enthusiastic reader

I bought these books today at the Tattered Cover - Aspen Grove. I'm about 3/4 done with Alias Grace from the kindle version and wanted a paperback I could annotate someday. There are so many references to hair, mostly on women in peril or as corpses. And the edition of the Count is gorgeous. Some other time I'll do a post about it. Books purchased:  What Happened by Hillary Rodham Clinton The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas

September was a bad month for the citizens of planet earth but a good month for my reading life, which, aside from moderate drinking and binge watching The Office , is one of the only effective antidotes: The Progress of Love , Alice Munro A strong story collection about people looking back on their earlier lives. There are two absolute standout stories: "The Progress of Love" and "A Queer Streak," but every story hold small treasures of human failings and complex loves. If you are okay with slow and mundane and miraculous tales of human behavior but haven't yet discovered Alice Munro, what are you waiting for? She is our greatest living stylist (I say with confidence!) Y is for Yesterday , Sue Grafton We're getting close to the end of the Kinsey Milhone detective series, which I have been reading since the beginning. This installment fits right into the comfortable slipper of Grafton's typical setups and prose. I'm not sure I loved the mystery...

I recently had occasion to discuss a newish novel about the African slave trade in the 1700s and how that terrible practice affected generations of both African people and the slaves that were brought to America. I liked the book, but not everyone in the group felt the same. In the discussion, it was remarked that we already knew the stories of slavery and what was the purpose of reading about it yet again? I didn't know what to say to that in the moment because who wants to be the know it all in a friendly gathering? But what I thought to say later and will say here is that writing a novel and then finding a company willing to publish and support a novel (or any book, really) is political, and to keep publishing new stories about old topics, especially topics that reverberate in insidious ways and just won't be easily or peacefully resolved is an especially brave act of resistance. We all know that publishers want to make a profit; they choose what to produce with the bottom...

My August books ended up being published in the last year, but that’s not a normal month for me. In general I’ve been re-reading favorites and exploring books I ended up missing, just not in August, I guess. Here are my August reads. 1. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. It’s a family saga about Koreans who end up in Japan, and in general, they find they’re not exactly welcome there. Koreans were considered inferior and lived in poor neighborhoods and weren't given good jobs. Once the second world war begins, things get worse. But Pachinko is a strong family story, and I felt like I got to know the characters over the decades of their lives. I gave Pachinko four stars on goodreads . 2. Mrs. Fletcher by Tom Perrotta. I would put this Perrotta into one of his b-role novels, down there with The Abstinence Teacher. It's fun, but light, if you know what I mean. 3. Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann  A five-star non-fiction ex...