Keep Reading August 2018
All the books on Today’s list are available through NLS for all you Talking Book users. I downloaded all of them from the BARD web site.
I lost myself mostly in current fiction this week with the exception of one Philip Roth book. I warned you about this. In September I will probably read more older books by searching for books that have won Pulitzer Prizes.
It is hard for me to say which of the following books I liked best. They are all wonderful reads. I will start with There There by Tommy Orange. I greatly enjoyed the writing style of this book. A group of characters who are mostly Native Americans who are discovering there heritage, head to a Powwow in Oakland California. They all have their own reasons for making this journey. They are not all good reasons. This is one of those books I could not put down.
I have starting asking people in my talking book presentations to tell me their favorite book. Circe by Madeline Miller was an answer to this question. Spend some glorious hours in the world of Mythology. You will feel like this world is totally real. You might need to take a trip to the Greek Isles. Would that be such a bad thing?
American Pastoral by Philip Roth, won Roth a Pulitzer Prize. After World War Two, the main character comes home to run his family’s business. Everything he touches seems to turn to gold until his daughter becomes a political activist and blows up the small local post office, killing the town doctor who was picking up his mail. How does a father deal with this situation? Roth does such a great job bringing the reader up close and personal with his characters feelings.
Winter Sisters by Robin Oliveira takes place in the mid nineteenth century in Albany New York. An unexpected blizzard kills several people including the mom and dad of two very young sisters. When the sisters are released from school they cannot find their parents in all the drifts of snow. They try to make their way home but are offered help from a stranger. They are not scene again for weeks and I won’t tell you more. I will just say one thing more. Did you know that during this time the age of consent for a girl was ten years old?