Fight Night

Fight Night by Miriam Toews
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I loved this book. The characterizations leaped alive on the page. I could see the grandmother, the granddaughter and her mother. I want to read all of Miriam Toews's novels. Peppered with priceless humorous bits, sadness and trauma, this little family carries on its days including a singular trip to Fresno, Raisin Capital of the World.

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Things I Don't Want to Know

Things I Don't Want to Know by Deborah Levy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you appreciate Deborah Levy's meandering style and discerning philosophical associations, as I do, you will like this first volume of her memoir trilogy. The books are slim nuggets, perfect for the pocket, and a quick read. The story begins in Majorca on holiday, alternates between recollections of her childhood in Apartheid South Africa when her father is jailed for his politics, fleeing to England as a child, and her parents' separation shadowed by her own marriage end. She questions the way men and women coexist and the possibility, for a woman, of life as an artist.

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I Couldn't Love You More

I Couldn't Love You More by Esther Freud
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I Couldn't Love You More tells of three generations of women, their daughters, and their disappointing men. Alternating between characters and time periods, sometimes frustrating the reader when suspense builds (once or twice I skipped ahead), the middle woman is forced to go to the Catholic home for unwed mothers i.e. like the Irish Magdalen Laundries and gives up her baby for adoption. Once this child grows up, she seeks out the secret story of her mother and tries to find her. The writing is skilled and the story moves along at a good pace. Highly recommended.

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2021 Reading List Recap

2021 on Goodreads by Various
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In my dreamscape, I was assessing my 2021 year in books, thinking how many I shared with some of you (aha-that's how I came up with some of those unusual titles and new publishers like Dorothy). So many of the same titles Fionnuala read, I too could do a biographical pattern, yet I do enjoy biographies and memoirs. These Goodreads connections add much meat to my bibliophilism and I wish you all the best reading year yet in 2022. My 65 books list was better than past challenges, mostly due to insomnia over the pandemic. A Ghost in the Throat was my favorite novel. For once, my Read list exceeds my Want to Read List but not by many. I was most proud of reading and enjoying Moby-Dick or, the Whale, one of over a million on Goodreads who did. Other highlights and top ratings went to a reread of Housekeeping, and newer books: Hamnet Essential Ruth Stone, (poetry), The Waves, The Promise,Intimacies, and The Copenhagen Trilogy: Childhood; Youth; Dependency. Something New Under the Sun was not for me--dystopian stories rarely are and I felt Great Circle needed a tough editor. I particularly enjoyed the D H Lawrence non-fiction in tandem with Second Place and the memoirs of Abigail Thomas, Anatole Broyard, and Three Simple Lines: A Writer's Pilgrimage into the Heart and Homeland of Haiku and Mary Morris, plus biosThe Life She Wished to Live: A Biography of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, author of The Yearling and Sybille Bedford: A Life. I got a kick out of the Backlist.fm title The Bloater. Secrets of Happiness,Unsettled Ground, A Lie Someone Told You about Yourself and Should We Stay or Should We Go All contributed to contented reading during the losses of 2021.

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