B. Morrison's Blog, page 60
August 3, 2014
The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt [2]
I did not want to read this book. Yes, it won the Pulitzer Prize but that has not always been a reliable barometer for me. Even though it came highly recommended by several of my most trusted reading buddies, I resisted. Why? Because it’s 775 pages!
No book needs to be THAT long, I thought. Either it’s full of extraneous (but possibly interesting) information, like Moby Dick, or the writing in the middle must be really sloppy and nobody had the nerve to tell the author that it needed to be c...
The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt
I did not want to read this book. Yes, it won the Pulitzer Prize but that has not always been a reliable barometer for me. Even though it came highly recommended by several of my most trusted reading buddies, I resisted. Why? Because it’s 775 pages!
No book needs to be THAT long, I thought. Either it’s full of extraneous (but possibly interesting) information, like Moby Dick, or the writing in the middle must be really sloppy and nobody had the nerve to tell the author that it needed to be c...
July 27, 2014
Mr. Churchill's Secretary, by Susan Elia MacNeal
This first novel in the series featuring Maggie Hope takes place at the beginning of the Battle of Britain in World War II. Although born in England, Maggie has been brought up by her aunt outside of Boston. Excelling in mathematics, her studies at MIT have been postponed so she could go to London to sell her deceased grandmother’s home, a grandmother she hadn’t even know about. Once in London and unable to sell the house due to the then-imminent war, Maggie decides to stay and support her na...
July 20, 2014
The Woman in the Dunes, by Kobo Abe
This Japanese novel from 1962 starts innocently enough. A man has disappeared after boarding a train to the seashore for a holiday. An amateur entomologist, he told the woman with whom he lives that he planned to collect specimens. Since no body is discovered in the area where he was headed, there is little to no investigation. Most people assume he’s gone off with a woman or committed suicide.
After this brief introductory chapter, we enter the man’s mind as he leaves the train and boards a...
July 13, 2014
A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, by Yiyun Li
Over the years, the staff at the Ivy Bookshop, my local indie bookstore, have introduced me to many of what have become my favorite books: Stoner, Old Filth, and The Sleeping Dictionary to name just a few. I always go there before my book club’s annual book selection night, and their recommendations are usually the ones we like the best. So when they put up a display of books by Chinese and Japanese authors with lovely covers from Vintage International and Random House, I immediately wanted o...
July 6, 2014
These Days, by Margo Christie
I did a reading with Margo Christie a little while ago, and we had an interesting discussion about using life experiences in memoir and fiction. I read from my memoir, Innocent, and she read from this novel, which is based on some of her own experiences.
Fourteen-year-old Becky Shelling idolizes her father, jazz trumpeter Ernie Shelling, a romantic figure whose gigs take him traveling or staying out till the wee hours. He in turn favors her over his step-daughter, treating Becky to dance less...
June 29, 2014
The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, by Rainer Maria Rilke
Although I’ve been meaning for years to read this novel by one of my favorite poets, I only just got around to it, prompted by last week’s The Blind Owl I heard that Hedayat had been influenced by the Rilke novel, and I could see that. Both plunge the reader deep into the mind of a troubled young man, seducing us with poetic prose that draws us in ever deeper. Rilke’s novel, however, is not a plunge into madness, but an existential journey.
Twenty-eight-year-old Malte leads a solitary life in...
June 22, 2014
The Blind Owl, by Sadegh Hedayat
Rummaging around in my TBR mountain (books waiting To Be Read), I came across this slender novel. I don’t remember where it came from; I’ve never heard of it, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t buy it. However, once it jumped into my hand, I was intrigued. The cover unsettled me; an interesting collage of Persian rugs, rather jumbled, with the title text pushing out of its box and just a corner of an owl’s head, it hinted at secrets and mysteries and dark things just outside your field of vision.
T...
June 16, 2014
The Awakening, by Kate Chopin
Edna Pontellier, a 28-year-old wife and mother, is on vacation with her two small sons. They are at a pension on Grand Isle where other families have taken refuge from New Orleans’ August heat, husbands joining them at the weekend. We see her first through the eyes of her 40-year-old husband, a prosperous businessman, as she returns from bathing accompanied by Robert Lebrun, the son of the pension owner. Mr. Pontellier criticises her for getting sunburnt, “looking at his wife as one looks at...
June 10, 2014
The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach [1]
This compulsively readable novel is about a handful of people at a small college in Michigan whose plans, dreams and ambitions are thrown off course. Mike Schwartz is more than the captain of the baseball team; he is its heart. Acting as the assistant coach the school can’t afford, he pushes his teammates to do more and better than they ever thought they could. He discovers shortstop Henry Skrimshander at a summer Legion game and, impressed by the boy’s astounding fielding ability, engineers...
