Sunday Caught My Interest

Back from a good trip to Salt Lake with lots of relatives and hugs. Today we are off to one 4th celebration with our small town parade tomorrow. I love to see the decorated bikes and we have a mens group that does a themed dance every year. The lemonade cookies are done and I am getting ready to make S’more crisps next. Tomorrow I am making root beer fudge. I love my Kindle for traveling (haven’t used it much at home). I am currently reading When God was a Rabbit and enjoying it very much. Himself has found a PDF book on the internet, The Last Ringbearer, translated from Russian, that has Mordor’s side of the story from Lord of the Rings – essentially it was a country on the verge of an industrial revolution and ready to abandon magic and superstition. He has a copy of What is Random: Chance and Order in Mathematics and Life – the summer reading of an Engineer. Youngest is on the home stretch of Infinite Jest – he figures he can read about 75-100 pages a day.

Happy Fourth of July and here is what caught my interest this week:

As for my Kindle, I love that volunteers have put various classic writing in the public domain into e-book format and available for free. So I am thinking of downloading Evelina by Fanny Burney reviewed by Chrisbookarama. Written in 1178, this epistolary novel is about a young English girl who has been raised in the country by a guardian, the Reverend Villers. Circumstances send Evelina to London and her letters to the Reverend detail her escapades. Burney is said to be a favorite author of Jane Austin and I remember hearing about her when I was in school but I can’t remember if I read anything by her – my Austin professor being the most boring lecturer in the College.

Sometime ago I read A Stranger in the Family by Robert Barnard, an English crime/suspense writer. It was a good read, good twists that I didn’t see coming so when I read Teresa’s review on Shelf Love  of Out of the Blackout by the same author I looked the book up. A Stranger is about a man who, when his adoptive parents die, discovers that his adoption stems from a kidnapping when he was three. He finds his birth mother and tries, with little help from her, to discover what happened. Out of the Blackout is also about finding roots. In this novel, Simon is evacuated from London to the countryside during the blitz. However, he isn’t on any lists and no one comes forward to claim him after the war. Simon stays with his adoptive family but when he is an adult and in London, he starts remembering things and tries to find out about his past.

I am always looking out for books about running for youngest and Trevor of The Mookse and the Gripes delivers an excellent review of Jean Echenoz’s fictionalized biography of Emile Zátopek, a famoous runner from Czechoslovakia. The novel, simply called Running: A Novel, not only goes over Emile’s running career but also the political events of his life which impacted his running: the German occupation and the post-war Communism of Czechoslovakia. Sounds fascinating. This sounds like a running book I can also read myself and I also want to read Echenoz’s book about Tesla called Lightening which Trevor also reviews. Echenoz also wrote a third fictionalized biography about, and entitled, Ravel. Trevor describes the three books:

All three of these fictionalized biographies are very short at only 150 to 200 pages of generously spaced type, and they recount these lives with the charm of a great storyteller who can use understatement, timing, pace, and a variety of emotions to sweep the reader up.  Echenoz creates an intimacy between the narrator (just some unnamed, third-person narrator; we’ll call him Echenoz) and the reader; it’s as if we’re sitting together during the evening.

One of the blogs I found through the Literary Giveaway Blog Hop is Annabel Gaskell of Gaskella. I knew I would like her blog as soon as I read the list of books she was giving away and was not disappointed. She lately reviewed Natasha Solomon’s The Novel in the Viola. Solomon’s first book Mr. Rosenblum’s List also got good reviews. The Novel in the Viola is about a well-bred Jewish girl who escapes from Austria just before the war and enters into service at a large country house. The book describes her change in status, her relationship with the others in the house, and the effect of the war on those great houses. Annabel says it is charming and it sounds perfect for a nice summer read.

There was a time, long ago, when I was obsessed with WWII, particularly stories of allied soldiers escaping from prison camps or other dire situations.  Kim of Reading Matters reviews one such book originally written by an English Journalist Herbert E. Bates called Fair Stood the Wind for France. The novel is about a crew of five that was shot down over France. The leader of the crew, Franklin, sustains and injury that necessitates him staying behind, hidden at a farm. Kim, who has excellent taste in literature says, “Fair Stood the Wind for France is not only destined to be on my list of favourite reads of 2011 at year’s end, but one of my favourite books of all time. Do beg, borrow or buy a copy if you can.”

Happy Reading!