Recommended

Over the weekend I read Anne Tyler's newest book, French Braid [affiliate link]. When I was in my 20s I loved Anne Tyler's writing, and then I came across a couple of books I didn't enjoy and stopped reading her for a long time. I can't remember why I decided to buy Vinegar Girl in 2016, but I loved it. In 2020 I gobbled up Redhead by the Side of the Road. French Braid reminds me more of the books I loved in the 90s, books like Accidental Tourist and Breathing Lessons. It's the story of a family, with all its complications and quirks and sadnesses. It made me tear up more than once, which is very unusual for me with fiction. I was sad when it was over, which is even more so. (I love finishing books and writing them down on my List of Books Read.) It made me laugh, too -- it's not a downer of a book. But in my memory the poignancy stands out more than the funny bits.

Last week I read Lessons in Chemistry, about a woman who wants to be a scientist and not the star of a cooking show. It is laugh-out-loud funny, salted liberally with zingy observations about life for women in the 1960s, but it is also painful to keep thinking about why that #2 pencil never leaves Elizabeth's bun. There are some fantastical elements -- mostly in the form of a genius dog, but also in the premise of the book. Would 1960s viewers really be all that excited about watching a TV show hosted by a woman who was obviously smarter than they were? I am not convinced about that, but I enjoyed the book anyway.

I am ten chapters from the end of the Palliser Chronicles, you guys. With all the other books in the series, I've read the first half or maybe the first two-thirds at the sedate pace of one chapter a night. By the middle of the other books, though, I've found myself zipping along happily, eager to see what happens to the characters. With The Duke's Children I have still not reached the zipping stage. Even so, I'm excited to be approaching the end of the series. It feels like an accomplishment. It's, like, 4000 pages of Trollope, you guys. I'm going to write it on my List of Books Read with an exclamation point! Or perhaps even two!!