April showers bring May flowers, or so they say... I just hope that April does bring some nice showery days perfect for curling up with a good book. For this column, I’m sharing a couple of books that are worth a good rainy-day-read, and one to avoid.
“The Dearly Beloved” by Cara Wall was a book club choice. When I heard the synopsis, I was completely prepared not to like it. It sounded too relational to me. I find that books that are heavily into relationships tend to have characters with a lot of self-inflicted drama or purposefully inflicted drama, and the story inevitably gets bogged down. I lack the patience for all that. This story, however, wasn’t like that. It was just a good story of how we all come from different places - geographically and emotionally - and sometimes by chance, or by providence, we end up together. I don’t know if you have ever had the experience of reading a book in which the story doesn’t remotely reflect your own story, but in a scene, in a moment, in that book, you feel seen. That was this book for me. Definitely a rainy-day-read.
Speaking of relational stories; that’s usually what I think of when I hear of the author Jodi Picoult. So, I’ll be honest; I don’t read a lot of her writing. However, the premise of her newest book, “By Any Other Name,” intrigued me. There has long been debate over whether William Shakespeare is truly the author of all, or any, of the works attributed to him. Written in a dual narrative, Picoult introduces Emilia Bassano as the likely author of many of Shakespeare’s works during a time when a woman writing for the public would have been scandalous. This is juxtaposed with Emilia’s fictional descendant Melina’s struggle with institutionalized sexism in the contemporary theatre industry. I tend not to be a fan of these “non-fiction novels” that take a character from history and weave a story around them. So, I found the afterward - the actual information about Emilia Bassano’ life, which makes the case for her as the writer, fascinating, along with factors that Picoult used to craft this fictionalized, yet plausible, version of her life. Another good rainy-day-read. (If that’s not enough though, find the June 2019 edition of The Atlantic to learn more about the Emilia Bassano-as-Shakespeare theory.)
Many years ago, 1991-ish, Stephen King’s “It” was a two-episode television series. I’ve said before that I don’t like scary, and I’ve never read any Stephen King. The first episode was not scary, but it was suspenseful. I can do suspense. The second episode - spoiler alert - was incredibly disappointing. It turned out to be a giant alien spider living in the sewer. Maybe that’s how the book ended; I don’t know. I hope not. I felt the same about Silvia Moreno Garcia’s “Mexican Gothic.” It started slowly, and in my opinion, the writing was stilted, but I thought it would pick up. Instead, it kept getting more and more strange. Never scary. Not an intriguing strange; not even a scary strange, just gratuitously strange. It wasn’t a giant alien spider this time. Instead, it was a malevolent fungus that embodies a house and a family, or I suppose it was the family first and then the house, because of an ancient curse. That was bad enough, but once that part was explained the strangeness continued to the point of tediousness. I’m willing to admit that my own cultural ignorance of the indigenous peoples of Mexico could have limited my understanding of some of the nuances of the story. I finished it, but it was a chore. Do not waste your rainy-day-read on this.
Happy Reading –-rainy day or otherwise.
“The Dearly Beloved” by Cara Wall was a book club choice. When I heard the synopsis, I was completely prepared not to like it. It sounded too relational to me. I find that books that are heavily into relationships tend to have characters with a lot of self-inflicted drama or purposefully inflicted drama, and the story inevitably gets bogged down. I lack the patience for all that. This story, however, wasn’t like that. It was just a good story of how we all come from different places - geographically and emotionally - and sometimes by chance, or by providence, we end up together. I don’t know if you have ever had the experience of reading a book in which the story doesn’t remotely reflect your own story, but in a scene, in a moment, in that book, you feel seen. That was this book for me. Definitely a rainy-day-read.
Speaking of relational stories; that’s usually what I think of when I hear of the author Jodi Picoult. So, I’ll be honest; I don’t read a lot of her writing. However, the premise of her newest book, “By Any Other Name,” intrigued me. There has long been debate over whether William Shakespeare is truly the author of all, or any, of the works attributed to him. Written in a dual narrative, Picoult introduces Emilia Bassano as the likely author of many of Shakespeare’s works during a time when a woman writing for the public would have been scandalous. This is juxtaposed with Emilia’s fictional descendant Melina’s struggle with institutionalized sexism in the contemporary theatre industry. I tend not to be a fan of these “non-fiction novels” that take a character from history and weave a story around them. So, I found the afterward - the actual information about Emilia Bassano’ life, which makes the case for her as the writer, fascinating, along with factors that Picoult used to craft this fictionalized, yet plausible, version of her life. Another good rainy-day-read. (If that’s not enough though, find the June 2019 edition of The Atlantic to learn more about the Emilia Bassano-as-Shakespeare theory.)
Many years ago, 1991-ish, Stephen King’s “It” was a two-episode television series. I’ve said before that I don’t like scary, and I’ve never read any Stephen King. The first episode was not scary, but it was suspenseful. I can do suspense. The second episode - spoiler alert - was incredibly disappointing. It turned out to be a giant alien spider living in the sewer. Maybe that’s how the book ended; I don’t know. I hope not. I felt the same about Silvia Moreno Garcia’s “Mexican Gothic.” It started slowly, and in my opinion, the writing was stilted, but I thought it would pick up. Instead, it kept getting more and more strange. Never scary. Not an intriguing strange; not even a scary strange, just gratuitously strange. It wasn’t a giant alien spider this time. Instead, it was a malevolent fungus that embodies a house and a family, or I suppose it was the family first and then the house, because of an ancient curse. That was bad enough, but once that part was explained the strangeness continued to the point of tediousness. I’m willing to admit that my own cultural ignorance of the indigenous peoples of Mexico could have limited my understanding of some of the nuances of the story. I finished it, but it was a chore. Do not waste your rainy-day-read on this.
Happy Reading –-rainy day or otherwise.
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