March Reading-a little late!

 

I was trying so hard to post this in a timely manner, but then time got away from me once more. I guess that I just have to say that eventually, I will get to my blogging! I had a clear favorite book that I read in March!

1) The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers: This book was in written in about 1940 when the author was twenty-three years old. It was the first book she had written.

It is a very sad, quite disturbing picture of a small town in the South in the 1930s. A deaf and mute man, John Singer is the main character of the book and the story is about the characters who come in and out of his life. All seem to put their trust in him and divulge their secrets and wants to him. 

I read this a long time ago and re-read it for my book group. It is a book that elicited a lot of discussions as each character was dissected. A good book, but not one I want to read again.

2) Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson: One of my daughters loaned this to me to read after her book group had read it. It is a good story that has dual timelines.

When Eleanor Bennett died, she left her two children a Black Cake to share together. Her two children, Benny and Byron, had been estranged from each other for some time. When their mother died she also left a voice recording for them telling a story from her past involving secrets that their mother had never told them about her life. As they began to unravel their mother's life, they learn many things, including a possible long-lost sibling. As the two children learn more, there were more questions and more mysteries to solve.

As a long-time genealogist, this was a very fun and interesting book to read!

3) Bewilderment by Richard Powers: I had a hard time getting interested in this book until it seemed to all come together for me at the end.

This was a story about Theo and Robin, a father and son trying to navigate life together after their wife and mother died. Robin was a rather strange boy who spent his time drawing/painting pictures of endangered animals. His father, Theo was an astrobiologist, who worked hard at raising this sweet boy, who one day was expelled from school after smashing another boy in the face. Doctors want to put Robin on psychoactive drugs to help with his behaviors, but Theo didn't want to. Then Theo learned of an experimental treatment that might help Robin with his control issues. 

It gets a little stranger after that, but Theo and Robin eventually find their places with each other. The saving grace of this book for me was the absolute love that Theo had for his child.

4) The Other Einstein by Marie Benedict: I have to say first of all, that the story is very well written and documented, but I ended up really strongly disliking Albert Einstein. The way he treated his wife and children was just horrible. So I had very mixed reactions to this book.

The book told the story of Mileva Maric. In 1896, she was the only woman studying physics at the university where Albert Einstein was studying. He wooed her away from her lifelong ambitions as a scientist to marry him, then went on to treat her like a little housewife, despite the fact that she was probably as brilliant, if not more so, than he was. He promised they would be equals and then went on without her, going so far as to use some of her research and writings and presenting them as his own. When she became pregnant with their first child they were not yet married. Mileva went to stay with her parents to have the baby and after the baby was born,  Albert convinced her to leave the baby with her parents (who lived in another country) and return to Switzerland without the baby so that his career would not be affected by the fact that he had a child.

And things just seemed worse from there.

Learning about Mileva's life was interesting, but a bit disturbing. This was a book that I read for my book group and we had quite a bit of discussion over it!

5) Lastly, I read Horse by Geraldine Brooks: This is a wonderful book that tells a story in a way that I had never read. This is another book that has dual timelines and is based on real events.

The story began with a young art historian,j Theo, finding a discarded old painting of a horse in his neighbor's pile of trash. And then with Jess, a scientist studying a horse's bones.

But first, the story goes back to 1850 when a young slave named Jarrett was the groom of a new foal. Jarret and the horse became inseparable as he groomed him to become a racehorse. The horse was called Darley in the early years and went on to be a record-setting winner. A young artist followed the horse's victories and painted him several times. After about three years, Darley was sold, and he was then called Lexington. And Jarrett was allowed to go with the horse.

In 1855, Jarrett and Lexington were sent to Kentucky for a couple of reasons. One to keep Jarrett out of danger with the talk of war coming, and the other was Lexington's health. 

Meanwhile, the book goes back and forth between Theo and Jess who had teamed up for the discovery of Lexington.

It is a fascinating book in terms of learning the story of both Lexington and Jarrett, racing and slavery/racism, and love. It will be undoubtedly in my top 5 books for 2023!