Catch up from Christmas…

When school finished up in mid-December, there was the usual crush of reviewing final exams and getting the grades in on time and so it was a few days before I could really sit down and chill out. Since I’m now faculty, I earn the same university breaks as the students which ended up about three weeks, give or take a day. (I still find it amazing that I’m now on the faculty side of the university after twenty years as a staff member. That staff work experience definitely enables me to be a stronger faculty member, I must say.) 

So, to the reading:

I really enjoyed a solid read of The Butchering Art by social historian Lindsay Fitzharris. About Joseph Lister and his quest to revolutionize Victorian medical care via anesthesia and better hygiene, this was an NF which ticked almost all of my reading boxes: well written, well researched, Victorian times, medical history, social history, dry sense of humor – and I really enjoyed this read. (See here for a more in-depth review.) 

Then, I embarked on the journey of Alex Haley’s Roots, the fiction-y saga of Haley’s family who were shipped to the U.S. as part of the Slave Triangle trade route and have stayed in the States since then. True or not, this was a really interesting narrative. Does anyone remember watching the old TV series of Roots when it came on? I’ve always meant to read the book, and finally got around to it. I think that there is some debate about what exactly is true and what is not, but just speaking about the plot – it’s a good read and really demonstrates how strong Haley’s family (and others in the same situation) must have been to make it through all these years. 

(Roots was also a Big Scary Book in terms of page numbers, so go me. It’s the little things, right?)

I read some more of Ray Bradbury’s sci fi, this title being The Martian Chronicles (see review here), and it happened to be one of those library books which have the well-turned yellowing pages with a perfect type font and size as well which made it a really enjoyable read. (I can’t help it. A reading experience involves much more than just the words for me!)

Traveled to a plot set in India with Lavanya Sankaran’s 2013 novel, The Hope Factory (another really good read with interesting characters and a fast-moving plot but no blog post), and then followed that up with a library checkout of the latest book Homebody by Joanna Gaines, an HGTV interior designer who (along with her husband Chip) has a series of TV shows about doing up old houses. This led me to redoing some of the decorations around the house and getting inspired that way – plus it had lots of pictures to look at!

Then a solid read of the 2018 America’s Best Travel Writing volume which was pretty bad until about halfway through when suddenly the read clicked for me. It was edited by Cheryl Strayed, and since I’m not the biggest fan of her work, I think this was the reason that I didn’t get on with the initial selections in the book. We did become more friendly in the end, but if I had stuck with Nancy Pearl’s rule of 50 pages, it would have been a DNF for sure. That’s the gamble with a curated collection of stories in these volumes… Still, as mentioned, I did come across some good selections which saved the read for me.

The new year brought more determination to read from my own TBR pile, so I pulled a random title with an old Virago volume, The Orchid House by Phyllis Strand Allfrey (1954). No real blog post, but this was an ok read (albeit slightly strange). This novel is widely considered to be one of the stalwarts of Caribbean literature despite the fact that Allfrey was of Caucasian descent and of a family that benefited significantly from the slave trade.

However, this seems to be generally forgiven since this narrative, her first (and only) published novel, was from the perspective of an old island nanny of the family. It’s a pretty dark and rather strange book though. However, this was more of a broccoli book for me in the end. Nothing too outstanding though, and I’m glad to have finally read it after it being on the TBR shelves for longer than I will admit. 🙂

I’m in the middle of reading some Wodehouse for light relief, and just about to pick up another one from the TBR, this one called The Rotter’s Club, a 2001 novel by Jonathon Coe. Very different from the Caribbean novel as this one is set in the much colder and grittier parts of Birmingham in England in the 1970s, and is from the perspective of a young lad. It’s been really funny in places so far – enough that I burst out laughing at the gym this morning – so I’m looking forward to the read. 

So that’s me all caught up for now. How have your reads been lately?