Right now I am reading High Risk, written by a maternal-fetal medicine specialist. Do you want to read about totally different varieties of looming catastrophe? This is just the book for you! I am finding it engaging and well-written enough to persist when one might think some non-catastrophic reading material would be more appealing.
Earlier this month I finished Oona Out of Order and This Won't End Well. Oona has a really interesting premise, executed competently. What if you didn't live the years of your life in sequence? What would that be like? This Won't End Well is fluffy but pleasantly so. I also finished Forgiving God, which I really liked. Hilary Yancey's first child was diagnosed prenatally with significant congenital anomalies, and she writes beautifully about the things she has learned about disability.
I had this grand idea that I was going to finish the Palliser Chronicles in time for my fiftieth birthday in July, one per month for six months. The first one went really well. I was super-disciplined about reading my three chapters every day, and I remembered why I had enjoyed the Barsetshire Chronicles so much. But then I finished the first one and thought, "Huh, do I want to spend the next six months reading nothing but Trollope? Perhaps not." I am very fond of Trollope. He is like the insightful uncle who keeps nudging you at the family get-together to murmur insightful and witty comments about your relatives in your ear. I have been trying to read Phineas Finn (the second Palliser book) this month, but there are an awful lot of opportunities for my brain to say "oooh! shiny!" just now. Phineas Finn will doubtless be skillfully drawn and gently funny once I am fifty chapters in. Fifty chapters feels like a lot of chapters right now.
Stella and I are inching our way through Two Towers. We've said farewell to the crew on the west side of Anduin, and we just encountered Gollum. I suppose it's a good time to be reading a book about an ultimately successful war against a seemingly implacable enemy.
If you like the idea of a deep dive into a different world, I can also recommend Against Walls. Rachel-who-needs-a-blog suggested it to me -- hm, maybe a couple of years ago now. It sat on my Kindle for a long time, but I finished it up earlier this year. These days I don't read a lot of fiction that requires me to pay close attention, and so it took me a couple of tries to get through this one. Well worth the effort.
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Ooh thank you! May I, in turn, recommend that you check out Circe by Madeline Miller (and, if you like Circe, also Song of Achilles by the same author). Another I'll recommend is Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner. I am not 100% sure you'll like it, but I found it very interesting and readable and I enjoy ambiguous endings.
Posted by: Ariella | March 18, 2020 at 08:16 AM
Boy, if it were me the only thing I could write is "What I *haven't* been reading. I am finding it very, very difficult to read books right now. I'm picking them up, reading a few pages, putting them down again.
Yesterday I picked up The Fellowship of the Ring where I left off, just after they leave Goldberry waving goodbye, and read until they got into the valley with no trees, only grass and springy turf. Then I put it down.
I also picked up A Literary Murder by Batya Gur in English translation, which I had packed for my ski vacation, and read enough for a little bit of character introductions but not long enough to get to anybody actually getting murdered yet, although there were some people being literary. Perhaps if I can struggle on to the murder I will become absorbed enough to stick with it.
I did some of a crossword puzzle from my book of NYT Sunday puzzles; it was already started, but I didn't finish it.
Posted by: bearing | March 18, 2020 at 10:34 AM
I read Can You Forgive Her? last year and loved it. Like you I decided to read my way through the Palliser novels. The second one I picked was Phineas Finn and I've put it down because it's just not grabbing me.
I'm reading Eifelheim, which is a great science fiction novel that follows a priest in a medieval German village and a couple of researchers in the new future. Investigations of aliens, the ethics of alien baptism, demographics, the science of historical modeling, weird physics, medieval spirituality... all sorts of stuff to chew on.
And The Silk Roads, a retelling of world history that centers the Middle East rather than Europe. Quite fascinating.
Posted by: Melanie B | March 18, 2020 at 11:47 AM