Thought others might enjoy this new online book club started by the author, Wiley Cash. I have enjoyed all of his books. The goal of the club is “to introduce readers to voices and portrayals of the American experience they may not have otherwise encountered in their day-to-day lives, their education, or their book club meetings.” The September book is The Birds of Opulence by Chrystal Wilkinson.
@TheGreyKing
Second “Sing unburied sing”! It is a difficult read as it is so so sad, yet she wrote it so lyrically. Jesmyn Ward is someone to watch for, her “Savage bones” (her debut?) was very well written too, (and it was last year’s recommendations for Stanford freshman.) I also read her “where the line bleeds”, I like the previous two books a lot more.
I second the recommendation for Educated. In addition to other themes, it really spoke to the dynamics of abuse and domestic violence and how victims can lose their perspective/identity/voice.
@rutgersmamma : after I read “Before We Were Yours,” I read “The Home for Unwanted Girls.” Another story of orphans (mis)managed by a government (Quebec, in this case). It also reminded me of “Philomena.”
I adore Ann Tyler. I have read and loved every one of her original novels, and reread many. But I couldn’t finish Vinegar Girl. Main reasons–first, it seemed to perpetuate the sexism of ToftheS–in that this woman doesn’t know what she wants but this guy that her dad is setting her up with will show her. Yecch.
Less so but still annoying–Tyler’s characters worked best in the precomputer, pre cell phone times. Writing them in the present day was jarring. When the teenage sister jumps up as the house phone rings and yells “I’ll get it!” and races to answer, even though this is clearly set in cell phone times, it made no sense at all. That’s one example, but that kind of thing happened over and over. It’s as if the characters of Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant were transported to 2018 with no warning or explanation.
So, that’s my cranky explanation for not liking this book–since people wondered.
I hate * The Taming of the Shrew* , so I have not tried reading * Vinegar Girl*. I’ve been reading her since I took a class with a bunch of older women who were taking a Radcliffe Seminar on writing and illustrating children’s books. We have a house phone, but no one answers it.
I’ve recently started listening to We Need To Talk About Kevin. I find myself becoming really annoyed with the author’s writing style.
This review on Amazon is spot on:
Does it ever get better? Or do I just have to resign myself to this in order to appreciate the positives?
I read another book by Lionel Shriver and was surprised by how little I liked it. I thought the writing was poor.
Read “the post-birthday world” by Shriver and thought it was a great premise but not well executed. The book follows a ‘parallel-universe’ structure. The idea is that alternating chapters continue the story based upon a different starting point. So the even chapters are what happens if the protagonist did something and the odd ones are what is she did an alternate thing.
“the Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley” -
“An American Marriage,” by Tayari Jones. Five out of five stars.
An American Marriage was wonderful! I didn’t know what to expect, but it was so good I could hardly put it down.
I went to put An American Marriage in queue at my Audible account, and it’s already there! 
^^^I am struggling to stick with “An American Marriage”. I have it on Audible but have had to stop and start for other books. I’ll push through!
I thought the narration of An American Marriage was excellent - I really liked the book.
I found An American Marriage on the “it’s your lucky day” new book shelf right after one of my favorite authors recommended it. It was wonderful.
I haven’t got my hands on it yet, but for those who enjoyed “Dear Committee Members” by Julie Schumacher (near and dear to the hearts of some CC members because of it’s entertaining college faculty viewpoint), she has a new book out called “The Shakespeare Requirement”. I just jumped on our library waitlist, looking forward to it!
I am currently working my way through Don Quixote. The dialog rambles a bit and Cervantes seemed to forget whether Sancho Panza’s donkey was still with them – come on, man, the donkey was stolen five pages ago! How could you forget that small detail?! – but I find this quite funny overall. Can’t believe it took me 35+ years of my reading lifetime to dig in to this classic.
I’m not quite finished with Indianapolis by Lynn Vincent and Sara Vladic. The subtitle says it all, “The true story of the worst sea disaster in U.S. Naval history and the fifty-year fight to exonerate an innocent man.” The ship carried the uranium for Little Boy and was sunk by a Japanese torpedo sub after the uranium was delivered and about a week before the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Very tough to read about the four days the seamen were floating in the Philippine Sea before they were accidentally discovered by a plane on a different mission. Still having a hard time coming to grips with how FDR’s former flagship carrier, the star of the fleet that had just completed the most highly classified mission of the war and was carrying 1,1195 men, could fail to show up at its intended port and no one thought to launch a search. I haven’t finished the book yet, but the lengths to which members of the Navy went to cover their butts is mind boggling.
Anyway, if you like history books, this is a great read. I can’t put it down.
Dipping in and out of James Baldwin’s writings over the years, I am rereading The Fire Next Time. His long essay on African American life continues to astonish, challenge, and refresh–as if he’d written it today. (What has changed? Almost nothing, as Spike Lee makes clear in BlacKKKlansman.)
Baldwin’s elegant style, sensitive observation of social injury, and his immense patience, goodwill, and willingness to love, are a unique and powerful occasion in American literature: our very best social justice essayist.
As a writer, I am in awe of his meticulousness and dignity as he works through experiences that would have made (and have made) less well-equipped folks crazy, violent, or suicidal.
For sheer human being-ness, James Baldwin’s prose is one of the sanest places to be on earth.
I also read White Houses, a recent fictional account of Lorena Hickcok and Eleanor Roosevelt’s relationship, written by Amy Bloom. (Did not quite finish it.)
Personally, I found my visit to the Roosevelt compound in Hyde Park, NY far more informative and intimate. ER’s sleeping porch, her chairs (the result of her championing local craftspeople,) her very modest dining room (where she and FDR entertained international figures and royalty,) and her working library, all better reveal her essence. So does the film shown there, which depicts ER’s courage in defying a gauntlet of the KKK.
White Houses peers closely into a bond that could have been understood only by the two women. Though there was, I gather, substantial writing between them, Bloom often seems to get the dialogue wrong. Too frequently it feels out of character, is grammatically incorrect, and/or is out of period.
But White Houses is quite accessible–an easy read for folks who are curious.