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| Art by Barbara Kruger. At The Broad Museum, Los Angeles |
This month my book reading included one children’s book, and two very short works. I spent the last weekend of the month furiously reading, before impending eye surgery. Two of this month’s books had the same title (before the subtitle). Much of my reading was an attempt to calm myself.
Book 1
1991
“It sat silently,hoarding its secrets.”
This particular story begins in the dusky hollows of 1991, remembered as a rotten year through and through by almost everybody living, dead, or unborn.
Book 2
1. In Hanover Street. Watch Out, Pat, Bruce is Back…Or Is He?
Pat saw Bruce at ten o’clock on a Saturday morning, or at least that is when she thought she saw him.
Book 3
To tell the truth, I don’t think Lizzie would ever have told us her elephant story at all, if Karl had not been called Karl.
Book 4
It’s difficult to think of a public health crisis more inevitable than the impending end of Roe v. Wade. And yet, on June 24, 2022, the country was profoundly unprepared.
Book 5
Bethany Waites understands there is no going back now. Time to be brave, and to see how this all plays out. She weighs the bullet in her hand.
Book 6
Someone is shouting at my receptionist.
The angry voice reaches me as I come out of an exam room in the back of my gynecology and family planning clinic in Phoenix, Arizona.
Book 7
Once upon a time, there was a ship. A lime-green ship, with taffeta sails, that soared through the flowing seas of silk and satin across the bedsheets.
Book 8
Act One, Scene 1
The time is early fall, 1977. The setting is a gypsy cab station in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Book 9
‘Ah, you ladies! Always on the spot when there’s something happening!’ The voice belonged to Mr. Mallett, one of our churchwardens, and its roguish tone made me start guiltily, almost as if I had no right to be discovered outside my own front door.
Did not finish
I turn I turn I turn before I lie to sleep and I rise before the Sun. I sleep inside and sleep outside and have slept in the hollow of a thousand-year-old tree.
The titles and authors revealed:
Book 1
The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World's Greatest Piece of Cheese, by Michael Paterniti
349 pages • first pub 2013.
This was an interesting book, about cheese but also about humanity. It was a slow read. The footnotes are often just as interesting as the main book, but I had to stop reading them in the hopes of actually finishing the book. The porrón, a strange flask used to drink wine, was perplexing to me. Also, bodega does not mean what I thought it meant.
Book 2
The World According to Bertie (44 Scotland Street series, #4) By Alexander McCall Smith
370 pages • first pub 2007.
Always fun to spend time with the characters on Scotland Street.
Book 3
An Elephant in the Garden, by Michael Morpurgo
199 pages • first pub 2009
An improbable but engaging story about refugees of the bombing of Dresden, Germany. I read it for book club - in the summer we pick a few children’s books. Hooray for children’s lit.
Book 4
Undue Burden: Life and Death Decisions in Post-Roe America, by Shefali Luthra.
291 pages of text; with endnotes 368 pages • first pub 2024.
Informative, heartbreaking, and infuriating. I recommend this book. The law in the US now treats women as second-class citizens, thanks to six chumps on an unelected court who would like all women to live as if we are in the 18th century. Who made them god? Also, they are bald-faced liars, all of whom said that Roe was settled law before they got themselves appointed.
I read a hardback from the library. I made myself read it fast because, unlike the other library books I borrow that nobody wants to read, so I can keep them for months (no late fees!), I wanted to get this one back into circulation fast. I could not be more angry.
Book 5
The Bullet That Missed (A Thursday Murder Club Mystery #3)
By Richard Osman
413 pages • first pub 2022
Loads of quirky fun, not to mention murder, with our favorite characters at the Old Folks’ Home in England. This one had some quite wistful moments, as well as amusing ones. The odd thing is that I had to put this down partway through, because it was too tense for me. Then world events happened, I went back to it, and it seemed all sweetness and light (but with murder).
Book 6
Undue Burden: A Black, Woman Physician on Being Christian and Pro-Abortion in the Reproductive Justice Movement, by Deshawn Taylor
204 pages • Published 2023.
I found this book excellent and helpful to me in thinking about the onslaught in the US against reproductive rights. The pro-birth stance is NOT a Christian viewpoint. Taking away reproductive rights is AGAINST humanity, it is AGAINST providing adequate health care, it is AGAINST everything that Jesus stands for.
Book 7
The Bedridden Pirates (a short story) by my younger daughter!
7 pages • written in 2024; unpublished.
A completely charming fantasy about pirates who sail the sheets and engage in a great adventure.
Book 8
Jitney (The Century Cycle #8), by August Wilson
76 pages • first performed 1982; subsequently revised. The version I read had a copyright of 2007.
There is a lot to think about here. It’s a fast read. I recommend it.
Book 9
Excellent Women, by Barbara Pym
231 pages • first pub 1952
I did not enjoy this Pym nearly as much as the ones I read several years ago. Yet this is supposed to be the one that draws most people to Pym. It is perhaps me, and current real-life events of this week. I am feeling extremely unsettled. Reading about people constantly pestering the single woman protagonist that she simply must get married was just annoying to me. I mean, I liked the main character, the usual self-demeaning single woman in her thirties (or so) that Pym masters so well. I just wished the other characters would respect her decisions. HOWEVER, there is plenty of tea drinking, and that is very fine.
Did not finish
The Eyes and the Impossible, by Dave Eggers with Shawn Harris (Illustrator)
250 pages • first pub 2023. Newbery Award winner, 2024.
Children’s lit about a dog and other animals who patrol a national park. Oddly, despite it being kids’ lit, it got too tense for me a bit early on – nothing graphic, but I just couldn’t take it at that moment, given the other injustices going on around the world. I will likely pick it up again at some point.
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| Art by Ellen Gallagher. Seen at The Broad in Los Angeles, 2019. |
Going to Google bodega next, but YES to reading children's books! They have plenty to teach us and are as entertaining as anything for adults! I love the Osman books so much and share your bewilderment and outrage over the abortion politics. And it's ALWAYS women's bodies, isn't it? Because I don't see the politicians lining up to make circumcision a requirement for all men, and that's a surgical procedure with a long biblical history...
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