Here’s what I read in February. A good and varied reading month!
1. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer & Anne Barrows (277 p.) Such a charming little book, I liked this one so much! An epistolary novel taking place in England just after WWII. The main character strikes up a correspondence with a man on the island of Guernsey, who tells stories about the Nazi occupation, and gets the other members of the literary society to write, also. Loved this.
2. Run: A Novel by Ann Patchett (295 p.) Leaving a lecture on a snowy night, a car almost hits Tip, the adopted black son of the former mayor, but he’s pushed out of the way by a woman, who is hit in his place, leaving her 11-year old daughter to be taken care of by Tip and his family… but she and her mother may have been at that lecture for another reason…
3. Secret Lives by E.F. Benson (316 p.) Imagine a stuffy 1930s-ish London neighborhood, whose leading lady has a secret love of trashy novels … then a meek woman moves into the neighborhood, who obviously doesn’t “fit in,” but she has a secret, too … she’s a writer…
4. At Home in Mitford (The Mitford Years, Book 1) by Jan Karon (446 p.)
5. A Light in the Window (The Mitford Years, Book 2) by Jan Karon (411 p.)
6. These High, Green Hills (The Mitford Years, Book 3) by Jan Karon (333 p.)
7. Out to Canaan (The Mitford Years, Book 4) by Jan Karon (342 p.) Awfully sweet books, rather precious, but enjoyable in a “nothing really happens, but it’s a nice place to visit” kind of way. Father Tim is an Episcopalian priest in the remarkably devout little town of Mitford. Lots of praying, lots of laughs, and a lot of romantic angst when a children’s book author moves in next door. Enjoyable but, even though the series goes on for at least five more books, I’m content to stop here.
8. Once Upon a Day: A Novel by Lisa Tucker (340 p.) Imagine you’ve spent your entire life living in an isolated house, protected by absolutely anything that could harm you by your father, then your brother runs away to see the “outside.” And then your father gets sick … naturally, you’d have to venture into the world yourself to find your brother, and in doing so, face that maybe, just maybe, your father has been lying to you your entire life. Good book.
9. The Magician’s Assistant by Ann Patchett (357 p.) All of Ann Patchett’s books are good, but this is the one I keep going back to most often. Love this. Sabine has only just buried her husband, the (gay) magicial, Parsifal, when she learns that the family he had always told her was dead was, in fact, alive and well in Minnesota…
10. The Intentional Spinner: A Holistic Approach to Making Yarn by Judith Mackenzie-McCuin (149 p.) One of the best books about spinning I think I’ve ever read.
11. Elegance by Kathleen Tessaro (319 p.) Frumpy Louise picks up this 1950 guide to elegant dressing and starts to transform herself … nice little chick-lit kind of book.
12. The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman (635 p.) Fascinating book about all the ways the world is flat these days–what with electronics, satellites, computers, email, and everything else, we don’t just compete with our neighbors for jobs anymore, we compete with people all over the world … which is good for some, bad for others, but definitely a whole new ballgame for all of us!
13. Photography and the Art of Seeing: A Visual Perception Workshop for Film and Digital Photography by Freeman Patterson (154 p.) Photography book that tries to get you to look at things in a new way.
14. Frauen: German Women Recall the Third Reich by Alison Owings (476 p.) This is actually the oldest, unread book in my collection. I’ve had this for over 10 years and kept putting off reading it because it seemed like it was going to be so depressing. Well, it is, in a way, but it’s also fascinating. The author interviewed dozens of German women about their experiences during the Nazi years, hitting as wide a range of women and experiences as she could. Amazing but also very sobering. Glad it hung in there and waited for me to actually read it.
15. Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn (208 p.) Not only a fascinating idea for a book, but a technical writing masterpiece. Ella lives on a small island in the Atlantic devoted to Nollop, the man who penned “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog,” thereby using all 26 letters of the alphabet in a sentence with only 37 letters. But, one day, the Z falls from the memorial in the town center and the island government decides that means that they shouldn’t use the letter Z any more, so it’s banished. Then the Q falls. And the J. And … you get the idea. The technical challenges of writing this book are massive … how do you write letters (because the entire book is written via letters between characters), that don’t use an ever-growing assortment of forbidden letters? It’s a masterpiece AND, even better, a darned entertaining one at that. The creative spelling and vocabulary toward the end is laugh-out-loud funny (at least to me). Love this book.
16. A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby (333 p.) Suppose that, one New Year’s Eve, you decided to kill yourself and so climbed up to the top of a noted suicide spot, ready to jump … and found three other people planning to do the same thing? Well, it’s not really something you can do in a crowd, so maybe you’re all better off bonding together to try to figure out a way to stumble onward. This is a good book, good story, but with an excessive amount of bad language (which I’m just Puritan-American enough to find unnecessary). But, still, it’s an enjoyable book with a good ending.
17. I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak (357 p.) Now, suppose that you were in a bank being robbed by a particularly inept burglar, and that you helped capture him. And that, after that, you started getting cards in the mail with names or addresses of people who needed help … what would you do? This is really a fantastic book. It’s geared towards YA, according to the award it won, which surprises me a bit, with its language, violence and sex … all of which are present but not truly offensive … but the story is great.
18. History of Love by Nicole Krauss (255 p.) Such a delightful, quirky kind of novel. It’s beautifully written and yet unique. It tells the story of two people–Leo Gursky, a Polish Jew who lost his family in WWII and now lives alone in New York, and Alma, a young teenager whose father has recently died and whose mother gets a commission to translate the book, A History of Love, where Alma got her name … the entire last third of this book just makes me smile.
19. The Soloist by Mark Salzman (284 p.) This has been sitting, unread, on my shelf for ages, so I finally pulled it out. It was good and kept my interest, but I didn’t love it. Start with a cello teacher who was a child prodigy, but hasn’t been able to perform for years. Throw in a new, incredibly gifted student, and jury duty on a murder trial, mix, and see what you get. Aptly named because, ultimately, the man is on his own.
20. For the Love of Knitting, edited by Kari Cornell (160 p.) A lovely collection of essays, short stories, pictures (especially vintage pictures) all about knitting. Really sweet.
21. An Equal Music by Vikram Seth (381 p.) One book about classical music to another–this is about Michael, a member of a string quartet in London, who is still in love with a woman he hasn’t seen in 10 years. Music is vital to this book, starting with the little-known 5-part Opus 104 by Beethoven (which, luckily, is on the available soundtrack. Yes, a book with its own soundtrack!) It’s a melancholy kind of book, but beautiful.
Tags: Monthly Reading List, Reading by --Deb
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