I should remember that the week I am back from my mom’s is almost always a non-reading week. It seems like everyone/thing (including the house and especially the cat) needs to reclaim some equilibrium. I did listen to the end of Where’d You Go Bernadette on the way home but did not actually reading. My one book group that has been on hiatus met and reconnected. We caught up with each other and had a mini discussion of both Canada by Richard Ford and Where’d You Go Bernadette. There has been lots of leaf picking up and I have spent lots of time playing in my scraproom. Yesterday we split up and Himself went to the regional Cross Country Meet to root for the high school teams which both won! Unfortunately Eldest and myself had to attend a funeral for a 23 year old classmate of his from high school who passed away in an auto accident. It was good to see people from the band program but sad for the reason.
Here is what caught my interest this week:
Last spring, a friend’s daughter took a class in college on literature and adultery. We had a wonderful lunch before she went back to school and this class, discussing the reading list which sounded wonderful. It included books that readers would expect such as Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina. Lately, another adultery book has come across my view due to German Literature Month and Dolce Bellezza has reminded me to put on the list. Mrs. Satoris by Elke Schmitter is said to be a modern day version of Madame Bovary. At age 38, Margarethe was last happy when she was 18 and felt the world was her’s for the taking. For the past 20 years she has stagnated in a provincial German town and then she meets a married man who may offer her a way out of her mundane existence. Winston’s Dad also has a nice review of this debut novel.
Fluer in her World has a review of a book that sounds light-hearted and fun. Come Out of the Kitchen: A Romance by Alice Duer Miller was originally published in 1916 (It is available free for electrnic readers). Set in the South, a young man rents a country house with the prevision he keeps the servants of the house: a butler, a cook, a maid, and a boy-all-work. Mr. Reed moves into the house with his lawyer, his almost-finance, and her mother. And while the cook cooks well, and the butler is very adept, the rest of the servants are more sullen and all of the servants seemed to belong to the house more than the occupants. Alice Miller was a prolific author writing to support her family. Many of her stories and novels became movies including the story that served as the basis for The White Cliffs of Dover.
If you are looking for a logic puzzle type of mystery – A Guy’s Moleskin Notebook has a review of The Oxford Murders by Argentine writer Guillermo Martinez. The author has a PhD in Mathematical Logic and his mystery features a professor of logic and an Argentinian student trying to solve a murder and catch a serial killer. Of course the murders are also mathematically based. Youngest is majoring in math and sometimes he and his father have incomprehensible conversations about algorithms and obscure math theories. I may have to read this one just to get some overlap between the Literature side of the house with the more scientific side.
And Teresa of Shelf Love tells me Annie Lamont has a new book of non-fiction out Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope, and Repair. If you have liked her previous books, be sure to look for this one as well. No one describes life quite like Annie Lamont who pulls no punches. Unlike her other books, this one is more focused on a single subject of continuing on with life after difficult circumstances. However different the book is, I am sure her sense of humor remains the same.
Finally Cornflower Books has a link to a bookstore in a 15th Century Church in The Netherlands – definitely worth checking out.
The Book Stop has a very nice post on the recent NY Times Book Review article on Literary Board Books.
And Kinna Reads has a list of 10 short stories you can read on-line including some by 2013 Nobel Prize Winner Alice Munro.
many thanks for the mention ,all the best stu
I am regular visitor, how arre you everybody?
This paragraph posted at this webb site is reazlly pleasant.