Favorite Books In April: Thursday's Reflection

One of my mottoes is to "Shop the house." I do that when I change tabletop vignettes or furniture arrangements for a new season or just because I am bored. What do I already have that I can use in a different way? What is hiding in a cupboard that will be fun to display now? How about switching locations of a chair? Maybe that is just what I need for a new and fresh look.

When it comes to reading this past month, I have also been shopping the house. Since I have not been able to browse in bookstores or the library, I have been shopping our bookshelves, and, trust me, there are more than enough books I have not yet read. My own personal TBR--to be read--collection. 

Here's a sample of books--all fiction, for I seem to need to read fiction more these days than nonfiction--I have read in April. 

1.    Beartown by Frederik Bachman who wrote A Man Called Ove. The setting is a town obsessed with hockey, but this is not just about hockey or I would have put it down within the first few pages. Instead it is packed with insights into human motivations and responses to conflicts and expectations. The small town, down on its luck, sees a winning hockey team as its ticket for revival, but when its young star player is accused of a serious wrongdoing, no one is untouched. I thought it was a bit longer than it needed to be, but I am glad I read it.

2.     Lessons from Yellowstone by Diane Smith. I have no idea what led me originally to this slim novel, but I am so glad I finally read it, for it is charming. I have always enjoyed epistolary novels like 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff or The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Annie Barrows and Mary Ann Shaffer or Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher, and this one is no exception. The main characters, including a young female medical student, are scientists and naturalists on a working expedition to Yellowstone National Park in 1898. I thoroughly enjoyed the descriptions of the flora and fauna, but also the characters' personalities and the controversies about the future of the region. 

3.     A Piece of the World by Christina Baker Klein. You may know this author for one of her earlier books, Orphan Train, which I have never read, but now I plan to do so, for I enjoyed her never heavy, but always fresh descriptive writing style. This is a novel about Christina Hathorne, who was the model for Andrew Wyeth's perhaps most famous painting, "Christina's World." He figures in the story, but the book is more about her and how she lived with a significant disability. 

4.      The Spectator Bird by Wallace Stegner. My husband names Stegner's Crossing to Safety as one of his favorite books of all time, a book he has read more than once. I love that book, too, and also really liked Angle of Repose and Big Rock Candy Mountain, which is why The Spectator Bird landed on our shelves, I am sure. The main character in this book is a 70 year old man, a retired literary agent, who is a bit soured on his life, at least this stage of life when he feels the effects of aging and arthritis. At his wife's request, he begins reading aloud a journal written twenty years earlier when they spent several months in Denmark. I don't think I would have appreciated this book when I was younger, but now I better understand some of his struggles and his regrets and his perspectives. Not his best book--and I had to look up the meaning of a number of words, which is not the worst thing,--but I love the way he goes deeply and widely into a subject. 

5.     The Betrayal by Helen Dunmore. This is a chilling look at 1942 Stalinist Soviet Union. The main character, Andrei, is a physician and his wife, Anna, a nursery school teacher. Andrei is forced to treat the child of a high-ranking secret police officer, and no, the implications of that are not good. Dunmore has written many books, and I intend to explore her more. 

I will continue to shop my shelves, but I was just able to pick up from the library a couple books I have requested, and I will read those first. Two memoirs: Joy Enough by Sarah McColl and Bleaker House by Nell Stevens. Plus, while taking a walk the other day I found a real treat in a Little Free Library, a book that has been on my TBR list for a long time, The Likeness by Tana French. And, finally, for our May book group I will read Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders, which is finally in paperback.

Happy Reading!

An Invitation
What have you been reading lately? Any recommendations? I would love to know.