The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – Stieg Larsson
A Short History of Women – Kate Walbert
Little Bee – Chris Cleave
That’s how far behind I am! Three books and three gatherings have come and gone without my giving you an update. There’s a reason: I didn’t read two of the books, and I didn’t make it to two of the meetings.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was never opened. Someone mentioned is was an ok read but the S&M was hard to get through. (Yes, that S&M!) I couldn’t be bothered. Life is full of mean without invoking it in your pleasure reading. For that evening, I stopped by for food and fun, but left before a discussion began. It may have been a great book, but I’ll never know. Given that one twist, I let it go.
A Short History of Women isn’t exactly as promised. Rather the book is a short history of a few women descended from one suffragette. The chapters wove a brief account of each woman’s life through the decades. One died for her cause; her daughter educated herself well and never married; her granddaughter struggles in retirement to reclaim her legacy; her great-granddaughters bounce along in the current muck without pleasure or happiness. My favorite was the one page Facebook declaration by the great-great-granddaughter renouncing conventional goals and proclaiming her bisexual preference. (Oy vey!)
It was an easy read, but it wasn’t a good read. The discussion on that book never took off. Rather, we spent the evening lamenting our own struggles. We drank, we ate, we stumbled home.
The last book, Little Bee, was discussed the night my parents came to town for the youngest’s graduation. It’s ok I didn’t make it to that one since I’d only plowed through three chapters of the book. At the end of every chapter I’d put it down and think “well that was awful.” The writing was sufficient. The author successfully gives voice to two women who find themselves in one place. It’s the stories of these women that left the book unreadable for me. Like the first book on this list, there were subjects recounted that I really don’t need to tackle, and therefore won’t. Maybe I’m wimpy, but as I said, life throws enough curve balls. I have no reason to imagine them.
Little Bee will toss you into new worlds. Partly storied in England, the other in Nigeria, one is forced to harshly examine the difference between two cultures. Neither one was coming out too well when I abandoned the book.
The book beside me for this month is Last Night in Twisted River by John Irving. I’m not so sure I’ll be jumping into that one with both feet. Irving can pull off some gems, like A Prayer for Owen Meany that I sent home with Dad last week, but then there’s The World According to Garp which indeed “denies synopsis,” and The Hotel New Hampshire. I will confess Irving appears to be mellowing with age. Given his early works he probably still has a long way to go.
The group has really seen a spectrum of life in the last few months. One mother married off her oldest daughter; one daughter buried her father after a short illness. It’s nice to have a place to share in an environment so caring.
—
Are you reading anything good lately? I’m very tempted to send this Irving back to the library and start my summer ritual of renewing my love of Jane Austen.
Recent Comments