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| Fence. Shore. Summer. 2015. |
Below are the first lines of the books I finished reading in April. Most are short books. I did not plan to read two books in a row with the word “unexpected” in the title, but that is what happened.
Book 1
Part One: 1993
The morning was ideal, a crime to waste it cooped up. They were off to the shore. That means you, too, Pasha – you need some color, a dunk would do you good, so would a stroll.
Book 2
Miss Cackle’s Academy for Witches stood at the top of a high mountain surrounded by a pine forest. It looked more like a prison than a school, with its gloomy grey walls and turrets.
Book 3
Open Door
The first time I got drunk was on Elijah’s wine. I was eight or so.
Book 4
Semiotics, Pubs, Decisions
It was summer. The forward movement of the year, so tentative in the early months of spring, now seemed quite relentless.
Book 5
Act One, Scene One
It is 1957. TROY and BONO enter the yard, engaged in conversation. TROY is fifty-three years old, a large man with thick heavy hands; it is this largeness that he strives to fill out and make an accommodation with.
Book 6
My Big Brother
Always
had a
short
fuse
but now
it's permanently lit.
Book 7
The nurse walked out of the room, closing the door behind her, and Mrs Pollifax looked at the doctor and he in turn looked at her.
Book 8
On the day that he was due to retire, Inspector Ashwin Chopra discovered that he had inherited an elephant.
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| Elephants depicted on miniature elephant canvas. Painted by Older Daughter, 2014. The canvas is wood, about 2 inches wide. |
Book 9
Chapter 1: The Kind of Problem Poverty Is
I recently spent a day on the tenth floor of Newark’s courthouse, the floor where the state decides welfare cases.
Did not finish
The grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennessee and she was seizing at every chance to change Bailey’s mind.
The titles and authors revealed:
Book 1
Panic in a Suitcase by Yelena Akhtiorskaya. 320 pages First published 2014.
The writing style gives us a froth of words, boiling over. Cacophony amounting to nothing meaningful. THe first two sentences you read up above may be the shortest sentences in the book. My husband (who did not finish the book) pointed out that this confusing barrage of words may be brilliantly designed to reflect the confusion that an immigrant may feel on arrival in the US.
I disliked all the characters, their lives, their motives, their way of speaking. This is one of those books where all the scenes take place in grime, either actual or metaphorical.
Here are a few words from several NPR reviews (all misleading):
· a multitude of exuberant set pieces about modern émigré life
· tart eloquence to her character studies
· the excellent debut novel
· such a breath of fresh air
· patient, understated prose
· Akhtiorskaya's dry, brilliant sense of humor
I thought it was going to be at least rather amusing, if not outright funny. It turned out to be dark, frantic, and depressing. I only finished it because I was the one to pick it for book club. A rash decision, to suggest a book one has not read. But to not finish would have left me with unending guilt.
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| Non-panicked suitcases |
Book 2
The Worst Witch (#1 in the series) by Jill Murphy
107 pages • first published 1974. Children’s lit.
One of many light reads this month.
Book 3
A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit
224 pages • first published 2005
Started strong. But I skipped portions of the later essays. Some of them seemed to meander. I like the author’s writing style and I like reading essays. I will probably read more from her.
Book 4
Espresso Tales (44 Scotland Street #2) by Alexander McCall Smith, illustrations by Iain McIntosh
345 pages • first published 2005
Having 17 books in this series makes life more tolerable. I supremely enjoy these characters. I have not read the series in order. This is the 2nd in the series, and the 5th one I have read.
Book 5
Fences, by August Wilson.
119 pages. First published 1986.
Masterful. For book club in June.
Book 6
What About Will, by Ellen Hopkins
384 pages. Published 2021. For Grade 5 or higher.
This book is about a pre-teen whose older brother experiences addiction (trigger warning – attempted suicide). It’s a meaningful story with interesting characters. I hated the writing style. Inexplicably the book is written in “verse”, which means a regular sentence is split up to land on several lines. I don’t call it poetry just because the lines end up that way – the language has to be poetical also. The advantage of this style is that a 384-page book is a very quick read.
Book 7
The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax (Mrs. Pollifax #1) By Dorothy Gilman
208 pages • first published 1966
A totally improbable spy novel. Quite enjoyable. Most of the novel takes place in… well, let’s just call it an undisclosed location.
Book 8
The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra (Baby Ganesh Agency Investigation #1)
By Vaseem Khan. 320 pages • first published 2015
A totally improbable murder mystery. Quite enjoyable. Most of the novel takes place in Mumbai, India.
Book 9
Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond
284 pages • first published 2023. The main text is 190 pages; the footnotes take up about 40% of the book.
The premise of this book is that poverty in the US is intentional, caused by policies that most of us approve of; most of us benefit from the existence of poverty. It is, for sure, an uncomfortable thesis. It will make for a good discussion at church next week.
The section on rental housing vs homeownership was eye opening.
The author is spot on when he says that the question to ask about a particular economic situation or policy is: Who benefits?
The question that ... we should ask every time we drive past a tent encampment, those tarped American slums smelling of asphalt and bodies, every time we see someone asleep on the bus, slumped over in work clothes, is simply: Who benefits? Not Why don’t you find a better job? Or Why don’t you move? Or Why don’t you stop taking out such bad loans? But Who is feeding off this? (page 79)
This book is a quick read for those who don’t need to refer to the footnotes. But ever since my read of the Mueller Report, I have loved footnotes with substance. As I was reading Poverty, by America I would question whether the numbers quoted were in constant or nominal dollars (i.e. had inflation been taken into account). I had to refer to the footnotes for that. As another example, that section I quoted above has a whole page of a footnote that makes a very important point.
Some of the footnotes have meaty explanations that I wish were in the main text, but maybe that would make some people quit reading.
The author is a sociologist at Princeton Univ. I am sure economists (and maybe sociologists) will disagree about the cause(s) of poverty and solutions to eliminate it; for me to make my conclusions I will have to do more reading.
Did not finish
A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories by Flannery O'Connor
264 pages • first pub 1955
Great writing. I kind of saw which direction the story was going and could not read further, given my current mental status. I am completely intrigued that by page 17, we know the names of the son of the grandmother, and his children, but not the names of grandmother nor the mother of the children.
2 comments:
Thank you. With the world so depressing, I've mostly been reading total fluff that puts me to sleep at night.
Sometimes a book gets rave reviews and I'm like, "whuuuuut?" Sounds like book 1 fit that category, but like you, I'd have read that review and been intrigued.
EVERYONE is reading the Desmond book here, because his work was based in Milwaukee. I think asking "who benefits" is always important. And footnotes.
I'm about to read Eve by Cat Bohannon, which is a deep dive into women's health.
I adore Rebecca Solnit's writing. I haven't read that one, but I find I need to space my essay reading out, cannot read a collection straight through.
On the mystery end, have you explored Sujata Massey's books? I LOVE them. Sublime series set in India for us armchair traveler types.
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