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Although it took me forever, I finally finished Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri and it was lovely although sad. It's a collection of short stories that share the Indian immigration experience in the United States as a backdrop. She's an amazing writer.
Then, despite the stack of books by my bed, and the list of books I'm interested in on my phone, I picked up a book I'd never heard of called Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson. You may have heard of it because it was well-received when it was published in 2008, but it was new to me. So far, it reminds me a little of Wendall Berry, but darker. In any case, it's contemplative and the writing is top-notch.
Location: Montreal -> CT -> MA -> Montreal -> Ottawa
17,330 posts, read 33,018,915 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Marlow
Although it took me forever, I finally finished Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri and it was lovely although sad. It's a collection of short stories that share the Indian immigration experience in the United States as a backdrop. She's an amazing writer.
Then, despite the stack of books by my bed, and the list of books I'm interested in on my phone, I picked up a book I'd never heard of called Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson. You may have heard of it because it was well-received when it was published in 2008, but it was new to me. So far, it reminds me a little of Wendall Berry, but darker. In any case, it's contemplative and the writing is top-notch.
I once read -- or starting reading, rather -- something by Per Petterson. It was I Refuse. Not sure what happened but I never did finish it.
ETA: I'm still reading A House in the Sky by Amanda Lindhout. It's devastating. I'm at 78% and have to keep taking breaks from it so that I can breathe and regroup.
I have returned to reading Practicing History: Selected Essays by Barbara W. Tuchman . I keep getting interrupted by library reserve books, this time Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign by Jonathan Allen. Shattered was an interesting and little known analysis of the abortive Presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton. Many of the architects of her defeat and unforced errors were little known. I gave the book only three stars since the author seemed to have some axes of his own to grind.
Why is A HOUSE IN THE SKY devastating?
...not familiar with the book...
QUOTE=DawnMTL;49484955]So glad that you loved my girl, Jhumpa!
I once read -- or starting reading, rather -- something by Per Petterson. It was I Refuse. Not sure what happened but I never did finish it.
ETA: I'm still reading A House in the Sky by Amanda Lindhout. It's devastating. I'm at 78% and have to keep taking breaks from it so that I can breathe and regroup.[/quote]
... I'm still reading A House in the Sky by Amanda Lindhout. It's devastating. I'm at 78% and have to keep taking breaks from it so that I can breathe and regroup.
Quote:
Originally Posted by greatblueheron
Why is A HOUSE IN THE SKY devastating?
...not familiar with the book...
That's what I was wondering, as well as "Why would someone go to such effort to be devastated?"
I read House in the Sky a few years ago and thought it was good- kind of for sure an amazing story(non fiction) but I wasn't so overwhelmed by it.
Marlow- I read that Out Stealing Horses also several years ago. I don't remember how it came to me-- most likely on a forum like this. I don't recall much of it other than I think it was not a very uplifting story and it took some effort.........
I am VERY SLOWLY reading China Doll by Lisa See. Pretty good but it's taking me forever.
Right now, I'm working on Cattle Kingdom, by Cristopher Knowlton, a former Fortune magazine staff writer; the book is a chronicle of the short-lived "open range" beef industry between 1865-1890. Like a lot of us, I was exposed to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, both as personal free reading the summer after I finished high school, and in an undergraduate history course some two years later. But Sinclair devoted little attention to the origins of the "raw material" for his tale of a brutal, emerging Industrial America; this work fills that gap.
The rise of the Kingdom of Cattle was an unintended consequence of the Civil War, with a devastated agrarian South no longer able to satisfy the demands of the emerging Northern industrial powerhouse. and of the suitability of the Texas Longhorn to the High Plains quickly (and ruthlessly) denuded of the American Bison. Displaced Confederate soldiers supplied most of the raw labor, the railroads fed the Chicago slaughterhouses from the "cow towns" of Kansas, Nebraska and points north and west, and the boom was on.
But as with all speculative bubbles (this one fed largely by European -- Scots, in particular -- capital) the cattle boom fell, largely as a consequence of the incredibly harsh winter of 1877 -- an event seldom recognized today despite the climate change concerns (but one, I can assure you, of which my own grandparents, born in the last years of the Nineteenth Century, were made aware of in their day). And that event, in turn, led to the closure of the "open range" accelerated by the invention of barbed wire; the cast of characters ranges from Theodore Roosevelt to Tom Horn, dispenser of vigilante justice eventually similarly dispatched at the end of a rope, but "legally". And the author acknowledges the sensitivities of an animal rights movement that simply didn't exist at the time in question. The book pulls no punches, as is usually the case in factual accounts of industrial history,
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 09-11-2017 at 09:46 PM..
Location: Montreal -> CT -> MA -> Montreal -> Ottawa
17,330 posts, read 33,018,915 times
Reputation: 28903
Because I liked her first book (We Were Liars) and despite the fact that people are saying that this is a knock-off of The Talented Mr. Ripley, I'm going to start E. Lockhart's Genuine Fraud tonight.
ETA: I just noticed that it's YA. Not my favorite. Eh, I'll try it anyway.
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