editors who've been really quite put off by it, but I've stuck with it."
April
2006
Book:
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is about two women in 19th century China whose lives are lived with rigid rules in seclusion which is the common practice for young women at this time. I really did not know anything about this time and place and I found the book fascinating. A couple of major parts of the book have to do with a secret language of the women which is embroidered in the secret fan of the title and the ritual of foot binding. I had heard of foot binding before but really didn't know anything about it. Ms. See goes into detail about the practice and its meaning.
March
2006
Book:
The Heidi Chronicles and Other Plays by Wendy Wasserstein
The Heidi Chronicles won the Pulitzer Prize for drama as well as the Antoinette Perry (Tony) and New York Drama Critics' Circle awards for best play, the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Dramatists Guild's Hull-Warriner Award, and the Susan Smith Blackburn Award for women playwrights.
My book club read this collection after Wendy Wasserstein passed away. We also saw a
local college production of the main piece. All these things worked to
make me appreciate this one more than I otherwise would have. It follows the life of Heidi from high school to feminist career woman. It really wasn't my favorite as I felt very removed from the situations of this era. I did enjoy seeing the play much more than I enjoyed reading it.
February
2006
Book:
Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
Hmmm. I had to go look this one up. It doesn't sound even vaguely familiar which makes me think I didn't read this one. It sounds interesting enough if you read the description but I'm sorry to say I've got nothing on it.
January
2006
Book:
Good Harbor by Anita Diamant
I had actually started this post about books last year in draft form. I had written in all the dates my club had read the books and put in the links to each title. On most of them I had written a very brief thumbs up or thumbs down review. But for this title I had only one word, and not really even a word, written. I had said, "Nu-uh." That doesn't sound so good, does it. But today I honestly couldn't remember this book, not even vaguely, so I read an online synopsis by Bette-Lee Fox that said, "Diamant draws a portrait of a friendship between women that weathers
illness and infidelity. Kathleen Levine, a children's librarian in Cape
Ann, MA, is 59 years old, married, and the mother of two grown sons.
She is also suffering from breast cancer, which brings overwhelming
solicitousness from others and countless stories of other women's
illness. She is no stranger to the disease, having lived through her
sister's death from breast cancer. Joyce Tabachnik is a journalist and
pseudonymous romance novelist. Now 42, she is married and has a
12-year-old daughter who bristles at anything her parents say and do.
The two Jewish women Joyce by birth, Kathleen by conversion meet at
synagogue one Friday evening and begin a relationship that will take
them up the Good Harbor beach in Gloucester for frequent walks and
talks and through the momentous challenges and fears of their varied
lives. Kathleen's ordeal with cancer, especially radiation treatment,
rings true, and her honest, compassionate friendship with Joyce, who is
doubting her own marriage and her ability to write, will touch readers
as they recognize these women's frailties and strengths."
In January of 2006 I was unaware that I would have breast cancer in the near future. I imagine that if I were to read this book again today I would have a slightly different take on it. While it might not be my favorite read, I do remember it as interesting and good tale of friendship.
December
2005
Book:
A Widow for One Year by John Irving
John
Irving can do no wrong, as far as I am concerned. While this isn't my
favorite Irving book (that one comes later), it is a good one. I read this book before I had children. And, as innocuous as that may sound, it really makes a difference in how I receive certain stories. Pre-children I thought this book was great. Post-children it was slightly frightening. Not frightening in the same way a story about kidnapping is but my focus had shifted and I had a new layer of depth in my own life with which to measure this tale. Still, I am a big John Irving fan and I would recommend this book to you. I would not recommend the film, A Door in the Floor, which is based on the first part of this novel.
November
2005
Book:
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
This book is touted as Marquez's greatest work and that's saying something for someone who holds the Nobel Prize for literature. It is the bestselling modern Spanish work of fiction second only to Don Quixote. It is a work of magical realism which is one of my favorite sorts of books to read. One Hundred Years of Solitude is the history of an isolated town called Macondo and the family who founds it. It is complex, funny, full of irony, love, adventure, and sadness. It is a classic.
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That's it for today. I still have many more books from my book club to tell you about. But I really want to go and read now. Please tell me about your favorite reads, too!
