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Musings of a Book Addict
I'm married to a scavenger of sorts and he often totes home rescued boxes of books that I paw through with shiny, hungry eyes. I pull out the odd and interesting and add them to my teetering stack.
Currently reading
The Hound of the Baskervilles
E.B. White: A Biography
Murder on the Orient Express
There Is Nothing Wrong with You: Going Beyond Self-Hate
Living Buddha, Living Christ
No. 44, The Mysterious Stranger
The Snare of the Hunter
Paintings of Henry Miller
Dreamways of the Iroquois: Honoring the Secret Wishes of the Soul
Pentimento (Back Bay Books)
The River Gods
I really liked the idea of this book. The author creates short vignettes written from a huge variety of perspectives, crossing time, gender and class. I love that the historical pieces are more or less taken directly from historical documents. In the author's own words: "I have often used (and burnished) other people's words - sometimes the words of historical figures, sometimes someone else's completely unrelated words when they fit the moment I was pondering." But in the end, it just didn't work for me. The vignettes were far too similar in their writing, which did not make me believe I was reading the thoughts of different human beings, as well as reflections of the historical time being written about. The tone and rhythm of every vignette was so obviously similar, I could not fall into the illusion. The author also goes into so much detail about Northampton, which can be really enthralling, if done well, but the author chooses to focus on street names and bridges, instead of the actual landscape, so for someone who has never been there, it was not very interesting. I was extremely hopeful about this book, but in the end I was disappointed.