Category Archives: books

Falling

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According to the forecast, daytime temperatures will reach the low eighties tomorrow and Wednesday. That’s all right; I’ll rise early to walk, and throughout the day, I’ll remind myself that the cooler weather will return on Thursday.

In my last post, I somehow neglected to mention Monk, which opened my recent “small screen as succor” season. My older daughter suggested that I try a few episodes of the television series, one that my son adored. I came for sentimental reasons and remained for Tony Shalhoub’s performance.

Of course, I have been reading, too. Since my last annotated list I finished Henry IV, Part II, Henry V, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Much Ado about Nothing, and Pericles, Prince of Tyre for my “Shakespeare in a Year” project (Pericles out of order in anticipation of seeing this); and for my Willa Cather project, Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) and Shadows on the Rock (1931). For a seminar led by translator Stephanie McCarter, I tackled her 2022 translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and for a seminar led by W.H. Auden scholar Edward Mendelson, The Shield of Achilles. I read John Leland’s Happiness Is a Choice You Make: Lessons from a Year Among the Oldest Old for a talk he was giving at the University of Chicago but missed the event. Similarly, I read SciFri Book Club’s September selection, Forest Walking: Discovering the Trees and Woodlands of North America (Jane Billinghurst and Peter Wohlleben; 2022) but did not participate in the online discussion.

Revisiting some books I shared with my children has been a source of comfort and delight: Freddy Goes to Florida (Walter Brooks; 1927), Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (J.K. Rowling; 1997 and 1998).

Other fiction read during this period included Bury This (Andrea Portes; 2014), The Gate to Women’s Country (Sheri S. Tepper; 1988), The Devil and Webster (Jean Hanff Korelitz; 2017), Sipsworth (Simon Van Booy; 2024), The Sea (John Banville; 2005), and A Haunting on the Hill (Elizabeth Hand; 2023). Other non-fiction works included Notes on a Silencing: A Memoir (Lacey Crawford; 2020), The Limits of My Language: Meditations on Depression (Eva Meijer; 2019/2021), and A Wolf Called Romeo (Nick Jans; 2014).

With a small discussion group, I’m rereading George Eliot’s Middlemarch and with 100 Days of Dante, The Divine Comedy. Beside my favorite chair is George Orwell’s 1984, which I picked up to celebrate the seventy-fifth anniversary of its publication and to mark Banned Books Week. (Yes, I’m a wee bit behind but catching up.)

A couple more

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Slowly, surely, I’m regaining my reliable daily rhythm of walking, reading, practicing, studying. While things were a bit rough, though, the small screen distracted me well: the latest season of Only Murders in the Building, Law & Order, and Abbott Elementary, the uneven but charming English Teacher, the sordid Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, and the first season of the dated but dear Murder, She Wrote. Kenneth Branagh never fails to delight me, so after rewatching his Henry V and Much Ado Nothing, I enjoyed Death on the Nile.

I tried to watch the film based on Banville’s The Sea, but despite a luminous Charlotte Rampal, it proved tedious. Perhaps it was too soon after reading the book? Speaking of which, it’s just about time for the discussion.

New books and whatnot

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If a body were to be likened to a car, then one could say that an aging body, like an older car, will eventually require more than an oil change, a multi-point inspection, a tire rotation, and an alignment to continue running (set aside smoothly). I’m an older car. More than one mechanic and more than one service appointment were required. And that’s really all I need say about that.

It’s back to walking several miles a day, practicing my music, reading, and studying. Today’s books are Pericles (in anticipation of this) and John Banville’s The Sea.

More books

By Posted in books, health 1 Comment

Two gifts and two purchases.

It was already eighty when I was ready to head out this morning, and heat index values of between 110 and 115 are expected in my area, so, yes, I bailed on the workout and used the time for paperwork and tasks decidedly more fun than walking in the unforgiving sun (e.g., shelving new books).

Speaking of the sun, in the sixties and seventies, I was a Coppertone kid raised on the Jersey Shore. Consider this a random but important public service announcement from someone who knows: Get your skin checked annually. If the dermatologist recommends that spots be biopsied and/or treated, have them biopsied and/or treated. Early identification of potential problems leads to better outcomes. Finally, wear sunscreen and a hat. No, really. Do it.

Fall-ish

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It has been cooler this month than I’ve come to expect from August, and apart from a spike tomorrow, the forecast shows daytime highs in the upper seventies — bliss. This morning, we walked in a steady shower; while this is not a problem for us, it was certainly kind of one of our neighbors to leap from his porch to offer us an umbrella. I have been thinking of his thoughtfulness all day.

It occurs to me that I haven’t recapped my reading in more than a month. Since my last annotated list, I’ve read King John, The Merchant of Venice, Richard II, Henry IV, Part I, and the related essays in Garber’s Shakespeare After All for my third iteration of Shakespeare in a Year. For my Willa Cather project, I read The Professor’s House (1925; July’s selection) and My Mortal Enemy (1926; August’s) — both remarkable, much better than reviews would have anyone believe. I also appreciated Benjamin Taylor’s brief biography, Chasing Bright Medusas: A Life of Willa Cather (2024).

After reading My Hijacking: A Personal History of Forgetting and Remembering (Martha Hodes; 2023), I reread The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry; 1943), which Hodes references throughout her memoir about trauma and memory. 

If a lack of age / experience explains why I had previously avoided Henry James, then color me grateful to have “grown up”: I read Washington Square (1880) with a discussion group late last month and now look forward to more James. The group host mentioned that James’ work is discussed in Reading Lolita in Tehran (Azar Nafisi; 2003), so I plucked that memoir from the shelves (where it had patiently waited for twenty years) and finished in a few sittings.

In anticipation of this, I read Inherit the Wind (Jerome Lawrence and Robert E.Lee; 1955) and for a discussion with a reading friend, The Story of the Lost Child (Elena Ferrante; 2014).

Want (Lynn Steger Strong; 2020), Long Bright River (Liz Moore; 2020), and Orbital (Samantha Harvey; 2023) are more recently published works I finished since my last recap. If I were to choose only one to recommend, it would be Harvey’s exquisite prose-poem of a novel.

The #faulknerinaugust group chose As I Lay Dying (1930) this year, and while I did not participate in the online discussion, I did appreciate the “reminder” to read more Faulkner. Apart from short fiction, this novel, and last year’s selection (Absalom! Absalom! 1936) represent my experience with this author, who may well be another that required whatever my older self brings to the reading table. As I wrote to another reading friend, Dying was painfully beautiful and bleak.

Right now, I’m reading The Invention of Nature: Alexander Von Humboldt’s New World (Andrea Wulf; 2015) with the SciFri Book Club and this year’s Briefly Very Beautiful (Roz Dineen) because I’m a sucker for well-reviewed dystopian fiction.

As I finish typing this, the outdoor thermometer reads sixty-nine. It is gently raining, and it’s so overcast that we’ve turned on lights throughout the house. Fall-ish. For me, the “new year” generally follows an academic calendar, beginning unofficially when the slant and color of the light change in early August, and officially when fall lessons / activities / schedules / etc. resume. This year, that was this past Tuesday, when I returned to my weekly music lessons. Band rehearsals resume next week; our Halloween and late fall concerts are already on the calendar. Heck, the HVAC tech will perform the annual clean-and-check on the furnace next week. Happy new year.