Sunday Caught My Interest

The strawberries are all transplanted and the five raised garden beds have been made and placed in the garden. They just need to fill with dirt but I was hit by a small bout of illness and yucky weather so that task remains for next week. I did rearrange all my cupboards in the kitchen all of which will thoroughly confuse everyone but it was extremely soul satisfying.

I finished Three Graves Full by Jamie Mason, and All Men are Liars by Alberto Manguel (loved it) and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Shaffer and Barrows (a re-read for book group). I also tried to read The Lighthouse by Alison Moore and found it very difficult to get into. I have to return it to the library tomorrow and I am wondering if it is worth checking it out again at some point and trying to finish it. Any opinions? If it gets better or is worth reading, I am willing to try but as of now I am on the fence for this one.

Here is what caught my interest this week:

Leanne Shapton is a Canadian artist and graphic novelist, a genre that I am not particularly interested in. However, The Book Snob reviewed her memoir Swimming Studies which seems to go beyond a simple memoir – rather it is, as described by Book Snob, “series of essays, interspersed with artwork and photography, are on an eclectic mix of topics and move from childhood memories to her modern-day existence as a late thirty something artist living in New York. All are connected by her obsession with swimming and the hold it continues to have on her thought processes and interests.” I was so interested in Shapton after reading the review, that I looked her up and I also want to read her book Important Artifacts and Personal Property From the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion and Jewelry. This book is in the form of an auction catalog and the reader has to discern the couple’s relationship and subsequent break-up through the photographs and captions of their various belongings. Shapton seems so interesting and different in her approach to the written word that both of these works are going on the list.

Danielle of A Work in Progress brings another memoir to my attention, Paula Fox’s Borrowed Finery. Fox, born in 1923, is perhaps better known for her children’s work (she won a Newbery Medal for The Slave Dancer) but she also wrote adult fiction. She was rejected by her mother and shuttled between relatives and friends. The title “refers to the lack of permanency in her life growing up.” Danielle points out that this isn’t a “misery” memoir, rather it is an examination of a life without roots. What I find really interesting is that Paula, who gave up her daughter for adoption, is (according to Wikipedia), the grandmother of Courtney Love.

Beauty is a Sleeping Cat reviews a book by Timothy Findley, a Canadian author described on the back of the book as Canada’s greatest living writer. Her copy of the book, The Wars, was written in 2001 and Findley died in 2002. He is another author I have never heard of and he has a wide range of work including drama. memoir, short story and ten novels. The Wars, about a young Canadian officer in World War I, is not readily available in the United States but Findley’s later novel, Pilgrim is available. Pilgrim attempts to kill himself but is unsuccessful. He is brought to Carl Jung’s clinic in Switzerland. Pilgrim is an immortal and tells his story to Jung who sees the story as a delusion. Having grown up hearing about Jung and his theory of the Collective Unconsciousness, I can’t wait to get my hands on this book.

I just heard that Elizabeth Jane Howard is going to come out with a fifth book in her Cazalet Chronicles taking the family up through the 50’s. Since I will have to wait awhile for it to be published in the United States, I may have to find another family chronicle to read and Kevin from Canada reviews British author Gerald Woodword’s second novel in his trilogy about the Jones family. I’ll Go to Bed at Noon was short-listed for the 2004 Man Booker Prize, however Kevin does recommend that a reader begin with the first book, August which was short-listed for the Whitbread Award (and also reviewed by Kevin).  August covers 15 years of the life in the Jones family as the camp each August in the same farmer’s field. The Jones may seem ordinary, he is a teacher and she is a stay-at-home mom, but there are depths to the members of this family and changes as life goes on.

Finally, Guy Savage reminds me of two books on my to-be-read list by George Gissing, New Grub Street (1891) and The Odd Women (1893). Both written in the late Victorian era and at this time there were more women in England than men so when marriages occurred, there were a number of leftover women – some by choice and others by circumstance. New Grub Street is set in the same literary circles Gissing also inhabited and once again explores relationships in a world with changing mores and roles. I was pleased to see that both books are free on electronic readers.

Happy reading.