Currently reading: Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane 📚
Finished reading: The High Sierra: A Love Story by Kim Stanley Robinson 📚A beautiful book. It was an enjoyable way to get to know the author. I hiked in the Sierra Nevada as a 20-something and the book brought back good memories.
Currently reading: The Promise by Damon Galgut 📚
Finished reading: Adam Bede (Broadview Editions) by George Eliot 📚A surprisingly modern novel. So much about class and unfairness and gender and choices and the lack thereof. I loved it.
Finished reading: Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen 📚Tales of good people behaving badly. But they behaved so badly that it was hard to maintain interest in and empathy for them.
Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment.
Currently reading: The Alchemy of Us by Ainissa Ramirez 📚
Finished reading: The Story Of The Lost Child by Elena Ferrante 📚I’m sad to finish this quartet of novels, they are each so so good. I didn’t know that no one knows who the author is: Elena Ferrante: Who Is Behind the Pseudonym? - The Atlantic
Currently reading: Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen 📚
Currently reading: Adam Bede (Broadview Editions) by George Eliot 📚
Finished reading: The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery 📚I quite enjoyed this even as the main characters annoyed me from time to time. It’s needlessly sad at the end but I can see why the author chose to do it. Beautifully written, in translation from original French.
Finished reading: Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante 📚Book 3 of 4. I described these books to someone as “Jane Austen for the second half of the 20th century.” I feel confident that they will be read a hundred years from now.
Finished reading: Bonita Avenue by Peter Buwalda 📚a disturbing book though mostly in a good way. I skipped the most violent or abusive parts. Thought-provoking on the topic of who is the victim and who is the perpetrator, especially when it comes to generational trauma.
Finished reading: A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine 📚A fun summer read but ultimately too fluffy.
Currently reading: The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery 📚
Currently reading: Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg 📚
Currently reading: A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine 📚
Currently reading: Bonita Avenue by Peter Buwalda 📚thanks to @ton for the recommendation at a Reader’s Republic meetup.
Finished reading: Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki 📚I loved this novel. Sorta SciFi, sorta Fantasy, but all great. A fun summer read with plenty of characters who are uncommon stars.
Finished reading: A Desolation Called Peace (Teixcalaan Book 2) by Arkady Martine 📚Fantastic world building but somehow it just doesn’t all hang together with a bit too much Deus ex Machina. However, it’s good enough that I want to read the first in the series, A Memory Called Empire, which garnered so much praise.
Currently reading: Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki 📚
Finished reading: Whirlybird Island by Ernest Hebert 📚Worth reading for Hebert fans, which I am.
Finished reading: Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World: Essays by Barry Lopez 📚A beautiful book with a useful perspective on nature and living a good life. It saddens me to know that his home burned in a wildfire. Remembering Barry Lopez, McKenzie River and Finn Rock resident
Currently reading: A Desolation Called Peace (Teixcalaan Book 2) by Arkady Martine 📚I haven’t read the first one A Memory Called Empire but so far it seems fine to begin with Book 2. Book 1 has been hard to get from my Library.
Finished reading: The Story of a New Name (Neapolitan Novels Book 2) by Elena Ferrante 📚oh my, these novels are SO GOOD. They are searing and painful and contain topics I hate (abuse, misogyny) but the world is so real and the characters so well drawn. I am in awe of the writing.
Currently reading: Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay by Elena Ferrante 📚