I find the winter months really challenging. So many gloomy, grey days and often bitter cold. The sun shines infrequently and I just want to close the blinds, turn on all my lamps and get under a blanker until spring. This year is especially difficult and it is hard to see glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. I was happy to turn the calendar over to a new year/decade, and now I am ready to turn that calendar over to a new month as well. Not that February will be any better. Winter has settled in and with it a pattern of snow and ice.
So my weekend spot of sunshine was a visit to the bookstore with holiday gift cards in hand. I browsed the many aisles, even those I tend to ignore and managed to create a hefty pile of books and magazines to peruse in the cafe. Hot coffee in hand I shifted books from one pile to another and then back and then once again whittled down, but I still came away with a larger purchase than usual. I try to leave with just one book and one magazine to add to my at home (teetering) piles. Part of the blame falls on those stickers that have popped up on books 'buy one get one 50% off'. I mean if I am going to buy one, surely I can find another ( I avoid those two for the price of three tables--I can never manage a combination of three books I don't already own, have not read and actually really want to read). But two is doable.
I hope I made good selections. Top to bottom:
My Husband's Wife by Jane Corry -- I hope this truly is a "grabber from the first page". "When young lawyer Lily marries Ed, she’s determined to make a fresh start and leave the secrets of the past behind. But then she takes on her first murder case and meets Joe, a convicted murderer to whom Lily is strangely drawn—and for whom she will soon be willing to risk almost anything. But Lily is not the only one with secrets. Her next-door neighbor Carla may be only nine, but she has already learned that secrets are powerful things. That they can get her whatever she wants. When Lily finds Carla on her doorstep twelve years later, a chain of events is set in motion that can end only one way."
The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli -- I am interested in books about science and nature, but often the science books seem a little more intimidating to me. This one seems accessible and the bonus is it is a work in translation (really want to read more translated books this year). "Why do we remember the past and not the future? What does it mean for time to "flow"? Do we exist in time or does time exist in us? In lyric, accessible prose, Carlo Rovelli invites us to consider questions about the nature of time that continue to puzzle physicists and philosophers alike."
To Shake the Sleeping Self: A Journey from Oregon to Patagonia, and a Quest for a Life with No Regret by Jedidiah Jenkins -- That's a tall order, isn't it? I am very interested in that "quest for a life of no regret" part. I think I would have passed this one by had not one of the booksellers enthused over this (apparently he must have a very popular Instagram account, too). She placed it in my hands to look at, but it was the first line of the book that really sold me: "I have learned this for certain: if discontent is your disease, travel is medicine. It opens you up to see outside the patterns you follow." One of my goals, once I get through the next six months or so of family obligations is to finally plan a proper vacation with new sights and sounds and experiences. It is far over the horizon, but I am hoping it is there and continues to get closer. Maybe this book will help inspire me!
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel -- I want to read at least twelve graphic novels this year. The idea was to just read one a month, but already I am nearly finished reading my second and now have the third one lined up. I think this must be a classic of the genre and it has garnered all sorts of awards and is being adapted to film, so it seems a perfect choice for this year's lineup. "A fresh and brilliantly told memoir from a cult favorite comic artist, marked by gothic twists, a family funeral home, sexual angst, and great books."
And my magazine of choice is the most recent issue of World Literature Today (another nod towards literature in translation!). To be honest, this is just a taste of my recent acquisitions . . . you know how all those library requests come in at the same time, right? And then there have been a few online purchases, too. So maybe there will be a part two sometime this week. Until then, I have to share a cozy photo: