Here are some takeaways from just some of the books I read in December.
I do wish the library would be more careful with their stickers. The author wrote one of my favourite novels ever, Broken For You. I liked seeing the memoirist, Doris Grumbach, mentioned in the acknowledgments. I would like to reread Doris’s memoirs.
The first couple of chapters inspired me to give the book a high rating. It is grim, so you might want to skip on to the next book.
…..
…
Oh dear. (I do wonder what enlightened parents and grandparents of the newest generation think about the future.) The author proposes no solutions.
…an utterly fascinating history book by one of my favourites. (I adore her memoir, Waiting for My Cats to Die.) In a telly show I recently was struck by the cheerful looking red aerial tramway in New York—turns out it comes from the former “Damnation Island”.
I am one of the lucky ones who can “do what I love” for work, partly from a willingness to be what most of the people I know would consider poor.
……
On the generational economic impact of racism:
(This is covered in depth in the book Waking Up White.)
……….more…..:
Makes me even more determined to represent real working class life.
I also burned through a most exciting mysteries, the Maeve Kerrigan series by Jane Casey and all of Belinda Bauer’s mysteries. Both had been recommended to me as worthy successors of Ruth Rendell. Bauer is the most like Rendell, and one of hers was the best psychological suspense that I had read since Ruth died.
I read Ketzel Levine’s Plant This—actually a reread because I had read them all when they were columns in the Oregonian.
I realized that the reason I have so many of the plants she writes about it because, through those Oregonian columns, she inspired me to buy them.
Sometime before the end of January, I hope to do the overview of the complete year of reading.
Skooter helped with this post.
After tomorrow morning’s post, I’ll be returning to reading, garden puttering and Gardeners’ World for another two or three weeks. I also must visit an ear specialist over an hour and a half away—a road trip being just about the last thing I want to do on staycation. I have accomplished nothing of my winter house projects nor have I acquired and spread yards of mulch in the garden. (Weather and the potting project have gotten in the way.) I still hope to do some of that in the last three weeks of staycation…even though it is seeming more and more unlikely.
I keep wanting to click Like on the photos I especially enjoy. :p I do like the one of inside “Plant This!”.
LikeLike
I do miss the like button!
>
LikeLike
Lots of good reading suggestions here.
And lots to reflect about in this post. Do what you love and poverty – society’s expectation that artists and craftspeople, and yes gardeners – produce beauty they can own at low prices that perpetuate poverty.
LikeLike
Exactly!
Sent from my iPad
>
LikeLike
Are you familiar with the late writer and environmentalist Roger Deakin? You would enjoy his books.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Deakin
LikeLike
I’m not, but I am putting him at the top of my book list.
Sent from my iPad
>
LikeLiked by 1 person