This is a little late – I feel sort of drained creatively and am struggling to write anything. Hopefully I snap out of this writing rut soon.
Books Purchased:
Picnic, Lightning by Billy Collins
Our Story Begins by Tobias Wolff
The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
Literary New York by Susan Edmiston and Linda D. Cirino
77 Love Sonnets by Garrison Keillor
American Eve by Paula Uruburu
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
I bought fewer books than I read this month, which is excellent!
I picked up Picnic, Lightning by Billy Collins at Strand, and randomly opened to page 39. The poem on the page (“I Go Back to the House for a Book”) caught my eye. It’s a great poem, and if you’d like to read it yourself, I found it online here.
Books Read:
The Long-Winded Lady by Maeve Brennan
Another Marvelous Thing by Laurie Colwin
The Four Story Mistake by Elizabeth Enright (library)
Something, Maybe by Elizabeth Scott (library)
American Eve by Paula Uruburu
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour an Introduction by J. D. Salinger
Then There Were Five by Elizabeth Enright (library)
Chicken With Plums by Marjane Satrapi (library)
Previously Reviewed: The Long-Winded Lady and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour an Introduction.
Another Marvelous Thing is the first work of fiction that I’ve read by Laurie Colwin. It’s a novel in short stories about a man and woman who are both married, and are having an affair. I enjoyed this and I like Laurie Colwin’s style, and am glad I have more of her novels to read.
I read the next two books in the Melendy Quartet by Elizabeth Enright – The Four Story Mistake and Then There Were Five. I enjoyed these as well and am looking forward to the last book in the quartet – Spiderweb for Two.
Something, Maybe by Elizabeth Scott finally came in for me at the library. It was exactly what I expected: a cute, fast, and fun YA book.
American Eve is a biography of Evelyn Nesbit. She was a iconic “it girl” at the turn of the 20th century and the most photographed woman of the era by age 16. She was at the center of the “crime of the century” when her mentally ill husband, Harry K. Thaw, killed her former lover, Stanford White in 1906. This is a fascinating biography – a very readable account of Evelyn’s rise to a life in the spotlight and her very twisted and troubled relationships that lead to her downfall. I’m reading Lolita right now, so it’s very interesting to have read this first. So far there are several similarities and parallels.
Chicken with Plums is a graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi, the author of Persepolis. It’s the story of her great-uncle, set in Tehran in 1958. She is such an excellent storyteller, and so talented. I don’t know if she has anything new in the works, but I certainly hope so.
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