It's official. I am a commoner. Okay, not exactly the sort of commoner that is associated with reading or history perhaps (though I would likely have been a commoner in those cases, too). I think I mentioned that I recently gave blood for the very first time. I just found out today that I am O+, which is the most common blood type. So when it comes to blood, I guess I am a commoner. Maybe in this case, that's a good thing?
I was planning on writing about Vanessa Gebbie's short story collection Storm Warning today, but my plans got a little derailed, so I hope to tell you about it tomorrow.
Instead . . . I had today off from work, though it was not entirely a pleasure day. I had errands to take care of, one of which was to get my taxes done. To celebrate not having to pay, I stopped in a real bricks and mortar bookstore, which happened to be in the same mall. I had to check out their yoga books. While I didn't find quite what I wanted in terms of yoga, I did peruse and come away with a couple of books on mindfulness. Oh, and a couple of other books caught my eye as well, that had to come home with me.
I know someone recommended Jon Kabat-Zinn's book Wherever You Go, There You Are to me some time ago, and now is the time to read it, I think. In my yoga class we are learning mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness is one of those terms that I think I know the meaning of, but when I try and think how I would explain it to someone, I am not sure I can do so. So, a book to the rescue. I know the best way to learn something new is to just do it, but a little extracurricular reading is always helpful, I think.
Along those same lines I also bought Ellen J. Langer's Mindfulness. I know I have heard her name before, so I thought I would take a chance on it. My copy is a twenty-fifth anniversary edition, so if nothing else, it would seem to have passed the test of time.
I am notorious for buying new books and then letting them languish on shelves and both are practical and timely to what I am interested in learning right now, so I will be starting one of these right away.
For reading pleasure at my leisure (or whenever I can manage to squeeze them into the reading pile), I have two impulse buys. Both books, I suspect, are not titles I would otherwise have come across had not they caught my eye on a bookstore display.
Now that we are officially into the month of March (only nineteen days until Spring begins, sixteen days until St. Patrick's day and a mere twelve until daylight savings time begins!) I want to read some Irish literature.
I have plenty to choose from on my own shelves, but Mary Pat Kelly's Of Irish Blood sounded quite tempting. "It's 1903. Nora Kelly, twenty-four, is talented, outspoken, progressive, and climbing the ladder of opportunity, until she falls for an attractive but dangerous man who sends her running back to the Old World her family had fled. Nora takes on Paris, mixing with couturiers, artists, and 'les femmes Americaines' of the Left Bank such as Gertrude Stein and Sylvia Beach. But when she stumbles into the centuries-old Collège des Irlandais, a good-looking scholar, an unconventional priest, and Ireland's revolutionary women challenge Nora to honor her Irish blood and join the struggle to free Ireland." It is a nice, chunky historical novel that looks like a story I can really sink my teeth into!
And one book that sounds right up my alley, but also sounds a little outside my normal comfort zone, Winterwood by Jacey Bedford. This is more in the realm of fantasy, which I don't tend to pick up, but as I keep meaning to try something in the genre, this one might do nicely. I love a good swashbuckling story and it should prove a good rollicking adventure story. "Ross Tremayne, widowed, cross-dressing privateer captain and unregistered witch, likes her life on the high seas, accompanied by a boatload of swashbuckling pirates and the possessive ghost of her late husband, Will. When she pays a bitter deathbed visit to her long-estranged mother she inherits a half brother she didn't know about and a task she doesn't want: open the magical winterwood box and right an ancient wrong—if she can." It looks like the first book of a series. I am never sure how I feel about series--they are good if you love the first book, but dangerous as then there will be ever more books to add to that growing TBR pile and/or wishlist that is both a promise of pleasure and maybe a plague!
I could easily have brought home more books, but I had to cut myself off. I did manage to write a few other titles down of books I will watch for later. It's good to have something to look forward to later, right?
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I did want to mention one other thing. You know how much I loved reading James Baldwin just recently. I seem to have picked just the right moment, or else I am simply more aware of his writing as he seems to be popping up left and right all of a sudden.
The author of this article visited and wrote about James Baldwin's home in France.
Colm Toibin has written a piece on James Baldwin for the New Yorker.
And also for the New Yorker is more on James Baldwin by Edwidge Danticat.
I wonder if that is a sign that I should read something else by him sooner rather than later? (Or maybe that is just an excuse to give myself to pull another book off my shelf to read?).
So, just curious, what's new (or old?) that you are reading right now that you would happily press into another reader's hands? Do tell!