Books

Books

~ MaryG ~ 22 Comments

Which author would you love to have dinner with?

The two novelists I follow on Instagram are living legends—one American and one Canadian. Ideally, I’d have dinner with both of them and silently listen to them talk to each other.

*Barbara Kingsolver, 71, is an acclaimed American novelist known for works like The Poisonwood Bible, The Bean Trees, and Demon Copperhead, blending rich storytelling with themes of social justice, family, and the environment. She’s the first author to win the Women’s Prize for Fiction twice (for The Lacuna and Demon Copperhead), and Demon Copperhead also earned her the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2023.

*Margaret Atwood, 86, is a celebrated Canadian novelist known for works like The Handmaid’s Tale, Cat’s Eye, and Oryx and Crake, blending speculative and dystopian fiction with feminist themes and sharp social commentary. She’s won the Booker Prize twice (for The Blind Assassin and The Testaments) and remains one of the most influential English-language authors of her generation.

(*Bios by Claude)

Speaking of contemporary fiction, I highly recommend Absolution by Alice McDermott.

Really good!

Don’t be an Eeyore

~ MaryG ~ 14 Comments

Who is the fictional character you relate to the most?

My husband has a cousin who’s an Eeyore. He just is and, apparently, always was.

I really don’t want be an Eeyore, but it’s hard not to be, if you read any news at all.

Today I hope to snap out of Eeyore.

I think (and hope) I’m more of a Kanga, in need of a quick visit from Tigger to perk up.

Happy Friday.

Impossible dream

~ MaryG ~ 28 Comments

What’s your biggest dream?

We saw The Odyssey yesterday—the latest blockbuster film from Christopher Nolan. Honestly, I was not a huge fan of Oppenheimer, but it’s not like we were going to skip the biggest film of the summer. (As you may have heard, it’s three hours long and cost 250 million dollars to make.)

I did a bit a “research” beforehand (I watched one video and read one article in the NYT), so I knew some basics about: Zeus‘s Law; Helen of Troy; Ithaca; and the Greek gods Zeus, Athena, Poseidon and Hades. I recommend doing that before seeing it or you will be confused.

My husband, who read way more Greek mythology than me as a kid, but didn’t brush up before the movie, was pretty confused. He gave the film a resounding “Meh.” In addition to being confused, he felt that none of the characters were particularly well developed.

My take home message was this: war is hell and (most) men are pigs.

The best scene in the film is when the witch Circe (brilliantly played by Samantha Morton) turns Odysseus’ men into actual pigs. It’s not a subtle message.

And as if to make the point more clear, I read these two bits of news upon my return from the theater:

Pig Trump

Pig Hegseth

As I watched 3,000 year old Troy burn, I couldn’t help but think of Tehran, Gaza, Kyiv, Manhattan and scores of other cities and countries that have seen bombings and other manmade violence in my lifetime alone. Some places are getting drone-bombed right now for God’s sake.

War just never seems to go away permanently. Where there are men, there are wars.

A world without war seems an impossible dream.

My best purchase

~ MaryG ~ 18 Comments
Daily writing prompt
What is the best purchase you have ever made?
View all responses

The best purchase I ever made was free.

Having fun isn’t hard when you’ve got a library card.

Things I got from my library:

An education

My closest friend

Sex education

Foreign language instruction

Books

E-books

Audiobooks

Books for my kids

Storytime and other entertainment for my kids

Books to discuss with my book group

Flu shots

Travel resources

Magazines

A quiet place to read

A place for my son to meet with his math tutor

A place to hold a community meeting

A place to buy used books for almost nothing

A place to donate old books

A way to download and read or listen to books on my phone or Kindle without ever leaving my house (aka the Libby app)

All for free

The Lacuna

~ MaryG ~ 17 Comments

What’s a movie or book that inspired you to travel?

I remember reading The Lacuna (copyright 2009) by Barbara Kingsolver and deciding I really needed to visit Mexico. I was in my mid-forties and I’d never been.

I don’t remember much about the book, but I know that at least part of it was set in Mexico and that Kingsolver is an incredible writer. So we went! I brought the whole family. Even though my son got a stomach bug, my kids still remember it as one of our best vacations.

We stayed in a resort, but it was one with a town nearby that we could walk to.
We took a boat over to Cozumel for a day trip.
My kids with other kids from all over the world at our hotel beach in Mexico (2011)

Atmosphere

~ MaryG ~ 28 Comments

Which outdated technology do you miss the most, and why?

I’ve been enjoying reading a good old analog book by the pool this week. The book I’m reading is Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid.

It reminds me of summers of yore, when that’s what we did—we laid around and read books.

Our phones did not distract us from our books, because our phones were home in the kitchen—attached to the wall.

My pool is in a condo community for older people, so there are always several other people sitting around reading real books. When I walk around the pool, I check out the titles of other people’s books. Sometimes people stop and ask each other about the book they’re reading. (This doesn’t happen when everyone is reading on their phone or Kindle.)

So yeah, hardcover and paperback books. They’re not actually gone, but I’ve missed them.

So far, it’s good. Please don’t tell me how it ends.😉

Gratitude post

~ MaryG ~ 21 Comments

My husband has been suffering from a mysterious set of symptoms since late last month. I’m not going to go into details, but it’s been hard having him feel so unwell again, after a full year of him feeling awful with his two total knee replacements. Hopefully the doctors will help him figure it out soon.

In the meantime, I’m trying to enjoy my own life and stay upbeat, so I’m going to do one of those annoying gratitude posts.

  1. Friends. I’ve got a couple of good girlfriends with whom I can be totally honest. There’s pretty much nothing I can’t tell them. They’ve both known me forever.
  2. Book group. I’ve got an additional group of four wonderful women that I’ve known since the 1990s that are very dear to me. We gather once a month on Zoom to discuss a book, but it’s so much more than that.
  3. Money. I am financially secure. I know I’m lucky to not have to worry about how I’m going to pay for medical bills, car repairs, and other unexpected things.
  4. My own health. I just passed my annual physical and blood tests with flying colors! My only physical problems at the moment are tinnitus and mild hearing loss in the right ear (thanks to COVID, I believe) and heel pain in my left foot (plantar fasciitis).
  5. My kids. Both are independent and doing well as adults living on their own out in this crazy world.
  6. My granddaughter. I get to play with the most adorable toddler on a regular basis. So uplifting!
  7. My church. It’s a real community for me. Even though my husband doesn’t attend, I know those people would be there for us if we needed them. They care.

I spontaneously ordered two copies of this book for my kids last night, after I saw the author on The Daily Show. She sounded extremely sensible and was giving the exact same advice I would give. They might not read it, but hey, it’s the thought that counts. At one point, one of my kids told me that one thing lacking in their high school was a basic financial literacy class.

The decisions and habits people develop around money in their 20s and 30s can make such a difference later in life.

Money doesn’t buy happiness, but it does make a lot of things easier.

We had a crazy haze all day yesterday due to wildfires in Minnesota and Ontario. Finally, around 8pm, we saw a bit of the sky and lots of orange.

The Mighty Red

~ MaryG ~ 5 Comments

What’s a book you think deserves a sequel?

We read The Mighty Red (c. 2024) by Louise Erdrich for my book group this month. It was my first time reading her. I liked the book and can certainly understand why she’s such an esteemed author.

The Mighty Red is really a portrait of a community along the Red River in North Dakota, where sugar beet farming and processing is the major industry. There are at least 15 different characters, from the local teenagers to the town priest. A tragedy has occurred, but you don’t find out exactly what happened until late in the book.

The last chapter jumps forward ten or so years, so you get a brief look at how things “turned out” for the major characters. But I think it would be interesting to visit this community in thirty years—when the teenagers are approaching 50. Did they stay? Did they go? Did they ever process their grief from the tragedy? Which couples stayed together and which didn’t? Did the farmers embrace a less devastating crop?

The challenge for Erdrich would be imaging a future that doesn’t exist yet. She’d have to create the world they live in without knowing it.

OK, on second thought, she should wait 15 years before writing the sequel. She’s 72 now. She can make it to 87. If it takes her three years to research and write the book, this could be her 90th birthday present to readers.

Louise, take note!

100 Best Books of the 21st Century

~ MaryG ~ 20 Comments

According to the New York Times Book Review, these are the 100 best books of the first quarter of the 21st century.

My second child is a Golden Dragon. (He was born in the Year 2000.) So I’m going to go ahead and blame him for how few of these books I’ve actually read. I was busy!

I have read some. And I’ve seen many movies and limited series (and one Broadway musical) based on others.

These are the ones I’ve read:

Bel Canto; Olive Kitteridge; The Great Believers; Demon Copperhead; Middlesex; The Goldfinch; Small Things Like These; A Visit From the Goon Squad; Between the World and Me; Sing Unburied Sing; Atonement

So, 11 out of 100. Pretty bad!

How many have you read?

One book that I can’t believe I never read because everyone was always talking about is: Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking.

One book I assume I’d like, based on other books I’ve read by the author is: The Runaway by Alice Munro.

Predictably, readers of the New York Times had a different list. Here in the main article, you can see which ones readers chose that didn’t make The Book Review’s list. I concur with readers on many of those including A Gentleman in Moscow, The Nightingale, The Glass Castle and Just Mercy.

If I had to pick one book that was left off both lists, I’d say Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime. Such a great memoir!

And one author that was left off both lists: Anne Lamott. I mean, I know she wrote a lot of great stuff before the year 2000, but I feel like at least one of her later books should have been included, like maybe Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith.

Thoughts?

NYTBestBooks.pdfDownload
A bookshelf in my family room

Angela’s Ashes

~ MaryG ~ 20 Comments

What’s a piece of media (book, movie, song) that changed how you see the world?

Weirdly the book that’s coming to mind is Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt, which came out in 1996 and won a Pulitzer. It seemed that everyone read it at the same time.

It’s a memoir of McCourt’s desperately impoverished childhood in Limerick, Ireland, after his family returned from Brooklyn. It follows young Frank navigating alcoholism, death, hunger, and humiliation, centered on his father’s chronic drunkenness and his resilient mother Angela.

McCourt was the same generation as my parents—born in the 1930s. Their parents were also poor Catholic immigrants, including some from Ireland to Brooklyn like McCourt.

I still think of that book when people talk about income inequality, tenements, an alcoholic father, or “food insecurity” (aka starvation) in a country of plenty.

I know they made a film out of it, but it’s the book that stayed with me.