Sunday Caught My Interest

Happy Sunday – I am back at home. My cat is very disgruntled that I have been gone so long and the dog was ho hum at first but then needed a couch cuddle. It is nice to have the whole family back together and the great thing is seeing all of youngest’s friends after their first year of college. Not much reading this week. I have started The Bird House by Kelly Simmons and Ashes to Dust by Yrsa Sigurdardóttir. I hope to finish these this week as well as get the house back in order.

Here is what caught my interest this week:

Matthew from A Guy’s Moleskin Notebook is reading The Sweet Hereafter by Russell Banks, an author whom I have heard about but never read. The novel is about a small town which suffers a huge tragedy when a school bus is in an accident and many of the town’s children are killed. Told from many perspectives, the book explores how people need to find a reason for the unreasonable, someone to blame. I remember when there was a school bus accident in California and article after article of the aftermath as time passed. It sounds like a hard subject but the novel definitely sounds worth reading.

Danielle of A Work in Progress always has the best book lists. One of the books she has recently acquired is Millions Like Us by Virginia Nicholson. While this book is not yet available in the states, her earlier book Singled Out is. This non-fiction work focuses on how two million British women lived without a man as a life partner after WWI. My grandmother’s choice of a husband was also dictated by who survived not only WWI but the influenza epidemic as well. I look forward to reading the accounts of how these woman coped, some badly and some re-writing their expectations to live fulfilling lives.

Iris of Iris on Books is hosting Dutch Literature Month. One of the books she has mentioned recently is The Ten Thousand Things by Maria Dermot. Iris describes the book:

Felicia, a woman who returns with her baby son to an island in the Moluccas, Indonesia, after she has been away for many years. The island is reigned by her grandmother. There, she learns that everything carries stories: nature, houses, and all other objects. Some are to be feared, others to be respected. You may even meet the dead. This book, in which time and storylines circle around each other, expand and retract, is one of the first works of “magical realism” in Dutch fiction.

Iris goes on to say that if you like a straight forward story, this novel isn’t for you. I do like books that have a mystical note to them so I think this one will go one the list.

Kim from Reading Matters highlights a book based on a true case of isolation, abuse, and the exploitation of children. However, Lauren Davis, the author of Our Daily Bread, only alludes to the abuse and focuses more on the notion of the other.The novel is set in a small rural Canadian town dominated by a strict fundamentalist church. There are a few characters who try to maintain a live away from the church’s scrutiny as well as “the poverty-stricken Erskine clan eke out an existence by growing cash crops of marijuana and burgling homes and shops in the town. Recently they have turned to “cooking” crystal meth (methamphetamine) in a caravan.” Kim loved this book and I think I may like it as well.

Claude Lanzmann is not a name that is well know in America however you may have heard about his oral history documentary of the Holocaust, Shoah. It turns out that Lanzmann has had a rich and complex life, first as a Jew in hiding in France, a member of the resistance and then as an editor of es temps Modernes working with Sarte as well as many other literary figures in Europe. Winstonsdad reviews Lanzmann’s autobiography The Patagonian Hare and I love it when a blogger’s review makes you want to run out and pick up the book right away.

I have mentioned before how much I like books that highlight the importance of place – where the place a novel is set is almost a character in the book. Little did I know that there was a prize for such a novel. The Ondaatje Prize is given by the Royal Society of Literature for “a work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry which evokes the ‘spirit of a place’.” Cornflower Books has a post on this year’s short list for the 2012 prize.

Finally, Jen at Devourer of Books has a post on four books and one documentary based on events in North Korea, both fiction and non-fiction. If you are interested in this part of the world, it is worth checking out. She also has individual posts reviewing each work.

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