- The Reservoir Tapes by Jon McGregor
(2017). This is a sort of sequel to McGregor's previous novel, Reservoir 13, published the same year, which is about what happens in a small English town after a 13-year-old girl goes missing. But the New Yorker assured me that the two books can stand alone. So I read this collection of -- what would you call them? Are they stories? The first one is supposed to be an interview with the mother of the missing girl, but her answers aren't shown -- you only see the interviewer's questions. It's quite funny how much you can figure out from them. The book isn't funny, though, it's creepy. At the end of the 15 -- interviews? -- you still have no idea what happened to Rebecca, though you have some suspicions. It was a good book, though, very well done. Supposedly it was commissioned by the BBC and performed on the radio. It is meant as a companion to the first book. So I decided to read the first book...
Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor (2017). This book begins by telling the same story as Tapes, but goes on to describe each of the 12 years after the year in which the 13-year-old girl vanishes. Each chapter after the first one begins with the words, "At midnight when the year turned..." and each chapter ends with some discussion of Christmas activities in the village. Over the course of 12 years you learn a lot about many of the residents of the village as they grow and change, are born and die. You also learn something about the animal and plant life of the area. You don't learn much about the missing girl, though. I actually liked Tapes better -- it was more exciting. So maybe you should read this book first. I don't know. They're both good. And they can, in fact, stand alone. - The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper by Roland Allen (2023). Oh, my goodness. So, I was very interested to read this book, because I have always loved notebooks. But it was so boring! Roland Allen sure did his homework, in fact, he went way above and beyond, and he felt the need to share with us Every Single Thing he found out about the history of notebooks. Occasionally it would get interesting. The chapter about Isaac Newton's notebooks was fun. But I thought I would never get to the end of this thing. It was such a relief to finish it. It took me 12 days!
In May I planned to read some more books off the New York Times list by authors with last names beginning with G and H. There were four books that fit into that category and I read one of them (and tried to read another).
- Exit West
by Mohsin Hamid
(2017). This sounded intriguing: two young people in a Muslim country
being overrun by militants escape through a mysterious door to the more
democratic West. And it was. It was a really great book until Saeed and
Nadia go through the door to England, and then it turned into, I don't
know, a boring book about refugee problems with unrealistic solutions.
Seriously, the first half of the book was excellent and the second half
wasn't (although there were a few good bits). Very odd.
- The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst (2004). I wanted to read this because the author previously wrote a novel called The Swimming-Pool Library, which I had previously wanted to read because what a great title, but I never got around to it. So, The Line of Beauty is very well-written, but it's a novel of manners, not my favorite type. It's also very graphically about what it was like to be a young gay man in England in the 1980s, and it just depresses me. Right now, on May 31st at 5:30 pm, I have read 194 pages out of 438. I may or may not finish it -- I'll give it a few more days.
So I've now read only 41 of the books on the list of the top 100. Still aiming for (at least) 50 by the end of the year.
My other reading this month consisted mainly of Patriot: A Memoir by Alexei Navalny, which I finished this morning at the Detroit airport, while waiting for my plane. It was interesting, compelling, and in the end heartbreaking. So inspiring. I think everyone trying to grapple with the horrors of the Trump administration should read this book. No, Trump is not as bad as Putin, but the thing is that he would like to be. That's his goal. This book is very educational.
I also read Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, because Teen A had to read it for Language Arts (I read it aloud to him; Rocket Boy listened too). That was pretty interesting, about this idealistic young man who accidentally dies in the Alaska wilderness. And I read Hair Raising: Beauty, Culture, and African American Women by Noliwe M. Rooks (the girl who was at my Guatemalan language school back in 1988). It wasn't brilliant, but it was interesting.
Next month
In June I will try to read two more books from "Briefly Noted" and try to read a couple more from the NY Times list, focusing on the letters "I" and "J." And the book for the book group. And I will once again try to read FDR by Jean Edward Smith. I now own a copy, so I have no excuse.
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