Check out my new favourite thing:
I know… it’s awesome, right?! Keeps me hydrated AND offers sage advice.
Three more books for Reading Bingo this month:
A book with a one-word title:
Andersonville, by MacKinlay Kantor
(Paperback, 766 pages, published September 1, 1993 by Plume (first published 1955))
3 stars
Winner of the 1956 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Andersonville has been described as the definitive book of the Civil War. Let me tell ya, this ain’t no Gone with the Wind. (By the way, my mom and anyone who knew me as a teenager were wondering how it is I’ve had a book blog for nine months and not yet mentioned Gone with the Wind! Well, there you go.) Andersonville is the informal name for Camp Sumter, a prisoner-of-war camp in the heart of the Confederacy. The book tells the tragic story of Andersonville from different points of view – neighbouring families, guards, prisoners, commanders, camp doctors – and alternates between a narrative storyline (which I liked reading) and a more fragmented, almost stream-of-consciousness style (which I didn’t like reading). The conditions at the camp were particularly brutal, partly because of severe scarcity of resources during wartime, partly because of ignorance, and partly because the Confederates just really, really, really hated the Union soldiers. (The prison was designed to hold 10,000 men, but at its peak held 33,000, with a mortality rate of 28%.) The novel, written after 25 years of research, unveils the horrors that went on inside the stockade walls. The beginning part of the book was very good, as was the end, but there came a point in the middle where there was almost too much of everything; the barbarity was no longer shocking, and reading about it was almost tedious. The book may have been more impactful for me if it had been smaller, a bit narrower in scope. Andersonville is now a National Historic Site, which includes the military prison site and the National Prisoner of War museum. Next time I am in Georgia, I will pay a visit.
A book your friend loves:
For Joshua: An Ojibway Father Teaches His Son, by Richard Wagamese
(Paperback, 240 pages, published September 9, 2003 by Anchor Canada)
5 stars
This one was a recommendation from someone very dear to me – she’s not just my friend, she’s my mom! Hi Mom! We both love whatever we’ve read by Wagamese, and she’d mentioned this one several times in conversation. Wagamese is truly an amazing writer, and here he tells his life story and spiritual journey, together with fables that are the teachings of his people. It’s beautiful, and sad.
A book with a number in the title:
The Last Hundred Days, by Patrick McGuinness
(Paperback, 384 pages, published May 22, 2012 by Bloomsbury USA)
4 stars
This is the first book I’ve read about Romania. I really liked the book, but honestly, it didn’t make me want to go there. The place is probably lovely now, but The Last Hundred Days is set in 1989, and Bucharest comes across as grey, and bleak, and terrifying. The reign of Nicolae Ceausescu is almost at an end, but in the meantime a young British professor newly arrived must navigate the ins and outs of life under a totalitarian regime, where nothing is as it seems. That goes double for pretty much every character in the novel. This one’s a bit of a thriller, but in an understated sort of way, not an over-the-top Hollywood sort of way.
Almost done… only TWO MORE SQUARES to go!!
To-read-pile count: 14. I was so close to getting it down to single digits, and then September happened, with its new releases and fantastic author events. (Thank you, David Mitchell, Ben Lerner and Ian McEwan!) It’s only going to get worse in October.