Week three of working from home (and I know some of you have been doing this longer than me, so kudos!) is coming to an end. Early this week it was 86F, yesterday sunny but incredibly windy, today sunny but chilly and Sunday is forecast measurable snow! It feels like all four seasons within the span of a week. One upside to working from home--not having to get up and go to work in the cold. And while I have no reason to complain compared to what others are enduring (and my empathy meter is going crazy these days and it is emotionally exhausting), I have to say some days are pretty good, and others are challenging. As a naturally solitary person I thought being inside and on my own would be natural, but isolation can be a little nerve-racking sometimes.
Just a few bookish notes today. My reading is still all over the place, but while it is slow going I am still reading and enjoying my books. With nowhere to go and nothing to do and only food and basic necessities to buy, I admit that I have been caving in more than I should to book ordering. I am trying to just order from smaller bookstores online--used mostly.
I am spending more time online and am bombarded (but in a good way?) by bookish emails and newsletters. We book people are all trying to stay sane and naturally are migrating towards books for solace and mental sustenance, right. But I read about so many other reader's bookish experiences of late and am tempted into this story or that book or maybe that collection. If my connection to the outside world is on hold, I am at least getting some somewhat regular bookmail. I need something nice to look forward to.
This week I did manage to (finally) finish a book--an entire novel (not just a graphic novel or a one-sitting comic-but those are okay, too). I absolutely loved Angie Cruz's Women's Prize longlisted Dominicana and I can warmly recommend it to you. It is the story of a young woman who lives in the Dominican Republic. She is very close to her family but knows she must do what is right to help them, which means being married off to a man much older than herself. The added benefit is he lives in NYC and will take her there and later she will bring her mother and siblings. So this is not just an immigrant story, but the coming of age story of a young woman learning not only how to be a wife and mother, but a woman in the changing world of 1960s America. Ana has such a wonderful and earnest voice and it is inspiring to see how she must navigate a new world and situation and how to become independent and happy. Or as happy as a woman can be in those times and in her situation. I really loved it and likely it will be high on my list of favorites later this year.
As you see above I have several more longlisted books and I want to pick another one soon. These are the titles that appealed most right off hand, but I am sure I will continue to explore the list.
I am getting into the thick of things with Kinsey in Q is for Quarry and the story is once again touching on family she did not know she had. She is working on a old case with two retired detectives--an unsolved murder of a young woman in 1969. She was never identified and her killer never found. It is gripping. I am trying to read a very manageable one chapter a day of The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizaki. Another story I am very immersed in and plan on watching the movie adaptation when I finish the book. I think I am even just past the halfway mark of this thick classic. When I finish (not to think too far ahead) do I pick another classic or another chunky book?! I have ideas in mind for both options. Still contemplating which new prompt book to choose, but mostly I want to finish The Handmaid's Tale, which I am reading along with Stefanie at Weeds (formerly So Many Books). The incentive to finish sooner than later is a planned next book to read together--a NYRB classic--something we each have on our shelves.
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It's always a pleasure when you read a passage that minics life as we know it now, and there are two passages I want to share that caught my eye this week.
From the Handmaid's Tale, Offred is living in isolation as well, but in her case it is complete as every semblance of who she first was has been rinsed away, and she reflects:
" . . . Your own skin like a map, a diagram of futility, crisscrossed with tiny roads that lead to nowhere. Otherwise you live in the moment. Which is not where I want to be."
"But that's where I am, there's no escaping it. Time's a trap, I'm caught in it. I must forget my secret name and all ways back. My name is Offred now, and here is where I live."
"Live in the present, make the most of it, it's all you got."
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And in the Makioka Sisters, they are also dealing with sadness and feelings of loneliness. In this case there are also the rumblings of a possible war in Europe.
" . . . Sachiko too was bored. She practiced her calligraphy and gave koto lessons to O-haru. One day she remarked in a letter to Yukiko: 'Etsuko is not the only one who is lonely. Everything seems sad this autumn. I wonder if it is a sign of age--I have always liked the spring, and this is the first time I have understood the autumn'."
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I am, weirdly as this sounds, looking at books in consideration of world events, about world pandemics. Maybe not the 1918 Spanish Flu, maybe the Plague? I am not sure--just looking now. I have three books I am looking at and dipping into for my prompt and a couple of other nonfiction books that have caught my eye--it is definitely time for some nonfiction. And then there are all those other piles of books that just seem to wander into my room and plant themselves next to my bed . . . Now where did you just come from, hmm?
Please stay healthy everyone and many hours of happy reading, too!