Category Archives: Reading habits

Library Checkout: April 2020

By Rebecca Foster on April 27, 2020 | 26 Comments

No new library books coming in this month, of course: my public library system is closed until at least the end of May, and the university campus is currently off-limits as well. But I had a stockpile that was more than large enough to see me through this month and next.

What have you been reading from your local libraries? Feel free to use the image above and leave a link to your blog in the comments if you’ve taken part, and/or tag me on Twitter (@bookishbeck / #TheLibraryCheckout). As usual, I give ratings where applicable, plus links to reviews of books I haven’t already featured.

READ

Youth by Tove Ditlevsen
Other People’s Countries by Patrick McGuinness
Nemesis by Philip Roth
Pine by Francine Toon
Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson

CURRENTLY READING

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
Reading with Patrick: A teacher, a student and the life-changing power of books by Michelle Kuo
Meet the Austins by Madeleine L’Engle
Oleander, Jacaranda by Penelope Lively
Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels
My Own Country by Abraham Verghese

CURRENTLY SKIMMING

The Changing Mind: A Neuroscientist’s Guide to Aging Well by Daniel Levitin
The Mirror & the Light by Hilary Mantel
What Are We Doing Here?: Essays by Marilynne Robinson
Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and How to Think Smarter about People Who Think Differently by Steve Silberman
Feel Free: Essays by Zadie Smith

CHECKED OUT, TO BE READ

The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather
Owls Do Cry by Janet Frame
The Trick Is to Keep Breathing by Janice Galloway
When I Lived in Modern Times by Linda Grant
Property by Valerie Martin
Becoming a Man by Paul Monette
Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy
Golden Boy by Abigail Tarttelin

ON HOLD, TO BE PICKED UP

The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Daré

IN THE RESERVATION QUEUE

A Thousand Moons by Sebastian Barry
Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams
Can You Hear Me? A Paramedic’s Encounters with Life and Death by Jake Jones
The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo
Guest House for Young Widows: Among the Women of ISIS by Azadeh Moaveni
The Accidental Countryside by Stephen Moss
Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler

RETURNED UNFINISHED

The Cruellest Month by Louise Penny — I’d long been interested in trying a Chief Inspector Gamache mystery. When I saw this on the new books shelf, I figured it would be perfect for April reading. I read the first 35 pages. I liked the preparations for an Easter egg hunt and a séance well enough. I had no trouble figuring out who the characters were, and the writing was undistinguished (lots of missing commas and a few dangling modifiers) but perfectly readable. But by the time there was a moider (page 34), I’d had enough. No way did my interest extend to reading another 420 pages.

What appeals from my stacks?

Posted in: Library Checkout | Tagged: library books, Library Checkout

Pandemic Reading Strategies & Recommendations, Serious or Tongue-in-Cheek

By Rebecca Foster on April 8, 2020 | 26 Comments

If you’ve been spending time blog-hopping or on Twitter over the last few weeks, you will have seen countless riffs on this topic. Everyone’s pondering what’s best to read in these times. All we can get our hands on about plagues (Boccaccio, Camus, Defoe)? Allegories of similarly challenging worldwide disasters (WWII, 9/11)? Childhood favorites? Comfort reads? Funny books? Light, undemanding stuff? Rereads?

My general answer would be: as always, read whatever you want or can – anything that captures your attention is worthwhile. We’re under so much stress that our reading should be entirely unpressured. But to be a little more specific, I’ve gathered reading recommendations on a variety of topics, drawing on lists that others have made and linking to my own blog reviews where applicable.

(Some of these ideas are less serious than others.)

If you are brave enough to learn about zoonotic diseases:

Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammen: This is top-notch scientific journalism: pacey, well-structured, and gripping. The best chapters are on Ebola and SARS; the SARS chapter, in particular, reads like a film screenplay, if this were a far superior version of Contagion. It’s a sobering subject, with some quite alarming anecdotes and statistics, but this is not scare-mongering for the sake of it; Quammen is frank about the fact that we’re still all more likely to get heart disease or be in a fatal car crash.

If you can’t look away from pandemic stories, historical or imagined:

I already had Philip Roth’s Nemesis (set in 1940s New Jersey amid a polio epidemic) out from the library because it was on the Wellcome Book Prize shortlist in 2011. I was also inspired to take Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks (set in the 1660s and featuring an English village that quarantined itself during the Plague) off the shelf. I’m nearing the end of these two and should have my reviews up next week.

You will see no one book referenced more than Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. It’s a wholly believable dystopian novel in which 99% of the population has been wiped out by a pandemic. The remnant bands together not just to survive but to create and preserve art. “What was lost in the collapse: almost everything, almost everyone, but there is still such beauty.” (My full BookBrowse review from December 2014.)

See also this Publishers Weekly list of “13 Essential Pandemic Novels.”

If you’re feeling cooped up…

Infinite Home by Kathleen Alcott: “Edith is a widowed landlady who rents apartments in her Brooklyn brownstone to an unlikely collection of humans, all deeply in need of shelter.” (I haven’t read it, but I do have a copy; now would seem like the time to read it!)

…yet want to appreciate the home you’re stuck in:

Years ago I read and loved At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson and Happier at Home by Gretchen Rubin. I can’t tell you anything more than that because it was before the days when I reviewed everything I read, but these are both reliable authors.

I love the sound of A Journey Around My Room by Xavier de Maistre: “Finding himself locked in his room for six weeks, a young officer journeys around his room in his imagination, using the various objects it contains as inspiration for a delightful parody of contemporary travel writing and an exercise in Sternean picaresque.”

I’m also drawn to Home: The Story of Everyone Who Ever Lived in Our House by Julie Myerson, who combed archives for traces of all the former residents of her 1870s terraced house in Clapham.

If you’re struggling with being on your own:

The Lonely City by Olivia Laing: This remarkable book on outsider artists interweaves biography, art criticism and memoir. Laing is a tour guide into the peculiar, lonely crowdedness you find in a world city.

How to Be Alone by Sara Maitland: Maitland argues that although being alone is easy to achieve, there is an art to doing it properly, and solitude and loneliness are by no means the same thing. Profiling everyone from the Desert Fathers of early Christianity to the Romantic poets, she enumerates all the benefits that solitude confers.

Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton: A one-year account of her writing life in New Hampshire, this is Sarton’s best. The book dwells on the seasonal patterns of the natural world (shovelling snow, gardening, caring for animals) but also the rhythms of the soul – rising in hope but also falling into occasional, inevitable despair.

See also this Penguin UK list of books to read in self-isolation.

If you’ve been passing the time by baking…

The City Baker’s Guide to Country Living by Louise Miller: As chief baker at the Sugar Maple Inn in Guthrie, Vermon, Olivia Rawlings settles into a daily routine of baking muffins, bread and cakes. This is a warm, cozy debut novel full of well-drawn secondary characters and romantic possibilities. There’s nothing clichéd about it, though. Livvy is a sassy narrator, and I loved how Miller documents the rhythms of the small-town country year, including tapping the maple trees in the early spring and a pie baking contest at the summer county fair.

Sourdough by Robin Sloan: Lois Clary, a Bay Area robot programmer, becomes obsessed with baking. “I needed a more interesting life. I could start by learning something. I could start with the starter.” She attempts to link her job and her hobby by teaching a robot arm to knead the bread she makes for a farmer’s market. Madcap adventures ensue. It’s a funny and original novel and it makes you think, too – particularly about the extent to which we should allow technology to take over our food production.

…but can’t find yeast or eggs in the shop:

Yeast: A Problem by Charles Kingsley (1851). Nope, I haven’t read it, but our friend has a copy in his Everyman’s Library collection and the title makes us laugh every time we see it.

The Egg & I by Betty Macdonald: MacDonald and her husband started a rural Washington State chicken farm in the 1940s. Her account of her failure to become the perfect farm wife is hilarious. The voice reminded me of Doreen Tovey’s: mild exasperation at the drama caused by household animals, neighbors, and inanimate objects. “I really tried to like chickens. But I couldn’t get close to the hen either physically or spiritually, and by the end of the second spring I hated everything about the chicken but the egg.” Perfect pre-Easter reading.

And here are a few lists I put together for Hungerford Bookshop:

If you need a laugh:

Fiction:

Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis

The Darling Buds of May (and sequels) by H.E. Bates

Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn

Heartburn by Nora Ephron

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

Anything by Nick Hornby

Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome

Anything by David Lodge

Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher

The Rosie Project (and sequels) by Graeme Simsion

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

Nonfiction:

Anything by Bill Bryson

21st-Century Yokel by Tom Cox

Anything by Gerald Durrell

Anything by Nora Ephron (essays)

This Is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay

Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood

Dear Lupin by Roger Mortimer

Anything by David Sedaris

Little Failure by Gary Shteyngart

If you want to disappear into a long book:

The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber

The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert

The Nix by Nathan Hill

We, the Drowned by Carsten Jensen

Mary Ann Sate, Imbecile by Alice Jolly

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters

If you’re looking for some hope:

Almost Everything: Notes on Hope by Anne Lamott

Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit

Hope Dies Last: Making a Difference in an Indifferent World by Studs Terkel

I’ve been doing a combination of the above strategies, reading about historical plagues in fiction and nonfiction but also doing some rereading and consuming lighter genre stuff like mysteries. I continue to dip into new releases, and I enjoy the ongoing challenge of my reading projects. Right now, I’m working through a few current Women’s Prize longlistees, as well as some past Wellcome Book Prize nominees and Women’s Prize winners, and I’m about to start a third #1920Club title. Plus I’m already thinking about my 20 Books of Summer (I’m considering an all-foodie theme).

What are your current reading strategies?

Posted in: Book lists, Reading habits | Tagged: Abraham Verghese, Adam Kay, Alice Jolly, Anne Lamott, baking, Barbara Kingsolver, Betty MacDonald, Bill Bryson, Book Riot, bread, Carsten Jensen, Charles Dickens, Charles Kingsley, Connie Willis, Curtis Sittenfeld, David Lodge, David Quammen, David Sedaris, Donna Tartt, Elizabeth Gilbert, Emily St. John Mandel, epidemic, Gary Shteyngart, Gerald Durrell, Geraldine Brooks, Graeme Simsion, Gretchen Rubin, H.E. Bates, Haruki Murakami, Hungerford Bookshop, Jeffrey Eugenides, Jerome K. Jerome, John Boyne, John Steinbeck, Julie Myerson, Julie Schumacher, Kathleen Alcott, Kingsley Amis, Literary Hub, loneliness, Louise Miller, Mark Dunn, Mary Doria Russell, May Sarton, Michel Faber, Nathan Hill, Nick Hornby, Nora Ephron, Olivia Laing, pandemic, Patricia Lockwood, Philip Roth, plague, Rebecca Solnit, Robin Sloan, Roger Mortimer, Sara Maitland, Sarah Waters, solitude, sourdough, Stella Gibbons, Studs Terkel, Susanna Clarke, Tom Cox, Wellcome Book Prize, Women’s Prize, Xavier de Maistre, zoonosis

Book Serendipity: 2020, Part I

By Rebecca Foster on April 2, 2020 | 22 Comments

I call it serendipitous when two or more books that I’m reading at the same time or in quick succession have something pretty bizarre in common. Because I have so many books on the go at once – usually between 10 and 20 – I guess I’m more prone to such incidents. I also post these occasional reading coincidences on Twitter. (The following are in rough chronological order.)

A Wisconsin setting in three books within a month (Shotgun Lovesongs by Nickolas Butler, This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel and Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner)

I came across a sculpture of “a flock of 191 silver sparrows” in Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano while also reading Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones.

Characters nearly falling asleep at the wheel of a car in Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner and In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

There’s no escaping Henry David Thoreau! Within the span of a week I saw him mentioned in The Library of Ice by Nancy Campbell, The Snow Tourist by Charlie English, Losing Eden by Lucy Jones and Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner. Plus I’d just read the whole graphic novel Thoreau and Me by Cédric Taling.

Discussions of the work of D.H. Lawrence in Unfinished Business by Vivian Gornick and The Offing by Benjamin Myers

That scientific study on patient recovery in hospital rooms with a window view vs. a view of a brick wall turns up in both Dear Life by Rachel Clarke and Losing Eden by Lucy Jones.

The inverted teardrop shapes mirror each other on these book covers:

Punchy, one-word titles on all these books I was reading simultaneously:

Polio cases in The Golden Age by Joan London, Nemesis by Philip Roth and Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner

An Italian setting and the motto “Pazienza!” in Dottoressa by Susan Levenstein and Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner

Characters named Lachlan in The Ninth Child by Sally Magnusson and The Inland Sea by Madeleine Watts

Mentions of the insecticide Flit in Nemesis by Philip Roth and Sacred Country by Rose Tremain

A quoted Leonard Cohen lyric in Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott; Cohen as a character in A Theatre for Dreamers by Polly Samson

Plague is brought to an English village through bolts of cloth from London in Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks and Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell; both also feature a woman who is a herbal healer sometimes mistaken for a witch (and with similar names: Anys versus Agnes)

Gory scenes of rats being beaten to death in Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell and Nemesis by Philip Roth

Homemade mobiles in a baby’s room in A Theatre for Dreamers by Polly Samson and Sacred Country by Rose Tremain

Speech indicated by italics rather than the traditional quotation marks in Pew by Catherine Lacey and Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson

What’s the weirdest reading coincidence you’ve had lately?

Posted in: book serendipity | Tagged: Ann Napolitano, Anne Lamott, Benjamin Myers, book serendipity, Carmen Maria Machado, Cédric Taling, Charlie English, D.H. Lawrence, Geraldine Brooks, Henry David Thoreau, Italy, Joan London, Laurie Frankel, Leonard Cohen, Lucy Jones, Madeleine Watts, Maggie O’Farrell, Nancy Campbell, Nickolas Butler, Philip Roth, plague, polio, Polly Samson, Rachel Clarke, Rose Tremain, Sally Magnusson, Susan Levenstein, Tayari Jones, Vivian Gornick, Wallace Stegner, Wisconsin

Library Checkout: March 2020

By Rebecca Foster on March 30, 2020 | 10 Comments

(Unusually, here is a second post in one day from me. Library Checkout runs on the last Monday of every month; exceptions are rare!)

The only stockpiling I’ve been doing this month is of books. My public library system finally announced its full closure on the 21st, to last through at least the end of May, so I have no real excuse not to get through most of what I’ve borrowed.

I’ve been working my way through a selection of new releases (notably, skimming Hilary Mantel’s trilogy-ending doorstopper – it’s exquisitely written, of course, but far too long and detailed), plus a few backlist books that coincide with my interests in bibliotherapy, health and life writing. Some very short books – a graphic novel, a poetry collection, and a few essay- or novella-length works – make the “Read” list look longer than it really is.

Once again, I had a lot of DNFs this month because I’d placed holds on buzzy books but found that within a few pages, or after the first chapter, the voice or style didn’t click with me. This is no problem, though; I’ll just think of it as my way of sampling new releases while supporting the library service.

READ

The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie
Dear Life: A Doctor’s Story of Love and Loss by Rachel Clarke
A Story about Cancer (with a Happy Ending) [graphic novel], India Desjardins, illus. Marianne Ferrer [trans. from the French by Solange Ouellet]
Childhood by Tove Ditlevsen
This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel
This Is Pleasure by Mary Gaitskill
Miss Austen by Gill Hornby
The Golden Age by Joan London
The End of the Ocean by Maja Lunde
The Cockroach by Ian McEwan
A Portable Paradise by Roger Robinson [poetry]
Why You Should Read Children’s Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise by Katherine Rundell
Oligarchy by Scarlett Thomas