End-of-summer reads
I wait all year for summer. I did as a child, growing up in suburban New Jersey. Summer meant freedom from coats and boots and car culture. I rode my bike to the pool, swam and raced all day, ate a deli-sandwich downtown. With my mom we bought peaches and tomatoes from the farm stand.Â
(...)Books: best of 2016
A very satisfying year in books. Below, my favorite reads. The Association of Small Bombs, by Karan Mahajan Characters linked by the devastation of a bomb set in a crowded marketplace. They grow up and old in surprising, unsettling ways. Christodora, by Tim Murphy A sprawling read set in lower Manhattan, 1970’s to
(...)Books: Recent reads
Most recently I read and enjoyed Ian McEwan’s Nutshell, a modern Hamlet narrated by a full-term fetus. Trudy, the pregnant mother, has dismissed her poet husband John from his childhood home, a crumbling mansion in a fashionable part of London. Taking his place? His brother Claude. Together, Trudy and Claude conspire to murder John Cairncross,
(...)Books: Reading in Florida and Chiberia
Doesn’t matter if it’s balmy (ahhh, Florida in December) or bitterly cold (Chiberia, Day 2): either place you’ll find my head in a book. I’ve read some really good ones lately. No duds. First, Dave Eggers’ The Circle. I loved Eggers’ last, A Hologram for the King. That’s the kind of reader I am, like
(...)Books: Reading Pythonga, Part 2
My husband’s family have been members at Pythonga since the early 70′s. Every year I invariably pack more books than clothes and still can manage to run out of things to read! You have to have the “boat bookâ€, something if it gets wet, no big deal. Then the “porch book†and “beach book†and
(...)