My book blogging has reached a new low in these past six months, but I'm trying to catch up with regular reviews! I am slowly, slowly catching up, but some of these links will go to amazon.com rather than my own review.
Books Read January 1–June 1
Best Books So Far
- Unbroken: an absolutely stunning novel about survival and resilience during WWII (nonfiction)
- The Story of Beautiful Girl: Absolutely mesmerizing story of Lynnie, a beautiful inmate at the School for the
Incurable and Feebleminded; Homan, a deaf man who is also locked away
there; and Martha, a widow in her 70s who becomes tangled in their
lives.
- Expecting Adam: Martha and John, young Harvard graduate students, find out the life-changing news: their unborn baby, a boy,
has Down Syndrome. They are shocked beyond words. This is Harvard, the
land of geniuses and IQs off the charts. There is no room in Harvard for
anything "less" than "perfect." Terminate now, they are told
over and over again. This is their family's beautiful story. (memoir)
- And, well, of course I have to add To Kill a Mockingbird, which I read again while teaching American Lit. It just never loses it's magic for me.
Biggest Surprises
The good: What Alice Forgot. I almost put this one back on the shelf because the jacket description sounded silly, but I absolutely loved this story of what we'd like to keep forgotten.
The bad: Other Voices, Other Rooms. I've been wanting to read this Truman Capote novel for decades—since singer/songwriter Nanci Griffith came out with her album by the same name. She's holding a copy of the novel on the album cover. (Yes, I know there aren't "albums" anymore, but you know what I mean.) I was pretty disappointed in this short novel, which I actually bought with delight at Shakespeare and Co. Bookseller while we were in Paris.
Books Read in Book Club
- Interred with Their Bones. Mixed reviews in book club, but the general consensus was similar to my review.
- Moonflower Vine. Well-received. Those who read it loved it!
- The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Unfortunately that was a book club in which only a few members could come, so we didn't have much discussion. But this is one of my favorites! I did a paper on it in graduate school.
I must admit that I did not read the other two books for Book Club. Bill Bryson's
A Walk in the Woods was one. I detest this book. OK, I actually only read a few chapters of it a few years ago, but I threw it across the room. I just couldn't bear to hear about a guy who can go buy anything he wants to randomly hike the A.T. because he thinks it would be a great story. My husband has a lifelong dream of hiking the A.T., so I have personal issues, I know. The other book was
The Paris Wife, the story of Ernest Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley. I'd still like to read this one, but I thought I was going to be absent from book club that month. And while I didn't read
The Paris Wife, we did pay homage to Hemingway's digs and neighborhood while we were in Paris.
 |
| Where Hemingway and Hadley lived in Paris |
Movies/Plays from Books
• With my American Lit class, I watched
The Crucible and
Ethan Frome. I loved both of them, although I've seen them both before. We're going to be getting together this summer to watch
To Kill a Mockingbird and a few other classic movies based on American literature.
• We also went to see the play
A Raisin in the Sun at the Clarence Brown Theatre at the campus of U. Tenn. The kids seemed to like the play pretty well. I love hearing them discuss how this actor wasn't what he expected, or how a particular scene was done differently that she imagined from reading the play.
• I watched
Sarah's Key finally. I liked it well enough, but it's been years since
I read the book. I've heard others say they didn't like the movie at all because it deviated so much from the book; fortunately, I have a short memory for such things.
• I'm really looking forward to seeing
The Great Gatsby. I re-read the novel (my old college copy) on the train from Paris to Normandy and loved it almost as much as I did way back when. I think I loved it most in college, but I remember some great discussions from my high school English class as well. We got to France right before the movie was released, and the metro was plastered with movie posters. They're excited in France, too!
Added to My TBR List
- The Keeper of Secrets by Julie Thomas.
- The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls by Anton Disclafani.
- A Hundred Summers by Beatriz Williams
- The Silver Star by Jeannette Walls
- 41 False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers by Janet Malcolm
- Ghost Moth by Michele Forbes
- Songs of Willow Frost by Jamie Ford
- And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini
- Riding the Bus with My Sister by Rachel Simon
- The Baker's Daughter by Sarah McCoy
- Clair de Lune by Jetta Carleton
- In My Father's Country by Saima Wahab
- Autobiography of Us by Aria Beth Sloss
- Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee
- Losing Julia by Jonathan Hull
- Astray by Emma Donoghue
- The Round House by Louise Erdrich
- Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo
- Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Mataxas
And last, but not least, a few more bookish photos from our trip to France!
 |
| Jesse at Baudelaire's grave |
 |
| Samuel Beckett, no longer waiting for Godot |
 |
| Victor Hugo's tomb marker in the crypt beneath the Pantheon |
 |
| And a bit about Les Mis while in the Paris sewers. Yes, really. |
 |
| My oldest, an English major, loved the booksellers along the Seine |
 |
| Breathing in the history, walking in the footsteps of great writers! |
 |
| We all had to buy a book or two. |
 |
| Beneath the Pantheon. |
And that is my mid-year update! Now, to get back to regular book reviews!
I have had these two novellas on my TBR list forever—at least for 20 years. It was about 20 years ago that Nanci Griffith came out with the album "Other Voices, Other Rooms." On the cover photo, she is holding that book by Truman Capote, so I've always known I need to read it. 
