A Balm in Gilead

Although I'm a tearful movie watcher, I rarely cry at a book.

Gilead is an exception.

I read Gilead quite a few years ago at the strong recommendation of a (bookish like me!) friend.  I was instantly captured by the idea that John Ames, this aging man, would write down all the important things he would want to share with his young son, being quite aware that he likely would not live long enough to see Robby into adulthood.  I was SO moved by the character of Jack (son of his best friend and colleague Robert Boughton), and the tragedy of a life of poor choices and a love that doesn't suit its time.

Fast forward to Home and Lila.

Announcing the Top Ten! Drumroll, please....

The Maine Readers' Choice Award Shortlist has been announced!

Daniel Woodrell - Winter's Bone

I'm assigned to read Daniel Woodrell's newest book, The Maid's Version, for The Maine Readers' Choice Award Longlist, but I decided to preface that book with an earlier Woodrell, Winter's Bone.

It is a visceral, gripping novel, revealing a slice of life that is often ignored in America... grinding rural poverty.

The Maine Readers' Choice Award Longlist is out!

I've made passing reference to the Maine Readers' Choice Award a couple of times... I'm a member of the 2014 Reading Committee.  Here's the skinny:

"The Maine Readers’ Choice Award, officially established in 2013 by the Maine State Library and the Maine Library Association, recognizes the best in adult  fiction published in the United States the previous year.  The aim of this award is to increase awareness and reading of literary fiction.  The Maine Readers’ Choice Award honors books that exhibit exceptional writing and a compelling story that encourages reading and conversation among individuals and in Maine’s communities."

Been wondering about the books under consideration for the 2014 Maine Readers' Choice Award?

Wonder no more!

Help for the Haunted

John Searles Help for the Haunted.  Swing.... and a miss.

Help for the Haunted - swing and a miss.

I really wanted to love this book. I wanted a good scare.  I don’t know why.  I felt affinity for the girls (Rose & Sylvie – incidentally, two of my favorite female names).  They seem really lonely, and their experiences: the seemingly supernatural ones, as well as the "real" (spoiler alert) murder of their parents... just tragic.

THIS is how “into” this book I was:  I was reading in bed, about 50 pages from the end.  My husband comes home from his weekly Guys Night Out.  He starts talking with me, and I actually shushed him: “I’m almost done this book, and it’s really suspenseful!” He likes a gripping yarn too, so he let me be.

Disappointment.  But in hindsight, I feel like I should have seen it coming.

Jill McCorkle, Life After Life

I tend to gravitate toward books with PLOT, and although there's nothing wrong with a great narrative - in fact there's a lot RIGHT about it - it's healthy for me to enjoy a character-driven novel.

Enter Jill McCorkle's Life After Life. Although I finished it more than a month ago, and I'm just writing about it now, I actually read it very quickly. 

Imagine a set of concentric circles, or a web.  Or maybe a whole bunch of Venn diagrams. With six main characters (and a supporting cast of a couple dozen), their lives are very much intertwined, even though they don't realize it.  

Jhumpa Lahiri, The Lowland

Jhumpa Lahiri, The Lowland
(accompanied by my "tools of the trade")

Jhumpa Lahiri's The Lowland is a magnificent novel, under consideration for both the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Award. I am honored to read it as part of the "very-long" list of the Maine Readers' Choice Award.  I finished it more than a month ago, but I haven't been able to write about it, mainly because I want so much to do it justice.

As much as I insisted that I like a book that has a very compact time frame (in my post about The Dinner), I have to say that Lahiri can achieve the opposite - a book that spans an entire human lifetime. 

The Dinner

Herman Koch's The Dinner is an ethically conflicted novel.

How far would you go to protect your child?  

How far into "we just want the best for our son"?

It actually makes me a little ill (indigestion?) to contemplate my reaction, my horror, if my son committed a senseless act of violence.... the source of the discord in The Dinner.

Narrators without Names: not-so-good, better, awesome!

I've had three books underway, all at once, and this week I finished all three.  

All three books are in the first person, and in all three, the narrator goes unnamed.

First up: Matt Bell's In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods (aka I'm Unnaturally Fond of Prepositional Phrases).
Bell teaches writing at Northern Michigan University and several of his short stories have been anthologized.  This is his first novel, and I think it would have been MUCH better cut back to a short story, maybe a novella at most.

NOS4A2

It's gotta be tough being Stephen King's kid.

I mean, you have the creepiest dad at school, everyone knows you have money, and now that you've taken up the family business of horror novel writing, the expectations must be practically unattainable.  Not to mention that Dear Ol' Dad is still cranking out books of his own!

Come on, Joe.  
Scare me more.

To be honest, I didn't know that Joe Hill was a King when I first heard about NOS4A2 (Nosferatu, pronounced "Nos-four-ah-too" like the silent-era German film).  In fact, I was about two-thirds of the way through the novel before a friend told me, "Oh yeah!  That book by Stephen King's son!"  Now THAT makes sense.

I'm back!

Hey y'all... took a little bloggy sabbatical in June.  I'm back!

Things that happened:

School ended. I'm not a teacher, but it's amazing how busy the end of the school year can be simply as a parent of a school-age child!