It’s been a while – no real excuses except feeling too distracted to write – but not to read. I have a list I will share, but first – Joan Didion. I remember reading The White Album years ago, and when I heard of her death, I had to stop reading my current book to find an old copy. Her first line lives on as one of the best first lines of a book – “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” Enough to inspire me to reread it to discover what Didion’s words might mean to me now, forty years and a never-ending pandemic later, and if they would have the same impact. I struggled to think of a current writer who has the same impact with her clarity of observations.
Zadie Smith in her tribute to Didion in The New Yorker, noted:
“It is a peculiarity of Joan Didion’s work that her most ironic formulations are now read as sincere, and her sincerest provocations taken with a large pinch of salt. Perhaps when your subject is human delusion you end up drawing that quality out of others, even as you seek to define and illuminate it. How else to explain the odd ways we invert her meanings? We tell ourselves stories in order to live. A sentence meant as an indictment has transformed into personal credo.”
Joan Didion’s name may be more familiar to modern audiences than her work, except perhaps for “The Year of Magical Thinking,”(she wrote five novels, six screenplays, and fourteen works of nonfiction), but it’s never too late to read books guaranteed to inspire, jolt, and perhaps persuade you – “…while everyone else drank the Kool-Aid, she stuck to Coca-Cola …”
Books I Have Been Reading Recently
Never by Ken Follett – slow start but picks up into a roller coaster ride – watch out for the ending
The Book of Magic by Alice Hoffman – the fourth book of witchery – fun to read and wish you were part of the Owens family of witches
Cheese, Wine, and Bread: Discovering the Magic of Fermentation in England, Italy, and France by Katie Quinn – a better version of Eat, Pray, Love with the author’s tongue-in-cheek memoir, good information, and a few great recipes.
Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen – the first in a trilogy. The book made the Washington Post’s top ten for 2021. The story revolves around an associate pastor at a Protestant church in suburban Chicago who’s troubled by his own envy and adultery. “The novel presents an electrifying examination of the irreducible complexities of an ethical life.” Take the time to savor Franzen’s use of words, and the inevitable thoughtfulness he will instill in you, as you read.
The Party Crasher by Sophie Kinsellla – read just for fun – book candy
What I am Reading Now
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weil – I hope it has a happy ending…
Books on My To Read List
- Gilded by Mariss Meyer
- Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout
- The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
- These Precious Days by Ann Patchett
- A Carnival of Snackery by David Sedaris
- The Fran Lebowitz Reader by Fran Lebowitz
- The Anomaly by Herve Le Tellier
- Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune
- The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan
Magic Lessons by Alice Hoffman
A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future by Sir David Attenborough
Buried in a pile of old Scholastic books, I found an Alice Hoffman story about a mermaid – Aquamarine. Hoffman is one of my favorite writers for magical realism; I’ve read most of her books for adults and eagerly anticipate her next one. Aquamarine is a short tale, not requiring a lot of time or attention; it flows easily into a story about two friends about to be separated at the end of the summer. Aquamarine is a real mermaid, of course, accidentally trapped in a swimming pool after a storm.
Although I had started reading Eleanor and Park when it was first published in 2012, I never read past the sample pages on my iPhone. When my ninety-two year old friend suggested we be a book club of two to discuss the ending, I downloaded the story of the two teenagers’ story of first love. Not exactly star-crossed lovers, these two are from different ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, but they connect on the school bus and save each other. A short easy read with an ending my friend says “left her with a good vibe” – glad I read it.
A recent New York Times article by author Robert Lipsyte – “My Struggle to Write Honestly About a Test of Manhood” -alerted me to his YA book – One Fat Summer. The book has been reframed into a movie – “The Measure of a Man,” but the book sounds better. I have it on my iPhone to read.
And finally, Margery Sharp. I found this author through an old movie with Charles Boyer and Jennifer Jones in “Cluny Brown.” Cluny Brown may be the patron saint of the distracted and Sharp perfected the easy style of story telling with a Sophie Kinsella flair over eighty years ago. The movie led to reading her books – funny and comforting. I had forgotten about “The Gipsy in the Parlor,” a two dollar purchase buried in my list of books on my iPhone. Not a YA book, but easy reading and I am now happily and distractedly enjoying it .
Celebrating the power of witches in Alice Hoffman’s The Rules of Magic seems an appropriate way to celebrate Halloween. Hoffman reveals the back story of the two witch aunts who raise Sally and Gillian Owens in her novel made into a movie – Practical Magic. This prequel dates back to the childhood of Frannie and Jet, played in the movie by a feisty Stockard Channing and an aerie Dianne Wiest.
As a fan of magical realism in literature, I thoroughly enjoyed an old book by an author new to me – The House at the End of Hope Street by Menna van Pragg. The idea for the story was inspired by van Pragg’s yearning to establish a house for female artists to give them a year to fulfull their artistic ambitions. This house, however, exists in its own dimension, only appearing to those who need it.
The No Charge Book Bunch 