The author says she has always connected more readily with non-human creatures than with her fellow humans. In fact she credits her pet pig Christopher Hogwood, named for the British conductor, with her increased ability to enjoy other people. She and her husband Howard adopted Chris when he was a runty little fellow on a nearby farm in New Hampshire. He thrived in their care, was able to escape...
Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout
This is my eighth Elizabeth Strout book and is distinguished by having so many of the familiar characters show up again. Her first main character, the cranky Olive Kitteridge, is now 90 and living in a retirement home. She is visited by Lucy Barton and the two tell each other stories and sometimes Olive complains that Lucy’s stories are pointless. Lucy, the novelist, tells stories and...
Vision by David S. Tatel
It was thanks to Laura that I listened to this memoir of a blind federal judge. I was immediately charmed by the mention of locations of his youth in Washington, DC: Glen Echo, Rock Creek Park, these are magical names from my childhood in then-rural Northern Virginia. I’m not sure I ever went to Glen Echo Amusement Park, but my siblings and I sang the Glen Echo jingle, “Glen Echo...
Elegy for April by Benjamin Black
This is the second book I’ve read in the Benjamin Black crime series featuring pathologist Dr. Quirke. Black is the pen name of the award-winning Irish writer John Banville. The series is set in Dublin in the 1950s. As it was in A Death in Summer, the story is horribly unpleasant, and Quirke’s behavior is awfully irresponsible and self-destructive. Having just completed a long stint...
A Death in Summer by Benjamin Black
It was Reading Matters that took me to this book. The author is the much admired Irish writer John Banville, writing mysteries under the pen name Benjamin Black. I have read one of John Banville’s books. The mystery solving characters of his books are a medical pathologist named Dr. Quirke and a policeman Detective Inspector Hackett. In this one Dr. Quirke begins an affair with the wife of...
The Anthropologists by Ayşegül Savaş
It was Dorothy’s recommendation that took me to this unusual little book. Asya and her husband Manu are immigrants from different countries who met in college and live in an unnamed big city. Asya describes their lives over the course of several months as Manu goes off to his job every day and Asya goes to the park to make a documentary. They are in that time of life depicted by the TV show...
Intermezzo by Sally Rooney
When I read a Sally Rooney novel, I am happy to spend time in her world, but at the end, I’m quite happy to return to my own. The characters in each of her books are in very different situations, but her focus is always a close examination of interpersonal relations. In this one the age of the main characters presents issues. Brothers Peter, 32, a successful barrister, and Ivan, 22, a chess...
The Almost Legendary Morris Sisters by Julie Klam
It was great to listen to this narrative about researching family history, written by someone who has written several other books. She had heard family talk about the four sisters who were cousins of her grandmother; their names were Selma, Malvina, Marcella, and Ruth. Three of them and their older brother were born around the turn of the century in Romania while Ruth was born in the US. The...
The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson
In 1995 Bill Bryson wrote Notes from a Small Island about his wander through the UK. I believe I read it, though I don’t remember it. This was written 20 years later, describing visits throughout the island with a big dollop of grumpiness on display. The word “stupid” makes too many appearances in this text. My favorite book of his, In a Sunburned Country, is quite funny, and is...
The Beet Queen by Louise Erdrich
This is my fourth Louise Erdrich book. Her first book was written in 1982; this one in 1986. The action occurs mostly in a small town in North Dakota beginning in 1932 where Mary, an eleven-year-old child, is deposited from the box car she and her fourteen-year-old brother were riding after their mother abandoned them. Karl jumped back in the boxcar after leaving Mary there. Their Aunt Fritzie...