Reading Time

"Until we invent telepathy, 

books are our best choice for understanding

 the rest of humanity."

                               Christopher Paolini     

My reading time has been limited.  I feel like I have been on the go for months.  It has been a good busy, so I can't complain.   My friends know my passion for books so I am often the fortunate recipient of titles they have enjoyed.  These along with the books I bring home are beginning...well, let's just say the stacks are beginning to spread.  Now, this is not a bad thing, and I am not complaining.  You know how I feel, there is no such thing as too many books.

When I left in May, to be with my daughter, I packed my favorite tote with books, (a lot of books) and magazines.  My husband's face showed a little shocked as he lifted the bag up into the car.  I shrugged.  I figured I would have blocks of down time.  Time to begin my summer reading.  What was I thinking?  When I did sit down with a little time, as soon as I opened a book my eyes closed.   When I returned home, that favorite tote,  filled with the same books, traveled with me.  Sadly, all unread with the exception of two.  Okay, full disclosure here, I finished the second the night I returned.

Neither of the books here are what one might think of as  light"summer reading",  though both are beautifully written,  thought provoking and well worth exploring.

"What happens if you're no longer who you believed you were?  What do you do with the knowledge of that?  An what if who you're becoming goes against what you believed about yourself until you won't remember who you were before?"

children and fire is the fourth in the Burgdorf "cycle".   I will be honest with you, I don't like series.  I just don't want to commit to waiting for the the middle (sometimes numerous) and the ending.   This series began with Stones from the River.   Published in 1994, I read it a few years later, and remember it being a favorite.  This was the only one of the four I had read.   I didn't know if I would be lost, having missed an import detail tying the books together.  These books stand alone.

children and fire is a story set mostly in one day.  The day is the first anniversary of the burning of the Parliament building, Reichstag, in Berlin; Hitler and the Third Reich are gaining power and influence.   Using Thekla Jansen, a  compassionate young teacher wanting to protect her students, Hegi draws the disturbing picture of how easily one's beliefs and morals can be manipulated and altered by propaganda and fear.

"Both life and death manifest in every memento of existence.  Our human body appears and disappears moment by moment, without cease, and this ceaseless arising and passing away is what we experience as time and being.  They are not separate.  They are one thing, and in even a fraction of a second, we have the opportunity to choose, and to turn the course of our action either toward the attainment of truth or away from it.  Each instant is utterly critical to the whole world."

I had heard so much about A Tale for the Time Being, it was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, it held a prominent spot on the shelf of a favorite bookstore,  and I wanted to love it.  I wanted it to be the book I couldn't wait to share.  There were so many things I liked about this book,  but I just didn't love it.  

Ruth, a writer living on the Pacific coast, finds a diary packed in a Hello Kitty lunchbox washed ashore.  The diary is written by Nao, a sixteen year old who is forced to move from California to Tokyo, after her father loses his job.  Unable to find her place in her new home,  Nao faces solitude and rejection.  Feeling the only solution is suicide, but she first wants tell her story.   Ruth becomes obsessed with Nao's story and finding out her fate.  I usually enjoy the back and forth of one voice to another, however a couple of times I found it confusing. 

I will admit not being able to give this book my undivided attention, I may have lost a bit of momentum leaving me with an "okay, it was a good book" feeling. 

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I have about four to five weeks of summer vacation left with a lot of reading planned.

I just finished The Borrower, Rebecca Makkai.  We'll talk about it another time.

What's on your reading list?