Posted on Aug 18, 2009 in
Books |
7 comments I’m away for a few days without my computer (scheduled post). Instead I brought three non-fiction books:
- Writing Life Stories by Bill Roorbach, along with pen and paper. If you’ve ever thought about writing memoirs or creative non-fiction, Roorbach is the best: entertaining, encouraging and inspiring. I’ve had the book for a while and am dying to finish it, but if Roorbach tells you not to continue until you’ve done the exercise, you listen. Now is my chance.
When exercises are hard, I remind myself (like Roorbach does) that they don’t have to be good.
- A review copy of a book about Israel and politics.
- Barbara W. Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror about France in the 14th century. It’s a long book, and I’m skimming until I get to the Black Plague. I love to read about plagues and epidemics. But the chapter on children got my attention:
“Medieval illustrations show people in every other human activity—making love and dying, sleeping and eating, in bed and in the bath, praying, hunting, dancing, playing, in games and in combat, trading, traveling, reading and writing—yet so rarely with children as to raise the question: Why not?”
Of the month’s book club books, my favorite was Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris, author of Chocolat. Early on I half-guessed the twist at the end but decided I couldn’t be right. I read it a second time to see how Harris had set it up. It’s about a child who longs to be a student at a local elite school, and takes revenge as an adult. If you like suspenseful drama, you’ll love Harris.
What are you reading this summer?
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I would like to read A Distant Mirror. Thanks for mentioning that one.
I’m reading Caspian Rain by Gina Nahai, a novel about life in Iran. Doesn’t paint a pretty picture – lots of levels of class and women looking down on other women, men not treating women well, Jews being second class citizens and poor Jews being treated as less than rich Jews.
I finished I Love Gootie, a biography by Max Apple about his grandmother. I hope to read Roommates by Max Apple, which is about his grandfather.
Enjoy your vacation.
I’ve just picked up Julia and Julie to read but mainly I’m working my way through a technical photography book first.
A Distant Mirror sounds like my kind of book. Did you get it in Israel?
I read “Mother in the Middle” by Sybil Lockhart about being a mother of young kids and dealing with a parent with Alzheimer’s — kind of depressing.
I just read “Life Sentences” by Laura Lippman. I enjoy her thriller/crime books. They’re much more nuanced than, say, Harlan Coben’s. (Harlan Coben went to high school with my brother; I probably wouldn’t have picked up his books otherwise. They’re entertaining, too, but entirely without substance).
Also “Stuffed”, by Patricia Volk. It came out years ago, I think. I like the memoir genre.
I read A distant Mirror years ago. What amazed me is that the NON Jews were almost as inhuman to their own country men as they were to the Jews! NOT a book to skim….
Leora and Robin: Thanks for the suggestions. Robin, I can give you the Tuchman when I’ve finished.
Tesyaa: I agree about Cben but haven’t read the others you mentioned.
Rickismom: I’m working on it!
Sooo. . . . why aren’t they shown with kids? You left us hanging there
I have such a long to-read list and I can’t wait that long, the suspense you know! 
She speculates that because of high infant mortality, children were not valued nor nurtured. Several times she indicates that this might be why the knights were so brutal.