Tags
Ali Smith, Big Magic, books, Claire Keegan, Elizabeth Gilbert, Foster, Henry David Thoreau, Jeanette Winterson, monthly wrapup, reading, The Passion, Walden, Winter
I started this month with a readathon (another installment of the Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon), marred slightly by my inevitable hormone-induced bad brain and my increasing annoyance with Thoreau’s Walden. Fortunately (and predictably), things looked up from about the second week onwards. Turns out, I can actually read pretty fast with the right book – and if I actually manage to allow myself to set aside time for reading, something I’m not always very good at. (I have this weird thing where I’m sometimes convinced I’m only ‘allowed’ to read once I’ve gotten through the rest of my to do list, which of course never happens and leads to me only reading a couple of pages before bed.) I was also finally able to take advantage of the better weather – lots of rain and low-ish temperatures all through July and at the beginning of August – and spent some time reading on the terrace, in cafes, and on the train to day trip destinations.
Here’s what I read:
Elizabeth Gilbert – Big Magic (20 BoS #8) ★★★☆☆.5
Another deviation from my original 20 Books of Summer TBR, but a very fortuitous one. I bought this book during a day trip to the art museum with my partner in late July and flew through it in a mere three days of total reading time. Big Magic is by no means a perfect book and you can definitely accuse Gilbert of using a lot of words to say not all that much, but I did like her generous attitude towards creativity and could really use some of her advice. In short, this book inspired me (yet again) to think about what I want to do with my life, something I need right now.
Ali Smith – Winter (20 BoS #9) ★★★★☆.5
Winter was the third book I picked up when my brain wouldn’t let me focus on – or enjoy – anything, and fortunately it was the one that turned out to be just right. I definitely liked it better than Autumn, although – as usual with Ali Smith – part of the fascination of these books is deciphering all the references and allusions, something I can’t say I always managed to do but will definitely get better at during my inevitable reread. (I also really enjoy the way Smith writes about art.)
Claire Keegan – Foster (20 BoS #10) ★★★★☆
Originally published as a short story in the New Yorker in 2010, Foster is a short but atmospheric novella set in Ireland during a summer sometime in the 1980s. A girl from a poor but large farming family is given as a foster child to a childless couple of distant relatives, with whom she spends a few summer weeks. What evolves from there is a beautifully written, concise but dreamlike story of love, loss, and belonging. It’s best read in a single summer afternoon.
Jeanette Winterson – The Passion (20 BoS #11) ★★★☆☆.5
This is the second of Jeanette Winterson’s books I’ve read, and again I’m not sure whether I really like it. On the one hand, I appreciate Winterson’s style and the almost fairy tale-like elements of magical realism in this story. On the other hand, I did not really care about the characters or their stories, the historical setting was boring because it has been overdone, and most of the deeper insights into truth and storytelling were concentrated in the last third of the book (and also not very deep, if I’m honest). Maybe I’ll like it better on a reread, who knows.
Henry David Thoreau – Walden (20 BoS #6) ★★☆☆☆
Every once in a while, when I have trouble deciding which book to read next, I let my partner pick something from my TBR shelf. Thoreau is just such a pick, albeit from July because yes, it has taken me a whooping two months to finish a 300 page book. The reason for that is primarily Thoreau himself, whose narrative alter ego annoyed me so much that I took several long-ish breaks between chapters and really had to push myself to finish it. I do agree with Thoreau’s basic premise and I did enjoy the nature writing parts of the book, but I just can not stand his didactic tone and holier-than-thou attitude.
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I also read two historical queer romance ebooks on top of everything listed here which I won’t be reviewing because they really weren’t all that good (I especially wish that the historical settings were more solid instead of ‘imagined 19th century that somehow gets all the decades all wrong’). They’re the kind of books that I tend to forget immediately, but hey. At least I know that I’m not actually as behind with my reading goal as Goodreads claims.
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August also marked the last month of the 20 Books of Summer Readathon, which I’ll write about more soon but which, and I guess that’s not a spoiler, was fairly successful for me this year. I didn’t manage the full 20 books – I never really expected to, if I’m honest – but I did get round to reviewing all of the eleven books I finished, which is a real accomplishment for me. (There are still a couple of reviews outstanding, which I will publish later this week; I didn’t want to flood the blog with five reviews in a row.)