For some reason or another, a few of the titles that I have been picking up later have not been stellar. (You win some, you lose some…) They have been good-ish but not stellar and there have even been some DNFs in the pile. To get things caught up a bit, here is a short but sweet roundup of what’s been in my grubby little mitts lately:
2012 Best American Travel Writing – ed. William T. Vollman. This was a good read that was well written for the most part. I think the success of each edition in this series is very dependent upon the taste of whoever is editor that year (naturally), but not being familiar with Vollman (2012 editor), I had little idea what to expect. It seemed quite across the board, topic-wise. However, just like previous years, very few female writers. What’s up with that?
Unbroken – Laura Hillenbrand. This book has been recommended by just about everyone, but just like her other book (Seabiscuit), I could not get into this. I read about half of it, but each page was a struggle for me which is odd as the actual hero has an amazing life. I think it’s her writing or something. There is a fine line between enough detail and too much detail, and I think she goes off on detailed tangents too much for me.
Been searching for some YA poetry to review for a column that I write. Wow. It is quite tough to find poetry anthologies that are pretty decent in this category. Any ideas?
After immersing ourselves in PBS’ series about the Dust Bowl, and having listened to Tim Egan’s talk about the era, I picked up the old book The Wind by Dorothy Scarborough. However, at the same time, I also picked up Cather’s book and it was just too confusing to read about two single women experiencing pioneer life in the US at the same time. So Cather won that round (rather regretfully in hindsight), and I will wait a few more days to pick up Scarborough. I know it’s going to be a good one though as it’s a re-read from ages ago.
And as Virago modern Classics have just released a re-print of Angela Thirkell’s early Barsetshire books, I picked up High Rising. Nothing hard to read, nothing to interpret – just a nice comfortable read that I can look forward to. Sometimes that’s all you want.
(image from House Beautiful)
Just One More Page... 