Nancy's Page
Of reading and books
July 20, 2012
Here's a list of "The Top 100 Books of All Time," published on The Guardian (the British newspaper) website. The list was compiled of "books nominated by writers from around the world, from Things Fall Apart to Mrs Dalloway, and from Pride and Prejudice to Don Quixote," which the site deemed "the greatest book of all time." My brother Guy, who sent me the link, thinks "it's a pretty good list." What do you think?
July 6, 2012
After reading LaVerne's recommendation of African writer Uwem Akpan's book, Say You're One of Them, as an example of "a book that makes me think about it and talk about it long after I've finished reading it," I decided to download it to my iPad--and I devoured it. I loved the book's vivid descriptions and dialogue and appreciated the writer's lack of sentimentality in telling heart-wrenching stories of kids living in various African countries today. I join LaVerne in recommending this book.
Next, I'm going to take Muriel's recommendation and read Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, another book that the BookBabes read before I returned to the book club as a member.
And I've downloaded the Spanish-language version of The Shadow of the Wind--or, as it's named in Spanish, La sombra del viento--to read instead of the English version, provided I can get through it (and understand it) by August 6. The really cool thing about reading a Spanish-language book on my iPad's Kindle app is that I can touch any word as I read and a Spanish dictionary (installed just as an English dictionary is) will provide me with that word's definition--in Spanish. It's soooo cool!
Here's a list of "The Top 100 Books of All Time," published on The Guardian (the British newspaper) website. The list was compiled of "books nominated by writers from around the world, from Things Fall Apart to Mrs Dalloway, and from Pride and Prejudice to Don Quixote," which the site deemed "the greatest book of all time." My brother Guy, who sent me the link, thinks "it's a pretty good list." What do you think?
July 6, 2012
After reading LaVerne's recommendation of African writer Uwem Akpan's book, Say You're One of Them, as an example of "a book that makes me think about it and talk about it long after I've finished reading it," I decided to download it to my iPad--and I devoured it. I loved the book's vivid descriptions and dialogue and appreciated the writer's lack of sentimentality in telling heart-wrenching stories of kids living in various African countries today. I join LaVerne in recommending this book.
Next, I'm going to take Muriel's recommendation and read Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, another book that the BookBabes read before I returned to the book club as a member.
And I've downloaded the Spanish-language version of The Shadow of the Wind--or, as it's named in Spanish, La sombra del viento--to read instead of the English version, provided I can get through it (and understand it) by August 6. The really cool thing about reading a Spanish-language book on my iPad's Kindle app is that I can touch any word as I read and a Spanish dictionary (installed just as an English dictionary is) will provide me with that word's definition--in Spanish. It's soooo cool!
May 25, 2012
The same brother Guy mentioned in my previous entry (below) told me about a book review he'd seen recently on the PBS News Hour. He thought it might be of interest to the BookBabes. View the review of Crossing the Borders of Time by Leslie Maitland here:
Watch 'Crossing the Borders of Time:' A Tale of Love Amid WWII on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.
December 2, 2011
Yesterday, my brother Guy sent the following email to his six sibs and a slew of other family members:
This strategy--passing up the writing of one's own era in favor of classical literature--was one we learned at our father's knee. He didn't follow his own advice in maturity, but he must have fed on a diet of classics as a boy and young man because he seemed to have read them all. As I was growing up, however, I witnessed his gluttonous consumption of detective, Western, and mystery novels as well as assorted histories, especially those related to the Southwest. The image of him that comes most readily to my mind is of him in his reading chair, smoke from his cigarette curling up toward the lamp at his shoulder, his attention on his book blocking out the boisterous family life around him. I followed my father's advice as I grew up, reading many of the classics--War and Peace, Madame Bovary, Les Miserables, The Odyssey, The Iliad, Pilgrim's Progress, David Copperfield, Wuthering Heights, Anna Karenina, The Great Gatsby, The Stranger, The Sound and the Fury, Lord of the Flies, Catcher in the Rye and many more of that caliber--in my teenage year and early 20s. I know doing so pumped up my vocabulary and my pride at being well and widely read. At this (advanced) stage of my life, however, I wonder how much more understanding I could extract from those books if I were to read them now. |