Jane A Jones' desultory reading

Just a place to keep track of books I read this year:

1. E.L. Doctorow, World's Fair, American, novel, 1985:
2. Robert Hough, The Final Confession of Mabel Stark: A Novel, Canadian, American, biographical novel, 2001: 1/2
3. Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys, American, British, novel, 2005: 1/2
4. Liz Murray, Breaking Night, American, memoir/atobiography, 2010: 1/2
5. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Purple Hibiscus, Nigerian, novel, 2003: 1/2
6. Vivek Shanberg, Chachar Chochar, Indian, novella, trans, Srinath Perur, 2013: 1/2
7. Margeret Atwood, The Year of the Flood, Canadian, novel, science fiction, 2009: 1/2 ,
8. Mary Trump, Too Much and Never Enough, American, psycho-biography, 2020: 1/2
9. Alice Hoffmann, Illumination Night, American, novel, 1987:

Can we watch? Pretty please? :-) ETA: It's been a long time since I've read a Doctorow, maybe Billy Bathgate in '89 or '90 (BOMC, probably)

Nice to see your thread pop up. 🙂

Just downloaded "World's Fair."

I adore World's Fair. I always say New York Jews can trace their literary lineage—you can be Woody Allen Jews, for instance, or Neil Simon Jews, and my family, at least on my mom's side, were E.L. Doctorow Jews. My mom was born right around the same time as Doctorow, same neighborhood, and I've seen wonderful footage (oh, where is it now?) of her and her cousins at the 1939 World's Fair.

Hm, me thinks your list needs a catch-up. Inquiring minds (aka nosy LTers) want to know what you've been reading!

OK -- more books, but still pretty slow reading:

10. Jacqueline Woodson, Another Brooklyn, American, novel, 2016:
11. Bradford Morrow, Prague Sonata, American, novel, 2018: 1/2
12. Alice Hoffman, American, novel, 2010: 1/2
13. Sofia Segovia, The Murmur of Bees, trans. Simon Bruni, Mexican, novel, 2015/2018:

>13 janeajones: Nice to see you here, Jane. That last book and your rating caught my eye, so I hurried off to read some reviews. What did you think, though?

Lois -- I thought it was enchanting. Best book I've read this year. It's beautifully written, even via translation, and I learned quite a lot about early 20th c Mexican history.
Prague Sonata was also fascinating -- lots of twists and turns and a mystery to be solved.

Hi there! I am happy to see you here. Thanks for sharing your reading. Please continue to do so.

I also read Doctorow many years ago--Ragtime, which I read with some of my 8th grade students. I just ordered World's Fair for my Kindle.

>9 janeajones: Oh, dear, it might be a must-have. Re: the Bradford Morrow crime novel; have you read any of his others? Just thinking that if I chase down the one....

14. Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, trans. Antonia Lloyd-Jones, Polish, novel, 2009, 2018

Glorious lyrical writing.

"For people of my age, the places that they truly loved and to which they once belonged are no longer there. The places of their childhood and youth have ceased to exist, the villages where they went on holiday, the parks with uncomfortable benches where their first loves blossomed, the cities, cafes and houses of their past. And if their outer form has been preserved, it's all the more painful, like a shell with nothing inside it anymore. I have nowhere to return to. It's like a state of imprisonment. The walls of the cell are the horizon of what I can see. Beyond them exists a world that's alien to me. So for people like me the only possible is here and now, for every future is doubtful, everything yet to come is barely sketched and uncertain, like a morage that can be destroyed by the slightest twitch of the air."

>11 avaland: I've not read any of his other books. Sorry.

That's a lovely quote from Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Jane. I really need to get to this novel, or one of the two other books I own by her, Flights and House of Day, House of Night.

>12 janeajones: I have one more of hers to read, I think. Or possibly two (ha! I see Darryl has the same others that I have. Maybe this will be the year!)

Hope you will be posting in 2021, Jane. I want a front row seat (preferably on the aisle)

>12 janeajones: What a quote, and how painful. I will be reading Tokarczuk in the year ahead.

Have you read anything else by her, and if so, how does this one compare?