Four more...
Six more...
The story opens with Thomas Birdsey, a paranoid schizophrenic, sitting in a library cutting off his own arm. Then for nine hundred and some pages the story of his relationship with his twin brother, Dominick, and their desperately messed up family unfolds. There's misery upon misery and yet it manages to lead to a satisfying conclusion. The story was good, I only wish it had been told in a hundred (or two) fewer pages.
Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day by Winifred Watson
The dowdy Miss Pettigrew's life as a governess has not prepared her for what's about to happen next. When the employment agency sends her to the wrong address for a job interview, she meets a glamorous young woman who will introduce her to a lifestyle she has only ever seen in the movies. In a twenty-four hour period she will be dazzled by glittering surroundings and fascinating people, and shocked at their disregard for generally accepted manners and morals.
It was light-hearted and fun to read, but sadly a couple of racist remarks in what was otherwise entertaining dialogue took the shine off it. I understand such remarks would have been accepted in 1938 when the book was written, and we can't change the past, but there's no getting around the fact that they are racist and reflect attitudes that were as wrong then as they are now.
More Catching Up...
Disappointing. Parallel stories, set in the same house 150 years apart, illustrate (read: sermonize) that the things we depend upon as being givens in this life are not reliable at all. In both eras the house is falling apart, the character's careers and personal lives are teetering on their foundations, and the world is undergoing seismic shifts in thinking. It is when your basic beliefs about life are shaken, when you realize that hard work doesn't always lead to success, people don't always fulfill their potential, and you can't count on fairness or even reason to prevail, that you begin to understand a hard reality: the universe does not have your back. You are not special, but like everyone else are unsheltered, unprotected, against the vagaries of life. Kingsolver always tells a good, insightful story, but it would have been more palatable had it been more subtle. I felt preached to, and I get more than enough of that already in newspapers, movies, and on tv news? shows when they report a story while telling me what to think about it. This book takes a stab at just about every political issue out there: the economy, health care, climate change, student loans, capitalism, even Trump's presidency, though his name is never used. It could have been an interesting story; it felt more like a lecture.
Trying to catch up...
After two challenging years I find myself suddenly able to get back to doing regular things, so I'm re-starting abandoned projects, organizing neglected shelves, closets, and file cabinets, and finally making an attempt to catch up on my blog.
These are books I read in 2019 and 2020 that didn't get posted due to lack of time and/or energy. Of course the problem with trying to do it now is that I don't remember a great deal about some of them. It helps if I can find a book summary online, but even then it may only remind me if I liked it or didn't and I'm not at all sure I can depend on that either. I've sometimes remembered not liking a book only to see on Goodreads where I've given it four stars. Given all that, here's what I think I remember about these books...
And Then There Were None, Shakespeare and Me, The Ten Thousand Doors of January
An Academic Question, The Busman's Honeymoon, Alone Time, & Mr. Ives' Christmas
An Academic Question by Barbara Pym
From a slow beginning, An Academic Question gradually develops into a story with potential, but sadly fizzles out at the end. Set in a university town and told from the perspective of one professor's wife, the central academic question is: just how far would you go to get tenure? Our professor does something unethical, but just as I was getting interested in seeing what the backlash would be, it ends. There's a solution of sorts, but it's disappointing and left me wishing this book had a few more chapters and a little more oomph.
The Busman's Honeymoon by Dorothy Sayers