September Reading
This month, I’ve been reading:
- The Bookish Life of Nina Hill by Abbi Waxman - A breezy story —fleetingly reminiscent of Knives Out — about a young woman who works in a bookshop and adores books (naturally)
- Meg and Jo by Virginia Kantra - A contemporary retelling of the lives of Meg and Jo March from Little Women
- Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez - An exploration of the gender data gaps which lead to disastrous design and policies (sometimes unwittingly) that leave women out in the cold
The third book is the one I’ll take away a lot from, especially at work, because we make so many assumptions every day, don’t we. Bookish Life was fun and easy, if a little given to stereotypes, and I did wish it had gone deeper into the story of the riches and the newfound family. But I enjoyed the bookishness of it all without having to thrown literary references in the readers’ faces, instead, bringing a quiet reverence. Meg and Jo is quite a departure from the setting of the original novel and unfolds quite a few surprises. A quarter in, it is already shrugging off some of the puritanism and veering in new directions that I’m enjoying — but all depends on how the characters are drawn out, because for me, that often makes or breaks a novel. I can do without much plot, but I need solid characters.
That said, I keep seeing Saul Goodman in my head when Mr March is in the picture, because we have been watching Breaking Bad for a month now. It is G.’s second time; the first time he watched it, I was still turning up my nose at series, especially those that involved violence. Give me the paranormal and I’ll accept it readily — I’m one for cheap thrills of the ghostly kind and scaring myself so that I see shadows when I wake up in the middle of the night from a bad dream — but I don’t really have the stomach for gore. (Which is why I probably find my September books a little less unputdownable, after the delights of August.) However, I’m surprising myself with how riveting I find Breaking Bad because there is so much more to it than mindless violence, and it’s become the joy of our mealtimes. It lingers in my head a fair bit through the day, which now means I need to find a book (a) set in New Mexico or (b) on a similar theme. I’m on the path to satisfying both those recommendations.
The Internet gave me a few recommendations, one of which was The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. As a book hoarder, I naturally have books for different occasions. In this instance, I happen to have a brand new, pretty copy of Oscar Wao that I bought at the book fair. I tried to start it a couple of times, but you know how the stars have to align with books for you to be able to read them. I also held off when the accusations against Junot Díaz surfaced: but now, I want to see for myself what is in the book, and also understand the troubled history of his characters. Is it a case of telling it as it is, or one that reflects how the artiste actually feels — a question that comes up time and again in books, cinema, in any kind of art? Should I still read Kipling, for example? I do, so that I may learn from other people’s mistakes apart from my own.
I want to follow this up with Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop, about a French missionary setting up a post in New Mexico. I enjoy books that feature the struggles of religion. The Power and the Glory, In This House of Brede, The Keys of the Kingdom, and Catholics were all books I appreciated for their willingness to ask questions. (I struggled with The Sparrow, but the writing didn’t appeal to me as much as the theological debates.) About everything I’ve read is about Catholicism, thanks to my limitations with language and my preference for fiction. Time to broaden the net.
I hope that Díaz and Cather will round off my September. But when my mind takes off on a tangent when we see an Ethiopian Airlines plane on our morning walk, remembering the signboards with Geʽez script in DC and immediately craving The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears, what can I say?
