I finished William Boyd’s Restless this morning. Very good spy story with mother/daughter protagonists. Not as long or emotionally engaging as Any Human Heart, but a page turner many of you may enjoy. Wait for the paperback and while you’re waiting, Boyd’s The Blue Afternoon is a mystery that’s widely available.
Yesterday I bought a Kate Atkinson novel to take with me on the trip, Human Croquet, and the Fitzgerald translation of The Aeneid. We were supposed to read the new Fagles translation–bookclub has recommitted–but it’s still in hardback and I didn’t want to invest $40. So I figure I can be the foil in the discussion. I liked Fitzgerald’s Odyssey a lot, so this should suffice. I really should take manuscripts to read, and maybe I’ll take a couple, but I really want to read more for pleasure.
Planning on watching the Academy Awards but I haven’t seen many of the movies, so I don’t know why I’m bothering.
Kate’s new one?
just wait for emma’s post award show recap. she’s like joan rivers, but on the way out. it’s a lot easier than having to watch that crap yourself.
“she’s like joan rivers, but on the way out.”
I haven’t had 100 plastic surgeries!
I just finished reading “Son of a Witch”…the follow-up to “Wicked”. I loved them Wicked. I enjoyed reading the new book, but I really didn’t care for the ending.
I just finished reading The Wright 3 by Blue Balliett. It’s a children’s book which is just about all I read anymore. I’m trying to read the Bookseller of Kabul but I never feel like I can devote my full attention to it. It’s a good book, but I don’t know if I like it. I don’t like feeling helpless. Reading it makes me angry and I end up lecturing my students on topics completely unrelated to what we are supposed to be learning.
I was really hoping for a great personification poem from one of my students using the noun ‘tree’ and the verb ’squish’, but no one chose those words. I even considered writing my own poem to share with them but I never got around to it. I was going to start with an image of a tree, squishing its root-toes in the mud. I’m not sure where it would have gone from there, maybe the tree would peel long strips of skin off its trunk and write lovely little short stories or haikus on them, then with its bony tree fingers it would let the strips go, to soar across the sky.
I bet it would have been great.
TB, you just wrote the poem. It’s already up there, and the strips are soaring.
I love it.
Hey Blu. Sorry I didn’t see your comment in moderation until just now. I think the one I bought is an older novel. I never got to it, though. It’s still uncracked.
Ah! Ha, ha, I thought you just deleted my comment from your blog. Did you read Little Children? It’s really great, you may enjoy it. I’ll even mail it to you when I’m done reading it. I am so over keeping books, space just ran out.
I read “Little Children” last summer and loved it. I later read “Joe College.” Not nearly as good, but I think it might have been his first novel. It felt like a first novel.
I’m glad you’re home safe. I worried about you. Now I can sleep soundly…
Thanks, Bertram.