Pathetic. It's been an eternity since I last posted. What have I read? Ah, yes. We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates. What an amazing book--one of my all-time favorites. Instead of posting here, I dropped a line to Oprah in an attempt to get on the show discussing it, but alas...I thought I might bring a probably underappreciated aspect of the book to the fore--the role of pets and the love of animals, particularly the importance of these in the healing of psychological wounds. It was gratifying to learn from an essay on the Oprah site that Oates has particular fondness for this book among all those in her vast oeuvre, and that one of the most moving pet situations in the novel was based on a real event in her life. I'm eager to read some other novels of hers that have been highly praised, especially Because It Is Bitter and Because It Is My Heart and You Must Remember This.
Next, for our book group, I read a hugely enjoyable book that made me laugh until I cried in several places: A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson. I almost missed reading this, because, as sometimes happens, it wasn't the kind of book I was in the mood for when time for the group rolled around. But very fortunately, I was out with some group members right before the scheduled discussion, and after hearing them rave about it, I had to read it. Good humor writing is a rare and wonderful thing. I went on to check out another Bryson from the library, but it slipped out of the queue when in the same trip I found Helen DeWitt's The Last Samurai. I still have that one by my bed, and I understand why many reviewers have said it's a delightful and ambitious intellectual romp, but I abandoned it after a goodly number of pages. I'm a strong candidate to love it--I know Japanese, which plays a bit of a role in it, and I do love the premise, of having the Seven Samurai be a brilliant fatherless son's role models, but it just wasn't what I needed to be reading right then or something. I'm not sure I'll get back to it this time around. Maybe after a friend reads it and praises it and I'm in a different mood I'll give it another try.
I went from the samurai to a book that two trusted recommenders spoke very highly of: The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell. It didn't grab me immediately by any means, but finally one day the story clicked with me and I got hooked. I'll probably finish it in a day or two. What surprises me about it, though, especially considering how highly recommended it came, is that it's pretty depressing. Or at least very very sad. It's pretty clear from the beginning that something awful has happened. I keep hoping against hope that that won't prove to be true--there has to be something uplifting here--but I'm not getting it so far. I do love the characters and care about them, and I think the writing is very good, imaginative and intelligent.
I did finally finish listening to the Dinesen bio. It was riveting to the end, and my fascination with her is endless. I thought a good follow-up listen would be Dinesen's own Out of Africa, and it's good, but I have to say that Beryl Markham's West with the Night strikes me as far better. Maybe it's just that having seen the movie of OOA twice and read the bio, there's not enough new in it to take my breath away. I may read the other Dinesen bio soon--I'll post the title and author later because they escape me right now.