start a 43t group to exchange "great books" info

I’ve been meaning to post this for ages – it’s a list of my favourite books from last year’s reading. None of them are particularly original finds, but here you go anyway:

Memoirs Of A Geisha – Arthur Golden
Tuesdays With Morrie – Mitch Albom
Persuasion – Jane Austen
I Capture The Castle – Dodie Smith
Down Under – Bill Bryson
Notes From A Big Country – Bill Bryson
Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernières
Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
Charlotte’s Web – E.B. White
Anne Of Green Gables – L.M. Montgomery
A Year In Provence – Peter Mayle
The Diary Of A Young Girl – Anne Frank

All 5 out of 5 stars!

See my entry about this wonderful book connected to another goal.

Definitely worth reading!

...but I’m putting it in the “done” pile to free up space in the “to do” pile.

by Hampton Sides. A biography of Kit Carson, who was a major player the westward expansion of the United States. Although the narrative reads more like a novel, it is well researched and historically accurate. Sides pulls no punches and depicts Carson the man, warts and all, instead of presenting him as a mythological frontiersman. The book also incorporates some good photos of the era.

Hawkmeister sez: check it out!

“You can’t get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.”

Amen. Well, if the book is good . . .

I heard Fassil Yirgu of Nyala Publishing interviewed on NPR yesterday. I was so taken with his mission, to publish books (fiction, nonfiction, poetry) by & about immigrants in the U.S. & their home cultures, that I scribbled down the name & went online later to look Nyala up.

Fasil Yitbarek’s The Texture of Dreams is definitely going on my wishlist. I love the excerpts I’ve read (check out the Chicago Tribune link in the middle of the web page).

I wanted to post the link as an encouragement for immigrant writers, as well as a source of interesting books for the rest of us. If you’re looking for a publisher & your work seems to fit, there’s contact info on the website! :-)

I wanted to recommend three classic novels that I loved reading – I realise that describing them as Gothic may be a bit of a generalisation, and perhaps you’ve all read them already, but just in case:

• Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier
• Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë
• Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë

I read Rebecca and Jane Eyre in two days each; I literally couldn’t put them down. Wuthering Heights took a bit longer to get into, but I ended up enjoying it a lot.

to recommend: I recently read The Thin Place by Kathryn Davis. This is a mystical, haunting novel about healing & resurrection (literal/physical & other kinds). It’s hard to describe—a number of different characters’ stories & points of view interweave throughout. Some chapters are narrated entirely from the point of view of a dog! The setting is a town beside a lake in the northern U.S. The story’s climax takes place during an Episcopal church service & involves a dog, a sparrow, a mentally ill woman, a 6th-grade girl, & assorted other beings/people with assorted intentions (good & evil).

It’s impossible to do justice to this book. I know I will reread it down the road-it puzzled me, haunted me, held me. And got me started writing a new poem! :)

P.S. The cover art has nothing to do with the actual story, but is similarly suggestive & mysterious.

Right now my reading has me in Africa! In today’s mail I received a copy of The Syringa Tree, a novel by the South African Pamela Gien. My brother heard Gien interviewed on NPR, thought of me & bought me a copy-isn’t that sweet? The story has been a very successful play-won an Obie in 2001—& now the playwright has adapted it into a novel that has been well reviewed.

I won’t start it, though, till I finish the African novel I’m currently rereading: Little Boys Come from the Stars by Emmanuel Dongala. Wonderful story set in central Africa, told from a young boy’s point of view.

I’m crazy-busy & my new job starts next week, so no outside-of-work reading for me till Monday. But then, during the reading portion of my train-commute time each day, I’m going to feel like I’m traveling in Africa! Yay!

but about an author—& he has published books, so if you’re interested, you can get them from the library or buy them.

A friend recommended the poet Martin Espada to me, & just last night I remembered his name. When I read his poem “Alabanza,” which is posted online, I realized that I’ve heard him read it, probably on NPR. I really like his work! Here’s a snippet from Heart of Hunger:

Obscured in the towering white clouds of cities in winter,
thousands are bowing to assembly lines,
frenzied in kitchens and sweatshops,
mopping the vomit of others’ children,
leaning into the iron’s steam
and the steel mill glowing.

Yet there is a pilgrimage,
a history straining its arms and legs,
an inexorable striving,
shouting in Spanish
at the police of city jails
and border checkpoints,
mexicano, dominicano,
guatemalteco, puertorriqueño,
fishermen wading into the North American gloom
to pull a fierce gasping life
from the polluted current.

You can read more at his website— see the linked titles on the left side of the page. On the homepage you’ll also see a link for info about his various books.

If by some great good fortune I do win a fellowship for next year, I hope I can use it for a workshop or apprenticeship with Espada!