I'm pretty much finished with winter. Sadly, winter is not finished with me. We have been in this awful cold cycle, not just cold, but Arctic subzero cold and it is beginning to wear me down. So I thought it was time to pull out the lady reading in the garden. If I think spring and sunshine and warmth maybe it will help usher it in? Or I need to pick a book with a steamy hot setting to offset all the wintry-ness that has settled in here. Suggestions? I might have to scan my bookshelves this weekend.
Until then there are two books I am giving all my attention to as I have to finish them (in part simply because I am to the point of no return with them and must find out what happens . . .).
In the case of Lyndsay Faye's The Paragon Hotel, I have a library book which is now very overdue! I wanted something a little different and so picked up the Faye book and I have not been disappointed. It's not like anything else I have read of late. A Prohibition era setting with a character named Nobody--well her name is Alice James but she goes (sometimes) by the persona of Nobody. It begins on a train and she is suffering from a gunshot wound in the arm and in much pain. She had been living in Harlem--she's part Italian and had gotten messed up with some mafioso types (her best friend being involved but sadly so) as she was rum running.
So she is barely conscious on the train and can barely help herself--she wants to get as far away from NYC as she can and so is on her way to Portland. One of the train porters helps her. He happens to be African American (rather biracial with some white siblings). He takes her to the Hotel Paragon which is a black-only hotel in Portland. Well, it is not a good idea--for either Alice as a white woman or any of the residents of the Hotel. And Portland has a rather burgeoning KKK presence. And then a small boy, an orphan looked after by one of the residents goes missing. Yes, lots of problems and intrigue. An interesting slice of (historical) American life and one I have not been familiar with.
The other book I am reading along with Buried in Print, which has been on both our bookshelves for ages. We've been talking about it for years and have finally decided to just dive in. It is turning out to be one of those 'why did I wait so long to read' books, and I think she is having the same experience with it. Happily Mary Hocking's The Good Daughters is just the first of three books, and the plan is to make stately progress and then move on to the next.
The story begins in 1933 when Alice Fairley is just twelve and follows the Fairley sisters, their parents and friends over the course of the war years. I am not allowing myself to pull out the second book from my shelves until I finish this one--I don't want to spoil anything by reading the blurb and knowing which direction the story is going--until I actually get there. It reminds me a lot of the Cazalet Chronicles by Elizabeth Jane Howard as well, perhaps just slightly of Antonia White's books about Nanda/Clara another famous VMC coming of age story.
Once I finish these I can look again to my night table and decide which books to focus on and yes, still trying to decide on my February prompt (though I think it will be the book by Susanna Kearsley).
What are you reading this weekend?