Sunday Caught My Interest

We have had a beautiful weekend – doors have been open so the cat feels safe in coming and going (closed doors make it easier for murderers to get kitties), Himself and Eldest were working in shorts and I am currently sitting on the couch sore as anything having moved dirt for two days. We decided to put our garden in this year in raised beds to make it easier to care for and to have some place for the dirt we removed from the front yard in making the patio there. So far I filled one bed, eldest filled another and I will slowly work on the other three over the week.

It was another week of not much reading. A friend is undergoing lots of medical tests and appointments and since I am the scribe for the appointments and the driver for the tests I have been busy. I had to put The Translation of the Bones aside (as it did not lend itself to a start/stop reading pattern) and found a new mystery at the library to put in my bag – Three Graves Full by Jamie Mason. It is pretty good so far.

Here is what caught my interest this week:

I have never heard of Elizabeth McCraken but I was interested in learning about her after reading the first paragraph of The Giant’s House: A Romance on Diane’s Blog, Bibliophile by the Sea. McCraken was named one of the 20 Best Young American Novelists by Granta magazine and according to Wikipedia, the only person who reads Ann Patchett’s manuscripts during the writing process. Set in the 1950’s, McCraken’s debut novel is about a 26 year-old librarian feeling life is passing her by and an eleven-year-old boy growing taller and taller. The two are drawn together by their loneliness and over the years develop a relationship.

Nor have I heard of Peter Taylor, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1987 for his second novel, A Summons to Memphis. Danielle of A Work in Progress features this novel as part of her Teaser  A middle-aged man is summoned back to the south by his two spinster sisters to help them prevent their elderly father from remarrying a younger woman. Danielle writes, “This is a story of ‘revenge, resolution, and redemption’.” And it is set in the south as well – sounds like a winner.

Since we are in the south, next is Fire in the Canebreak: The Last Mass Lynching in America by Laura Wexler. While this book is non-fiction, the Literary Omnivore speaks of it as a detective story. In July 1946 two men and two women, blacks were shoot by a mob of white men. Wexler, in her narrative, is search for the truth of what happened as no perpetrator has ever been convicted. In 1991, a white witness came forth but there are a large number of holes in his story as well. This time in history is not as well known to me as the later civil rights era. There were raising racial tensions due to black servicemen returning home from the war, labor issues, as well as political issues and this book seems to be a well-thought exploration of this era.

Happy Reading!

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