First of all, let me say that posting around here will be light for the foreseeable future. And I apologize for dropping out of the blogging world as far as commenting goes. But the usual busyness — job, baby, life stuff — has been made more complicated by the fact that we are now trying to sell our house. This has required ungodly amounts of cleaning and also putting many of my books into storage, in the name of making our house look less cluttered. We have emptied the house of five large bookcases. It’s painful not to have those books around, although having gotten those books temporarily out of the way will make moving day decidedly less painful. But I have no idea when moving day will be — our house could be on the market another week, another month, another year, no idea — and I don’t like not having my books right here. Um, okay, I have lots of books left, it’s not like I’m living in a bookless house, but just the other day I wanted to reread the opening pages of Maggie Nelson’s Bluets and I couldn’t! Frustrating.
So, here is some recent reading:
- James McBride’s The Good Lord Bird, which is part of the Tournament of Books. Actually, most of the books I’ve read in the last few weeks have been part of the tournament. I liked this book, although I didn’t fall in love. The opening sections were enthralling as I read about life in Kansas in the 1850s. McBride captures the wildness and danger of it so well. He also creates a wonderful character in John Brown. I thought the book needed some more editing, though, and it felt too long. But his language is amazing, and he deals with some interesting gender and race issues with his main character.
- Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries. This was a strange reading experience. The book is very long and very plotty, and neither of these attributes is something I really enjoy. But I liked this book. The way the plot unfurls is mesmerizing. Catton has such perfect control over her material that following the plot twists and turns was satisfying. And over time, she creates memorable characters whose lives and fates I came to care about. She also does a brilliant job of capturing the world of the gold rush in 1860s New Zealand. I’m not sure I would ever want to reread this book, though. It’s beautiful, brilliant, moving — but is it a truly great book? I’m not sure.
- Margaret Millar’s Beast In View. This was my choice for the most recent meeting of my mystery book group. I liked it, although I felt a little disappointed that I didn’t like it more. But it really was good — tightly constructed, chillingly atmospheric and creepy. The psychologizing felt a little too easy to me, which I think was my main problem with it. But Millar was great at keeping the plot going at a good pace and making you feel uneasy and unsettled in the way good thrillers do.
- Scott McClanahan’s Hill William. This book could easily be a novella. But the large margins and abundant white space that make this book 220 pages serve a good function: the writing has a spare quality to it that invites you to slow down and reread and linger over the language. It’s about a boy growing up in the mountains of West Virginia, dealing with sexual abuse by an older neighborhood boy and also becoming more and more aware of the depredations done to the landscape around him by miners. The book is dark, but also beautifully written and moving. Very good.
- Lastly, I just finished Rainbow Rowell’s Eleanor and Park. It was good, not at all surprising in terms of the plot, but with two good main characters. I liked Eleanor very much. This was entertaining, fun, difficult to put down.
I’m in the middle of reading Maggie Nelson’s book Jane: A Murder. It’s part poetry, part bits of journals, books and newspapers. It tells the story of the murder of Nelson’s aunt who died when she was 23, before Nelson was born. The book is Nelson’s attempts to understand and respond to what happened to her aunt and how it affected her own life.
I also plan on picking up Elizabeth Gilbert’s new novel The Signature of All Things and maybe also Kiese Laymon’s novel Long Division. So, lots of good reading going on around here, in spite of the busyness.
Of Books and Bicycles 