September Recap

I love Fall with it’s crisp air and blue skies.  I love cross-country season (even though it severely cuts into reading time) and the CV boys are doing really well this season.  The kid even talks to us after races (at least most of them).  And I hope to see the Marching Band put their show on the field sometime soon.  As for reading — it slowed considerably and I have the sense that I may have left off a book from the list.  I had so many 2 week books from the library coming and going that it got chaotic there for a while.

• 100 Malicious Little Mysteries selected by Isaac Asimov, et. al.
• The Patience Stone by Atiq Rahimi
• The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas
• The Hand that First Held Mind by Maggie O’Farrell
• The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
• In Rough Country by Joyce Carol Oates
• The Memory Wall: Stories by Anthony Doerr
• Let Me Finish by Roger Angell
• Father of the Rain by Lily King
• The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Wallace
• The Other Family by Joanna Trollope
• You Lost Me There by Rosecrans Baldwin

This month it is really hard to pick the best read but I am going to go with Let Me Finish by Roger Angell, a long time Fiction Editor and contributor to the New Yorker.  He is well known for his baseball writing but Let Me Finish is a compilation of autobiographical essays; they are simply charming to read and I highly recommend this book.

So what made picking the best read so hard:

• Best Book Group Book: The Hand that First Held Mine – As I have said before, I am fascinated by the idea of memories and this exploration of identity and memory is well worth reading.  And there is lots to discuss for a book group.
• Best travel Book: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet – there is nothing like being absorbed into a different time, country or culture and to have all three present in a well-written book is a treat.
• Best Short Story Collection: The Memory Wall – There were some stories in this collection that were stunning and grabbed your heart.  A few stories fell short for me and that is the only thing that kept this book from being the best read.

Good reads but not quite the best:

• 100 Little Mysteries – one to three page short mystery stories by various authors.  It is a good “I want to read but not stretch” book.
• The Little Stranger – It would have helped if there was some one in the book I could feel connected to but there wasn’t.
• Father of the Rain – about a Daughter trying to come to grips with her father’s alcoholism, this gets the nod for best family drama; I still hope to review this book but it is hard to wrap my brain around it.
• The Slap – I liked the bigger questions it asks; I just found some of it to be uneven.

The so-so list contains two disappointments and one difficult subject:

• In Rough Country: Essays and Reviews – I was looking forward to reading Oates’ essays and reviews and found them mildly disappointing.  I didn’t think there was much depth to the reviews and in my opinion, the writing wasn’t up to her usual standards.
• The Other Family: I really liked Trollope’s Marrying the Mistress and this fell short.
• The Patience Stone: I think this short novel is well worth reading for the illumination it sheds on women in Afghanistan but some of what happens to the woman is difficult to read.

I have only one “Don’t Bother” book and that too was a disappointment because I have read some good reviews – You Lost Me There is the story of a man reflecting back on his marriage after his wife dies.  Victor discovers a series of note cards written by his wife and he finds that her memories of their life together are vastly different from his.  I found the book to be repetitive as well as wandering somewhat so you couldn’t tell what the focus was suppose to be.  Was it about how memories differ? The grief after a partner dies? I felt Mr. Baldwin’s work  could have benefited from some more discerning editing to focus its scope and tighten up the writing.

I have three books going so far this month: Language of Trees (which I need to finish by Monday for book group), Faithful Place by Tana French (bedside book) and What is Left the Daughter by Howard Norman (living room book).

Happy Reading.

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