Juggling school and work and after school activities has worn me down. The long Labor Day weekend was nice – we had the best weather and the three days at home gave us time to play and do some work around the house. All of my windows are washed inside and out, and best of all Will took the interior shutters down in the kitchen so we have light! It looks like a totally different, huge room now. I probably need some curtains, but I have to patch and paint the molding first, which gives me plenty of time to figure out what kind of curtains I want. The last thing I am going to do is cover up the beautiful glass.
With the busy-ness of last week, I didn’t get to finish my back to school book posts for Eren. I figure better late than never, so here are some of my fiction favorites. I’ve always loved fiction, and usually my book club’s pick for the month is fiction. The older I get, the fewer and fewer books end up categorized as favorite books. Some books are well written with beautiful language, but the plot is lacking or I hate the characters or the author can’t figure how to end the story. Other books are the exact opposite. My favorite books seem to have it all, at least in my eyes they do.
Selected Stories by Alice Munro – Munro is such a marvelous writer, and I never tire of reading her stories, both old and new. This volume is great because there are so many included stories, and I love seeing how they change from the beginning of her writing career to later.
Jim the Boy by Tony Earley – A beautiful, simple story of a 10 year old boy whose world is changing almost too rapidly. I love everything about this book. There is an equally good follow-up novel – The Blue Star – about Jim as a teenager, but I’m still partial to Jim as a boy.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy - After my husband read this, he told me, “you should never read this book.” Well it was chosen as a book club pick, and I was mad because I didn’t want to read it. I almost thought about skipping it, but I’m glad I didn’t because there is no other book that is quite like The Road. The result of a horrific time, the journey of a father and son, and McCarthy’s simple language is mesmerizing, and he is a storytelling genius. I’m also a little partial to this book because the only character given a name is an old man named Ely, with the same archiac spelling as my son. I figured there must be a special reason McCarthy chose this name and this spelling, and it made me so happy not to have changed the spelling of my grandfather’s name to the more common Eli just to make life easier for my son.
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri- I probably could have listed all of Lahiri’s books, but I’m partial to this novel. I like so many things about her writing and characters, but best of all I like how reading her books makes me realize that despite all the outward differences in people, we are really very much the same.
Peace Like a River by Leif Enger - My most recent favorite book. I’m still mad at myself for letting this book exist in the world for 9 years before I knew about it and read it, but I suppose that is just how some things are. Luckily I know about it now, and can reread whenever I want.
Don’t forget that I write about everything I read 3-4 times a year in booklog posts. I’ve briefly reviewed many many more great fiction reads (non fiction too) besides the smattering of titles above.
