Most of us are finding more time to read these days, although I'm hearing from many who find it tough to concentrate on their books, from others who only want to read "gentle" stories. I, too, can find it difficult to concentrate and I'll admit to spending more time with a screen than usual (what did we do before Netflix? And I just subscribed to MHz so that we could finish watching Un Village Français of which we'd only managed 5 seasons, a few years ago in France, and had been searching for here ever since). . . .
For me, comfort from reading doesn't necessarily come from gentle narratives, although I'm not averse to those, if they're well written. But I seem to like a mix of subject material and genre and writing style, and that's what you'll see in this post. Again, I'll remind you that last year I made the decision to write my response to my reading by hand in a small journal. Rather than aim for more comprehensive (and more cohesive!) posts -- which, in the past has meant posting that falls far behind my reading -- I post photographs of those pages here semi-regularly, and I try to post what I'm currently reading on
my Instagram reading account. . . . In case you're new here and wondering what kind of an excuse for a Reading Blog this is . . .
Without further ado. . . .
1. Top of this page, photo of the bottom of a page from my Reading Journal, very brief note about Mick Herron's
Spook Street (note continues on the next RJ page, seen in photo below. If you like very well-written topical thrillers -- and if a London setting is a bonus -- you really should look for this Slough House series. Begin with his
Slow Horses.
2. I posted this
photo on Instagram-- Ann Patchett's blurb on the back cover of Jesmyn Ward's
Sing, Unburied, Sing -- having just read a book by Patchett. Synchronicity. . . No one would call this a gentle book, and perhaps few would call it comforting. But I do take comfort that brilliant, talented, skilful, observant, and thoughtful writers work to record difficult truths about our world. And somehow make surprising beauty as they testify. Redemption seems possible through the telling and the hearing, the writing and the reading.
3. I'm not sure I would have made room in my far-too-long To Be Read list for Ann Patchett's debut novel if my Book Club of Two friend hadn't suggested it, but I'm glad I did. That reading time seems so distant now, though, and yet marks such an abrupt and drastic change. Borrowed from the library just before the shut-down, and still sitting on my hallway shelf waiting to be returned weeks later, due date extended. . . . (
IG post here)
4. I've written before about books by Jean-Christophe Rufin -- back in May 2017 I referred ever so glancingly to his
L'Immortelle Randonnée: Compostelle Malgré Moi, my favourite of several Camino pilgrimage memoirs I've read. Last summer I read Rufin's most recent novel
Les Sept Mariages d'Edgar et Ludmila and liked it very much. So last month, I finally got around to reading a novel that a friend in Bayonne recommended to me last spring, a novel that has been made into a film which I hope to see some day.
Le Collier Rouge. If you read French, I recommend this . . .
My notes about it are scribbled here. . .
5. And for a change of pace, this whimsical novel set in Rome is fun -- if I were willing to spend less time reading and more time writing, it probably deserves more than the few scrawled lines you see above (#21 in the year's entries). . . . I did say a
few more words about it on IG. If you're looking for something light, charming, that will transport you to a Rome in a happier state that it is now, this might be for you. I enjoyed it.
6. Jesmyn Ward's
Salvage the Bones is another book I borrowed from the library before it closed; I'd reserved it, along with her
Sing, Unburied, Sing in early March, when we were looking forward to seeing the author speak at a UBC series on
Thinking While Black. Sadly, her talk and another we had tickets to were cancelled because of Covid-19. I hope both events might someday be re-scheduled. . . .
This novel is set in the days before and after Hurricane Katrina, and in the current context of Covid-19 might prompt a reader to think about the kinds of crises we respond to and the kind of chronic and ongoing poverty and inequity we can ignore or accept as unchangeable.
7. I'll close with another novel that won't provide readers with any conventional comfort or escape they might be seeking during these strange times. But I seem to take comfort from writers who tell us important truths . . . and while doing so, and without compromise, without coddling, without couching dark realities, can nonetheless engage us aesthetically.
I find hope and even redemption in writing like this. The third novel in Smith's tetralogy/quartet of seasons (I wrote about
Winter in this post: a sentence or two about
Autumn at the very bottom of this one) is the most directly political, but it's also wonderfully multi-vocal, so many points of entry and exit, so many stories overlapping, so many "levels of discourse," neatly integrated. In contrast to my inadequate Reading Journal scribbles, here's a
decent review from The Guardian. I did say a wee bit more on Instagram
here and
here and
here
Now perhaps you'll tell me if you've read any of these and let me know if you agree with my response to them. And perhaps we could talk about whether you turn to books for comfort in difficult times, and if so, what provides that comfort. (Perhaps instead you'd prefer trenchant analysis of the difficulties or books with substantive, distracting content -- not necessarily cosy or gentle. Perhaps you find comfort in graphic murder mysteries, perhaps you indulge in genres you barely tolerate in normal times. No judging here, just curiosity and solidarity between readers.)
But mostly, we could just talk about what books you've been reading and enjoying since most of us entered this time of Staying Home. . . . any recommendations? The mic's all yours. . .
