Borrowed from Lauren & Peter. A Holocaust memoir. What a crazy combination of luck, intelligence, and kindness helped Szpilman to survive the devastation. Very moving.
Memoir: The Pianist, by Wladyslaw Szpilman
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Monthly Archives: June 2009
Short Stories: The Feminists Go Swimming, by Michael Collins
Bought in Dublin, Collins is a writer I’ve read in the past and often had a hard time finding his books in the US (I’ve occasionally ordered them from Amazon UK) so I was on the lookout for him.
These stories are such a unique combination of funny and harsh: you’re sometimes embarrassed to be laughing at the funny parts, particularly as they’re so quickly followed by the serious and dark.
Catholics dealing with the prophesised end of the world; the portioning out throughout the day as an alcoholic drinks himself to death… I think my favorite may have been “The Horses” where a man is a wildly accurate race picker to no benefit to himself.
Mystery: Circle of the Dead, by Ingrid Black
Bought by Silvia on our trip to Dublin.
Entertaining enough; I enjoyed the brusque “what the author thinks is Americanness” of Saxon’s character. But it was a bit convoluted and one of those mysteries with too many twists, to the point where it becomes not very believable.
Fiction: City of Refuge, by Tom Piazza
Bought after reading about it at the Tournament of Books (where it made it to the final round but lost to Toni Morrison’s latest).
There are really three storylines here: Craig and his middle-class white family; SJ and his lower-class black family; and the historical facts of Hurricane Katrina. They pretty much trade off chapters throughout and in the beginning of the book, I definitely found the “fact” chapters a bit distracting; taking me away from the action to just recite numbers. But toward the end of the book, I found them a welcome emotional relief; a way to ground yourself in the reality of how many people this actually happened to.
I thought it was a great book, perhaps made more weighty by being woven in to such a recent past. The characters and their struggles with moving on vs turning back felt very real to me.
Clearly Piazza loves New Orleans, and continues to struggle with the thought of his city in destruction. Huffencoopers, have you read this yet? I think you’d love it.
À la Super Eggplant, currently, I am…
Eating: Today: nothing. Tomorrow: a cake like this one, I hope.
Making: Good week for dreaming of projects a-plenty. Bad week for actual crafting.
Reading: Just started this month’s challenge book: “Motherless Brooklyn” by Jonathan Lethem. Loving all the Tourettes’ word experiments.
Watching: New season of Burn Notice, yippee. Also about to start in on the Band of Brothers DVDs. For real this time.
Listening to: “Orange Sky” and “All of My Days” (Alexi Murdoch, both) back to back to back. Thanks to seeing “Away We Go” last night (a: it was AWESOME and b: Murdoch was basically the entire soundtrack), I just can’t listen to anything else.
Failing at: Focus. Control. Willpower. The usual.
Oh me, Oh my.
I am actually so far behind on Snip book reviews (2.5 months about. give or take) that it’s making me CRAZY whenever I get home and see this big ole stack of books sitting here that to my insane OCD mind canNOT be put away until they’ve at least been acknowledged on the blog. So expect a lot of SHORT reviews coming. Soon.
Truth.
“My gripe is not with lovers of the truth but with truth herself. What succor, what consolation is there in truth, compared to a story? What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney? What you need are the plump comforts of a story. The soothing, rocking safety of a lie.”
–Vida Winter, The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
[emphasis added]
found here.
À la Nick Hornby, books in/books out for May.
Bought:
- Definitely Dead, by Charlaine Harris
- All Together Dead, by Charlaine Harris
- From Dead to Worse, by Charlaine Harris
- Grimspace, by Ann Aguirre
- What We Eat When We Are Alone, by Deborah Madison & Patrick McFarlin
- In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan
- The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery
- Blue Diablo, by Ann Aguirre
- Wanderlust, by Ann Aguirre
- Dead and Gone, by Charlaine Harris (for kindle/iphone!)
- Gone Tomorrow: A Reacher Novel, by Lee Child (for kindle/iphone!)
Read:
- Dead as a Doornail, by Charlaine Harris
- The Dart League King, by Keith Lee Morris
- Definitely Dead, by Charlaine Harris
- All Together Dead, by Charlaine Harris
- From Dead to Worse, by Charlaine Harris
- Grimspace, by Ann Aguirre
- Wanderlust, by Ann Aguirre
- Dracula, by Bram Stoker (re-read)
- All Summer, by Claire Kilroy
- Dead and Gone, by Charlaine Harris