Books: Catching Up
Well I haven't been posting much since the first of the year mostly out of pure laziness and a serious case of ennui. Here's an attempt (a la Jay) to quickly catch up with what I've been reading for the past few months.
The Novel 100
My Antonia - Willa Cather's lovely evocation of the world of the immigrants who settled the Great Plains; a world which was already lost when the novel was published in 1919.
An American Tragedy - Based on a real-life murder case, Dreiser's big novel is a study of class, ambition, sex and religion in early 20th Century America. The basis for the Academy Award Winning film A Place in the Sun, starring Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor and Shelley Winters. Loved it.
Madame Bovary - Currently reading. Oh, Emma! Get over yourself!
General Fiction
Friend of the Devil/Slip of the Knife - Peter Robinson's Chief Inspector Alan Banks series (now up to 17 novels) and Denise Mina's Paddy Meehan series are two of my favorite, must-read mystery series. These two latest lived up to my high expectations.
The Gathering - Anne Enright's novel, which won the Man Booker Prize last year, was somewhat disappointing. I'm not even sure why. It's beautifully written (she's Irish after all), but it just left me wanting something more. Maybe more story and less rumination.
Out Stealing Horses - Norwegian writer Per Petterson's novel will definitely be on my 2008 favorites list. Trond is sixty-seven and widowed. He goes to live quietly in a remote cabin built many years earlier by his father and where he spent summers as a child. A chance encounter with his nearest neighbor, a childhood friend, brings back memories of a fateful summer long past. Both the novel and its translation have won major awards.
The Reluctant Fundamentalist - At a cafe table in Lahore, a young Pakistani man tells the tale of his spiritual journey from Princeton to Wall Street and back to his home country to a mysterious American.
Still Life - currently reading. I saw a favorable review of the third novel in Louise Penny's Three Pines mystery series so naturally I ran out to find the first one, Still Life. Set in Quebec and featuring the crusty Surete de Quebec Inspector Armand Gamache, I expect that this one will be on my favorites list as well and I'll be looking for the next two volumes. In this installment, Gamache is trying to solve the murder of a well-loved elderly woman, found in the forest and the victim of an apparent bow and arrow attack. Nicely written and full of wonderfully quirky characters.
Audio Books
No Simple Victory - Just started listening to Norman Davies' history of WWII in Europe. Davies is an Eastern European scholar who has written, among other things, a history of Poland and a history of the 1944 Warsaw uprising. His thesis, so far, is that there is a long accepted myth in the West that the US and Britain defeated Germany, reinforced by earlier histories, movies, novels, etc. We talk about El Alamein, the Battle of the Bulge and Normandy as decisive turning points when, in fact, the war in Western Europe was, at best, a 'sideshow' to what was going on on the Eastern Front. The US and Britain lost close to 250,000 men in Europe. The Russians lost 11 Million, plus an additional 11 Million civilians. In effect, one brutal regime was destroyed by another possibly more brutal regime. As one reviewer put it, Stalin may have saved the world for Democracy.
Comments
Fascinating! You've read ALL these in the past year? Wow! I used to read at least a book or two a month. Right now I'm reading John Grisham's new novel "The Appeal". It's nowhere near as enlightening as your list however. I do seem to have a Grisham addiction, though I never made it through his non-fiction "The Innocent Man". Could be because the book club sent the LARGE PRINT edition! How RUUUUDDE! ;-)