It's Wednesday, so that means it's time to join Kat and the Unravelers! I've got a little knitting update and a pretty good-sized reading update today.
First, the knitting. Houston, we have a leg!
By some stroke of luck, I finished the first leg in exactly the right spot in the stripe pattern so that I didn't have to wind off any yarn when I picked up stitches for the second. I made note of how many rounds I needed to knit after the last decrease and for the ribbing, so the second leg should go even faster.
It's been an interesting week of reading, with some enjoyable audiobooks, a book club book, a long-awaited hold, and some titles on the Women's Prize for Fiction shortlist.
First,
Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont, an older book (older than I am, even!), which I read for a book club. Mrs. Palfrey is an older widow who moves into the Claremont, a hotel but also a place where other older people live full time. She encounters some interesting personalities in the other residents, all but one of them women, and tries to figure out what to do with her time. One day she falls when out on her own and makes the acquaintance of a young man, a struggling writer named Ludo, who soon becomes a friend. This is a quiet novel, at times funny and at others sad, whose main focus is primarily the reckoning we all do with our own mortality at one point or another. I enjoyed it, but it didn't leave a very strong impression on me. I gave it 3 stars.
Next were two audiobooks, both novels by J. Ryan Stradal. I know many of you have already read and enjoyed his books, and I've been meaning to read them for a while. I was lucky to find copies available without a wait and listened to them back to back.
Kitchens of the Great Midwest reads a bit like a series of interconnected short stories. There are characters who tie them all together, and Eva is at the center of them, starting when she is a baby and following her as she grows up into adulthood. Food is also at the center, as this is a book about food and cooking and the flavors and meals that are at the heart of our memories and formative moments. The audio was read by two actors (
Michael Stuhlbarg and
Amy Ryan), something I love because they really know how to perform a book instead of just reading the words.
The Lager Queen of Minnesota has the same comfortable Midwestern feel to it but leans more heavily on brewing than cooking. Women are the main characters here, two sisters who are long estranged and the granddaughter of one of them. There's a lot about brewing beer, which isn't exactly of interest to me because I don't drink it, but it's clear there was a lot of research done to write about it based upon the level of detail. What I enjoyed most was the stories of women persevering in spite of the odds against them, and
the reader (also an actor!) did a marvelous job of creating distinct voices for each character, down to the accents.
I really enjoyed my time with both books and gave them both 4 stars.
The Wilderness was one of those books I was seeing everywhere for a while; it was nominated for the National Book Award last year and had a long hold list at my library, so I was waiting for it for quite a while. Based upon the first chapter, I thought I was going to love it ... and then I didn't. This is a book about a group of female friends over a period of time, but the story isn't told linearly, and that's what gave me so much trouble. I thought the writing was outstanding, but because the story jumped forward and backward in time in addition to jumping between characters, I had a really hard time keeping them and their stories straight. (I also found a couple of copyediting mistakes that should have been caught before publication, but I accept that that's not something most readers would even notice.) If I'd edited this book, I would have suggested a chronological timeline; I'm sure the author didn't do it this way on purpose, but why wasn't clear to me, and ultimately that's what made the book not work very well for me. I gave it 3.5 stars, rounded up.
The last two titles I read this week were the two on the Women's Prize shortlist I had not yet read:
The Mercy Step is set in the UK, starting in the early 1960s. Mercy is born to an immigrant Jamaican family with two older sisters already and two children left behind; there will be another sister and a brother who will later follow her. Though the family has a home, they are clearly struggling to improve their lives between the number of children in the household and the father's abusive behavior. Mercy is unlike any of her siblings, as she seems unnaturally intelligent and mature from the get go, though it's clear there are many things about the world she doesn't understand. Most of all, she wants someone to care for her and take care of her; most of the time she feels it's her job to take care of her mother. There are some hard things in this book (domestic abuse, sexual abuse, racism, etc.), but Mercy provides an interesting perspective. The audio is read by the author, and I appreciated hearing the Jamaican accent when the parents spoke. I gave it 3 stars.
I started
Kingfisher just before bed and didn't think I'd care for it based on the little I read before I put it down for the night, so I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it as I read more. The narrator of the book (whose name we never learn) is in a long-term relationship with a man when he meets and becomes obsessed with an older poet who is teaching at the university where he works. Meanwhile, his mother, who is homophobic and has always treated him badly, is dying. His life becomes further and further enmeshed with the poet's when she has a recurrence of the cancer she beat years ago, and his emotions get more and more complicated as he reflects on the loss of both his parents. It's a hard book to describe, but what I liked about it was how it depicted the love of friends, of found family, and how they can be there for you at your very worst. This is a debut novel, and I don't think it should win the prize, but I was impressed by it. I gave it 3.5 stars, rounded up.
What are you making and reading this week?
