The (Almost) Halfway Post.

Almost halfway through the year and like other book bloggers, I think it’s fun to see how the reading is going and whether there are any patterns or trends emerging. 

To that end, here is what I’ve read so far this in terms of numbers:

• 54 books in total for a total of 16,142 pages:

• 33 fiction  – Includes short story collections and a play. (Very surprised to see this. I would have sworn that it was more NF but it’s not to be.) 
• 21 non-fiction

Other interesting (perhaps only to me!) stats include:

• 25 books (46%) taken from my TBR – I’d like to up this stat a bit more this year…
• Average number of books read per month: 10.5 books
• Average page count per month: 285 pp.
• Total average page count per month: 2,690 pp. 

How do the demographics look?

• 10 from POC/BIPOC authors (19%) – I’d like to up this stat a bit more this year…
• 23 male authors
• 27 female authors
• 5 mixed gender content

The books themselves:

Oldest book: (Far From the Madding Crowd / Hardy – 1875) 

Newest books: Two from 2020 (Battle of Brothers / Robert Lacey (NF) and Sharks in the Time of Saviors / Kawai Strong Washburn (F).)

Best book so far: 

Hmm. If I absolutely have to commit for both F and NF, I would argue for the following:

• Fiction: Rebecca / du Maurier (or the Hardy)
• Nonfiction: The Best American Travel Writing 2019  / Alexandra Fuller (ed.) 

Autobiographies and biographies have been popular topics, but there are no real leaders, TBH: Other topics have included nature writing, travel, history and the social sciences…. 

.It’s been a good year so far. I hope that you’re having a similar year. Onward and upward!

New TBR shelf…

Here are the titles on the new TBR shelf:

• Letters of Note: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience – Shaun Usher (ed.) (NF/socio)
• On Doctoring: Stories, Poems, Essays – Richard Reynolds, M.D. and John Stone, M.D. (eds.) (NF/socio)
• The Girls from Winnetka – Marcia Chellis (NF/bio)
• A Victorian Courtship: The Story of Beatrice Potter and Sidney Webb – Jeanne McKenzie (NF/history/bio)
• Cold: Adventures in the World’s Frozen Places – Bill Streever (NF/geog)
• My Family and Other Animals – Gerald Durrell (NF/nature)
• All Things Wise and Wonderful – James Herriott (NF/nature)
• The Book of Not – Tsitsi Dangarembga (F)
• Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card (F/sci fi)
• Majesty: Elizabeth II and the House of Windsor – Robert Lacey (NF/bio). Read. Good.
• Time and Again – Jack Finney (F)
• On Borrowed Wings – Chandra Prasad (F)
• Olive Kitteridge – Elizabeth Strout (F)
• Gentlemen Prefer Blondes – Anita Loos (F). Read. Good.
• Mr. Chartwell – Rebecca Hunt (F)
• Tales of a Female Nomad: Living at Large in the World – Rita Golden Gelman (NF/travel). Read. Good.
• Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey – The Countess of Carnarvan (NF/history)
• Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier (F). Read. Good.

As always, the usual guidelines are in place: these are just suggestions for me and I’m happy to go off-piste if I want to. It’s summer time rules here! 🙂

Reading Review: April 2021

The reads for April 2021 included:

• Life After Life – Kate Atkinson (F). Loved this and plan on reading more Atkinson.
• The Happiness Project – Gretchen Rubin (NF). Meh.
• Bird: DK Eyewitness Books (NF). I’m starting to get into a bit of birdwatching but I’m a big novice right now. Thought I’d learn some basic facts.
• Evil Under the Sun – Agatha Christie (F)
• Living, Loving, and Lying Awake – Sindiwe Magona (F/short stories). OK.
• Belfast Diary: War as a Way of Life – John Conroy (NF/history/geog). Pretty interesting how it “normalizes” a war-torn society and culture.
• Suburban Sahibs: Three Immigrant Families and Their Passage from India to America – S. Mitra Kalita (NF). OK.
• Sharks in the Time of Saviors – Kawai Strong Washburn (F). Despite my aversion to short stories, these worked. Plus it’s on a list of Favorite Reads by President Obama.
• A Gentleman in Moscow – Amor Towles (F). Loved this. Definitely going to read more Towles.
• Dinner ASAP – Cooking Light (NF/cooking). I’ve been cooking some of these recipes – very good and not too complicated for this neophyte chef.
• All Creatures Great and Small – James Herriot (NF/memoir). Just a good read.
• Freddie and Me: A Coming-of-Age (Bohemian) Rhapsody – Mike Dawson (GN/autobio). Fairly typical teenaged angst for GNs.  

So to the (rather obsessive!) numbers:

• Total number of books read in April 2021: 12.
• Total number of pages read:  3,656 pages (av. 305). 
• Fiction/Non-Fiction: 5 fiction / 7 non-fiction. 0 plays.
• Diversity:  3 BIPOC. 6 books by women.
• Library books vs. books I owned (and thus removed from the home abode): 6 library books, 7 owned books (whee!) and 0 e-books.

Plans for May 2021 include continuing to include more BIPOC writing on my list. Continue this pace of reading and continue this streak of reading more from my own TBR as opposed to those titles from the library. Sounds pretty doable to me. Plus – it’s the end of the semester and I’m off for the summer. 🙂

Library Loot: April 07 2021

Loot from my local library included the following:

• Belfast Diary – John Conroy (NF about 1980s Northern Ireland during the Troubles).
• Sharks in the Time of Saviors – Kawai Strong Washburn (F). One of former Pres. Obama’s favorite books of 2020, apparently. If it’s good enough for him… 😉
• A Caribbean Mystery – Agatha Christie (F/murder mystery). Love me some Christie.
• The Secret River – Kate Grenville (F/Australian). I’ve heard good things…
• Dolores Claiborne – Stephen King (F). I would like to read more King so seeing if I can handle his less-scary titles first.
• Emma – Jane Austen (F). In the mood for a good classic.
• The Water Museum – Luis Alberta Urrea (F/short stories). I don’t always get on that well with short stories but I’ll give them a go with Urrea’s work since he’s really good.)

March 2021 Reading Review

The reads for March 2021 included:

• India Calling – Anand Giridharadas (NF)
• The Sytteford Mystery – Agatha Christie (F)
• The Commitments – Roddy Doyle (F) – Reading Ireland Month
• The Snapper – Roddy Doyle (F) – Reading Ireland Month
• The Van – Roddy Doyle (F) – Reading Ireland Month
• Germinal – Emile Zola (F)
• Heroes and Monsters of Greek Myths – Evslin, Evslin and Hoopes (F)
• Queenie – Candace Carty-Williams (F)
• The Feast of Lupercal – Brian Moore (F) – Reading Ireland Month
• Mythology DK Eyewitness book – Neil Philip (F)
• The Long March – Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick (NF) – Reading Ireland Month
• The War Bride’s Scrapbook – Carolyn Preston (F)
• The Time Machine – H.G. Wells (F)
• Londoners – Craig Taylor (NF)
• The Importance of Being Earnest – Oscar Wilde (play)
• Humans – Brandon Stanton (NF/photo/soc sci)

So to the (rather obsessive!) numbers:

• Total number of books read in February 2021: 16.
• Total number of pages read:  3,266 pages (av. 266). 
• Fiction/Non-Fiction: 10 fiction / 5 non-fiction. 1 play.
• Diversity:  3 BIPOC. 5 books by women.
• Library books vs. books I owned (and thus removed from the home abode): 8 library books, 7 owned books (whee!) and 2 e-books.

So I had a productive reading month which was really fun. Plus, I also pulled out some cross-stitch and finally finished up a project that I’ve working on for quite a while. Just need to get it framed and then it’s done. 🙂

Review Roundup: London, Humans, Life After Life…

I’ve been reading quite a lot lately. It’s so interesting to see that I have a tendency to fluctuate in my reading levels. Looking back at trends over the past several years, I see that my reading levels falter in January and February and then pick up the pace once it gets into the Spring months. Is it to do with the amount of sun? Is it something to do with the moon? 😉 

I’m not sure but I’m glad I’m back into one of my most important hobbies. So – what have I actually been reading? Let me do a quick round-up for you.

Londoners – Craig Taylor (2011). A nonfiction collection of conversations, really, that Taylor has gathered from a wide range of people who live in, love, hate, or perhaps left London. This was one of those perfect reads at the perfect time for me and I loved it. It was fit in with my temporary Monkey Mind and I could really hear what his interviewees said. This was such a fascinating read and I highly recommend it if you’re searching for a good book to pick up and put down. Loved it.

The Importance of Being Earnest – Oscar Wilde (1895). The play itself. I have been wanting to go to a live play or other cultural event, but the pandemic has put the kibosh on that option right now so I picked up this Wilde read. I haven’t seen or read this one and it was full of Wilde’s sly witticisms and sense of humor. Good. 

Then, still with a bit of a Monkey Mind (and thus lower levels of concentration), I was at the library (shocker!) and saw the most recent edition of the photo collection by Brandon Stanton called Humans. (He did the photo books called “Humans of New York” and has a really good blog, which I reviewed here and this was just as stellar). Stanton takes extremely good photos and allows his interviewees to really talk. Just fascinating if you like that kind of thing. (This is one of the projects that I wish I had done.) 

Life After Life – Kate Atkinson (2014). Looking for a solid good read and wanting to pull a title from my homegrown TBR (as opposed to the library), this was quite a chunky read (and yet I wasn’t scared off by it) – 536 pages. (Normally, I would run screaming from such a high page count but it was ok.) This was such a good read but it definitely plays with time and structure so you need to concentrate. The protagonist, Ursula, reincarnates over and over throughout this story but what is truth? Anyway, a very clever novel and easy to read at the same time. I’m definitely going to pick up more Atkinson at some point. 

So that’s me all caught up re: recent reads. Tell me about yours. 

Oh, and I bought a new rug for my office at home. It makes me very happy! 🙂

Queenie – Candice Carty-Williams (2019)

Picked this up at the library the other day after having seen it mentioned on quite a few book bloggers’ sites and, at the same time, wanting to add another POC author to my reading life.

This is, apparently, Candice Carty-Williams’ first novel although it looks like she has a background in publishing as well. So – did I enjoy this read? Not sure that “enjoy” is the best word but it was a fast read and a pretty good one. I’ll say that.

The narrative revolves around the central protagonist, Queenie, a 25-year-old first generation Brit who is single, living in the UK with Jamaican parents. As the plot moves forward, we get to see how Queenie lives and works and from the POV of this particular reader, it read very smoothly overall.

Reading some of the reviews, countless people had compared Queenie to a more brash Bridget Jones in many ways, but I don’t think this is an accurate impression. Queenie is a much more hardened character than Bridget ever was.

She straddles both the Jamaican immigrant culture as well as the culture(s) of her friends and has to deal with insidious cuts and asides (racial and otherwise) in her newspaper workplace.

It seems as though she has her life fairly together for a twenty-something woman in the 21^st century, but the one piece that is significantly awry for her is her love life where there is one terrible decision after another. (There is a lot of unprotected sex in this book. Fair warning, if you want it. If not, carry on.)

And I just kept wanting to pull Queenie aside EVERY time she went to bed with someone and tell her that she didn’t have to do this. But I couldn’t and it was actually made even harder to be patient with her as she came across as consistently unlikeable in many ways: she’s selfish at times but perhaps Carty-Williams’ goal with her was to provide a more human character who makes human mistakes. I’m not sure.

This was well written overall. Carty-Williams handles the narrative effectively. I just wish that I had liked (and respected) Queenie a little more.

The Long March – Marie-Louise Fitzpatrick (1998)

Chahta hakia hoke: We are Choctaw.

With Cathy at 749Books focusing on All Things Irish this month, I’ve been pulling some Irish-related titles from the shelves and in doing so realized that I know shockingly little about Irish history. So – wanting a quick primer on the Emerald Isle, I read this title. (I also have another FANTASTIC novel that I’m finishing up but that’s a different post.)

This read was about the terrible potato famine that occurred in 1845-1847. The juvenile title covers how the Choctaw people in Oklahoma collected money from their tribespeople to send to the Irish during their time of need…

Despite having lived close to OK for many years, I was not familiar with this event of the Choctaws supporting the far-away Irish so my interest was piqued when I saw the title on my library website.

Even better – it was a kid read which meant two things: (one) it’s probably really well explained (assuming the author is good) and (two) it wouldn’t take long to read and learn. I was right on both counts.

The protagonist, Choona, a young Choctaw boy, is familiar with the terrible Great March (or the Trail of Tears) which his tribe had been forced to undertake when their lands were taken away from the tribe, and as the reader learns (along with Choona) of the overlaps between these two displaced peoples, s/he also learns the importance of being true to yourself and others.

(In fact, there is such a connection between the Choctaw tribe and Ireland that Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland, was inducted as an honorary tribal chieftain.)

So – what was good about this read? Well, it was really well researched by Fitzpatrick and she had worked closely with her Choctaw contacts, both the actual Chief of the Choctaw tribe and the Executive Director of a non-profit that works with the actual tribe. This automatically added authenticity and drive to the book for me, at least.

Additionally, the artwork was stupendous. Fitzpatrick, the author, is also a professional illustrator and it was obvious that she had taken great pains to reflect Choctaw life and people accurately and with care. I wonder how she had come across this story originally, as I haven’t heard of it before now. I’m really glad that I’ve learned about this as it’s a really interesting story.

Fascinating (to me) note: According to this title, the state name of Oklahoma (actually Okla Homa) is Choctaw for “Red People”.