What are you reading: August, 24, 2024

Wrapping up William Wells and the Struggle for the Old Northwest. Magnanimous Dukes and Rising States and Annie Bot to follow.

In as much I'm on the march with my self-assigned reading list, I've wrapped up World's Fairs in the Cold War and am starting Stalin as Warlord.

>1 Shrike58: Thank you for getting things started!

I read a wonderful book this week, which I must whole-heartedly recommend: The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa. Dystopian in scope, the story tells of a place where items are disappearing - there are no more birds, or books, or flowers, or summer. Now people are disappearing, taken by the silently terrifying Memory Police. It's a stunning book, and was short-listed for the Booker Prize.

Current reading:
Audiobook - How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent by Julia Alvarez
Paper book - Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo

Both are very good.

I'm just past the 2/3 point of Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica, Zora Neale Hurston's memoir/anthropological report of her time in the two countries of the title in the late 1930s. Much of it is very interesting, though there are a few chapters where she lays on the details a bit too thickly for me.

Give Me a Sign– Anna Sortino
Digital audiobook performed by Elizabeth Robbins
4****

From the book jacket: Lilah is stuck in the middle. At least that’s what having a hearing loss seems like sometimes – when you don’t feel “deaf enough” to identify as Deaf or hearing enough to meet the world’s expectations. But this summer, Lilah is ready for a change. When she becomes a counselor at a summer camp for the deaf and blind, her plan is to brush up on her ASL. Once there, she also finds a community.

My reactions:
I loved this book. Sortino is Deaf and passionate about seeing diverse characters portrayed in the media. This is her debut novel.

Lilah and the other counselors at Camp Grey Wolf are in many ways typical teenagers. They are looking for opportunities for their future, trying different approaches to future success, testing their wings with a few months of independence from parents. They enjoy a variety of activities – music, dancing, art, reading, cooking – and are eager to make friends, and even have a romance. But they are also dealing with the obstacles posed by the disabilities they have.

While the experience at camp is eye-opening and refreshing for campers and counselors alike, Sortino doesn’t shy away from relating real difficulties faced by the Deaf. A scene at a fast-food drive-thru window is a perfect example. This really opened my eyes to the some of the challenges faced by the deaf and hard-of-hearing.

I listened to the audiobook, which was performed by Elizabeth Robbins. The irony of my listening to an audio version of a book about the Deaf was not lost on me. Robbins does a great job, and I liked the way the producers dealt with those cases where a deaf character missed vital information because she or he could not fully “hear” what was being said. (In the text version, Sortino inserts blanks to convey that information is being missed.)

Today I finally finished Fairy Tale by Stephen King. It was an excellent fairy tale!

I read some of my "between books" as rocketjk calls them. I read the July and August chapters of The Wild Remedy: How Nature Mends Us - A Diary by Emma Mitchell, and one story from The Norton Book of Women's Lives by Phyllis Rose.

Up next is Dust Child by Que Mai Phan Nguyen for my book club.

>5 PaperbackPirate: I've read that marvelous collection by Phyllis Rose, too. (As a "between book"!) As a side note, my wife took a writing class, which she says was excellent, with Rose at Wesleyan University.

>6 rocketjk: I read your review - good to know how much you liked it. That must have been very exciting for your wife to take a class with her!

I learned about Phyllis Rose as a happy accident; we rented her house in Utah on Vrbo, not knowing it was hers or who she was. She has an amazing library with all of her books she wrote/edited, including the books it looks like she read to compile Book of Women's Lives. Her husband is the author and illustrator of the Babar books, and there was a lot of his artwork around the house, and many interesting editions of Babar in their library. She left a welcoming note and a bottle of champagne. They seem like a couple we would like to have dinner with.

I've just finished Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica by Zora Neale Hurston. The book is her anthropological memoir of her time in the two countries of the title in the late 1930s, traveling those countries and learning about the people and their lifestyles, customs and religious beliefs. As per the title, there is a lot of effort spent on describing Voodoo practices in great detail. Much of the book is very interesting indeed. You can read my longer review on my 50-Book Challenge thread.

Next up for me will be The Fortune of the Rougons, the first book in Emile Zola's 20-book Les Rougon-Macquart series.

Started this audio via Libby ~

The Last Time She Saw Him
by Kate White

Morning Glory
LaVyrle Spencer
A young widow meets a man recently and invites him into her home and help raise her kids and work on her property. Will it work out or not? I enjoyed it! 1989

After months of reading thrillers and mysteries, I’ve picked up Robert Caro’s Path to Power, the first biography in his trilogy about Lyndon Johnson. So far, it’s great. By the end of this volume, I’ll know a ton about the Texas Hill Country and LBJ. This biography is a chunkster so it should keep me busy for a bit.

The new thread is up over here.