Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Reading, lately

I got some good ones in this batch! Now I'm in a lull again, re-reading some Sue Grafton while waiting for the library to tell me that my holds are coming in.

Fates and Furies - A really beautiful and intimate exploration of a marriage. The first half of the book is focused on the husband and the second half on the wife, although that makes it sound much more pat and boring than it really is. This book is so well written and reading it was a delight.

H is for Hawk - I'd been hearing praise for this book everywhere, but I guess I hadn't absorbed enough of it to know what the book was about. It's a memoir that deals with the crippling grief the author experiences after losing her father, and how she attempts to cope with it (by adopting an enormous hawk and spending all her time training it to hunt, naturally). I have to admit that after the first few chapters I wasn't sure I would go on. The subject matter (losing a father, not falconry) hit pretty close to home and made this more difficult for me to read. I pushed through and the book is powerful, although I hadn't realized falconry was still a thing and to be honest, I have no interest in it. The descriptions of loss will lay you flat, though, and the author's deep interest in and devotion to falconry makes even the long passages regarding bird training beautiful.

Mislaid - This book grabbed me so hard. I'm not really sure how to sum it up in a short description. It's a novel about a highly unusual family and it plays with gender, sexuality, and race. There's a lot of dry humor and I was so attached to all the characters by the end that I wasn't quite ready to let it go.

Home - I loved this quiet, beautiful novel. There is so much sorrow in it and yet it feels calming somehow. Again, I managed to unwittingly pick out a book about loss, but the grief in this book is more tender and less searing than it is in H is for Hawk.  The plot premise is that the youngest daughter in the family comes home to take care of the dying father and is joined by her black sheep brother, with whom she's always wanted a relationship. It's a deeply felt examination of family and self and I almost felt like I was absorbing it rather than reading it.

Before I Go To Sleep - Always on the hunt for a good thriller (thanks, Megan!) and this one was pretty good. It's very reminiscent of Memento (anyone else super into that movie when it came out?) in that it revolves around a woman with a very specific (and highly unlikely) form of memory loss who is trying to piece her life together. It holds together pretty well and the ending is good.

Between the World and Me - Part memoir, part manifesto, Ta-Nehisi Coates' letter to his teenage son on his experience of being a black man in America is a powerful piece of writing. I felt uncomfortable reading it and I feel even more uncomfortable trying to write about it. Seriously, I have written and deleted more sentences here than I can count. The bottom line is that I think it's an important book and so beautifully (and painfully) articulated.

Young Skins - A short story collection from Irish author Colin Barrett. This is a really strong debut and I tore right through it. All the stories are set in a small Irish town and feature young people in some pretty unpleasant situations, and yet somehow the writing energizes you instead of bumming you out. Nicely done. (Thanks for the rec, Lydia!)

The Passenger - I'm a huge fan of Lisa Lutz's Spellman series, which are comedic mysteries. This book is a bit of a departure for her, as it's more thriller than mystery, but her distinctive (and humorous) voice still comes through and lends a bit of levity to an otherwise fairly intense book. If you're looking for the next Gone Girl, I won't say this is it. It's a little less twisty and the reveal isn't quite as big, but it is a really enjoyable book that will keep you rooting for the protagonist, a woman caught in a situation that is constantly spinning just out of her control.


22 comments:

  1. Between the world and me - yes. I felt exactly the same way. I wish everyone would read it. I love these round-ups. Thanks!

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  2. Ooh, I may have to pick up Before I Go To Sleep. I , too, am always on the hunt for a good thriller but let down by endings far too often. Glad for the recc! I was mixed on the Passenger. I ADORE the Spellmans and, I don't know, wanted a little bit more. Thanks for sharing!

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  3. have you read the rest of the trilogy by marilynne robinson? home is actually #2 in the series, preceded by gilead and followed by lila. her writing is just incandescent, and it's such a tender and intimate portrait of this small town and intertwined families.

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    1. I haven't yet! I will openly admit that I heard that Gilead was a struggle and it stuck with me somehow, so every time I see it I avoid checking it out. But because I loved Home so much I'm thinking I'll dive in soon.

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    2. Gilead is one of my favorite books, but it had me balling my eyes out at 3am when I finished. Not meant to turn you off it! But it does make you feel a lot of things about family, and parenthood especially. Worth noting that Marilynne Robinson writes some very satisfying descriptions of food in this book (which is always a plus for me).

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    3. of the three, it was actually lila that i didn't love! if you liked home, i definitely think it'll be worth your time to read gilead.

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  4. Glad you enjoyed Before I Go To Sleep.
    I just finished a great, page turning thriller: Orphan X. I loved it and highly recommend.
    Also, Ashley Bell by Dean Koontz.

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    1. I've never read any Dean Koontz and it sounds like maybe I'm missing out? Thanks for the recs!

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    2. I hadn't read any Koontz either and I have heard that some of his work is a little off the deep end but his one was highly entertaining.

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  5. Before I Go To Sleep is a movie with Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman. SOO INTENSE! I can only imagine the book is amazing.

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    1. I saw that they made a movie of it when I was looking up the book! I didn't see it, but I can see how it would make a good script.

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  6. Been meaning to pick up "H is for Hawk". So nice to hear an honest review - I never know when to believe all the hype!

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    1. Hope I didn't turn you off! The writing is really lovely and I'm glad I read it, but it hit me at a particularly hard time.

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  7. It's so encouraging to hear that you liked Fates & Furies and H is for Hawk because I've been on the waiting list for both at the library going on two months now (very impressed with DC readership, but c'mon) and was starting to worry that the read would be anticlimactic. I'm so glad you liked Colin Barrett! He writes with such a kind eye, especially when the characters are in particularly pathetic straights, which I think is what makes it energizing instead of a bummer? You can tell that he writes his stories from a kernel of empathy. He had a great short story in the New Yorker a while back, which is how I found him: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/01/05/ways-2

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    1. Oh, I feel you on the waiting list! I generally just load it up and then forget about it, which means I'm completely surprised when something comes in and I can't remember why I requested it or who recommended it half the time. It takes months to get popular books here! But, I swear I'm not really complaining - go libraries!

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  8. Mislaid has been on my TBR for awhile so I will have to read it but Before I Go to Sleep sounds right up my alley! Since your last update, I don't think I've read anything spectacular that would be in your wheelhouse but I've got a lot of books coming up. Next is I Let You Go, which I keep hearing is amazing so I'll let you know!

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    1. Forgot to say, glad you liked The Passenger -- it wasn't my favorite if only because I needed/wanted something super suspenseful but I plan to start her Spellman series soon

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  9. have you read the maisie dobbs mystery series by jacqueline winspear? a female PI in England after WW 1. really good!

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  10. I really liked Before I Go to Sleep! I would also recommend Orphan 8.
    I will give The Passenger and Mislaid a try ! Thanks!

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  11. i just read h is for hawk as well, and in the flurry of recommendations from people who know i work with birds i too neglected to pick up on the fact that it's also a story about grief. i have wondered how it would read to someone who approached it with that experience, and i'm both glad and very sorry that it rings true for you - i thought the way she spoke about losing her father was really powerful. (i'm tempted to compare it to joan didion's duo, but that feels like bad manners.) her writing about raptors was also outstanding, though i had a hard time with the parts about TH white; i pity him, but i have no patience for people who torture animals, full stop. i'm going to have to read the goshawk now, and i'm dreading it.

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    1. Oh, those sections were really hard to get through. I will NOT be reading The Goshawk, and I don't feel bad about being a slacker. It was just so painful.

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  12. I also loved Fates and Furies. I didn't know anything about it before I read it so it was a lovely surprise. I'm trying to get through H is for Hawk but I am struggling with it. I'm not sure why exactly. I'm reading The Terror right now by Dan Simmons. It's a novel about the Franklin expedition to find the Northwest Passage in the 1840's, which would normally sound really dull to me but this story has an ice monster killing all of the sailors! (I'm pretty sure that didn't happen, but it makes for a good story!)

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