Now that April is nearly over, it’s time for
me to tell you what I finished reading in March.
Here are the first lines of those books.
Book 1
At half past six on the twenty-first of June 1922, when
Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov was escorted through the gates of the Kremlin
onto Red Square, it was glorious and cool. Drawing his shoulders back without
breaking stride, the Count inhaled the air like one fresh from a swim.
Book 2
Warning Signs
When I was ten years old, I wrote a letter to my future self
and buried it in my backyard. Seventeen
years later, I remembered that I was supposed to remember to dig it up two
years earlier.
Book 3
The word of the Lord that came to Joel son of Pethuel:
Hear this, O elders,
give ear, all
inhabitants of the land!
Book 4
I’m about to throw up.
I’m standing on the press riser at Donald Trump’s New York
City Election Night headquarters.
* * * * * *
Titles and authors revealed:
Book 1
A Gentleman in Moscow,
by Amor Towles. © 2016.
I might have been in the wrong mood for this book when I
read it. In the first two-thirds of the
book, I kept waiting for something to happen.
The tragic parts are described at arm’s length. The set-up and plot mostly seem
improbable. I was always wondering how
the main character was paying for living his life. It was quite enjoyable and exciting at the
end, though. Everyone else in the book
club loved this book. They raved about
the writing, and were able to suspend any requirement for realism in the
plot. There was a time when I could do
that, too.
Book 2
Hyperbole and a Half,
by Allie Brosh. © 2013. Mostly done in
graphic art form. Interesting, and
hilarious at times. I wasn’t terrifically interesting in the parts
about dogs, but many of you might be.
Fascinating exploration of some mental health issues.
Book 3
Joel (The
Bible). © 9th to 5th
Century BCE. Features many locusts, but
it’s not an agricultural treatise. As is
usual with biblical texts, locusts are a metaphor for something else.
Book 4
Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign
in American History, by Katy Tur. ©2017.
Yes, it is unbelievable. This
book was a fast read. Perhaps that is a
merciful thing; I do not mean that as an indictment of the writer, but of her
subject, the campaign of Donald Trump for president.