Tips, links and suggestions: what are you reading this week?

Your space to discuss the books you are reading and what you think of them

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Welcome to this week’s blog. Here’s a roundup of your comments and photos from last week, with lots of poetry – from Mary Oliver’s approachable words to Emily Dickinson’s obsession with gardens –, a “brilliantly” funny book about race in America, and readers forgetting what they’ve read.

booksnourishcarole praised the poetry of Mary Oliver:

Mary Oliver is my favorite poet in the spring, when everything comes alive again and awes us with the Earth’s beauty and bounty. Her poetry is accessible and always makes me more alert to my surroundings and I see with more appreciative eyes.

“Still, what I want in my life / is to be willing / to be dazzled – to cast aside the weight of facts / and maybe even / to float a little / above this difficult world. / I want to believe I am looking / into the white fire of a great mystery.” (excerpt from The Ponds)

... which is my new favourite among the texts of his that I’ve read, and is certainly the most readable. For me, the first page alone is worth more than all of The Ambassadors combined. It’s essentially what I had been looking for in James’s work, something with the wit and intelligence of What Maisie Knew, without compromising its appeal with misty abstractions. The plot is essentially about the incestuous romances of an aristocratic American family when two European cousins come to stay, back in a time when that was an unremarkable occurrence. It sounds innocuous, but it’s a sharp satire. I’m now leaning towards James’s shorter and earlier works, so I’ll add The Spoils of Poynton to my list.

... narrated by a “mixed-race” man who discovers that he has an 17-year old “white” daughter. For those who don’t want to read a serious book that deals with race in America – how about if that serious book made you laugh your a## off? Johnson’s discussions about race, and gender, and self-identity are sharp and funny, the very best kind of satire that slices you open while you’re busy guffawing. He’s a hell of a writer.

About twenty pages in, déjà vu struck, and I realized I must have read this before … a certain scene brought back a strong mental image of the moment I had at the time of first reading it. I’m now about the third the way through, I still cannot remember the outcome of the novel. I got me to thinking about how I remember novels. Some people I know can reel of the entire narrative of books, while I struggle to be articulate, but nonetheless have a strong set of mental images and somewhat ineffable emotions feelings. I have the same thing looking back over my life. Some people can spin long yarns about past experiences, and again I’m completely inarticulate.

Anyway, I just wondered about the differing way people remember books they have read.

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