I fear that from here on out whenever I decide to add a book to the reading pile without first having finished one--it is going to now be known as "the Joe Queenan Effect". Actually I am not being entirely bad. I set a little goal for myself of finishing two books (Kept and the new Maisie Dobbs mystery), and then I could choose a library book from my towering pile. I finished Maisie last night (post to follow in a few days), and the choice was easy. The New Yorker said this about Sigrid Nunez's The Last of Her kind:
"Nunez’s ruthlessly observed portrait of countercultural America in the sixties and seventies opens in 1968, when two girls meet as roommates at Barnard College. Ann is rich and white and wants to be neither, confiding, 'I wish I had been born poor'; Georgette has no illusions about poverty, having just escaped her depressed home town, where 'whole families drank themselves to disgrace.' Georgette finds Ann at once despicable and mesmerizing, and she’s stunned—if not entirely surprised—when, years after the end of their friendship, Ann is arrested for killing a cop. In previous works, Nunez has proved herself a master of psychological acuity. Here her ambitions are grander, and the result is a remarkable and disconcerting vision of a troubled time in American history, and of its repercussions for national and individual identity."
I checked this out when the book was first released, but didn't get it read before it had to go back. It happened to be on the new books shelf last night when I went to pick up some DVDs that I had requested at the library (no more queue--yay--I can renew it if need be). So much for the pile that I had sitting at home (waiting patiently) that I had planned to choose from. I am in the mood for something different than the other books I am reading or have recently finished. At least I am progressing forward in time--this is set in America in the 60s. Hopefully it will live up to such a good recommendation.
Unable to wait any longer, I decided that I really need to dive into something by Virginia Woolf--a book, not just an essay here or there. Since I had been reading the biographical information in the beginning of the book anyway (fascinating life), I decided to continue on with A Room of One's Own. I want to read something nonfiction before diving into her more difficult novels (and am leaning heavily towards To the Lighthouse thanks to many suggestions that I do so). So, I am adding another book to the pile. What can I say. The Joe Queenan Effect.