Radio Silence Doesn't Mean I'm Not Reading

What probably should be my retirement years haven't turned out to be just that. After one semester off about ten years ago, I've been back as an adjunct ever since. Teaching has never gotten in the way of reading, but combined with other ventures, I've neglected to report on my reading. 

This summer (academic summer, that is; I know real summer doesn't start until June), my reading list covers has run the gamut. I read three pop rom coms in a row. Go figure. I started with The Wedding People by Alison Espach because it was getting a lot of press. It was clever, and the idea of an adjunct ditching her classes and heading off to a tropical vacation--even if it is with suicidal intents--drew me in. Living in Nashville, the bachelorette capital of the US, I also enjoyed some of the humor from an outsider's perspective. 

I also read Rufi Thorpe's Margo's Got Money Troubles, and I didn't find a personal way in. I did finish reading, which I don't always do these days. Then a friend I trust recommended Colton Gentry's Third Act by Jeff Zentner, the story of a B-tier country artist who gets cancelled for an alcohol-fueled rant about gun control, after losing a close friend at a concert shooting. Of the three, this would be the best for a book club because (a. there is SO much food talk, since he ends up looking the restaurant business. If your book club is like mine, a food link makes for a fun evening; and (b. there were some really clever lines--the ones that make me stop and open my notes app.

I also read Jean Hanff Korelitz's novel The Plot, and I will seek out the sequel, aptly entitled The Sequel. For anyone who's read Yellowface, this plot might ring a bit familiar. 

I've read two Liz Moore novels recently. I started with God of the Woods, which has been fun to pass along, followed by The Unseen World, which would make a good companion reading with Richard Power's Playground. While I was "in the woods," I read Heartwood by Amity Gaige, another newer release, set in the northern segment of the Appalachian Trail, when a forty-something woman goes missing. The multiple perspectives are well-done, but making it less a whodunnit than a how's it gonna turn out. Warning to Southern purists: If you listen to the audiobook, the narrator (mis)pronounces Appalachian as Appalaychian instead of Appalatchian. 

Those titles are just a few from my recent reading list, but what brought me back here, wanting to share was a book someone--and I can't remember who--recommended on Facebook: How Donating a Kidney Fixed My Jumpsuit by Jim Sollisch. 

Not infrequently, I am stopping mid-book to tell other reading friends, "You've got to read this one." This is one of those books, but it also makes me want to get out my notebook or open a new document on my laptop and start writing my stories. Sollisch is in the advertising business but has written and published short essays, particularly in newspapers, for several years. Most of these are under three pages. He manages to tell his story, reminding readers just how universal some of those stories really are. It's a book that makes me want to read out loud. I already see so many ways I want to incorporate this book into my freshman composition course when fall semester rolls around. 

Which do I love more--a book that makes me want to read, one that makes me want to write, or one that opens up great book conversations? Maybe all three.

Radio Silence Doesn't Mean I'm Not Reading

Book a Day Challenge

 Disclaimer: While I refused to sacrifice reading for pleasure when I started my doctoral program, I have let it cut into my book updates here, which shames me. After all, one of the greatest pleasure of reading is sharing and discussing what I read with others. To that end, I plan to post a book note every day until I have posted about all the good books I've read since my last post. The posts will not be in order as I read the books but instead as the push their way to the front of my brain.

One of the books that caught my interest most recently was Margaret Verble's novel When Two Feathers Fell from the Sky. My interest was due impart to the setting of the novel, the early 20th century, when the Nashville Zoo was located in what is now the Green Hills area, near where I teach, in fact.

Two Feathers is a young Cherokee woman whose job at the Glendale Park Zoo is horse diving. The cast of characters includes Shackleford, whose company runs the zoom and whose family lives in Longview Mansion, right on Caldwell Lane near my campus. Two Feathers' closest friend at the zoo is Crawford, a Black employee who cares for her horse. Verble develops several secondary characters, such as Clive the zookeeper who is still haunted by his WWI experiences, a number of the young women who entertain crowds at the zoo, including two sisters two throw (and sometimes drop) plates. The antagonist Jack is obsessed with Two Feathers, spying on her from a tree near her window and even letting a monkey loose in the girls dormitory to tie him a chance to get into her room.

An interesting aspect of the novel is the way Verble weaves elements of magical realism into the narrative. Clive sees ghosts of his cousin who served in the war with him, and Little Elk, the spirit of a young Indian whose life was cut short, appears to several characters. The animals themselves are characters with personalities, and Two Feathers feels a particular link to them and empathizes with their suffering.

The peek into historical Nashville is a perk for those of us who live there. As I head north on Granny White Pike now, I think of the buffalo run that was once there. I'm planning to locate the old bear caves on Scenic Drive and Clive's stone house on Lealand Lane. 

Book a Day Challenge

Range by David Epstein: Good News for Generalists

 

I get the best book recommendations from people who know me well. Since I've started my new journey toward an Ed.D in Educational Leadership, I am reading a disproportionate number of academic texts. I love fiction. I love a good story. Somehow I must find a way to satisfy that urge too.

Recently, a friend I've kept up with who is also in higher education recommended David Epstein's book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialize World. I was barely into the book before I wanted to write a letter to the author and started thinking who needed to read the book along with me. 

I am an unapologetic universalist. (Well, I do apologize a little.) It says a lot that I have an undergraduate degree in accounting but have taught English for more than 30 years (not counting the time I spent teaching Lamaze childbirth and aerobics and selling real estate.) Even now, knee deep in my dissertation process, I find myself pursuing all my other interests. I'm still going to concerts, listening to great music, and writing about it. I mentor a student teacher, three young moms, and a thirty-something single who lets me borrow her cool jackets. I still sew, particularly handwork. 

Epstein opens the book Range with a side-by-side comparison of Tiger Woods and Roger Federer. Woods was primed for his golf career practically from birth; Federer tried out lots of sports. Things worked out well for both.

The book is full of stories that confirm what I've suspected all along. The best decisions are made, the toughest problems are solved with a variety of minds working together. Austin Kleon's books (such as Steal Like a Genius) would be perfect companion reads to this book.

Epstein reassures me that quantitative research alone cannot, should not rule the world. Ask those NASA scientists with "In God We Trust; Everyone Else Must Show Data" on the wall--and the Space Shuttle disaster on their resumes. 

What I loved most about this book is the opportunity to talk further about it. There are so many implications for the classroom, for example. I look forward to lots of ripe conversations as soon as my book people indulge me and check it out for themselves.

Range by David Epstein: Good News for Generalists

Women's Roles in World War II.

 

I have seen a trend in literature lately of telling the stories of women's roles in World War II. The ones I've encountered recently run the gamut from pure fiction to biography. At least three of the books I've read recently are set at least in part in Paris. 

Kristin Harmel's novel The Book of Lost Names traces the life of Eve Traube, a Jewish girl forced to leave Paris with her mother after her father was taken on a roundup when the two women were out of their apartment. She has to forge their papers to leave, and her talent for forgery is recognized in the Free Zone, where the two women are staying as they wait to escape to Switzerland. She is recruited by the local priest to help forge documents for Jewish children being spirited out of France. 

The book opens with Eve as an older widow in American, spotting in a news report a book that had been discovered, which she recognized as the volume she used to keep a record of the children's real names, lest they be lost.

The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles follows the life of Odile, a young Parisian woman who ends up living as a widow in the U.S. As Charles' epilogue explains, the book is based on real lives of people who worked in the American Library in Paris during World War II. They took chances delivering books to their Jewish patrons after they were denied access to the library. 

Charles' book divides the focus between Odile and young schoolgirl Lily, a neighbor to Odile in Montana. Lily befriends the woman they consider mysterious, a friendship that grows after Lily loses her mother and finds herself with a new stepmother and young brothers.

Both the young Odile and Lily often behave in ways that make them less sympathetic. Odile's infatuation with a young man leads her to overlook his questionable behavior. Lily's immaturity sometimes causes her to act thoughtlessly toward others who trust her as well. The saving grace of the book is the story of some of the employees and subscribers of the American Library in Paris whose lives were intertwined as they faced life in Paris under German occupation.

Next on my list is A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell, the story of Virginia Hall, an American woman who acted with great daring and valor as a spy during World War II, despite having to live with a prosthetic leg after injuring herself in a shooting accident. Purnell spent about three years researching the life of Hall, not only detailing her undercover exploits but the difficulties that she had to overcome because she was a woman. She was continually placed in secretarial position despite her ambition and her abilities. The film rights have been sold for the book which has the potential to become a film of high adventure.

Women's Roles in World War II.

The One-in-a-Million Boy by Monica Wood

 

As I reviewed favorite books I've read this year, I was surprised to realize that I hadn't shared one of my favorites, The One-in-a-Million Boy by Monica Wood. I can't remember who had recommended the book to me, but I had filed it away in the back of my mind until it popped back up on my radar--and I'm so glad it did.

One of my favorite assignments with my college freshmen is three interviews, ideally with their oldest living relative or someone of that generation. I am always so gratified when I find how much the assignment meant to many of my students. Some who didn't know their grandparents well ("I just thought of him as that grumpy old man at our house during holidays.") who discovered someone with common interests and experiences, with special stories worth preserving.

The book opens with an 11-year-old boy who has been assigned as part of the troop activity to do chores for Ona Vitkus, a 104-year-old Lithuanian immigrant. The boy has his tape recorder with him for these Saturday visits as he interviews her for a fifth-grade project. She has much to tell from a rich, full life.

The boy is unusual in some ways, but particularly in his fascination with the Guinness Book of Records. Once he realizes Ona's age, he becomes obsessed with helping her to break a world's record.

Spoiler alert: The reader learns early in the story that something has happened and the boy is no longer living. His father Quinn reports to finish his son's responsibilities. He has been an absentee father since he and the boy's mother Belle divorced, so he carried a load of guilt. 

Moving back and forth between the Saturdays with the boy interviewing Ona Vitkus and the days his father begins showing up, Wood brings all of the characters to three-dimensional life, flaws and virtues, in this painfully beautiful, haunting story.

The One-in-a-Million Boy by Monica Wood

Follow-up Novels: Reading the Next Book

 All my reading life, I've enjoyed finding an author whose work I enjoyed and then plowing my way through their complete works. There's very little pattern to my "author reading" either. In junior high, I read everything by Daphne du Maurier after loving Rebecca.  I was surprised to learn she lived until 1989, since she quit publishing around 1972, right when I was reading her novels. I also read Lloyd C. Douglas' novel The Robe and then read all of his books, first the sequel The Big Fisherman and then the series set in more modern day.

If I like a first novel I read by an author, I'll willing to get another one a shot. What I love best is an author who can follow up with something just as good
but original. While I've had a little more reading time lately, I picked up two books from my "to read" list from that category. I had loved Euphoria, a novel that draws from the life of anthropologist Margaret Mead, a story of love and intrigue set in remote villages in New Guinea. When her novel Writers & Lovers came out with rave reviews and a

recommendation from Ann Patchett on the Parnassus website, I was sold.

Casey, the protagonist, has finished a writing program and has been working on her first novel for about six years. She is overwhelmed with college loans, living in a garden shed, and doing restaurant work to keep her head above water. Her friend Muriel takes her along to a reading by Oscar, a relatively famous writer. Casey can't afford to buy his book, but she recognizes him when he comes to her restaurant with his sons he is raising after losing his wife to cancer. His is moved by her kindness to the boys, who plan to pay for their father's meal as a birthday surprise--for which they are for woefully underfunded--and the two end up developing a relationship.

By coincidence, she is also seeing another aspiring writer, a young man in Oscar's critique circle who also teaches high school. On the surface, the story--something of a love triangle--seems ordinary, but the development of the characters, the clever details (that would certainly ring true to anyone who's worked in a fast-paced restaurant setting), and the satisfaction of the way loose ends are tied up make it something more.

Here's my confession: I started reading the novel on my iPad while working at a blood drive. I was surprised when I saw how many pages I had read. Only as I neared the end did I have the nerve to check to confirm what I suspected: I had somehow skipped a good chunk. I read to the end then skimmed the beginning until I got to the part I had missed. It explained a lot, but honestly, I think I enjoyed the novel as much as I would have if I'd read it correctly. I do think anyone who's ever wanted to write and publish will be struck by her experiences and the reactions of those who try to feed her on doubt. (Her landlord, learning that she's an aspiring writer, says he is surprised she thinks she has something to say.)

Another second read by a novelist I enjoyed the first time was Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano. I had loved her novel A Good Hard Look set in Milledgeville, Georgia, during the Kennedy era. In that book, Flannery O'Connor (with her peacocks) is a secondary character.

Her latest novel is a complete departure from that one. Edward, a 12-year-old boy, is the only survivor of a plane crash as his family is flying to their new home in California. He is taken in by his mother's sister and her husband, an infertile couple facing their own grief. The story alternates between the flight leading up to the crash and the boy's attempt to return to some kind of normalcy.

Both of these books were so unlike the predecessors, but I enjoyed reading both. Now I have a newly arrived copy of Simon the Fiddler by Paulette Jiles (who wrote News of the Day.) I am eager to get started.

Follow-up Novels: Reading the Next Book

Lethal White: Discovering Another Series

After living in the world of Harry Potter for so long, I was curious to see what kind of writing J. K. Rowling would produce once she left that hugely successful run. I read A Casual Vacancy and found it rather dark (which doesn't necessarily scare me away.)

I began the first in her Cormoran Strike novel The Cuckoo's Calling, not knowing it was a going to be a series, and I found her two protagonists, Strike and his protege Robin Ellacot, completely engaging. Strike is a private detective who lost a leg in Afghanistan. The first novel opens when Robin responds to an ad for a temp receptionists. She's young, attractive, and engaged to be married. She has also harbored an interest in police work for years. Rowling, writing as Robert Galbraith, develops the camaraderie and even the spark between the two, as their partnership and friendship grows.

The fact that Robin's fiance Matthew isn't keen on her working with Strike adds some delicious tension to the stories, as Robin uses her wits to help Strike solve the crimes that land on his desk. This month, I finished the fourth in the series Lethal White, in which Strike is drawn to investigate the veracity of a story brought to his office by an unbalanced young man about having witnessed the burial of a small child.

As the story opens Robin, who has been let go by Strike after an assignment led to injury and near death, has just married Matthew, after prior delays in their wedding. She makes discoveries about her husband's deception that cast a shadow not only on the wedding but the marriage, particularly when Strike asks her to return as his partner in the business. Robin goes undercover working with a member of parliament being blackmailed. This story is set in London as the city prepares to host the Summer Olympics. Meanwhile, a socialist organization that opposes the Olympics seems to have more that just disruption in their plans.

This story brings Cormoran and Robin to government offices and to the shabby country homes of the horsey set, landing them in the midst of at least one murder investigation.

While the audience for these novels is quite different from the Harry Potter fans, the author balances her expertise at character development with her suspenseful plot structure, delivering another satisfying reading experience. Best of all, she has the next installment in the series ready for a 2020 publication.

Lethal White: Discovering Another Series

My 2019 Reading List

With just over a day left in the year, I decided to go ahead and post my reading list from this year. I'll post some more detailed commentary later, but I am already looking forward to comparing my list to others'.  

I always enjoy being reminded of a year of reading. Two Louise Penny books made the list because she published two close enough for me to read both. I hope she is busy writing the next one. I do see several poetry books included on this year's list, especially Nye and Kooser because of last year's and next year's Christian Scholars Conference. 

I also re-read some books that I already loved. My book club chose Daphne DuMaurier's classic Rebecca, which got me started reading all of her books back in junior high. It held up over time. I also read Varina by Charles Frazier again, the book club selection for the month I hosted. I also had a couple of books with Little Women connections, The Spring Girls, a modern retelling, and Ann Boyd Rioux deep dive into the book, the author, and all the spinoffs. Because I'd loved A Gentleman in Moscow, I selected the audiobook for a long road trip with my husband, now also hooked on audiobooks. I listened to a significant percentage of several others with him, but didn't add them to this list.

I also read Margaret Renkl's Late Migrations twice, in part because I'm reviewing it for L. A. Review, but also because I simply loved it. In fact, I gave more than one copy as a Christmas gift this year, and I recommended it to so many others. 

Already I have a long list of books I hope to read next, knowing that other books will muscle their way into the queue. 

Reading List 2019

Stuart Turton, The 7 ½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

Louise Penny, The Kingdom of the Blind

Kate Atkinson, Transcriptions

Heather Morris, The Tattooist of Auschwitz

Richard Grant, Dispatches from Pluto

Fannie Flagg, I Still Dream about  You

Tommy Orange, There, There

Delia Owens, Where the Crawdad Sings

Ann Boyd Rioux, Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Matters

Sonia Nazario, Enrique’s Journey

Emily Griffith, All We Ever Wanted

B. A. Paris, Bring Me Back

Susan Orlean, The Library Book

Patti Callahan, Becoming Mrs. Lewis

Lisa Genova, Every Note Played

Naomi Shihab Nye, Voices in the Air

---. You and Yours

---. Red Suitcase

---. Fuel

---. The Tiny Journalist

Tayari Jones, An American Marriage

Taylor Jenkins Reid, Daisy Jones and the Six

Amor Towles, A Gentleman In Moscow

Robert Dugoni, The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell

Louise Erdrich, Future Home of the Living God

Clyde Edgerton, Night Train

John Shors, Beneath a Marble Sky

Sandy Coomer, Available Light

Diane Setterfeld, Once upon a River

Marie Kondo, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying up

Anne Todd, The Spring Girls

Alan Bradley, The Golden Treasures of the Dead

Ron Seybold, Stealing Home

Andrew Sean Greer, The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells

Helen Ellis, Southern Lady Code

Katie Quinn, The Alice Network

Casey Cepp, Furious Hours

Melinda Gates, The Moment of Lift

Graeme Simsion, The Rosie Results

Fiona Davis, The Masterpiece

Tom Hanks, Uncommon Types

Margaret Renkl, Late Migrations

Ocean Vuong, On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous

David Brooks, The Second Mountain

Anne Youngson, Meet Me at the Museum

Allen Eskens, The Life We Bury

Daphne DuMaurier, Rebecca

Cathleen Schine, The Grammarians

Ann Patchett, The Dutch House
Colton Whitehead, The Nickel Boys
Adrian McKinty, The Chain

Louise Penny, A Better Man

Charles Frazier, Varina

Mary Laura Philpott, I Miss You When I Blink

Elizabeth Strout, Olive, Again

Tana French, In the Woods

Naomi Shihab Nye, The Tiny Journalist (re-read)

Margaret Renkl, Late Migrations (another re-read)

Ted Kooser, Flying at Night

Kevin Wilson, Nothing to See Here

Colm Tolbin, The Testament of Mary

Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give

Zadie Smith, Grand Union: Stories

Ted Kooser, Delights and Shadows

Patricia Harmon, The Reluctant Midwife

Matthew Dicks, Twenty-one Truths about Love

The Bible (McArthur’s read in a year)

My 2019 Reading List

Review of Cathleen Schine's The Grammarians

Of course we judge books by the cover! Not since elementary school have readers been satisfied by those library-bound generic blue and green covers. I'm often drawn to cover art, and I've even heard that books with blue on the cover sell better than others. I have also heard plenty of evidence that the human eye is drawn to text. (Why else do I lean in close to try to read strangers' tattoos?)

For my people, though, Cathleen Schine's recent novel The Grammarians appealed to me strictly on the basis of the title. The novel tells the story of twin sisters Daphne and Lauren Wolfe, who shared a private twin language from the time they were babbling infants, as well as an intense fascination with language. Their philology only increases when their father brings home a huge used copy of Webster's New International Dictionary, which he places on the stand the girls call an altar. Ironically, they discover the volume is missing the page where the word altar would have been defined.

Schine's chapter divisions are marked by entries from Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language,  often words strangely related to their unique relationship. As the girls grow up, much of the time sharing an apartment and even wearing matching clothes into young adulthood, they also make awkward attempts to separate. Laurel has a nose job, which Daphne takes as a direct affront. They have a double wedding--challenging since Daphne isn't even dating anyone when Lauren becomes engaged. Daphne lands a receptionist job at a small newspaper, where she moves first into a copy editing position, and eventually becomes a language columnist writing for Vogue. Laurel, lacking any actual qualifications, lands a job teaching kindergarten at a private school until she turns lines from government publications into found poetry.

Sometimes the jumps in time are surprisingly abrupt, skipping years, even decades. Shine surrounds the girls not only with loving, quirky parents but with an extended family and a set of work friends and spouses that often serve as ideal foil characters.

The best part of the book for me, the part I want to discuss with other readers who also love words, is the girls' razor sharp fascination with language. The longer I read, the quicker I anticipated the girls' response to misuse of words and phrases. While I am often disappointed when a plot line is predicable, my own recognition of the Wolfe girls' sensitivity to language gave me the satisfaction of an omniscient narrator. "I knew you'd catch that one!" I wanted to cheer each time the girls homed in on some misuse or when they found themselves fascinated by the flexibility of words with multiple meanings. In fact, by the end of the book, I'd made a list. Now if only I had a twin with whom to share it.

Review of Cathleen Schine's The Grammarians

Tom Hanks' Uncommon Type: A Study in Voice

I picked up the audiobook of Tom Hanks' short story collection Uncommon Type on a whim. I knew he'd been in Nashville promoting the book, but I hadn't heard much about it from my reading circles. Since the narrator of a book can make or break the experience, I was pleased to note that Hanks was reading his own work.

Just as the audience has to suspend disbelief when seeing the same actor in different roles--think Forrest Gump, Big, You've Got Mail--hearing the familiar voice delivering these stories might have been a distraction. It wasn't.
The first story "Three Exhausting Weeks" introduces a four characters that reappear in a couple of later stories, four friends who couldn't be more different from one another. The narrator has minimal pressure to work, having inherited money after his mother's death, leaving him time for adventures with his friends: Anna, the only female in the group, and two males--Steve Wong, a prodigious bowler and new citizen MDash.

Hanks manages to inject a little magical realism and time travel in some stories, while the others are realistic, even nostalgic. In only one story does the narration shift from Hanks alone to a cast that comes across like reader's theatre, or an episode of "Guy Noir, Private Eye."

The sole element that unites the story is the presence of at least once vintage manual typewriter in each story. I found myself listening for it the way Hitchcock fans kept an eye peeled for his cameo shot in each film.

The stories stand on their own with out the celebrity factor. In fact, the dramatist's eye for the specific and tangible, as well as his ear for clever dialogue made for a surprisingly pleasant reading experience.

Tom Hanks' Uncommon Type: A Study in Voice

Furious Hours: The Book Harper Lee Didn't Write

Since I've never denied that Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird is on the short list of my favorite books--to read and re-read as well as to teach--I was eager to pick up Casey Cep's book Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee.

The books begins not with Lee but with the story of Willie Maxwell, who returned to South Alabama after military service first to do work in a local plant and then to become the Rev. Willie Maxwell. The book details a series of mysterious deaths--two wives, a neighbor (and the late husband of wife number two), a nephew, and a step daughter. In each case, he was never convicted, thanks primarily to his lawyer Tom Radney.

Cep shifts between main characters, describing Radney's political career, including an unsuccessful run for Alabama Lt. Governor. The author deftly weaves together her extensive research on the parties involved in the trial before turning her attention to Lee.

The ironic twist comes when Maxwell is killed at the funeral of his step-daughter (and yes, Maxwell was the obvious suspect). Who defends the shooter Robert Burns? Maxwell's lawyer Radney. The trial held in Alexander City draws lots of attention, but most significantly that of Harper Lee. The author, already well-known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, sat through the trial and gathered extensive research of her own, intending to overcome her writer's block and turn it into her second book.

Cep takes the reader through Nell Harper Lee's history before, during, and after there writing of Mockingbird. This including her lifelong connection to Truman Capote first as childhood friends and later as collaborators as Lee assisted Capote in his research for In Cold Blood. She paints a complex and candid picture of the author's life and even her struggle with alcohol.

Eventually, Cep manages to do what Lee could not: find a way to tell this complicated story that evoked as much rumor and innuendo as fact.

Furious Hours: The Book Harper Lee Didn't Write

Starting and Stopping: What to Read Next

Honestly, I could stay in my house for a couple of years without having to leave to find something new to read--even without an internet connection. That hasn't ever stopped me from adding to my collection of books or from regularly visiting libraries and bookstores. I'm always on the prowl for the next good read.

I'm not a one-book-at-a-time kind of reader either. I regularly keep one traditional print book going, along with one audiobook in the car and one eBook on my iPad. It doesn't confuse me any more than talking to more than one person in a day would.

Occasionally, the stars align just so, and I find myself at the end of all three at once. This month, my book club decided to abandon a book choice (I won't mention the title. I'll just whisper the words "Pulitzer Prize") because most of the ladies just couldn't get through it. These are hardcore readers, too--not lightweights. I was about to start reading it but decided this many women can't be wrong. We opted instead to discuss a book I've already read, one I loved. Now I'm free to pick whatever I want to read.

Meanwhile, the audiobook I chose at the library hasn't caught my attention, and I am perusing my shelves to decide what volume I've overlooked too long. It's a nice problem to have, I'll admit. For now, I'm listening to music in the car. The Americana Fest is going on in Nashville this week, so I don't have much time for reading anyway--other than constantly scanning the schedule to choose my next concert or showcase.

I know that in a few days I'll be back into my reading/listening rhythm, lost in another good story--or three.

Starting and Stopping: What to Read Next

The House of Broken Angels: Anticipating the Southern Festival of Books

Sometimes a book just keeps presenting itself to me until I give in and read it--at no one's suggestion, after little more than a glimpse in a book review or its appearance on the library shelf. I'll admit than the first time I saw the book cover for The House of Broken Angels, the "unimportant words" were so small, I thought the title was House-Broken Angels. When I found myself casting about for an audiobook to feed my habit, I found it on the library shelf and gave it a try. In the past week, I have found myself coming up with excuses to drive to the store or sitting in the garage, listening just a little longer.

Urrea, who will appear in Nashville's Southern Festival of Books in October, has written a lovely, sprawling family story. The novel opens on the day of Big Angel de la Cruz's mother America's funeral, short of her hundredth birthday. As the family patriarch, Big Angel has arranged the timing so that his extended family can stay over for his seventieth birthday--his last birthday-- the following day. Suffering from terminal cancer, Big Angel is more and more dependent on his wife Perla and their daughter Minerva, whom the family calls Minnie--after the Disney mouse.

The cast of characters in this Mexican-American family in San Diego is so large that upon finishing the audiobook, I have considered buying a print copy and creating a family tree, like that Little Angel, the protagonist's half brother, keeps in his pocket notebook to keep the family straight.

While the story opens on the day of the matriarch's funeral, Urrea provides flashbacks to Big Angel's childhood in Mexica. He also shifts perspective in the story told in third person, giving Little Angel an increasing perspective, but also developing the many characters that assemble for the funeral and the birthday celebration.

Even the murdered children of Big Angel's wife Perla and her sister, called La Gloriosa, are given a place in the story. Big Angel and Perla's children, even the absent step-son Yndio, are drawn to the family circle, where Little Angel, a literature professor in Seattle is disappointed to find a birthday meal of pizza and spaghetti instead of the home-cooked Mexican fiesta he had anticipated.

With the lightest hand, Urrea gives an honest look at border politics and ethnic identity, full of flavor in its language and detail. At its heart, he has drawn a beautiful family story. Big Angel faces imminent death with a weight of guilt from his past. He is briefly visited by the ghost of his father, a former policeman who left two families in his wake, but the presence of his little brother gives both men a chance to clear the air of their old grievances.

In one of the most poignant scenes, after they have survived what could have been a disaster, his children and brother crawl into bed with Big Angel, as his "Perla of great price" stands at the bedside. What could have been a sad and somber story has woven into it humor, warmth, and the loveliest, most tender romantic scene possible between aging spouses looking into the face of death.

Since the author reads the audiobook with such verve, I am more eager than ever to hear him when he appears at the literary festival next month. In the meantime, I'm going looking for his earlier stories.

The House of Broken Angels: Anticipating the Southern Festival of Books

Echo by Pam Munoz Ryan: Why I Still Read YA Novels

I keep a running list of reading suggestions from friends, often forgetting exactly from whom the recommendation first arrived. Such is the case with Echo, the Newbery Award-winning novel by Pam Munoz Ryan (author of Esperanza Rising.)

The narrative structure brings to mind books such as The Girl with the Pearl Earring, which traced a Vermeer painting from the most recent owner, back through its numerous owners to the painter himself.

This book, which opens with a fairy tale style of narrative, follows a harmonica from one owner to the next--Frederich, a young boy in Nazi Germany; Mike, trapped in an orphanage with his younger brother; Ivy, the daughter of a migrant worker in California; and Kenneth, a young Japanese-American soldier whose parents are in an internment camp. Each narrative stops at a suspenseful point, with a suggestion of tragedy or disaster; the resolution ties the threads together, explaining the path taken by the harmonica.

Much of the story can be considered a historical novel, exploring the way World War II affected people in a variety of situations and setting. One surprise detail was the existence of harmonica orchestras in America during this time period (perhaps rivaled by ukulele bands today). A real bonus of the audio recording of this novel is the inclusion of a number of lovely songs throughout the story. A major theme of the story is the transformative power of music to heal and to unite. Relationships between parents, children, siblings, and neighbors are also explored through the story.

Ryan follows the tried and true narrative method: get your characters into trouble and see how they get out of it. The young adolescent characters are realistically naive at times. They jump to conclusions and try to take action themselves, often without considering the consequences.

I realize that I read plenty of novels set during World War II, but this one is particularly accessible to younger readers and gives a number of varying viewpoints to these pivotal years in world history. I wish I could remember whom to thank for the recommendation.

Echo by Pam Munoz Ryan: Why I Still Read YA Novels

Old Filth: A Good Surprise off the Shelf

I don't know if there is a word similar to ambidextrous to describe one who navigates easily between eBooks, audiobooks, paperbacks, and hardbacks, but if there is, I an one. On a recent vacation, though, I knew I needed some paperbacks for beach reading, since sun and sand don't work well with screen reading. I scanned my bookshelves for titles I had put away for another day. All too often, my supply exceeds demand (or at least my ability to read them all) and some good books risk being lost. Maybe they are just waiting for the right time.

This time, I picked up Jane Gardem's novel Old Filth, a book that had been sent to me unsolicited. Subsequently, it was recommended by readers I trust. It ended up being such a great read. The title refers to an acronym coined by the protagonist: Failed In London Try Hong Kong.  A "raj orphan," Edward Feathers had been sent away from Malaysia by his father, who has shown no interest in the boy after the mother died from childbirth complications. He ends up first in Wales with a couple of female cousins, then private school and Cambridge, eventually becoming a very successful barrister. Only gradually does the narrative reveal some of the events of the past that continue to haunt him.

As the book opens, he is retired, his wife has just died suddenly, and he is wrestling with memories of childhood experiences. He ends up taking a road trip to find the cousins. In the narrative, Gardem  moves back and forth between the elderly Feathers and young Edward, with some poignant scenes at the home of his best schoolfriend, where he is treated like family until the war and illness disrupt their lives.

Old Filth--or young Feathers--evolves as an engaging, sympathetic, unforgettable character, a survivor. The author's description creates vivid settings which serve as anything but filler or fluff. The telling of the story provides enough dramatic irony to keep readers' wheels turning.

I may have to resume my junior reading habit--finding an author I like and then reading anything else she has written.

Old Filth: A Good Surprise off the Shelf

Macbeth as Summer Reading: No, Not That One!

Having taught high school seniors for many years, I can't even count how many times I have read Shakespeare's great tragedy Macbeth. Far too many of the lines trip off my tongue from simple repeated exposure. Yet I never tired of it.  Like most of the Bard's plays, too, I find so many connections to current events, politics, popular culture.

Jo Nesbo, known for his dark Scandinavian thrillers has taken the story, the characters, plot, and even some of the lines, setting the story in the late 1990s in a Scottish town that has lost is main industry, resulting in a boom in crime and drug trafficking.  At odds with law enforcement are Hecate, a local drug lord who has created his own narcotic product known as "Brew," and his main competition Sweno, the head of a drug trafficking motorcycle gang.

Macbeth is the head of SWAT, working for police commissioner Duncan. His (common law) wife, known as Lady runs the most exclusive casino in town, the Inverness. Duff, his colleague is especially intent on stopping Sweno, giving the impression of ambition.

Nesbo builds the backstory, with Macbeth having met Duff after both boys landed in an orphanage after losing their parents. Banquo, an older policeman, had taken Macbeth into his own home, like a son, even before he and his wife have their own son Fleance.

Anyone familiar with Shakespeare's tragedy knows the basic plot, but will still find the way the story unwinds fascinating. It's worth noting that even when the play was new, the audience at the Globe knew the basic story before it even began, even though the playwright took liberties with the accounts in Hollinshed's Chronicles. Shakespeare's real talent was not so much plot as characterization and theme. Nesbo develops many of the same threads: meaning (or meaninglessness) of life, loyalty, ambition--and the ongoing question: Can people really change?

As I read, I realized that readers who don't know a thing about the play on which it was based can read this novel as the suspense thriller it is. The dramatic irony as one reads, anticipating but dreading the inevitable, creates a perfect summer reading experience.

Macbeth as Summer Reading: No, Not That One!

The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce

From the author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and The Love Song of Miss Queen Hennessy, I was happy to discover a new novel.  I loved the way Rachel Joyce brought together such unlikely combinations of characters. The Music Shop is no exception.

The story is set in a neighborhood in a declining section of London as the streets up and down the street are being forced to close their doors, some selling out to pushy developers. In 1988, Frank, the owner of a music store, refuses to give in to music trends. He has resisted cassette tapes and now refuses to add CDs, to the dismay of the music sales reps. Frank loves vinyl. He also has a gift for matching up just the right music for each customer--part retailer, part counselor.  He has a listening area set up in a repurposed piece of furniture. He employs an accident prone young sales assistant, and he interacts with the neighboring business owners--twin brothers running the family funeral business, a former priest selling (only occasionally) religious icons and bookmarks, and an eccentric female tattoo artist with a not-so-hidden attraction to Frank.

Resistant to love, Frank's life changes when a lovely woman in green passes out just outside his store--and then disappears. Claiming ignorance on the topic, she pays Frank to give her lessons in music outside of store hours. The only obstacle is her fiancé.

Joyce also develops the back story of Frank's childhood, the son of a quirky single mother, negligent at best. Readers learn his mother is the reason he can't bear to hear "The  Hallelujah Chorus."

The Music Shop may not be the stuff of literature classes, but it is a fun reading experience--especially for music lovers--with a nice love story. As an added bonus, the author provides a play list on Spotify: bit.ly/TheMusicShopPlaylist.  Who doesn't love a playlist that ranges from Chopin and Handel to "Stairway to Heaven" and Aretha Franklin?

The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce

Micro-Memoirs: Beth Ann Fennelly's Heating and Cooling

When I read some books, I can't put them down. Each chapter, I'm thinking, "Well, maybe one more. . . ." Other books I have to savor slowly--dark books that haunt me if I overload the images, dense books that require concentration, retention. Sometimes I have to stop while reading a particularly engrossing book to call or write someone else who needs to read it too. Right now.

But some books make me want to write. I can't finish even a short chapter without digging out my little notebook to write down the scrap I recalled in response to what I'm reading or opening my laptop and laying down a few lines.

I'm in the middle of at least two books right now--on on CD, another for book club on the iPad, but after hearing Beth Ann Fennelly reading from Heating and Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs at the Southern Festival of Books this past weekend, I had to dive right in.

After finishing her book project The Tilted World with husband-novelist Tom Franklin, she found herself unable to write poetry but filling her notebook with fragments. She sifted through and published the pearls, the ones she said she kept thinking of later. Some are only a sentence or two; the longest may be four pages. They pack a wallop.

But as I read them, I keep having my own little micro-memoirs surfacing, tiny but meaningful experiences, family stories, overheard or stolen bits and pieces. Fennelly has a doctor story; I have a doctor story. She has a neighbor raising chickens; my mother started raising chickens in her late seventies.

Meanwhile, I drift over to Facebook where more and more of the women I know are posting two single words: Me too. And I know that what silences, what saves us is our shared histories, as different as we might be.

Micro-Memoirs: Beth Ann Fennelly's Heating and Cooling

Mrs. Queen Takes the Train

Just in time for all the documentaries on television commemorating the 20th anniversary of the death of Princess Diana, William Kuhn published a charming novel with Queen Elizabeth as one of an ensemble cast of characters. I had read Alan Bennet's An Uncommon Reader, which imagined the queen happening upon the bookmobile while walking her corgis, stepping in to look around and becoming an avid reader. I was amused to learn that the Queen in Kuhn's novel was aware of that book too.

In this particular story, the queen is wrestling with her place in Great Britain and the world. She's still stung by the reaction to her during the period following Diana's untimely death, and she even suspects she, like Diana, may be suffering from a touch of depression, the reality of which she was late to recognize during Charles and Di's marriage.

Kuhn interjects a number of quirky and interesting characters--her equerry and butler, her personal dresser and a lady-in-waiting, two women on whom she depends but who have no relationship themselves. He also includes Rajiv, a young Pakistani clerk at the local cheese shop and Rebecca, the girl who works at the Royal Mews.

When the Queen learns that Parliament is considering defunding the royal train, after already placing her yacht in dry dock, she goes gets a hankering to visit the yacht and strikes out with her handbag, but wearing a hoodie lent to her by Rebecca when the queen appeared in the stables not dressed for the weather.

The self-deprecating humor of the monarch as she wrestles with her own obsolescence is particularly charming. When she finds herself seated with a blind man, his almost blind wife, the guide dog, and a pierced and tattooed young man, they note her striking resemblance to Helen Mirren, but afford her the opportunity to spend a day in the midst of her subjects without threat.

Kuhn avoids being either over-sentimental or judgmental toward the Queen; instead, he shows her vulnerable human side. She finds herself caught with an audience of a performance of Shakespeare's Henry V, which she has learned from Rajiv only during this short time to appreciate. When the play is interrupted with the announcement of a nearby terrorist attempt, she gets the chance to follow her own mother's royal example, choose an appearance among the injured over her own safety.

The chapter titles, all yoga positions, point to the Queen's own yoga practice, an image that amuses, just as it also humanizes the octogenarian. I loved all the characters so much I hated for the story to end.

Mrs. Queen Takes the Train

Books That Make Me Think about Resolution: Andrew's Brain and Today Will Be Different

 I don't have to have my literature with tidy endings, though I do love an author who can end a book in a way that satisfies, even when it surprises. Sometimes though, in literature as in life, the endings are more complicated. Two of my most recent reads have been almost unsettling in that way that keeps me thinking about them. Nevertheless, they bear almost no similarities otherwise.

Maria Semple, who wrote Where'd You Go, Bernadette? has followed with a "one day in the life" story of Eleanor Flood, a wife and mother beginning her day making a commitment to be a better person. She's called away from her private poetry lesson when her son complains of illness--again--to the school nurse. She and her son Timby discover that her husband, whom she saw holding his head at the breakfast table, is not only not in his office but that he
has told his employees he's on a week vacation. Suspecting the worst, she and Timby engage in a series of adventures across the city. Flashbacks and stream-of-consciousness inform readers of her career writing for a popular television series, her far-too-prolonged book deal, and her estrangement from her sister, the other "Flood Girl." At times, Semple shifts to husband's Joe's point-of-view as well.

At story's end, after much "madcap adventure," she discovers (spoiler alert) that her husband--a former Catholic and avowed atheist--has become part of a Christian congregation after the team chaplain on the sidelines where he serves as orthopedist on call begins to help him address personal problems. While at book's end Eleanor and Timby seem eager to join Joe as he goes to seminary in Scotland, she doesn't seem to make any kind of peace with his conversion. In fact, she says he has gone from being the most interesting person she knows to the most boring. That seemed problematic at least to this reader.

In Andrew's Brain, the last novel by the late E. L. Doctorow, the entire narrative is revealed as the title character engages in a dialogue with someone he refers to only as "Doc." Through these conversations, the details of his life are teased out: After his failed marriage to Martha, following the death of their only child, he ends up appearing on Martha's doorstep bereft, holding the infant child of his second wife Briony, his much younger former student, who has apparently died. (This is not a spoiler. That much is revealed early. The full story emerges only in bits and pieces.) While Andrew may not be a totally unreliable narrator, his tendency to withhold details, even entire incidents, until he feel the time is right, keeps readers guessing before he delivers one-two punches.

I kept thinking of a favorite old Young Adult novel by Robert Cormier, I Am the Cheese, also a tricky little tale told in much the same fashion, but with an ending that sent me immediately back to chapter one. Andrew is complicated but engaging, and his observations about people in his life are intriguing. Everything about him, though, is revealed indirectly. (As Emily Dickinson suggests, "Tell the truth but tell it slant.").

Both of these books kept me interested but left me a bit unsettled, thinking about them long after I came to the conclusion. Maybe that's not such a bad reading experience.

Books That Make Me Think about Resolution: Andrew's Brain and Today Will Be Different