Oh my gosh, the writing here, yours and the Machado short story. I am reading Know My Name by Chanel Miller, and the writing there is pretty spectacular, too. Curiously, it reminds me in rhythm and style very much of the excerpt you've shared. Sentences building one on top of the other, the chosen details deceptively mundane, building to a devastating crescendo. Oh, literature! I'm so gratified to be able to immerse myself in it again. This is the gift of the world slowing down, I think. I'm very struck by the poetry of the titles of the books you mention here. So evocative, every one.
That piece from a short story is beautiful, Elizabeth. Thanks. I just finished reading Hamlet--again. Reading Hamnet led me back to the play. Oh what a piece of work . . . ! On my Kindle I'm reading To the Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey. Just getting started on George Saunders--A Swim in the Pond in the Rain. Good time to stay away from the web. Let's just read and breathe and love each other.
If there is a book buyers anonymous group, I would definitely join. In the meantime, I'll do what you do...acquire, stack 'em up in lists and in online carts and by my bed. Loved your description of the online chatter...
"The Ten Thousand Doors of January," by Alix E. Harrow. YA fantasy, placed in early 1900s with the main character a girl being brought up by a white man who collects antiquities and who employs her father in scouring the world for rare items for him. But it turns out there are other worlds, accessible through Doors (thin places, maybe), all over the world, and her father is from one of them, looking for a way home, and her guardian is not who or what he seems.
I'm reading "Hillbilly Elegy" which is shedding some light on my father's background of poverty and Scots. Why people move and migrate. My father's family moved a lot, looking for work and a better life I'm guessing.
I read "Cutting For Stone" and enjoyed that very much.
Thank you for asking. I've just read Sand Talk, by Tyson Yunkaporta, for the second time. After finishing it, I went back to the beginning and liked it even more on the second reading. So much that after I returned it to the library, I bought it in paperback. Now I'm reading The Crooked Mirror, by Louise Steinman, on interlibrary loan. Given that I have been binge-buying books on my severely limited income to relieve stress, I need Bookbuyers Anonymous to gently direct me back to the public library (-:
I'm reading "Roughing It" by Mark Twain and indeed, he does rough it throughout the pages of the book, riding a stagecoach across the country, searching for gold and silver, being stranded by snow storms and floods. He has a great deal to say about Mormons and Brigham Young is still alive when he's in Utah. I have to admit that I can only read so much every night before I find myself drifting off into sleep. Sometimes I find his hyperbole hysterical, sometimes I find it sleep-inducing.
Well, I realize this isn't on a par with the other books being read here but I'll mention it all the same. I'm still stuck in the murder mystery groove so now it's Literary Murder by Batya Gur, translated from the original Hebrew. I find this genre - and especially this writer - a great escape from life's stresses and grief. And speaking of writing, I will do a bit of grandmotherly bragging: My nearly-7 year old granddaughter just sold her first short story (and I mean Very Short) to the children's podcast MoonHouse!!
Elizabeth! I didn't call you.My time with Eden was so brief. But-
Just finished A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews, so good and laugh out loud funny.
Also Marilyn Robinson's series after Gilead (surely one of the best books ever)-Home, Jack, Lila. She is a treasure. Still chipping away at A Promised Land by our dear Barack.
Finished Hamnet and then read I am I am I am by O’ Farrell. Interesting how her personal life informed Hamnet. Also read Erasure by Percival Everett a novel about race and writing and bitingly funny.
Oh my gosh, the writing here, yours and the Machado short story. I am reading Know My Name by Chanel Miller, and the writing there is pretty spectacular, too. Curiously, it reminds me in rhythm and style very much of the excerpt you've shared. Sentences building one on top of the other, the chosen details deceptively mundane, building to a devastating crescendo. Oh, literature! I'm so gratified to be able to immerse myself in it again. This is the gift of the world slowing down, I think. I'm very struck by the poetry of the titles of the books you mention here. So evocative, every one.
That piece from a short story is beautiful, Elizabeth. Thanks. I just finished reading Hamlet--again. Reading Hamnet led me back to the play. Oh what a piece of work . . . ! On my Kindle I'm reading To the Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey. Just getting started on George Saunders--A Swim in the Pond in the Rain. Good time to stay away from the web. Let's just read and breathe and love each other.
If there is a book buyers anonymous group, I would definitely join. In the meantime, I'll do what you do...acquire, stack 'em up in lists and in online carts and by my bed. Loved your description of the online chatter...
"The Ten Thousand Doors of January," by Alix E. Harrow. YA fantasy, placed in early 1900s with the main character a girl being brought up by a white man who collects antiquities and who employs her father in scouring the world for rare items for him. But it turns out there are other worlds, accessible through Doors (thin places, maybe), all over the world, and her father is from one of them, looking for a way home, and her guardian is not who or what he seems.
I wrote a comment and didn't hit post. Fuck!
I'm reading "Hillbilly Elegy" which is shedding some light on my father's background of poverty and Scots. Why people move and migrate. My father's family moved a lot, looking for work and a better life I'm guessing.
I read "Cutting For Stone" and enjoyed that very much.
Thank you for asking. I've just read Sand Talk, by Tyson Yunkaporta, for the second time. After finishing it, I went back to the beginning and liked it even more on the second reading. So much that after I returned it to the library, I bought it in paperback. Now I'm reading The Crooked Mirror, by Louise Steinman, on interlibrary loan. Given that I have been binge-buying books on my severely limited income to relieve stress, I need Bookbuyers Anonymous to gently direct me back to the public library (-:
I'm reading "Roughing It" by Mark Twain and indeed, he does rough it throughout the pages of the book, riding a stagecoach across the country, searching for gold and silver, being stranded by snow storms and floods. He has a great deal to say about Mormons and Brigham Young is still alive when he's in Utah. I have to admit that I can only read so much every night before I find myself drifting off into sleep. Sometimes I find his hyperbole hysterical, sometimes I find it sleep-inducing.
Well, I realize this isn't on a par with the other books being read here but I'll mention it all the same. I'm still stuck in the murder mystery groove so now it's Literary Murder by Batya Gur, translated from the original Hebrew. I find this genre - and especially this writer - a great escape from life's stresses and grief. And speaking of writing, I will do a bit of grandmotherly bragging: My nearly-7 year old granddaughter just sold her first short story (and I mean Very Short) to the children's podcast MoonHouse!!
Elizabeth! I didn't call you.My time with Eden was so brief. But-
Just finished A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews, so good and laugh out loud funny.
Also Marilyn Robinson's series after Gilead (surely one of the best books ever)-Home, Jack, Lila. She is a treasure. Still chipping away at A Promised Land by our dear Barack.
Love you, dear woman.
Finished Hamnet and then read I am I am I am by O’ Farrell. Interesting how her personal life informed Hamnet. Also read Erasure by Percival Everett a novel about race and writing and bitingly funny.