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 📚
Currently reading: Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World: Essays by Barry Lopez 📚
Currently reading: Whirlybird Island by Ernest Hebert 📚
Finished reading: Himalayan Dhaba by Craig Joseph Danner 📚Not recommended unless you’re one of those people who love it when emergency room doctors start telling graphic stories.
Finished reading: Learning from the Germans by Susan Neiman 📚Quite a good book about what Germany has done to “work off” its Nazi crimes, and what the US could do to work off its slavery crimes.
Finished reading: Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller 📚a useful marketing book. So many in this genre are useless.
Finished reading: Frankie’s Place by Jim Sterba 📚I liked this more than I expected. Well-off white people enjoying their boring summers in Maine in the 1990s. With recipes.
Finished reading: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir 📚Another one of those novels that is full of “and then this happened and then that happened.” I keep reading them through to the end but I don’t love them.