jeannegibbs Posted December 2017
Reading Suggestion, Fiction
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Anne Tyler is a great storyteller. Her stories are generally about families. I've just read "A Spool of Blue Thread" and thought some of you might like it because one of its themes is caregiving. The first third of the book focuses on an elderly woman who doesn't accept that she is declining and her adult children who try to take care of her. I think it presents both sides of this conflict very well. It reminded me of many posts on this site! The rest of the book is also about caring about and for family. Tyler is very good at showing an event from several different perspectives.
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I am reading A Man Called Ove, have been working on it for awhile. I am enjoying it. Just a funny, while trying so hard to be grumpy, old man. The book is quite humorous in places.
I too, enjoy Margaret Truman books. Have some tucked away in a box, next move they will be unpacked.
"I can stand it no longer. I look down at my plate. Stewed something under pale gravy with a side of pockmarked Jell-O.
“Nurse!” I bark. “Nurse!”
One of them looks up and catches my eye. Since it’s clear I’m not dying, she takes her sweet time getting to me.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Jankowski?”
“How about getting me some real food?”
“I beg your pardon?”“It’s not nursery food.”
“Yes it is. There’s no substance. Look—” I say, dragging my fork through the gravy-covered heap. It falls off in glops, leaving me holding a coated fork. “You call that food? I want something I can sink my teeth into. Something that crunches. And what, exactly, is this supposed to be?” I say, poking the lump of red Jell-O. It jiggles outrageously, like a breast I once knew.
“It’s salad.”
“Salad? Do you see any vegetables? I don’t see any vegetables.”
“It’s fruit salad,” she says, her voice steady but forced.
“Do you see any fruit?”
“Yes. As a matter of fact I do,” she says, pointing at a pock. “There. And there. That’s a piece of banana, and that’s a grape. Why don’t you try it?"
....and the young man convincing.
The end made me roll my eyes a little but smile anyway - who doesn't love it when the hero wins?
Still. There can't be more than a couple of hundred of them..?
I almost wish (hold your tongue, GA) it was winter again so I wouldn't be tempted to just leave it and take refuge in the garden.
A thousand curses on all authors who do not pick a surname, just one, and stick to it. And the same to those with prefixes.
Does Conan Doyle come under C for Conan or D for Doyle? MacDonald Fraser? Daphne du Maurier - is she a d or a m?
I want my dining room floor back. At this rate I'll be tiptoeing round the stacks of books 'til flaming Christmas.
They will benefit, anyway, from being a change from 'Pamela' by Samuel Richardson; which took me decades to get round to and I'm beginning to think might take me decades to finish. Oh God! - I'm on about page 400, and it's only just got interesting with the arrival of the hero's incensed sister.
Mind you. In the light of #MeToo... Plus ça change, plus c'est la meme chose...
This is a whole new language for me. It's been years since I've read anything clever and playful, with its own language.
I can't remember Murder in Ford's Theatre so I guess I should read it again. Summer is such a great time for reading.
(Sorry, CM, but yes, you probably do have to look up the verse now.)
It's from Jabberwocky, Garden; in which Lewis Carroll coined a good many words including galumph, beamish.
Beware the jabberwock, my son, the jaws that bite, the claws that snatch
Something something the jou-jou bird and shun
the hideous bandersnatch
Oh bollocks I'll have to go and find it now...
Isn't buying books wonderful? So many new places to visit, while comfortable at home and not even having to drive, let alone get stuffed into an airplane seat!
I might have been the one who mentioned Margaret Truman; I love her books and have some of them multiple times. The progression in her skill is so obvious from the first book, which is fairly straightforward, to the more complex later ones in which she excels in her writing.
Which book did you get?
My choice now is Peter Mayle's Hotel Pastis, not quite as I remember it, but still somewhat charming in the descriptions of Provence.
Wayne State U. used to have a great bookstores; after getting my texts, I'd wander around to see what else I could find, then lug them all back to the car, several blocks away.
I miss the smell of libraries and bookstores.
The Book 'Em fundraiser used book sale was amazing! It was held in a former Toys R Us location. With everything out that is a large space, and it was filled with table after table after table with books, organized by author name within genre. Amazing!
Six of us from the bookclub carpooled, had lunch together, and shopped until we couldn't carry any more books. My arms are sore today, but I am not complaining.
I made a list of all the books and authors mentioned in this thread. At least 7 of my purchases came from that list. It was fun to have specific things to look for.
I'm now reading a Margaret Truman book, which I'd forgotten about until someone mentioned her on this thread. I'd read most of them, but found one that was new to me. (She sets her murder mysteries in Washington DC.)
Thanks for all the suggestions, folks. Happy reading.
Judith Kerr, who wrote 'The Tiger Who Came To Tea' as well as the Mog series, is also in her nineties and still writing, only she's a children's author and I expect it's a bit easier to keep plugging away at that. She iced Mog eventually, not so much because she was sick of her as because she worked out that Mog would be something like 140 in cat years and it was beginning to strain credulity. 'Goodbye Mog' - look, the lady was a WW2 refugee, she's going to tell things like they are, isn't she - was greeted by parents throughout the land with horror, but it does have a hopeful ending; and it's not a bad introduction to the whole subject of bereavement, come to that.
My very favourite undemanding read is the "No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" series by Alexander McCall Smith. Set in Botswana, the books tell the story of Mma Precious Ramotswe, a "traditionally built" lady who has learned to be a detective by following the writings of Clovis Anderson. Good always triumphs over evil, the mystery is always solved, and all ends up right with the world. Balm to the soul in these troubled times.
Do ordinary people actually read that book, outside of college classrooms? I still think it is brilliant. I concur with all those list makers. But it is/was more important for its influence on other writers than for the number of people who read it on the subway, I think.
If you do read it again, I'd love to know if you finish it.