Sunday Caught My Interest

A wet and rainy week in the Hinterland led to sunshine today and the promise of a beautiful week ahead. I have managed a few handfuls of strawberries from the garden this week trying to get to them before the rabbits and squirrels. Much of this week was spent with my friend who had a hard time with her cancer treatment. I did manage to finish Alan Bennett’s The Lady in the Van. I am also halfway through Fly Away Peter by David Malouf and A Coin in Nine Hands by Marguerite Yourcenar both of which I am enjoying. I also picked up There Was an Old Woman by Hallie Ephron but I did not like it very much – I ended up just skimming through it and was disappointed. Himself is away this weekend and most of the next week so I hope to get a lot of reading done.

Here is what caught my interest this week:

I loved William Maxwell’s So Long See You Tomorrow and have some of his other novels on my to-be-read list and now I have to add Time Will Darken It (and even bump it up the list) all due to The Book Snob’s fabulous review. Set in a Midwest town at the turn of the 20th century – Maxwell once again deftly shows the repercussions which build up over a series of ordinary things. Emotions build as Franz Potter hosts some family much to his pregnant wife’s dismay. It is a plot that sounds so simple, but I have seen what Maxwell can do with simplicity.

S. Krishna reviews a book about the war in Afghanistan from the unique perspective of those left behind, What Changes Everything by Masha Hamilton. Krishna points out that while this novel may seem like a series of connected short stories, it is instead, a novel with a large cast of characters. This is the story of those impacted by the war and how they deal with their losses. It is a short read that sounds like it packs a pretty good punch – it also sounds like a good book group book. Hamilton has extensive experience as a journalist both in the middle east and Russia. She has also written several novels. I was also pleased to see that she is very involved in The Afghan Women’s Writing Project (To Tell One’s Story is a Human Right) with 30% of the E-Book profits going to the organization.

A few years ago I read Hiroshima in the Morning by Rahna Reiko Rizzuto – a book I am still processing (I have very conflicting feelings about this book). The memoir, among other things, is about how a mother balances writing, creativity, and the rest of life. Perhaps I need another perspective and I may have found one. Tales from the Reading Room had a discussion about Elif Shafak’s memoir Black Milk: On the Conflicting Demands of Writing, Creativity, and Motherhood. Shafak is a highly regarded and award- winning Turkish writer and she sounds absolutely fascinating. She was raised by her diplomat mother and her very traditional grandmother in a cultural that does not necessarily value female independence. Shafak seems like a very interesting person and I think I may be on the lookout for this book.

Many years ago when the boys were young, Himself traveled a lot for work. One of our family rituals was to stand on the front porch and wave our feet to him as he got into the car. It sounds like a really silly thing to do but having a set thing to do  at the beginning of their dad’s trip really helped the boys. My family growing up had lots of rituals and it is something I have tried to incorporate into my own home. This idea was solidified when I read The Intentional Family by family therapist William J. Doherty when it first came out. So when I saw the name of a book in Iris on Books Blog – I had to find out more about it. Rituals by Dutch author Cees Nooteboom contains the reflections of Inni Winthrop, who has failed in a suicide attempt. He then looks at life in the Netherlands over a period of thirty years by examining the rituals of two men he knows, one using time as a ritual and the other using Japanese rituals. I love the premise of this book but i haven’t read anything by this author. However A. S. Byatt once called Cees Nooteboom “one of the greatest modern novelists” and, according to Wikipedia, he has been considered for the Nobel Prize so it may well be worth my time.

Finally, Fleur in Her World has a lovely list of books set in Cornwall so if you are in the mood for an English summer vacation without leaving home, there is lots to choose from. Only one is not available in the United States (The Burying Beetle by Ann Kelley) and a few are only available for electronic readers. The Wilke Collins’ book, Rambles Beyond Railways, is available for free on electronic devices.

And Salon.com had a wonderful article about a study that shows how Reading Novels Makes Us Better Readers (courtesy of Chrisbookarama)

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