I really wish I had a sunny, warm reading photo to share today, but this is closer to reality. Even though it is a snowy picture, there is something very inviting about it. It's going to be a good weekend to stay indoors and read. I have to sort through library books as I have had a number of new books come my way. It's always the case that they arrive at once, isn't it?
I discovered that one of the more recent Persephones and that I had been so excited about picking up is a book I read several years ago. I hate how quickly and sometimes how deeply stories fade from my mind. I read Diana Tutton's Guard Your Daughters five years ago. I didn't realize when I started reading that I had very much enjoyed it previously, but my post is rather vague, so maybe it is time for a reread as the story only feels familiar but I don't recall much of it. However, I have discovered that Malachi Whitaker is a very good short story writer and I plan on reading The Journey Home and Other Stories. I think I might even have to buy my own copy of it. I was so intrigued by the quirky first story of the collection that I think she is someone I need to read more of.
I have too many library books to give the full run down on, but there are a few others I am hoping to dip into and maybe even read. Alicia Drake's I Love You Too Much is set in Paris and is a coming of age story. "Seeking solace in an unlikely friendship with rebellious classmate Scarlett and succumbing to the temptation of the numerous patisseries in his elegant neighborhood, Paul searches for unconditional love. But what will he do if he can't find it?"
I love movies and go quite often to see all the artsy new releases (and often much older films that a local indie cinema happily shows--latest repertory series are the films of French director Agnes Varda), so when I saw there is one of those "A Very Short Introduction" books on The History of Cinema, by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith I snapped it up and can't wait to look at over the weekend.
The three books currently waiting for me are all books I have been really looking forward to. Will Boast's Daphne is a retelling of the Greek Myth of Daphne and Apollo (where she is turned into a laurel tree to avoid his amorous overtures). In Boast's version a young woman living in San Francisco must decide whether to "cling to her pristine, manicured isolation or risk the recklessness of real intimacy."
I have never read Rachel Joyce, but her new novel The Music Shop sounds charming and fun and the cast of characters sounds like a group of average misfits, which I find very inviting. "The Music Shop is a story about good, ordinary people who take on forces too big for them. It's about falling in love and how hard it can be. And it's about music - how it can bring us together when we are divided and save us when all seems lost."
And Mary Lynn Bracht's White Chrysanthemum is so typically me in that it is a historical novel set during the war years. This one has a slightly different slant than what I normally choose. "Korea, 1943, under Japanese occupation: As a haenyeo, a female diver of the sea, Hana enjoys an independence that few other Koreans can still claim. Until the day she saves her younger sister from a Japanese soldier and is herself captured and transported to Manchuria. There she is forced to become a 'comfort woman' in a Japanese military brothel. South Korea, 2011: Emi has spent more than sixty years trying to forget the sacrifice her sister made. Seeing the healing of her children and her country, can Emi move beyond the legacy of war to find forgiveness?" This sounds like it might be heavy-going, but I will give it a try and see how it goes.
There has not been much shifting in my night table piles, but maybe one of these will be added over the weekend to stir things up! Otherwise it will be continuing on with my current reads. Hope you're reading something good this weekend, too.