March 2012: 2 of 3

Stuff I’ve Been Reading: March 2012

6. A Gate at the Stairs (40%) by Lorrie Moore. Familiar with some of Moore’s exquisite short stories, I thought one of her more recent novels was a fair gamble at a dollar, but I found it not to my liking, primarily because of the narrator’s stream-of-consciousness style. I left this book in the seat back pocket of an international flight in the hopes that it would entertain someone else more than it did me.

7. The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes. Is it bragging to confess that I purchased this novel in Shakespeare and Company, the famous English-language bookstore in Paris? (Yes.) Having read only Arthur & George, about which I felt ambivalent, I was worried that Barnes’ award-winning newest novel would not be to my taste, but my fears were groundless. Exploring issues of time, memory, character, and the unknowable minds of those we thought we understood, this contemplative novel slowly accumulates emotional weight as the protagonist learns to reinterpret his past.

8. Old School by Tobias Wolff. After I heard Wolff’s stupendous short story “Bullet in the Brain” read aloud on a podcast, I instantly began searching for his work. Old School was amusingly and unintentionally related to The Sense of an Ending in that both had to do with private boys’ schools; but Wolff’s novel is a bildungsroman of an emerging writer and paid homage to several well-known figures in literature. It would be hard to say which of the two I liked better, for I enjoyed them both very much.

9. Wit’s End by Karen Joy Fowler. On the return flight, I thumbed through Wit’s End by the author of The Jane Austen Club which I read many years ago when it came out and of Sarah Canary, a strange novel about journeying through the West in the time of the railroad. This novel, about a woman who moves in with her mystery-writer godmother after the death of her father makes her the last of her family, is a quirky getting-in-touch-with-oneself narrative dotted with eccentric characters and descriptions of California. I left it on the plane as well.

New acquisitions

I went to Half Price Books.  I know, but it’s a hard habit to break.  I found some good books, one I was looking for and four I wasn’t; I’ve added them to my TBR list.

1. Banks, Iain M.  Look to Windward.  It’s a UK version of a Culture novel that hasn’t been re-released in the US yet!   True, the back cover says, Not for sale in the US, but I proved that wrong, didn’t I?
2. Brockmeier, Kevin.  The Brief History of the Dead.  After having enjoyed The View from the Seventh Layer so much, I wanted Brockmeier’s novel, which is about Limbo and Antarctica, and a global epidemic.  At least as far as I can tell from chapter two.
3. Card, Orson Scott, ed.  Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the Twentieth Century.  This collection was positively forced on me by my husband, who wanted to read one of the stories and insisted, therefore, that I should read all of them.  I complained, but not too hard.
4. Moore, Lorrie.  A Gate at the Stairs.  My former graduate school classmates always made much of Lorrie Moore, so for $1.00, I thought I would finally see what they kept going on about.
5. Petterson, Per.  Out Stealing Horses.  This was another $1.00 find, reminiscent of when I worked at a certain no-longer-existent bookstore, where I shelved and sold a whole lot of this novel; since I always feel as though I need to read more books from other countries, more books in translation, I took a chance.

I found some good books, one I was looking for and four I wasn’t.