July 2015 Reading List

Some excellent reads this month:

1. The Magician's Land by Lev Grossman
2. Walk Me Home by Catherine Ryan Hyde
3. The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin
4. The Bloodletter's Daughter by Linda Lafferty
5. Accordion Crimes by E Annie Proulx

So after really enjoying Magician King a couple of months ago I couldn't wait to get into the third and final book in the series.  Grossman has truly created a unique world and painted many memorable characters in it.  It sometimes seems that he is re-visiting every character from the first book (in particular) and the second book in order to round out everything in the story but for me this was fine because I read the first book a lot longer ago and needed the reminders.  Over the course of the series and particularly in this last book we see that the kids that started out in the beginning have finally come of age and are realizing the full responsibility of becoming an adult.  This is really a great series and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys the magic genre.

I've read other books by Catherine Ryan Hyde and probably enjoyed them more than Walk Me Home.  I was waiting for the "shock" moment in this book and it didn't really come.  It all just unrolled itself somewhat predictably.  Still there are always elements of these books that delight and that's why I enjoy them (e.g. the girls' insistence on keeping a record of everything they obtain unscrupulously so that they can go back later and pay them back).

I love Toibin's prose.  Every word seems so perfectly selected.  Mary recounts her life as she nears her passing and explores the events around her son's life like a loving mother would.  We could more easily believe this telling of events than any other account because of that mother's love shining through.  Wonderful.

Not so much with Bloodletter's Daughter.  I like historical fiction because I get to benefit from the research an author has conducted to let us glimpse into a time and place that we're not familiar with.  On that score this book does well.  But I felt that the ravings of the king's mad son were overwrought and went on far longer than was necessary.  The king's brother seemed to be added to the story to give some context but not enough to be a player in the outcome, which history clearly tells us.  On balance though there was enough fascination of events for me to make me read about events on Wikipedia and that tipped the balance to enable me to finish the book.

Accordion Crimes follows the "fortunes" of one particular accordion from it's original maker's life and migration to America through to its eventual ignominious demise over 100 years later.  The lives of many different American immigrants are told through the exchange of the accordion's ownership from migrant to migrant.  I couldn't figure out if possession of the accordion was a curse on the owner or not as each one seemed to come to an unfortunate end (I have a new horror of Recluse spiders).  But certainly it has not been easy for many folks who have made their lives in America.  This book tells their stories and they are worth reading.

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