read all the books I own

I really thoroughly enjoyed reading The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver and I’m so glad I picked it up when I did. I could even see myself rereading this one day.

...I decided to pick up one of my existing non-fiction titles and start working my way through it. It’s actually a decent diversion from the incessant noveling of NaNoWriMo. I only read it for about 30 minutes each night before going to bed.

Finally finished the borrowed book and now I started 2 books at the same time: Rookvrij (smokefree) by Kristina Ivings and Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder.

I can’t read all the books I own because right now I have too many. I do believe that you can never have too many books, but only if every book you own is one that you really want to get round to reading one day. Some of mine – I know I’m never going to read them and they just sit there and reproach me.
So I’m going to be ruthless and take some to Oxfam. Then this goal will be more realistic and might not take me 11 years after all…

Schama uses the novelist’s tools to tell two stories which demonstrate the difficulty of arriving at a definitive version of any historical event. The first is the death of General James Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham in 1759, and the subsequent mythology built up around him by, among others, Benjamin West, who painted the very famous The Death of General Wolfe (1770) and the American historian Francis Parkman, who wrote about Wolfe. Schama shows us many different versions of Wolfe: was he hero or invalid? Whose interpretation is correct? Schama includes imagined scenes in his story, which are based on his careful research.

The second story is of the murder in Boston of Francis Parkman’s brother George by a Harvard professor named John Webster. Again, the focus is on the many different versions of the murder itself presented at Webster’s murder trial and the variety of impressions of Webster and Parkman among the citizens of Boston.

Schama is a very good writer, and this is an interesting examination of the historical process, of the fictionalizing tendency in all story-telling, whether fact-based or not. Nevertheless, I’m not sure, after reading it, why he wrote it. Two interesting stories, connected by the Parkman family, but nothing terribly urgent or profound in the material communicated. Still, worth reading.

I’ve begun The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, and I’m entranced.

ernist hemingway bio
the diving-bell and the butterfly
presence
green is the new black
the reluctant fundamentalist
1000 places to see before you die
i lick my cheese
the mule
lady chatterley’s lover
jane eyre
my antonia
a spot of bother
shantaram
herland
the pearl
woman on the edge of time
accross the river and into the trees
the rain before it falls
the autobiography of alice b toklas
under the net
heart of darkness
the handmaids tale
freedom in exile
aesop’s fables
the phantom of the opera
north-west odyssey
writers at the movies
katharine hepburn bio
blow fly
death and the sun
orlando
villette
Griffin and sabine

i’m going to right hem all on scraps of paper and pick out a new one each time.

Haven’t read any existing books lately, but I’ve bought and read several. At least I’m not buying and then failing to finish. :)

Soon I’ll finish Hannibal Rising. This goal is going to take forever because I keep buying book at the library sale:)

Rise and Shine by Anna Quindlen. Only 6 more to go!