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Finishing up Margaret Atwood's Stone Mattress today. I don't normally read short story collections but got this one when I requested anything written by Atwood from the librarian and received it through the inter-library loan. Out of the 8 short stories that I've read so far, all 8 dealt with death in one form or another. I was surprised at the amount of sexuality in these stories considering that the characters are elderly. To be honest, I'm unsure about how I felt about this work.
Also finishing up MaddAddam by Atwood and this one has taken me a long time to finish. As I mentioned before this one has a Terry Pratchett feel in the writing style.
I am reading The Orphan Master's Son, by Adam Johnson. I must have requested this book after reading that it was a Pulitzer winner for fiction. I would never have thought that I could get involved in a book about North Korea, but there it is. I am.
I am finding the book absolutely fascinating. Just be glad you don't live in North Korea, folks! It is an awful, awful place. But the book is interesting.
I finished the book a couple of days ago and made an entry for it in my book journal. It was hard to know what to write about. There are so many threads and developments. Some have suggested the second part uses magic realism, but I don't know about that. Maybe. You do have suspend your disbelief.
I stand by my recommendation. It is an amazing, well written, interesting look at the people of North Korea. You might not be able to put it down after you start reading it.
This is supposed to be his masterpiece. If I had read it when he wrote it, I probably would not have enjoyed it. Stegner is obviously disillusioned with people of my generation. It should be an interesting read.
Where You Once Belonged by Kent Haruf was good, but not as heartfelt and moving as the Plainsong trilogy. It sort of felt like he was warming up with WYOB. I imagine it's just a function of his become a better writer as time went on. By all means read it if you're the mood for a quiet study of people in a small town, but don't expect to love it as much as you loved Plainsong (assuming you did ).
I picked up The Wright Brothers by David McCullough. I've loved the other stuff I've read by him.
I finished listening to "The Kite Runner" yesterday, read by the author The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini.
His writing was riveting. I was thrilled by the two boys playing, dismayed when the glimmer of darker thoughts colored that rosy picture, and enraged by its ugly head rearing over them, destroying those halcyon days. I considered not reading further, so angry with the character's lack of backbone. And then the roller coaster started to rise again. (Yes, apparently though I am almost 60 I am still too impressionable. )
I gave it five stars. I already added his next book to my TRL.
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