Well, my hand is healing well, so that excuse is gone, but now I am so immersed in packing that I haven't been able to keep up with my blogging. Is that a good excuse? I think so. I can't believe how much work packing is. It would be a bit easier if I didn't have so many books! So once again, just very brief remarks on the books that I have read in the past month.
1) The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett: good book! It is about a set of identical twin sisters,j Desiree and Stella, who at the age of sixteen ran away from their small, black, southern community to New Orleans. As they were living there, the sisters began separating their lives, including their racial identities. Stella left New Orleans without telling Desiree and it was many years later before they found each other. This is a sad, but loving book, very well-written;
"She'd always felt like the older sister, even though she only was by a matter of minutes. But maybe in those seven minutes they'd first been apart, they'd each lived a lifetime, setting out on their separate paths. Each discovering who she might be."
2) How to Stop Time by Matt Haig: this was an easy, quick read. The main character, Tom Hazard had a rare condition that allowed him to live through centuries. But how can you live a life with someone you love when the Albatross Society only allows you ten years in each life? How does Tom live a normal life?
It was a fun read, but nothing too heavy.
3) The Orphan's Tale by Pam Jenoff: this was one of my book club reads. It is historical fiction that takes place in Germany and France during World War II. There are two main characters, a young girl, Noa, and an older woman, Astrid. They met at the circus when Noa, and a baby she had rescued from a train car of Jewish babies being sent to the camps, found refuge there. Astrid was the lead aerialist for the circus, and she was told to train Noa to be her partner. At first, Noa and Astrid did not get along, but they soon forged a strong bond with each other as they learned each other's stories and worked together.
This is a book that highlights an unknown to me...who knew that the Germans allowed circuses to continue to travel around during the war? It was a good, sad, and strong story that has stayed with me for a while. Good read.
4) This Is Happiness by Niall Williams: This was an impulse buy, and it ended up being one of my favorite books of the year so far. It's a simple story that takes place in a small parish in Ireland. Noel (called "Noe") was a seventeen-year-old who had just left the seminary. You can imagine how that would go over in Ireland. He went to the small parish of Faha to stay with his grandparents. The big issue in Faha was that electricity was coming. With electricity coming, workers were arriving in Faha, including one named Christy. Christy and Noe became close and learned each other's secrets. This is a very slow-paced novel, yet, I couldn't put it down. It's just full of very tender moments and of a slower time. And something about it really touched me. When Noe had been a young boy, he came home from school and found his mother on the floor:
"When you try and lift your mother it's not the same as lifting another human being. The moment you do it you know you'll never forget it for the rest of your life. You know there's no frailty, nakedness, nor tenderness either, quite like this, and know that the moment you have her in your arms the feeling of it is entering you so profoundly that from here on it will form part of the knowledge of your blood and brain and soul too, whether you believe in souls or not."
5) The World We Knew by Alice Hoffman: This was another book group choice. I had read it earlier and blogged it at https://alifeofbooks.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-world-that-we-knew.html. It is also one of my favorite reads!
6) and lastly, Too Much and Never Enough by Mary Trump: great clinical analysis of Donald Trump. Well-written. Enough said.
