This fall, so far, my reading list has been much more diverse than normal. I have only read a few thrillers & mysteries, and instead have read more memoirs and fiction that reads like memoirs. It wasn't a conscious decision, but somehow I managed to choose some really, really wonderful books. And through them I've traveled to India, Australia, Hungary, Tibet, Ireland, and Italy. That sounds so pompous and.. uninviting - but please believe me, I have no patience for dry boring stories... these books were all books that drew me in and continued to occupy my thoughts when I was unable to be reading.
The Book I Can't Stop Talking About
Speaking of light reads, after listening to John Grisham's book tour podcasts (they are excellent! I am usually not a huge fan of podcasts, but these were like visiting bookstores to hear authors speak.. and we were doing a lot of road trips at the time, so they were perfect to listen to while driving) I had to read Camino Island. Grisham set out to write a "beach read" and he nailed it. It's about a fictional theft of the Fitzgerald manuscripts from Princeton's library, and also about a bookstore. This is nothing at all like his normal books.
Harlan Coben is second only to Rex Stout on my list of favorite authors. So oddly enough, even though this is not one of my favorite books by him, it's one of my favorite books. It was very, very good. Not his best, but still fantastic.
Room, by Emma Donaghue, remains on my list of all time favorite reads. That is the only reason I picked up this book. I can't imagine I would have ever been interested based on it's description alone... and it is a different read, for me. I loved it so much more than I would have thought possible. Goodreads touts this as a "psychological thriller" - but I don't agree. It is a mystery, but the mystery isn't as interesting as the surroundings. I've read several books since I finished this one, but as I sit here trying to explain why I loved this, I can still picture, the room, the house, the area it is told in.. and there were never long descriptive passages to tell you those things, they were descriptions weaved into the story that stuck with me. "In the latest masterpiece by Emma Donoghue, bestselling author of Room, an English nurse brought to a small Irish village to observe what appears to be a miracle-a girl said to have survived without food for months-soon finds herself fighting to save the child's life.
Tourists flock to the cabin of eleven-year-old Anna O'Donnell, who believes herself to be living off manna from heaven, and a journalist is sent to cover the sensation. Lib Wright, a veteran of Florence Nightingale's Crimean campaign, is hired to keep watch over the girl."
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante is everything I hate in a book. It starts out with a "mystery" that you never return to in this book. It ends abruptly - so abruptly that you may think your book is missing pages. And then you find out that it's actually book one of FOUR, and that the four books are really not stand alone at all, but rahter one monstrously huge book that is cut into 4 books to be sold separately. (I think book two, alone, is 470 pages. )
But what a story... it grips you, pulls you in, and is hard to put down.
(On the other hand, I've started book two, and I am not loving it nearly as much. I want it to move on so I can find out what happened and it's dragging a bit...)
"Beginning in the 1950s in a poor but vibrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples, Ferrante’s four-volume story spans almost sixty years, as its protagonists, the fiery and unforgettable Lila, and the bookish narrator, Elena, become women, wives, mothers, and leaders, all the while maintaining a complex and at times conflictual friendship. Book one in the series follows Lila and Elena from their first fateful meeting as ten-year-olds through their school years and adolescence.
Through the lives of these two women, Ferrante tells the story of a neighborhood, a city, and a country as it is transformed in ways that, in turn, also transform the relationship between her protagonists."
My husband follows Jon Actuff on twitter, and as I started about my 15th project this year (Nope. Not exaggerating. A children's book, a cookbook, two different etsy stores, new craft venture (I got a cricut! LOVE this machine!), three new committees, TWO fiction novels at the same time (I've written approximately 3 chapters for each book - that's it.) a new genealogy book (written about our family history, not genealogy in general) , Redoing a bedroom in our house (with intent to make it the "new" master bedroom, and our current bedroom the new guest room - TWO of our sons got married and moved out this year...)
Well, he may have mentioned 8 or 37 times that John Acuff has this new book out about finishing projects. Finishing, not starting, apparently being the goal. Who knew? I'm the queen of starting. I love to start things. I love to plan them and organize them. Finish them? Uhm... I'm too busy starting the next 12 things!
So this book was written for me. And yes, I finished the book. And the cookbook, and I'm almost finished with the children's book. Did THIS book help me? Maybe. I didn't actually follow the homework each chapter. (Although I always thought his suggestions were great ideas.) But it is a really great book, and a lot of it has stuck with me. My favorite is Choose What To Bomb. I now at least feel better about not keeping up with my email.
Seriously, this is an incredibly practical book that I think I will re-read next year. Because I realized by chapter one that my problem is not really "finishing". My problem is that my kids are grown, for the first time I am facing a truly empty nest, and I have no idea what my focus is supposed to be.... so I am trying everything. And that's ok. This is also a year where I had two weddings (two sons married in one year), two cross country trips, two surgeries, two construction projects on the farm... so it wasn't the best year for finishing projects. And that's ok. Maybe next year I'll make figuring out my goals a project.
