October (almost November!), 2023… A few additions to post:
First, an article from The G+M on notion called “commonplace” which resonates with my Reading Notes, in a way:
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-commonplace-book-where-early-modern-thinkers-collected-ideas-was/

Beyond That, the Sea, Laura Spence-Ash
A wonderful story, historical fiction, centred on a young girl, Beatrix, sent from England during the war, to live with a family who divided their time between Maine and Boston. The story brought back so many memories of Maine… Gerald and William are brothers who couldn’t be more different, and Bea turns out to love both of them, both as brothers, and soul-mates—and later more like lovers. The characters are fully formed characters and I grew fond of most all of them. It’s about family, and love, and forgiveness, and story.

An Immense World, Ed Yong
An intense and fascinating read. At times it verged on too much, but then Yong’s voice is so real—passionate and also amusing and humble. He kept pulling me in and along. I have so many marked pages noted with excerpts gathered in my journal…

Paul Doiron, Dead Man’s Wake (2023) set in Maine, this was a good story and a fast read (perfect for a quiet long weekend). It felt great to read of familiar places in Maine, and I enjoyed the characters and the families involved.

News of the World, Paulette Jiles
Another amazing book and gifted writer, too. This is historical fiction at its best, drilling into another time in all of its complexities, and weaving a story to pull us into this other world. This is the 1870’s and mostly set in Texas, with Captain Kidd, and older man and widow, taking a young girl back to her relatives after she’s been stolen and then raised by an Indigenous band, but then been stolen away from them. She’s now a Kiowan at heart and by habit, and lost in this strange white world. Kidd is a news reader, in itself a fascinating trade and perspective. They gradually grow to care for and love one another. It all feels so credible.
And as if that weren’t enough, Jiles is a stunning writer, with a poet’s ability to describe setting and to focus on nature. I have so many turned down page corners.

Perry Chafe, Closer by Sea
Wow: Yet another really good story—and read in a single day!! It’s been quite a while since I’ve had that kind of indulgence. The story is of a few kids growing up in a Maritime community threatened by the diminishing fish stocks. Some lovely characters, and a fast-moving story… I was fond of the boys, and Emily, and Solomon, and even the Arseholes get a second chance at decency. There’s loss, and laughs, and loyalty, as young Pierce grows up. A great coming of age story.

Michael Robotham, Lying Beside You (Cyrus Haven series)
Must have heard about Robotham from Margaret Cannon. A good story—fast moving, with interesting characters (though lots of them!!!). I enjoyed the narrative alternating between Cyrus’s and Evie’s perspectives. Both are compelling individuals, with a complex and also interesting relationship.

Jojo Moyes, Someone Else’s Shoes
Another good story! A great month for reading. Got a stack of books from on hold, but these have been a pleasure to push through. At first, I thought I wasn’t going to enjoy this one. The main characters, Nisha and Sam, just didn’t pull me in. Nisha seemed so shallow and arrogant and Sam, so lost and driven. But they drew me in, or Moyes did. By the end, I loved the core of women, who’d become fast friends, and enjoyed their interactions. The notions of attire, of projecting confidence and class, were also interesting, with those red shoes central. Aleks, the cook, is a sweet character too, a good man. Between him and Jasmine, the power of small acts of kindness and caring work their magic and transform Nisha and her life.

This Tender Land, William Kent Krueger
I don’t know where I heard about this, but a wonderful, absorbing read. Krueger is a gifted storyteller, as is his main character, Odie. I loved the cluster of kids at the heart of this story: Odie, Albert, Emma, and Mose. The story is set in the 1930’s, and yet it’s the complexity of relationship, and the challenges of thriving and of forgiveness that make it seem so very relevant to today. The epilogue is also wonderful, flashing forward from Odie’s 12th to his 80ths year. The tale of the four orphans who set sail together on an odyssey wasn’t really finished. Their lives went far beyond… their meanderings of that summer…”

Lessons in Chemistry, Bonnie Garmus
This was an engaging story. I really enjoyed the main character, Elizabeth Zott, and Calvin Evans, too. Actually, I was fond of and admired a cluster of central characters. The cooking show was fun and fascinating, and also credible. But some parts were less so —the daughter Mad was a beyond belief in some ways, and the dog, too, though in ways more fun that disturbing. But while I’ve seen bright kids with amazing capabilities, the spurts of maturity this kid demonstrates so early on seem over the top. But that was not enough to push me away, and I enjoyed this and read it quickly and with pleasure, despite the sad and frustrating parts. The sexism and racism, and absorption with religion, of the 60’s is all too easy to remember (and noticably arising again today).
The way chemistry figures into the story and propels it along is wonderful.
Oh, and I loved the rowing, and notice Garmus is a rower!! Fun to have that special physical outlet and ability woven in. Garmus seems a powerful writer, and story-teller.

July 25, 2023     Just finished Nothing to See Here, by Kevin Wilson, which was on my wish list for years, maybe from a NY Times recommendation. A wonderful, quirky story which was just what I needed in my time away from work.

At the heart of the story, two close friends who couldn’t have less in common. Madison is wealthy, protected, full of confidence and ideas; Lillian is poor, ignored, alone, but bright and eccentric. Their lives mesh in as teens, and then separate abruptly. Letters keep their lives connected, until the troubled and abandoned twins of Madison’s husband brings their divergent lives back together, and draws Lillian’s life into a whole new trajectory. Fire and heat and love and connection are at the root of this surprisingly uplifting, funny and sad story.

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It’s been a stretch since I updated, and I see some satisfying and insightful reads among the entries in my reading notes. Here’s three highlights that got me from November to January:

January 15, 2023 Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver
Wow. A long haul, but just finished and so thankful for Kingsolver’s story, and touched by her acknowledgements too. It was special that both my daughter and I got the same book for Christmas, and have been reading it at the same time. I was worried at times, especially closer to the end, that it would end badly, and while that would make sense, it would be so terribly sad. I loved the characters Demon, and Angus, and June and so many others, though it was a challenge to keep track of them all.

The insights into this level of poverty and neglect were stunning, and Kingsolver does us all a service by bringing us there, into foster care (or lack of it), neglect, hunger, addiction, abuse. It’s easy to dismiss, an yet a persistent reality.

The final section, set in a detox centre in the city, probes the fascinating distinction—cultural, social, economical—between city life and rural, between sophisticates and hicks. Kingsolver mentions her Appalachian roots in the final pages, and clearly understands this distinction deeply. I’d never really thought about it this fully, and yet I’ve known the difference, intimately.

January 6, 2023 The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri
This was a sobering, clear and engaging read. The writing is strong and effective, but doesn’t call attention to itself. It pulls a person right into the world of the Indian immigrants to the US, into the ways of adjusting and sustaining themselves even as they have children who will both be at home with and resent the ways they preserve from home. I was pulled in from the start, and read it fairly quickly.
I loved how Gogol figured into the father’s life, and became the son’s name. Gogol’s own story is more tragic than I’d remembered, but I always enjoyed his stories….

November 10, 2022 Justin Gregg, If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal
I don’t remember where I learned about this book or writer, but it was a good read. Gregg is bright, and funny, too. His style is humble and thoughtful and easy to take in. His arguments are sobering, depressing sometimes, but they make all too much sense, especially today, with the absurd and distressing political and ecological crises we face. He’s analyzing and exploring why—for all the gifts of intellect, imagination, and comprehension humans have evolved to possess—we make such stupid and dangerous decisions, or avoid the wise and compassionate ones. By comparison, he explains how insects, chickens, crocodiles all seem masters of survival, and have what seem satisfying lives.

Among the human capacities he explores is our capacity for deception, for lying. We’re deceptive creatures. He examines how the US keeps dealing with fake news and deception, day to day, incident to catastrophe. Humans keep evolving, meanwhile, to lie and to believe lies—“to dupe and be duped.” He examines death and our sense of it, our comprehension of time, and also our social and cultural norms and biases—always comparing us to animals. He argues that our moral aptitude might constrain our behaviour and cause us to do harmful and destructive things to one another. “Animals, with their less sophisticated normative systems, are the ones living the good life.” (p154).

P190-192 tells of Capability Brown, England’s celebrated gardener, who managed to hook us all on the manicured lawn, “symbols of Americana” and of success, and yet these “monocular wastelands” are responsible for unimaginable waste and ecological damage. This is an example of what he calls prognostic myopia. This is the notion that we can imagine, but not really feel for the future. We seem hard-wired to base decisions on short term, immediate goals and needs. He refers to other thinkers I admire (e.g. Gladwell, Kahneman, and others), who explore human decision-making, flawed as it seems to be. Overall, “intelligence sometimes results in very stupid behaviour.” (227). We may be exceptional and complex creatures, but that doesn’t seem to set us up to evolve and thrive. Sad.

August 1 (BC Day), 2022
It continues to be a challenge to find those books that pull me in and hold me in their grip, but I’ve been fortunate to stumble upon a few in the past months. Today I finished one: A Molecule Away from Madness: Tales of the Hijacked Brain, by Sara Manning Peskin
Peskin is a brilliant and caring neurologist who also knows how to write and to tell a compelling story. She approaches the brain with a narrative outlook, telling us the story of the cells and molecules and DNA of the brain, and how those provide us with “empathy, memory, language, and other critical parts of our identities” and also what can go awry, robbing us of those traits. Woven into the science are the extraordinary stories of the extraordinary individuals who made the discoveries over the centuries to shed light on these complex intricacies of our anatomy. Equally powerful and gripping are the personal stories Peskin tells of the victims of an array of neurological disorders. She clearly won the trust of the individuals and their families, and shared those stories with compassion and respect. I learned so much (which I’ll try to remember), and loved reading this.

Another good find was Emma Hooper’s Etta and Otto and Russell and James:
A moving and gripping book, but also hard to fathom, and hard to summarize. I have no turned down pages to help, only a happy memory of a Canadian story (both character and landscape-weaving in a vast and diverse array of individuals and an impressive swath of the landscape, too). Not a perfect book or story, sometimes a bit convoluted and tough to follow, but still well worth reading.

And another, given to me by a special student back in 2019, and waiting for me since: Florinda Donner, Shabono. I found this one intriguing on so many levels. It’s not fiction, though the name of the people, place, and society are fictionalized to protect their privacy.
This is the account of a tribe of the Yanomama Indians who live between Venezuela and Brazil. Donner is an anthropological field researcher who traveled there to learn and study the ways of their curing practices, which were intriguing. She finds her way into a community, is accepted, cared for, and taught their ways and language until she is a skinny white version of them, though never, according to her, fluent in their language. She’s taken in by two young wives, who become her sisters and don’t let her out of their sight. A recurring theme is the different perspective towards time and memory and mortality.

Finally, there’s Cloud Cuckoo Land, by Anthony Doerr finished in April. A giant book (600+ pages!) that sat on our bookshelf for ages, and which I almost gave up a few times. Then I had one of those insomnia nights, and after 3 hours of reading, I was committed to finishing. Doerr is brilliant, and a beautiful writer, but there’s a staggering number of threads to this story: not only complex individuals, each with her or his own context, but also leaping from ancient times into the future, from Constantinople (1452) to space (2146). There’s the two world wars and Korea, the current pandemic (there’s even a character called Omicron!!). It’s brave and brilliant, but was close to too much for my poor brain. I became attached to a few characters, but had a hard time, as their their chapter would end, being catapulted into another world.
Doerr was himself pushing through COVID as he writes this, and he cares deeply about things I care about too: finding the good and kindness in humanity, connections with our natural world, and yes, libraries and books and story.

A long time since my last post… and I continue to struggle with letting myself fall into stories, still am abandoning more than I finish. But a few great finds in the very long time since I last posted… I recently finished Ann Patchett’s book of essays, These Precious Days. A couple of the essays were wonderful, but think that with Patchett (as with Kingsolver), I love their novels most.

August into Winter by Vanderhaeghe was an impressive–and amazing read, but I was relieved to be done with it. Another heavy book, with troubled or even crazy characters.

I’m still enjoying Ann Cleeves, with The Heron’s Cry one of my recent favourites. It’s something about the appeal of ordinary people, and their ordinary working lives, I think, that Cleeves does so well and that pulls me in.Proust and the Squid, Maryanne Wolf

A wonderful discover was Maryanne Wolf‘s Proust and the Squid, full of astonishing details about our reading brains, and our brains, on reading.

A favourite of the fall was New Girl in Little Cove, Damhnait Monaghan: slow and steady, warm and funny, and uplifting. Plus, well, it’s Newfoundland…

I had been excited by Miriam Toews’s Flight Night but then grew disappointed with the single perspective through the eyes of the kid (Swiv). I wasn’t about to give up on Toews,though, and kept reading. I loved the ending, so we glad I stuck with this one.

Firefly, by Philippa Dowding, turned out to be a young adult or kids’ book, and I loved it. Fascinating setting (a costume factory!), and some very cool perspectives from that alone. But Firefly is a lovely central character, and her story unfolds so beautifully. Fun, funny, and uplifting. Just what I needed.

Will finally end my too long post with a short note: em, by Kim Thuy was a slender, beautifully written, and tough read.

I’ve rediscovered Ann Cleeves this past couple months. Her characters are many-layered and complex, and their stories are both gripping and grounded. I get pulled in and come to care about her characters (Vera Stanhope being a favourite currently). Cleeves’s story-telling has the power to pull my mind from the billion things I need to let go of, to fall into sleep.

Reading’s been harder, through the pandemic. I give up on as many books as I finish. Some stories are just too dark, and others seem too trivial. Sometimes it seems as if I just can’t focus. When I can, it feels like a gift and reading becomes even more vital.

After so much screen time, the physicality of the books seems so right. They’re solid, with such a simple and yet beautiful design. I find myself noticing the binding and the texture of the pages.

Recently finished and still astonished by Bill Bryson’s The Body, and

Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal.

Also discovered in a dusty stack and loved Eats, Shoots & Leaves, by Lynne Truss

“Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”

― Groucho Marx