B. Morrison's Blog, page 77
February 26, 2012
The Door, by Margaret Atwood
Atwood is best known for her novels such as Alias, Grace and The Handmaid's Tale, but it is her poetry that I have most valued. She writes in clear, compelling language, yet each poem contains a moment of surprise, of opening out into something beyond what I thought I understood. These revelatory connections and enlightenment—moments of being as Virginia Woolf called them, the leaping poetry Robert Bly described his book of that name—are what I look for in poetry. And what she refers to in...
February 19, 2012
Nothing to Be Frightened Of, by Julian Barnes
It's not a promising premise for a book: one man's fear of death. Yet Barnes' wit and learning kept me turning pages, nodding and chuckling. The jibes are at himself; he admits to feeling competitive about the age he was first woken to death-awareness, a moment Charles du Bos called by le réveil mortel: thirteen or fourteen to his friend G.'s ridiculously early age of four "(four! you bastard!)". Throughout the book, Barnes contrasts his own approach as a novelist to questions about death...
February 12, 2012
Love Songs from a Shallow Grave, by Colin Cotterill
I'd heard good things about this series featuring Dr. Siri, the 74-year-old National Coroner of Laos. Set in the late 1970s, the story provides a portrait of life in the new People's Democratic Republic of Laos and its uneasy relationship with its neighbors' new regimes in Vietnam and Cambodia. This historical and political background, though important, is sketched in briefly, a sentence here and there, barely discernible in the flow of the story in which Dr. Siri is called in on three...
February 5, 2012
Absalom, Absalom, by William Faulkner
In this astounding novel, we are given the story of Thomas Sutpen, a man who came out of the West Virginia mountains with nothing to his name, arriving in Yoknapatawpha County in 1833 to build a fortune and carve out a plantation, expecting to found a dynasty. We learn about him only indirectly, through the stories that are told to young Quentin Compson. About to leave for Harvard, Quentin endures the wisteria-scented heat of September listening to Miss Rosa Coldfield, whose sister married...
January 29, 2012
Divisidero, by Michael Ondaatje
I've waited a couple of weeks to write about this book, but my thoughts still haven't settled. They are like the birds at the feeder, startling up at the slightest shadow into a flurry of wings. Ondaatje's books always give me plenty to think about, and this one is no exception.
The first part is about Anna and Claire, two teenaged sisters who live on a farm in Northern California with their father and a young man named Coop. The father had brought Coop from the neighboring farm to help with ...
January 22, 2012
Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis, by Cara Black
I like reading books set in familiar places, but can also be entranced by those set in places where I'd like to go. Cara Black's mysteries featuring Aimee Leduc as a detective who mostly works computer security are set in Paris, a place that is high on my bucket list. Leduc is assisted by René Friant, only four feet tall, but dapper and wise.
On the very first page, as Leduc struggles to finish a system upgrade within the deadline, this story is launched by a phone call. A woman's voice...
January 15, 2012
A Tidewater Morning, by William Styron
I hadn't read anything of Styron's since Sophie's Choice but picked this up because I was spending a week in the Tidewater area of Virginia. The three stories making up the book are linked by having a common protagonist, Paul Whitehead. Set during the Depression and World War II, the stories present Paul's memories, based, as the Author's Note tells us, on Styron's own experiences. The tone of the stories avoids nostalgia and sentiment, giving us the boy's experiences unmediated by the...
January 8, 2012
Playlist 2011
Songs are stories, too, even when there are no words. Thanks to my friends for all the great music and for all the sweet dances.
The Jolly Tinker, Jeff Warner
Mandalay, Jeff Warner
The Bonny Bay Of Biscay-O, Jeff Warner
Across The Blue Mountains, Suzannah & Georgia Rose
Hallowell, Suzannah & Georgia Rose
Travelers Prayer, Suzannah & Georgia Rose
Narrow Space, Suzannah Park & Nathan Morrison
Darlin' Corey, Suzannah Park & Nathan Morrison
Amelia , Suzannah Park & Nathan Morrison
Man Of Constant...
January 1, 2012
Best books I read in 2011
This has been an odd year for me. I read fewer books than usual, but among them are some that will go on the best-of-a-lifetime list.
1. To the End of the Land, by David Grossman
This is one of the most deeply moving books I've ever read and it has stayed with me long after I closed the cover. No other fiction I've read comes close to capturing as this book does what it means to be a parent or what it means to belong to a land.
2. Precious Bane, by Mary Webb
First published in 1926, Precious...
December 25, 2011
The Sun, Sy Safransky Editor
I subscribe to a fair number of literary magazines, far more than I can read, to be honest. Mostly I cycle around, subscribing to different ones, but there are a couple of standards that I'm not willing to give up, even for a year. One of these is The Sun.
Proudly ad-free, The Sun always repays my attention with excellent writing and strong insights. It starts with an interview, which I'm sometimes tempted to skip over it, but I've learned that there are always at least a few nuggets that...
