October Book Report

Portland, ME, October 2024

I finished 7 books last month.

A quote from this month's reading:

““I once attempted to flirt with her our freshman year of college, complimenting her sandals before class. She didn't respond, just glared at me with a scowl that would've liquefied helium, for which I repaid her many years later by marrying into her family and sitting next to her every Thanksgiving.”" ― Harrison Scott Key, How to Stay Married

I made no progress on any of my various goals or challenges. 

 Here are the books I finished in October 2024: 

1. Lethal Treasure by Jane Cleland (3-stars)
2. How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told by Harrison Scott Key  (4-stars)
3. The Productivity Project by Chris Bailey (4-stars)
4. Murder on the Half Shelf by Lorna Barrett (3-stars)
5. The Five Years Before You Retire by Emily Guy Birkin (3-stars)
6. Georgia by Dawn Tripp (5-stars)
7. Not That Fancy by Reba McEntire (3-stars)

Three Men in a Boat To Say Nothing of the Dog

Three Men in a Boat 

by Jerome K. Jerome
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I found this book very funny. It is the thoughts of one man, J. who embarks on a boat trip on the Thames with two friends and a dog named Montmorency. The events of their journey are described and various other stories are told (like the signing of the Magna Carta) when something on the trip reminds J. of them. There is also life advice sprinkled throughout the story.

"Throw the lumber over, man! Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need--a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing." 

This novel was first published in 1899, the same year as Dom Casmurro and 2 years after Dracula. It felt more modern than that--the tone was very similar to P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1975) or John Mortimer (1923-2009).  It had summary notes at the head of each chapter--in the style of Henry Fielding--which I find entertaining. 

This book is from my Classics Club list and was my spin title. 

NonFiction November 2024 - Week 1

This first week of NonFiction November is being hosted at Based on a True Story. This week's questions are what NF have we read this year and what were our favorites?

I have read 78 books so far this year and 30 of them were nonfiction. Mostly I read books about productivity, a little history, and some memoir/biography. 

As far as favorites these were the standouts:

Congratulations! The Best is Over by R. Eric Thomas -- funny and touching memoir and the audiobook, read by the author, was great.

The Life List by Kate Christie -- a woman of "a certain age" taking control of her own destiny and nailing it!

All it Takes is a Goal by Jon Acuff -- sensible, practical tools for getting stuff done.

Boom Town by Sam Anderson -- a true story of Oklahoma City and basketball.

As always, I hope to discover some new-to-me NF titles and learn more about ones I might have been considering that are not likely to be good picks for me.

Georgia

Georgia: A Novel of Georgia O'Keeffe 

by Dawn Tripp
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Dawn Tripp was at the NH Book Festival (which was awesome) talking about her new book on Jackie Kennedy. That one sounded really good, but this one was on the shelf at the public library so I decided to read it first. I am so glad I did because it was fabulous! I have had Laurie Lisle's biography of O'Keeffe on my owned-but-not-read shelf for years (maybe decades) and will definitely need to dig it out. 

When I saw her speak Tripp talked about how important it is to her to stick to the historic record in writing her fiction which made this novel even more interesting to me. 

Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz are the center of this story which begins when they met and takes us beyond his death. Along the way we discover how the artists felt about their own work, each other's work, and each other. I couldn't put this book down and I learned a lot. I am anxious to go back and revisit O'Keeffe's paintings now that I know more about why she painted what she did.

This is a novel full of great lines too. I'm not sure if they are Tripp's or O'Keeffe's, but either way they are memorable.

"A life is built of lies and magic, illusions bedded down with dreams. And in the end what haunts us most is the recollection of what we failed to see." (p. 15)

"There are those moments, always, looking back on a life when you can see the points--fully lit in hindsight, real or imagined--where the path split, where you could have made a different choice and the cost of the choice you made." (p. 173)

I am counting this book toward the Historical Fiction Reading challenge.

The Frozen River

The Frozen River 

by Ariel Lawhon
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"A gripping historical mystery inspired by the life and diary of Martha Ballard, a renowned 18th-century midwife who defied the legal system and wrote herself into American history." -- publisher's blurb

This was not a book that jumped out at me as something I would be interested in, but it was fabulous! Lawhon brings her readers into the mind of Martha Ballard which is a fascinating place to be. The story includes a lot of hard things, but the narrator is a very practical and sensible woman who's matter-of-fact dealing with what is put in front of her keeps the book from being too harrowing to read. I loved the ending!

This book counts toward the 2024 Historical Fiction reading challenge.  

Classics Club Spin

The Classics Club is hosting another spin. A number will be selected on Sunday 10/20/24. I have until December 18th to read the book from my list at that number.

Here is my list:

1. Hard Times, Charles Dickens, 1854
2. Come and Get It, Edna Ferber, 1935
3. Three Men in a Boat, Jerome K. Jerome, 1889
4. Profiles in Courage, John F. Kennedy, 1955
5. Steamboat Gothic, Francis Parkinson Keyes, 1952
6. Russia House, John le Carre, 1989
7. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh, 1945
8. Howards End, E. M. Forster, 1910
9. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1967
10. Riders of the Purple Sage, Zane Grey, 1912
11. Dune, Frank Herbert, 1965
12. The Razor's Edge, W. Somerset Maugham, 1944
13. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry, 1985 
14. True Grit, Charles Portis, 1968
15. 3 Lives, Gertrude Stein, 1909
16. A Tale of a Tub, Jonathan Swift, 1704
17. Aesop's Fables
18. Song of the Lark, Willa Cather, 1915
19. A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens, 1859
20. Delta Wedding, Eudora Welty, 1946

Only 3 months left!

As we approach the end of the year it seems like a good idea to look at how far I have gotten with the 2024 goals I set for my reading life.

• I planned to read 10 books from my Classics Club list and I have read 6 so far. I may get through 4 more titles from this list before the year ends.
• I wanted to read at least 6 books from my Readers' Advisory Reading List and have not read a single one. This doesn't look promising, but it also doesn't seem impossible.
• I read 9 of the 35 books on my #nonficnov tbr list and my goal was to read at least 6 of them before November 2024 so this one is done.
• I wanted to complete the 2024 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge at the Victorian level of 5 books and I have read 4 so far, but have only blogged about 2 and writing about the books is part of this challenge so I have work to do here. 
• I committed to the 2024 What's in a Name Challenge which requires 6 books. So far I have read one. 
• The Canadian Reading Challenge ended on July 1, 2024 and I was nowhere near to completing it. I have taken a break from this challenge for the current year. 
• I am not doing very well getting my owned-but-not-read shelf down to fewer than 100 books. It has hovered around the 130 mark most of the year. I need to both read from this shelf and stop adding to it.
• I have read 72 books so far this year so I should make it to my usual GoodReads goal of 100 books.
• Figure out where I left off with my Century of Books project. I have 3 years left in this project: 1901, 1903, and 1909. The goal was to figure out where I was, not to finish so that is a crossed off item.
• Continue posting a Book Report the first week of each month. So far so good on this one. 

I definitely have some reading to do if I am going to complete these challenges. Other than getting my owned-but-not-read shelf to fewer than 100 books--which is not going to happen in 3 months-- I think I can complete these goals. 

September Book Report

Manchester, NH

I finished 5 books last month.

A quote from this month's reading:

“For it was a truth universally acknowledged that a single vicar must be in want of a wife." ― G.M. Malliet, Wicked Autumn

Here is my progress toward various goals and challenges:

• 0 were from my owned-but-not-read shelf  (with 135 remaining)  
• 1 was from my Classics Club List 

 Here are the books I finished in September 2024: 

1. Shot with Crimson by Nicola Upson (4-stars)
2. A Palm for Mrs. Pollifax by Dorothy Gilman  (audiobook, 4-stars)
3. Wicked Autumn by G. M. Malliet (4-stars)
4. Dom Casmurro by Machado de Assis (4-stars)
5. A Fountain Filled with Blood by Julia Spencer-Fleming (4-stars)

Apparently this was a four-star month! I am not doing too well with reading for my various challenges and lists however. I will try to work on that in October.

Dom Casmurro

Dom Casmurro 

by Machado de Assis

translation by Helen Caldwell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this novel. I discovered Machado de Assis back in college when I read Epitaph for a Small Winner (aka Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas) for a Latin American Literature class and was immediately a fan. I have read several of his other novels that have been translated to English (unfortunately I can't read Portugese) and have enjoyed all of them. 

The introduction in the edition I read was by Waldo Frank (dated 1952) and he explained that Laurence Sterne was a strong influence on Machado. This makes sense to me as the dry, quiet tone and the way the author steps out of the pages now and then to make asides, is similar. Dom Casmurro is told from the point of view of a man looking back over his life and telling us about it. He hints at the future implications of the events he describes, but until you get there in the story you don't know what happened. This builds a tension in the novel that propels you through it. 

“In ordinary life, the action of a third party does not free the contractor from an obligation; but the advantage of making a contract with heaven is that intentions are valid currency.” --Machado de Assis, Dom Casmurro

This book is on my Classics Club list.