With the advent of the internet I have not often chosen what would be better for me, to read books avidly, thus developing my brain and character. But I still manage a few books every year.
The first one I finished up our fist week here was Home by Marilyn Robinson (quote here). Ali put me onto Robinson, and it was her second book I've read in the last year, the first being Gilead. To Home, if there was ever a book that was the greatest drudgery to start relative to the greatest difficulty to put down at the end, weeping and all, this is it. It is the story of a much beloved and misunderstood prodigal son, told with the most exquisite nuance of everyday life in families that you may ever read.
To follow on that, I started reading Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset (quote here) on my Kindle on the flight over. It is a trilogy, an epic trilogy of sorts, about the lifetime of a mediaeval Norwegian girl. Undset won the Nobel prize for literature in 1928, and this book is her crowning achievement. I read the first of the three books five years ago, but had never finished them. They are taken up, again, with daily life of Kristin as she grows from a girl to a woman. But it is also an overarching story of choices, consequences, responsibility, and maturity as Kristin abandons her parents' selection of betrothed for a passionate love affair and links her life to another man. Painful at times, it offers a rare glimpse into the continuity of our humanity over time, even as it was written 90 years ago.
And speaking of painful, about halfway through Kristin, I fumbled the Kindle and bapped the screen on the wooden chair arm, thus cracking the etch-a-sketch and rendering it useless. This was a controversial move, as I had sort of allowed Tom to take over my Kindle back at home. He'd gotten into War and Peace, which he's been reading now for about two years, and loved the slim electronic version. When I got on my Kristin kick, there was a certain amount of tension about who got to read the Kindle. And then I broke it, at the worst possible time, in a house full of Dutch books. There is not a happy ending to this story yet. I was able to access Kristin through the Amazon Cloud, and thus finished reading it, feverishly, on my computer.
Now a fellow doctor has lent us British books from her house. I have numbers two to four of Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency novels. I read the first a few years ago, but my parents have been reading No. 1 lately and loving it, so back we go. Also, I grabbed Monica Ali's Brick Lane and Zadie Smith's On Beauty, both shortlisted for the Booker prize. I read Smith's debut White Teeth nine years ago and still think fondly of the convoluted plot and her way with words.
In related news, Tom is reading Philip Ball's Critical Mass and The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. There actually are a few English books in the house and those are two of them. I've also been pleasantly surprised how avidly he has taken to British gossip magazines, given to us by another of his fellow doctors. We have even more in common than I'd thought.
Lastly, I've just plowed through this article from the New York Times', Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will. I don't have a strong sense of our president's character, as I rarely know where to turn except The Atlantic, which rather cheekily put 'of no party or clique' inside their last cover. But with this article, I think one inevitably comes away understanding more of who this man is.
The first one I finished up our fist week here was Home by Marilyn Robinson (quote here). Ali put me onto Robinson, and it was her second book I've read in the last year, the first being Gilead. To Home, if there was ever a book that was the greatest drudgery to start relative to the greatest difficulty to put down at the end, weeping and all, this is it. It is the story of a much beloved and misunderstood prodigal son, told with the most exquisite nuance of everyday life in families that you may ever read.
To follow on that, I started reading Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset (quote here) on my Kindle on the flight over. It is a trilogy, an epic trilogy of sorts, about the lifetime of a mediaeval Norwegian girl. Undset won the Nobel prize for literature in 1928, and this book is her crowning achievement. I read the first of the three books five years ago, but had never finished them. They are taken up, again, with daily life of Kristin as she grows from a girl to a woman. But it is also an overarching story of choices, consequences, responsibility, and maturity as Kristin abandons her parents' selection of betrothed for a passionate love affair and links her life to another man. Painful at times, it offers a rare glimpse into the continuity of our humanity over time, even as it was written 90 years ago.
And speaking of painful, about halfway through Kristin, I fumbled the Kindle and bapped the screen on the wooden chair arm, thus cracking the etch-a-sketch and rendering it useless. This was a controversial move, as I had sort of allowed Tom to take over my Kindle back at home. He'd gotten into War and Peace, which he's been reading now for about two years, and loved the slim electronic version. When I got on my Kristin kick, there was a certain amount of tension about who got to read the Kindle. And then I broke it, at the worst possible time, in a house full of Dutch books. There is not a happy ending to this story yet. I was able to access Kristin through the Amazon Cloud, and thus finished reading it, feverishly, on my computer.
Now a fellow doctor has lent us British books from her house. I have numbers two to four of Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency novels. I read the first a few years ago, but my parents have been reading No. 1 lately and loving it, so back we go. Also, I grabbed Monica Ali's Brick Lane and Zadie Smith's On Beauty, both shortlisted for the Booker prize. I read Smith's debut White Teeth nine years ago and still think fondly of the convoluted plot and her way with words.
In related news, Tom is reading Philip Ball's Critical Mass and The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. There actually are a few English books in the house and those are two of them. I've also been pleasantly surprised how avidly he has taken to British gossip magazines, given to us by another of his fellow doctors. We have even more in common than I'd thought.
Lastly, I've just plowed through this article from the New York Times', Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will. I don't have a strong sense of our president's character, as I rarely know where to turn except The Atlantic, which rather cheekily put 'of no party or clique' inside their last cover. But with this article, I think one inevitably comes away understanding more of who this man is.
2 comments:
I look forward to reading that article! We get our "news" from The Economist, but I would be happy to get into British gossip myself, from time to time.
I adored Home. I cried at the end of both Gilead and Home, partly because they made me slow down enough to feel the nuance. Lovely! Sorry about the etch-a-sketch.
All so interesting, Hannah. And intrigued to hear about Kristen Lavransdatter, and The Unbearable Lightness of Being, as well the Detective Agency stories. Your description of Undset's work is exactly right.
Post a Comment