Beach Reads

So here's what I read at the beach...

I finished off Bridge of Sighs, by Richard Russo. This became book #76 of the year. I enjoyed it very much. It's set in upstate New York, familiar Russo territory, but also Italy. The Kayla plotline felt a bit tacked on to me, but maybe that's because I was trying to finish it in the car on the way to the beach and got a bit carsick...

I read the first part of The Doctor's Wife. I think I've read this before, or at least started it, but I quit reading it when I realized I was spending all my energy thinking, "Have I read this or not? And if I have, why is only some of it sounding familiar? And where would I have found it?" and none of my energy actually paying attention to the story. (I don't want to mischaracterize the book, not being sure I even finished it the first time, but how boring that anyone who is against abortion is shown to be stupid, clueless, and perhaps deranged as well.)

I read several past issues of the New Yorker. This was an amazing article, about a Muslim sheltering a Jew during the Second World War. I also enjoyed a little article on diaries, which you can read here. A quote: "In a diary, the trivial and inconsequential - the 'woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head' pieces - are not trivial and inconsequential at all; they are defining features of the genre. If it doesn't contain a lot of dross, it's not a diary. It's something else - a journal, or a writer's notebook, or a blog (blather is not the same as dross)." This article on the digitization of knowledge was wonderful, and included this quote which I believe fully: "Sixty million Britons have a hundred and sixteen million public-library books at their disposal, while more than 1.1 billion Indians have only thirty-six million. Poverty, in other words, is embodied in lack of print as well as lack of food." Also read lots of articles about the environment that convinced me that wherever our planet is going, we must certainly be in a handbasket.

I also read, as book #77 (and it's starting to look like it will be the last) of the year, Wallace Stegner's wonderful All the Little Live Things. I had read one Stegner book in college and I will definitely look for more.

Here's something I just read this morning to finish up this end-of-the-year reading post: children's book characters make New Year's resolutions.