I particularly liked Pip Williams’ first book, The Dictionary of Lost Words, a successful combination of a fictional story with the backdrop of the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary. It has some historical figures and is set late in the 19th century through the early 20th. This one is a fictional story set during World War I, with a focus on twin sisters, Peggy and Maude, who work...
I could not tear myself away from listening to this book and as a result, made significant progress on a tough jigsaw puzzle I was working on. I had been thinking about this Charlottesville author since his recent book was tapped by Oprah and then learned that Jennifer was reading this one. While I was always conscious of its shortcomings, it did capture me. It is the story of four complicated...
Ron Charles’ enthusiasm for this book is infectious. He says, “Please don’t do this. Don’t write a novel about trying to write a novel. It’s cliche and insular and lazy. Just don’t do it. Unless it’s this novel — this wonderful, witty, heartfelt novel by Lily King titled Writers and Lovers.” I strongly agree and also have an aversion to books about...
The recommendation to read a book by Wright Morris came from Laura. He was born the day after my mother, on January 6, 1910 and lived ten years longer than she did. I hadn’t heard of him, although he was a prolific writer and won two National Book Awards. Several of his books are available on Kindle which tells you modern readers are still interested. This book is set in Nebraska where he...
What a fun book this was to listen to. I have listened to all of the Baltimore-based author’s detective Tess Monaghan series, but haven’t written about them, though I did write about two of her other books. This one centers on Mrs. Blossom who made an appearance when Tess hired her as a person unlikely to be spotted following a suspect. She is 60-something and is a large woman, thus...
For a variety of reasons as I read this book, I often felt off center or confused by it. One aspect was quite clear and repeated in a variety of ways. The central theme of how badly one person in a relationship might be treated was illustrated in two examples. The first was Ruth’s art teacher from college days. Moser says that he’d forgiven his mother for the cruelty he experienced at...
There is now a genre “people writing about their connection to wild animals” and in my experience two stand out: H is for Hawk and Raising Hare. This one is remarkably insightful and like the other two, successfully interests us in the human involved and what the human thinks. Frieda Hughes is a poet and a painter and was living in the countryside in Wales during the time George was...
This is another short book, an essay, really, in the Australian series Writers on Writers that took me back to books I loved. While there’s much in it about Carey’s life and all his novels, the focus is on his book True History of the Kelly Gang, the fictional account of the 1870s outlaw who is a heroic figure in Australia. The oppression of the Irish, which the British carried with...
When I read that Helen Garner, one of my favorite writers, had written a book describing the season of Australian Rules Football for under 16s that her grandson was playing, I knew I had a treat in store. One day she saw her youngest grandson with a football and realized he was almost six feet tall. She asked Ambrose (called Amby) if she could come to his practices. She explained to Amby she had...
The inspiration for this fictional book is a woman named Margaret Fishback, who was the highest-paid female advertising copywriter during the 1930s based on her work for R.H. Macy’s. She was a published poet and a feminist. The author learned of her from Angela McClendon Ossar, her high school friend who became the archivist for Fishback’s papers when they were donated to the...