Sunday Caught My Interest

Happy Sunday – himself is down in the basement on a bike ride, youngest is outside on a bike ride and the cat is, of course, right under my nose.  This morning my mom asked me if the Julia Child craze was over – you have to understand, my family watched Julia Child’s Kitchen before it was popular to watch. In fact we had the neighbors over for dinner one Thursday night and they watched the PBS show with us. I can still see the black and white version of Julia merrily cooking away – she made cooking such fun and my mother cooked her way through Joy of Cooking when I was a small girl (and it never occurred to her to talk about it.) I remembered seeing a recent book about Julia on one of the blog hops I was doing (which I can’t find now) so went looking on Amazon – As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child and Avis deVoto edited by Joan Reardon. Avis deVoto was Julia’s friend and unofficial literary agent. She was critical to the publishing of the Joy of Cooking and corresponded with Julia throughout all the changes in culture, politics, and food that were happening at the time. Bon Appetit.

Lots of good reading and book finds this week so here is what Caught My Interest:

I have near read anything by Nick Hornby but when I read Melody’s review of Hornby’s Polysyllabic Spree (what a mouthful), I though it might just add him to my reading list. This work is non-fiction and contains a series of essays about Hornby’s reading life, the books he buys, what he has read, what he wants to read, etc. I am almost finished with Bound to Last: 30 Writers on their Most Cherished Book and really enjoying it – luckily for me, the library has a copy of Spree and it is on order.

Sometimes I catch a showing of Hoarders on TV- and I watch in fascination, in part because my late mother-in-law had hoarding tendencies and my experience in cleaning my father’s apartment when we moved him into assisted living was – painful (and he isn’t a hoarder per se). So when Alyce of At Home With Books reviewed Dirty Secret by Jessie Scholl I was interested. Jessie is the daughter of a hoarder who goes back home to help her mother when she is ill with cancer and at the same time, they must deal with the hoard. I think it is easy to dismiss hoarders as being selfish and lazy but hoarding is such a complex psychological issue that there are no easy answers. It is nice to see books like Dirty Secret come out to show this complexity in for more depth than a 60 minute television show.

Frances of Nonsuch Books introduced me to a debut novel by Tatjana Soli called The Lotus Eaters. In this case, the lotus eaters are the journalists and photographers covering the Vietnam War, particularly female photojournalist Helen Adams. In a backdrop of violence, death, and destruction, the journalists try to do their jobs while coveting some psychological distance between what they see and what they capture with their lenses and words. The reviews I have read of this book speak of its simple power to describe grand themes such as addiction to violence and the search for love and at the same time, speak of the effect of these issues on individuals. I think I will watch for this one at my library,

A first A Geography of Secrets by Frederick Reuss would seem like a simple  spy thriller but after reading Nicole’s review at Linus’s Blanket the book seems to be a more complex investigation of secrets and shadows and their effect on people who cannot share their burdens with the people around them. I was so interested I looked up the author’s back list and have a few more of his works in mind to read.

Speaking of secrets, family secrets is a favorite subject of mine so when I found Juxtabook’s review of Blackmoor by Edward Hogan I immediately ordered it from the library.  Set in dilapidated village in Derbyshire, Blackmoor has two threads, the first is about a villager and his albino wife who is viewed with great suspicion by the villagers. The second strand takes place ten years later in the present and concern’s Beth’s son. Vincent, the son, has a need to know about his mother and it seem his father has a need to keep things buried.

Two mysteries caught my interest – the first from Tom of A Common Reader – A Quiet Flame is the latest Bernie Gunther mystery by Phillip Kerr. This novel is set in the 1950’s with Bernie emigrating to Argentina to escape the devastation in Germany as well as his past as a detective during the war. I was so intrigued, I ordered one of the first in the series from my library. I might not get to read them all (I am unsure how many are translated) but want to work my way up to reading A Quiet Flame. Bernie sounds like a complex character and when you combine that with a well-written plot, you have a good mystery.

I thank Kimbofo of Reading Matters for the second mystery also takes place in the 1950’s but this time is set in South Africa which allows its author to explore Apartheid with its violence and cruelty. A Beautiful Place to Die by Malla Nunn is about a white South African policeman who goes to a rural town to investigate the murder of a white man.  The novel is about more than the simple crime, it becomes a struggle for the truth against political expediency. It is also described as a well written literary mystery.

My mid-century spree continues – Portrait of a Mother as a Young Woman by Friedrich Christian Delius is described beautifully by Max at Pechorin’s Journal. In fact he states he read it twice, both times straight through and if he had read it in 2010, it would have made his top of the year list. Portrait is a novella, set in Italy in 1943. A young German woman lives in Rome with her solider husband. She is on her way to a concert when she begins to think of the dangers her husband is in and then tries to not think. Set in a single afternoon, Portrait seems to be just that, an exploration of one of the everyday people caught up in a war and a totalitarian regime.  Nicholas Lezard, of The Guardian, states, “The book’s last paragraph, overtly expressing nothing more than the young woman’s intention to write a letter, is one of the most moving conclusions I’ve ever read.”

Finally, Matthew of A Guy’s Moleskin Notebook talks movingly about one of the books he loves and wonders why it isn’t more widely known. Shadow Without a Name by Ignacia Padilla, a Mexican author, is a complex work with four separate narrators each talking about identity, trading identities, questioning who we are. Moving from 1918 just before WWI and 1957 in Buenos Aires, and featuring stories within stories, the reader is challenged to try and understand just who is talking. The author leaves clues scattered about and it is up to the reader to come to their own conclusions. I can get this one on Inter-Library loan and I can’t wait.

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