While reading Anne Sexton’s third book of poetry, I also began reading a biography by Diane Wood Middlebrook. I enjoyed that syn64th book read in 2025
While reading Anne Sexton’s third book of poetry, I also began reading a biography by Diane Wood Middlebrook. I enjoyed that synergy because I learned about how she came to be a poet, how her poetry is autobiographical, how she used her creativity to combat her mental health issues.
In Live or Die, she is debating with herself (and her therapists) whether she will ever be well, whether to keep trying, but also realizing that her poetry will save her when nothing else can. Some of these poems are micro-short stories. Some are flights of fancy, some are bursts of defiant life. I feel her writing skills in this collection have reached a new level of competence and impact.
I was struck by how life for women in mid-20th century America could constrain their creativity, punish them for not being fully functional mothers while requiring them to have children. Psychiatry was still heavily Freudian.
Also, as always, there are the critics, the marketers, etc. She was heralded as one of the first female confessional poets. She was also maligned for it. In truth, along with Sylvia Plath, I feel she broke ground for so many female writers in all genres. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry for this 1966 cri di coeur! ...more
I first read this debut novel by Angela Carter in 2001. I came across it in the library while looking for something else. Due to6oth book read in 2025
I first read this debut novel by Angela Carter in 2001. I came across it in the library while looking for something else. Due to rave reviews on the dust jacket, I took it home.
According to my reading notes back then, I did not like it much. In fact, I wrote “Two young men, losers, under the spell of a young female waif, a violent gory ending, some humor in an ironic tone.”
When I found the book on my 1966 reading list, I remembered that I read it but not what it was about. So, I read it again. This time in my reading notes I wrote, “Glad I reread it. Understand better what she was doing. Reminded me of Theodora Keough.”
Angela Carter has many rabid fans. I plan to read as many of her novels as I can fit into my reading. She has concerns similar to other authors I love: Joyce Carol Oates, Margaret Atwood in particular. Because it is a debut, I predict her books will get better as she goes. She is not for the faint of heart. She is ruthless with her characters, perceptive about the breakdowns of society in the 1960s, brutally feminist. ...more
I love this author! I first discovered her in a story collection. Her own collection, The Friendly Persuasion, was published in 58th book read in 2025
I love this author! I first discovered her in a story collection. Her own collection, The Friendly Persuasion, was published in 1945 and featured a Quaker family in late 1800s Indiana. The main idea was how to create peace between people without preaching about it, but by example.
Now I have read five of her books and have always found such wisdom and faith in the human capacity for love along with our other mixed characteristics.
A Matter of Time is the story of two sisters whose devotion and dependence on each other is a thing of heart and mind. When Tassie was just a toddler, her baby sister was placed in her arms, and she was told to always take care of Blix. She has, through everything women can experience.
As in her previous books, Jessamyn West puts so much truth, courage and love into what could have been only heartbreaking. I will leave it to interested readers to discover the rest of the story by reading the book. If you like tales of women helping each other, of sisters overcoming life’s challenges together, I recommend A Matter of Time ...more
Another book by Ursula K LeGuin which I read 25 years ago and remembered nothing except a feeling of fascination. I like that th56th book read in 2025
Another book by Ursula K LeGuin which I read 25 years ago and remembered nothing except a feeling of fascination. I like that this author does not make herself easily understood. The reader must pay attention and identify for herself the elements of the story.
The elements here are a planet, Werel, where two different tribes of humans have been exiled for hundreds of Earth years. They are in conflict with each other and have certain taboos, so when a young woman from one tribe falls into a relationship with a man from the other, the tensions between these peoples are made palpable.
The main issue is that winter is approaching. Any season on Werel lasts for 15 Earth years. Winter is brutal and neither group is fully prepared. A barbarian enemy is headed towards them hoping to prey on what few resources remain. I know, it does not totally add up, but you have to go with it.
In rereading Planet of Exile some elements that impressed me the first time remained impressive: an “interracial” love affair, a form of telepathy, the long seasons, and the necessity for cooperation in order to survive.
So here we are today, with climate change, racial conflicts exacerbated by rampant immigration, and ideological differences inflamed by money and politics. LeGuin, in her own unique way, gives us clues but not answers. ...more
I reread this debut novel by Ursula LeGuin. My first reading took place in 2000, and I barely remembered anything. It is the fir50th book read in 2025
I reread this debut novel by Ursula LeGuin. My first reading took place in 2000, and I barely remembered anything. It is the first of the Hainish Cycle, which includes many novels and stories. It is science fiction and it is good.
Rocannon is an Earth scientist studying cultures on a certain unnamed planet. After a long period of space travel, there are various humanoid races on many planets. An intergalactic entity, of which he is a part, has been attempting to set up a confederacy to enable communication and diplomacy between planets.
An enemy of the confederacy arrives and kills off all Rocannon’s team, as well as a woman he loves, and destroys any means for Rocannon to return to Earth. Thus, he must become one of the people of that planet.
I like Le Guin’s skill in writing sci fi and her views on how different races and cultures can and cannot achieve understating ...more
As I read through My Big Fat Reading Project, I have included Nigerian author Chinua Achebe’s amazing African Trilogy, in which 48th book read in 2025
As I read through My Big Fat Reading Project, I have included Nigerian author Chinua Achebe’s amazing African Trilogy, in which he chronicles the culture clash of his people with British colonizers.
1. Things Fall Apart, 1958: A strong but violent Nigerian man loses his way when the white man comes.
2. No Longer at Ease, 1960: Set in the 1950s. A bright boy receives a scholarship from his village and goes to university in England, returns to become a civil servant in Lagos, then loses his certainty and surrenders his tribal values as he tries to assimilate.
3. Arrow of God, 1964: A tale about the clash between the Chief Priest of the god of six villages and a British officer. Whose god is more powerful?
These three books showed the tensions and troubles that arose in Nigeria between native culture and the colonizers’ culture.
In A Man of the People, 1966, Nigeria has achieved independence from the British but is not prepared for self-government. Corruption abounds while young Nigerians try to improve the democracy they are supposed to be creating. Once again old tribal ways creep in as leaders chase prosperity and power at the expense of their people.
The most popular politician falls into unscrupulous lusts and greed while the idealistic main character discovers that he too is lured by such temptations.
By means of wonderfully drawn characters and expert storytelling, Achebe shows these conflicts as they play out in families, how the women are often as oppressed as ever, and how power corrupts even the most forward looking and smartest people.
He is considered the most influential author of modern African literature. He has certainly made me aware of the reasons for the struggles of African nations to create stable societies that can exist in these global times. Once again, I have learned more truth from fiction than I find in the news. ...more
This magical and amusing book for children ages 8-12, is the third of such books by Roald Dahl. I first came across his books wh43rd book read in 2025
This magical and amusing book for children ages 8-12, is the third of such books by Roald Dahl. I first came across his books when I worked at an indie bookstore with a fully stocked children’s section. On slow days I would read the picture books and middle grade books, looking for presents for my grandchildren, and discovered Roald Dahl. In fact, it was my older granddaughter who raved to me about Fantastic Mr Fox, his 1970 offering.
The main character of The Magic Finger is a girl who is easily angered by injustice. When this happens, she “sees red” and gets very hot all over, the tip of her forefinger begins to tingle and out comes a quick white flash which touches whoever has angered her. Then bad things happen to that person.
In this story it is a whole family who live at the next farm over and whose father and boys like to hunt. They earn the Magic Finger treatment and end up as the ducks they were shooting down that day.
There have been many reprints of this book with various illustrators. I got my copy from the library, the original 1966 hardcover, illustrated by William Pene Du Bois, most famous for The Twenty-One Balloons.
Curiously, The Magic Finger has quite a bit of text, so could be read by a girl of ten or read to a younger person. Either way, it should delight with the switch that puts the family in a nest and the ducks in their house! ...more
I had a hard time getting through this novel by Madeleine L’Engle and an even harder time deciding what to say about it. I have 39th book read in 2025
I had a hard time getting through this novel by Madeleine L’Engle and an even harder time deciding what to say about it. I have read many L’Engle books and loved most of them. I have read A Wrinkle in Time three times during various periods of my life.
In The Love Letters she visits several of her usual themes: young girls overlooked by parents or losing parents, being sent to boarding schools (in this case Catholic convent schools), young women in love or losing love, fathers and artists.
Charlotte has experienced all the above, has run from her New York husband to Portugal, where she finds herself in another convent/pension. While she waits to visit her mother-in-law, she finds a book of love letters written by a nun from the 17th century to a young soldier who caused her to disobey her vows and then deserted her.
I had problems with the two timelines, with a comparison of love in the 1960s vs the 1600s, with New York City life compared to the customs and attitudes of convent life.
I could not imagine going to my mother-in-law if I was having problems being married to her son.
I felt the “solution” to Charlotte’s abusive marriage was as bad as what my first mother-in-law said to me: “you made your bed, now lie in it.” Charlotte decided she should be more understanding of her husband’s issues but did not decide to have more agency herself.
At least that is what I took away and I felt a bit betrayed my Madeleine L’Engle. She crossed some fine line between relying on love to get through relationships and letting one’s partner get away with abusive behavior. ...more
William Trevor, born Irish but became British, had a long and successful career writing novels and short stories, winning prizes38th book read in 2025
William Trevor, born Irish but became British, had a long and successful career writing novels and short stories, winning prizes all along. He wrote 15 novels; I have only read his first three, all published in the 1960s. I did not love any of them, but I did love his writing, his wit and his sympathetic portrayals of both men and women.
The Love Department is a satire on women’s magazines. I remember reading my mom’s: Woman’s Day, Redbook, Better Homes and Gardens. Then I grew up and read teen mags such as Seventeen. Each had its own section of advice on love and marriage. One of my favorite columns was “Can This Marriage Be Saved?”
The characters in this novel include Lady Dolores, head of the love department of such a mag, to whom women from across Wimbledon write letters pouring out their disappointments with husbands. She advises them but is being thwarted by a seductive conman, Septimus Tuam, whose amorous skills break up marriages while the wives help him financially.
Edward Blakeston-Smith is an insecure young fellow, socially challenged, who decides to leave the monastery where he has been hiding and get a “real job.” When he meets up with Dolores, he is given the task to hunt down Septimus and stop him.
Truly, it is one of the strangest tales I’ve read and more than a bit far-fetched, but seductive in its own way. The women who fall for Septimus are also quite the characters.
Each time I have read a William Trevor novel I have been won over enough to continue. He did it again this time ...more
I fell in love with Larry McMurtry 30 years ago when I read Lonesome Dove. Now I have finally read The Last Picture Show, surely36th book read in 2025
I fell in love with Larry McMurtry 30 years ago when I read Lonesome Dove. Now I have finally read The Last Picture Show, surely an iconic American novel. It is the third book in his Thalia trilogy, preceded by Horseman, Pass By and Leaving Cheyenne.
Horseman, Pass By was made into the movie, Hud, starring a young Paul Newman. The Last Picture show, also adapted for film, for which McMurtry co-wrote the screenplay, featured an all-star cast and attracted both critical acclaim and public controversy.
Thalia is a dying town in Texas with all manner of sad and discontented characters, income levels, and lots of teen sex. By 1966, when the book was published, teen sex had become, if not more frequent, at least more openly represented in fiction and movies.
That thing McMurtry can do which twangs on your heartstrings and portrays female desire so poignantly, he could do from the start. Then there is male friendship and competition. Also, bad parenting, disability, and coming of age.
I suppose it would seem quaint to teens today compared to what can be found online and in music, but I think we owe a big debt to McMurtry for breaking the prudish barriers of earlier decades while showing us a really good time. ...more
This was Nadine Gordimer’s fourth novel and the fourth one I have read. I am following her work as part of My Big Fat Reading Pr35th book read in 2025
This was Nadine Gordimer’s fourth novel and the fourth one I have read. I am following her work as part of My Big Fat Reading Project. I have a long way to go with this author and with the project. I am currently reading the list for 1966.
The Late Bourgeois World is the shortest of the ones I’ve read. It is more a novella than a novel. It struck me hard though because like the main character, a woman who narrates the story, I married an impulsive man who only brought trouble into my life, even after I left him.
I admire Nadine Gordimer for her exquisite writing and her courage as a South African woman who gave her life to helping her country eradicate Apartheid. She was white, daughter of colonizers, thus from the oppressive side of the conflict, who felt a responsibility to put things right.
This story opens with a telegram relaying to the woman that her ex-husband is dead by suicide. They had built their relationship on ideals of protesting injustice, but he was unable to be effective and she was stuck at home once they had a child. Oh, that old story.
The remainder of the book tells that back story and then moves on to an encounter between the woman and one of her ex-husband’s Black colleagues. He asks for a favor which she struggles to decide whether to grant.
The 20th century was fraught with the results of colonialism and its effects on the indigenous populations displaced or enslaved by white capitalism and what I would call greed. Gordimer, in her fiction, wrestles with the moral questions white people faced in South Africa. Those issues are still ongoing in the 21st century which makes her writing so relevant to this day. ...more
I always enjoy this author when I read him. I have read three of his 20th century novels: Satan in Goray, The Slave, and The Mag32nd book read in 2025
I always enjoy this author when I read him. I have read three of his 20th century novels: Satan in Goray, The Slave, and The Magician of Lublin. He grew up in Poland before coming to New York. He won the Nobel Prize in 1978. He always wrote his stories, essays and novels in Yiddish first, then translated them into English for publication in the United States.
In My Father’s Court contains many autobiographical sketches, which he wrote over the years, about his childhood in Poland. His father was an impoverished rabbi, his mother the daughter of a rabbi. Both were dedicated students of Jewish religious texts. Isaac himself devoured books of all sorts. He tells us how these books influenced his writing and his life.
I felt like I was there with him and his family in their struggles ...more
Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, put Holcomb, Kansas on the map and brought new life to the True Crime genre in 1966.
I did not exp22nd book read in 2025
Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, put Holcomb, Kansas on the map and brought new life to the True Crime genre in 1966.
I did not expect to enjoy this book as much as I did. I knew Capote was a good writer. I knew that he took his buddy Harper Lee along to Kansas in 1959 to investigate the horrific killing of a farmer, his wife and two youngest children.
I have since learned that it took him years to write a four-part serial which he sold to The New Yorker in 1965. The book was published in 1966.
As he did in some of his early books, he dove into the psychological details of both the murderers and the victims, as well as the investigators of the Kansas FBI. I wonder if Harper Lee’s valuable assistance enhanced his accounts of the search for the killers and their trials in court.
Curiously, the book is now called a “true crime novel.” Does that mean some of the work is a product of Capote’s imagination based on the details he was able to uncover? That is still a controversy.
The movie appeared in 1967. I think I should watch it ...more
This is one of the best books I have read so far in 2025. It is the story of Vyry, child of a white plantation owner and his Bla20th book read in 2025
This is one of the best books I have read so far in 2025. It is the story of Vyry, child of a white plantation owner and his Black mistress, a slave. Vyry’s mother died giving birth to her 16th child, some were her husband’s and some were her master’s children. The setting is Georgia where plantation life flourished but abolitionists in the North were beginning to stir up trouble. It follows Vyry’s life from the Ante-Bellum years though the Civil War and Reconstruction.
Throughout the book Margaret Walker shows both sides of the story. What life was like for slaves and what it was like for plantation owners. She also shows how Negro spirituals came to be and how they were sung by the slaves to give them hope for freedom. As Vyry grows up, mothered by the Black cook for the family in the Big House, she becomes a consummate cook herself. Her ability to put together enormous meals every day for the Master and his family gives her a sense of purpose, strength and the ability to organize all the details surrounding food.
But Vyry longs for freedom and takes up with a free Black man who gives her a child along with promises to take her North to freedom. When that freedom does not materialize for her, she marries another slave, has more children, and once emancipation finally comes, they leave the plantation and journey from place to place to find a home and make a farm. She also manages to get her children educated.
Margaret Walker was an award-winning Black poet, born in 1915 to a scholar and a musician. They bequeathed to her a love of literature, poetry and music. She learned the story of her great-grandmother, the inspiration for Vyry, from her maternal grandmother. She eventually earned a PhD from the University of Iowa, while raising four of her own children.
Vyry is a stunning character. She is very light skinned, her hair almost blonde, but has the stamina and faith of her Black heritage. The incidents in her life range from drudgery, danger and brutality to moments of triumph when she perseveres against all odds. She really does sing while she slaves, but other times she does “pass” with good results.
The final scenes of the book are a testament to how enslaved people learned to love others despite their dire life experiences. It is a shout-out to strong women. The entire story demonstrates the power of faith and song to sustain and give hope to a people without agency or safety. The title is from a spiritual:
“We are climbing Jacob’s ladder, We are climbing Jacob’s ladder, We are climbing Jacob’s ladder, for the year of Jubilee!
Every round goes higher, higher, Every round goes higher, higher, Every round goes higher, higher, to the year of Jubilee. ...more
The third book in Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles is just as challenging and exciting as the first two. I have learned to fi13th book read in 2025
The third book in Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles is just as challenging and exciting as the first two. I have learned to find and print out character lists for these books, since there are scores of them, most of whom go variously by first name, last name or title throughout the text of the novel.
Francis Crawford of Lymond, a Scot, is the hero of these chronicles and a complex, fiendishly competent adventurer he is. This time he is off to Malta, headquarters of the Knights of Hospitallers who are sworn to protect Europe from the Turks. The politics are entangled in 1551 between France, England and Scotland while the Catholic Church is a complex web of Pope, Kings, and the Holy Roman Emperor. The women are often pawns due to the many ways that royal persons marry into other royal families more for alliances than love, though Dunnett gives them quite a bit of agency.
It took me about a week to make my way through the tale, but it presented a brilliant picture of a time reeling from earlier international events such as The Crusades, the effects of The Renaissance on European lands, upheaval in the Catholic Church, and the conflicts between France, England, Scotland and Ireland. It is also a tale of families, feuds, betrayals and just plain evil.
Many of the characters are historically real but Francis Crawford is a creation out of the author’s imagination. It is he who holds the story together, who keeps the reader entranced and who is at once treacherous and heroic. I know I am under the influence of a great writer when I suffer anxiety for the hero’s life even though there are three more books to come. ...more
In 2007, I read Amos Oz’s memoir, A Tale of Love and Darkness. It was a book that illuminated my understanding of Jewish history 9th book read in 2025
In 2007, I read Amos Oz’s memoir, A Tale of Love and Darkness. It was a book that illuminated my understanding of Jewish history and the reasons behind the founding of Israel. I always meant to read more by this author who lived in Israel for most of his life and wrote, taught Hebrew literature and promoted the concept of the two-state solution for Israel. He died in 2018 at the age of 79.
Elsewhere, Perhaps was his first novel and concerns life on a kibbutz in the early 1960s. At first, I was chagrined. It felt like reading a Jewish version of Peyton Place. The narrator of this story is an unnamed representative who speaks in an omniscient “we.” This voice introduces us to the Metsudat Ram kibbutz, first giving the reader a tour while delving into the contradictions and hopeful intentions of its residents, alluding to a disaster the befell the poet of the kibbutz, and extoling the virtues of gossip. I felt overwhelmed by ennui and too much information.
Slowly I made my way through the novel, being introduced to numerous characters, to the tensions, the scandals, the ways this place works. The poet has two children, who live in a dormitory with all the other kibbutz kids, and whose wife left him and those children to marry a man from Munich. That poet now has a lover who is married to another man. Please, I thought, what is the meaning of all this?
By the end I found out. Basically, life is messy. Communal life is perhaps messier. I have lived communally at times in my life, so I know the truth of that. I have lived and worked with groups who had a strong purpose, who had ideals, who wanted to improve life. I recalled while reading Elsewhere, Perhaps, that communal decisions are made, altered, broken, and reinvented continually with much discussion, with many differing viewpoints trying to come into a consensus while gossip and backbiting run somewhat rampant.
I was left with the understanding of what those early pioneers of a new country faced. Ideals, faith, love, and change are the most difficult things that humans attempt to bring into being. We are still working on it! ...more
I have now read nine novels by this author. Some were better than others, but all were fine for me. The Comedians takes place in 6th book read in 2025
I have now read nine novels by this author. Some were better than others, but all were fine for me. The Comedians takes place in Haiti, presumably in the early 1960s. Three fellows meet on a ship bound for Port au Prince: a former Presidential candidate, a confidence man and our hero, an Englishman who owns a crumbling hotel in the city.
Papa Doc Duvalier and his secret police are in power and life for diplomats as well as for locals is filled with fear and violence. Two of the three men have checkered pasts, while the former Presidential candidate is a vegetarian, an innocent in some ways, so plays the part of a foil to the other two.
It is a rich story with many threads. The writing captures the complex and dangerous scenes. I was struck by how much nothing has changed in Haiti, which is currently run by gangs. Typically for Greene, in the end all hope is lost. As it turned out, he was right. ...more
This was pretty much the best book to read as our new American President was sworn in and the next chapter in Trump World began. 5th book read in 2025
This was pretty much the best book to read as our new American President was sworn in and the next chapter in Trump World began.
The Crack in Space begins amid a presidential campaign with a Black candidate running for the Liberal Republican Party and a white former space explorer running for the Conservative Democrats. Funny. Head-spinning.
The planet is so overpopulated that millions of mostly Black people are being stored in a sort of cryo-sleep. Various solutions to that are on the table, mostly involving sending those sleepers to another planet. When a time travel device, the Jiffi-scuttler, develops a crack, a parallel but ancient world opens. Turns out the inhabitants are prehistoric “Peeks,” a sort of Peking man.
These days when I read the news, as I do just to stay abreast of the madness, I imagine that I am living in a P K Dick novel. The question is, how did he know?...more
I have read lots of Isaac Asimov books. I started with the Foundation trilogy and never stopped. I was a poor science student during my schooling, butI have read lots of Isaac Asimov books. I started with the Foundation trilogy and never stopped. I was a poor science student during my schooling, but I have no trouble reading about science when Asimov is the writer.
Fantastic Voyage was a novelization by Asimov of a screenplay by Harry Kliener, which was based on a story by Otto Klement and Jay Lewis Bixby. I don’t know any of those writers. I don’t even know how Asimov came to write the novel. I am glad he did!
Though my library copy states the reading level to be 13 and up, I was completely entertained and once again in admiration of the author’s ability to make science accessible to me.
A scientist has defected from a Soviet country, presumable the USSR, bringing with him vital data. A general, a colonel and a secret agent are responsible for the scientist’s safe landing. A brain surgeon and his lovely assistant must destroy a blood clot in the scientist’s brain. But to reach said brain, these people must be reduced to a microscopic fraction of their true size, board a miniaturized atomic sub, then be injected into the scientist’s carotid artery. From there they travel through his heart and his inner ear to reach their destination and perform the operation.
I have not seen the movie from which the book was adapted but the writing is so cinematic I feel I have. The political and personal tensions are standard Asimov material. There is also a romantic thread between the agent and the surgeon’s assistant.
I tore through the book is two sittings with a racing pulse. I experienced all the sensations of traveling through a human body while learning many facts about blood, antibodies, etc. What a great tale! ...more
This was Shirely Hazzard’s debut novel. Back in the early 2000s, I read two of her novels. Both were for reading groups. Bay of NooSecond book in 2025
This was Shirely Hazzard’s debut novel. Back in the early 2000s, I read two of her novels. Both were for reading groups. Bay of Noon was her third and I found it dreamy and literary, not great but not bad. The Great Fire was her 5th and final novel. I found that one beautiful and satisfying. It won the National Book Award in 2004.
The Evening of the Holiday is short, and I felt rather bored for the first half. More description than action and the young English woman who is visiting her aunt in Italy just dithers on for days about an older man she met in her aunt’s garden. She keeps meeting up with the man and finally they start an affair. Then she falls in love with him. I can’t say more without it being a spoiler.
I love to read debut novels but sometimes they are not great. Shirley Hazzard kept that descriptive writing skill but managed to include more action and deeper emotion in her later novels ...more