Visit to the Local Library helps, or does it?

Well now that our Local Library is so conveniently located, I am going there every chance I get. Is that good? Well it is excellent to satisfy my hunger to read and collect everything that I can get in my two arms to carry out so... I have a lot of books started and that makes my evenings very very busy!

Because of those great book bloggers out there that are opening my eyes to new authors, poets, new books of already well known authors and etc. I only have to input from home directly online to the Anchorage Library website for my "plat du jour" and here I am with many "dishes" waiting for me on the "holding" shelf at the Chugiak/ Eagle River Branch with my name inserted ready to be eaten, no reheating necessary. So convenient! I was first very annoyed by our branch being closed on Sundays and Mondays, I am now happy about it: For two days I don't have the option for a quick visit to see what is new.

Anyway my last "loot" included Carl Sandburg's selected poems. That was a real treasure. Did not know him before and I love his poetry. Here is a short one to give you "l'eau a la bouche":

I Sang

I sang to you and the moon

But only the moon remembers.

I sang

O reckless free-hearted

free throated rhythms,

Even the moon remembers them

And is kind to me.

I also got Ana Castillo's "Watercolor Women Opaque Men". I fell in love with the cover by artist Rufino Tamayo. I had seen it at the Phoenix Art Museum once. It is a memoir in verse and gives me a little view of what it is to be a Mexican picking seasonal fare in the USA. How it was to grow up from imigrants without money to speak of but how love substained them. I am just at the beginning and it really is easy to pick up and leave because of the short sections devoted to one subject at a time.
Another memoir but this time this woman is an famous editor (unknown to me until few days ago) Diana Athill: "Somewhere towards the end". Love the title and love the way she confines the very personal moments in her life in such a casual, honest way. I am enjoying that one too very much. Margaret from Bookplease introduced me to her.

Then "The Little Stranger" by Sarah Waters was practically lifting its arms at me to be taken... It was short listed for The Booker Man Prize this year. That is going to be scary!!!

I am finishing "Nocturnes" by Kazuo Ishiguro. Short stories. Not my favorite not because of the author but because of the characters and the difficulties I had to look at the human behaviors in his stories. You wish never to know any of those people. They are so pathetic. No back bones and are as fickle as fickle can be even when they have talent they lack the self esteem and assurance that they need to succeed. Nevertheless I am reading it with interest and I am learning as I do. Can't help feeling pity and I don't like that feeling at all. I did a lot of head shaking. Maybe that is why I have had vertigo for two days now...ahahha.

I have started "Company of Liars" by Karen Maitland and I am time traveling to the dark Middle Ages it seems where a group of people are connecting, the Black Death is spreading in England. Different century same mistrust and same problems so far but also same hope of better days ahead. I do enjoy the rhythm of the language between those people. It is said to be a different version of the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. I have never read that so cannot comment on it but I am planning on doing so in the future to see the difference. Should be interesting.

Then I am still working on The Children's Book. In between all this I have read some comic novels and parts of the new Muriel Barbery's "Gourmet Rhapsody" that one is in the car. In a nut shell it is the story of "the" gourmet critique in Paris that is about to die and cannot remember one flavor, so recollects his life in order to remember what is missing. So far that what it looks like. Each short chapter gives a memoir of this man mixed with other people's memoirs of him.

I am instantly in need of food after reading some pages of that book.

I will have to bring my camera with me next time I go to the library so I can post some pictures of this inviting little place. They do have the best little wooden chairs that I fit in perfectly. I am very short as you all know. I like that, about the chair that is. Well I don't mind being short either except when I don't have a chair that fits me. I do like my comfort.

Happy Reading

Reading when it is cold out there!

There are many hours in the day when it is cold outside. A quick run outside is sometimes the only fresh air that I get, thanks to Gaia who doesn't have a choice to stay in. Those moments are precious because I get to assess the temperature (passing by the thermometer) and reinforce that inside the house is the place to be at the moment. ahahah. There are plenty of things to do when you have a three stories house, always something to clean, to eat (!), a tea to brew, sewing, beading, paying bills etc. Once things are under control reading is a natural choice. So I have been catching up with some books that didn't appear on my sideline category "What I am reading right now". Years ago I had started "The Interpreter of Maladies" by Jhumpa Lahiri. She is a master storyteller. Not realizing that it was a book of short stories I starting with the first "chapter" and loved it. Then the second.... wait a minute something was wrong.... the second "chapter" had nothing to do with the first one and.... oh I get it!!! they were stories standing on their own.... (I know I can be dense) Anyway I got really angry because I wanted to know the rest of the first story. It was too short. So many things unresolved. In few pages I was hooked, I cared and loved and felt and cried for those characters so I felt let down. Eventually I read more of it after that and loved every stories. First I am passionate about India and Ms Lahiri seems to know the essence of India, the joy and the sorrow. Also a lot of them have a real ending some finality about them that things have been resolved. She is very clever about mixing situations and characters and adding the charm and wisdom necessary to make you think and change how you see things yourself. Every one of the story is strong and makes you reevaluate your views on human behavior. This read was long due. I have read "The Namesake" making sure that it was a "real" novel this time..ahahha. I purchased her new book of short stories "Unaccustomed Earth". I am looking forward to travel through the visions of this fabulous author once more.

I have also read the first book of a mystery series by Jacqueline Winspear, "Maisie Dobbs". Ms Dobbs is a detective living between WWI and WWII in London. Lots of British lingo. Very well constructed and informative about that time in history. Some flashback to set the characters in perspective. I am hooked. I got "Birds of a Feather" the second in the series. I am finishing also a very short book "A Month in the Country" by J L Carr. Also very British. I didn't get some idioms but it is so entertaining. Really fun plot and can't wait to get back to it.

Billy Collins has written a new book of poems that I am waiting patiently to come from Amazon. I keep in my car Margaret Atwood's "Moral Disorders and other stories". Another book of shorts. This is a great one because those stories are all about the same character during different time of her life. I like more and more short stories because you don't have to read the book all at once. It is like sipping wine or even sipping tequila. Margaret Atwood is so acidic at times that she could give you a heartburn if read in one "shot". I do love her twisted stories.

I am off to California for a week and I am taking with me "The Shadow of the Wind" by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. I love her first page... that is how far I have gone since two months that I posted it it as my current read... What is that all about? I am a bit scared of the story, that might have something to do with it.

On my PTR (pile to read) I have:

Proust was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer

Blindness by Jose Saramago

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

So may the winter be long and cold.... just kidding!!!