2017 MMD Reading Challenge Update

This week I updated my chart for the 2017 Modern Mrs. Darcy Reading Challenge. With the year almost halfway over, I’ve read 10 books (well, maybe a couple more, but they either didn’t fit the challenge or were a second for a particular category). Honestly, this list is probably only interesting to me, but here you go anyway.

The Color Code:

Red = a book chosen for the category. I don’t have it yet. Subject to change.

Blue = a book chosen for the category that I own or have checked out from the library.

Green = what I’m currently reading.

Black = This category is complete! 

Reading for Growth
Category	Book 1	Book 2
Newbery Award Winner or Honor Book	The Graveyard Book, Gaiman
Translated Book	The Sound of Things Falling, Juan G. Vasquez
Poetry, Play or Essay Collection	The Impossible Will Take A Little While
More than 600 Pages
Any Genre: Current Event Theme	Strangers Drowning, Larissa MacFarquhar
Immigrant Story	Girl in Translation, Jean Kwok
Published Before 1960	Pale Horse, Pale Rider, Katherine Anne Porter	The Awakening, Kate Chopin
3 Books by the same Author	Trigger Warning, Neil Gaiman	Anansi Boys
#ownvoices or #diversebooks author	This is Where it Ends, Marieke Nijkamp
Unreliable narrator or ambiguous ending	Brief Life of Oscar Wao
Nominated for award in 2017	check shopping list on amazon for ….	2017 Pen America Literary finalists
Pulitzer Prize or National Book Award Winner	Gilead, Marilynne Robinson	All the Light We Cannot See*
Reading for Fun
Chose for the cover	Girl With the Lower Back Tattoo, A. Schumer
Un-put-downable
Set somewhere I’ve never been
I’ve already read it	The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
Book about books or reading	Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, Anne Fadiman
Genre I Usually avoid	What Women Fear, Angie Smith
I’m Dying to Read it	Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead
Backlist of Favorite New Author
Recommended by Someone with great taste	All the Light We Cannot See, A. Doerr
Excited to buy or borrow but hadn’t read	Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance
Topic or Subject I already Love	Blessings, Anna Quindlan (Audio)
Juicy Memoir	Not My Father’s Son, Alan Cumming	Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo*

Book Review: Gilead

2017 Reading Challenge: Reading for Growth

A Pulitzer Prize or National Book Award Winner

For this category, I chose Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 2005.

Gilead, set in Gilead, Iowa, begins as a letter by John Ames, an elderly pastor, to his young son to provide his son with the legacy of a father that he will not have the opportunity to know well. The story continues as this letter throughout with only breaks between subjects or writing sessions. More than just a letter of wisdom handed down to this son, Gilead becomes a journey of a life well examined as Ames is confronted with reconciling his relationship with the adult son of his best friend in the present day as he recounts his memories of the past.

This epistolary novel (a novel written as a series of documents) forces the reader to slow down and let the words of the good pastor work their way into your heart. Without flash and fast-paced drama, it surprised me by becoming a book I couldn’t put down.

Ames does not shy away from revealing his struggles and flaws, giving the reader a fully developed (maybe even more than fully developed) character. Gilead felt more like the memoir of an actual person than fiction and that explains my liking it so much.

 

Book Report: Pale Horse, Pale Rider

2017 Reading Challenge: Reading for Growth

A Book Published Before I was Born

I have so many books hanging around the house that were published before I was born, so the only hard part was choosing one I hadn’t read before. I chose Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter, a collection of 3 novellas published in 1939, 1937 and 1936 respectively. Well before I was born!

After reading her bio in my favorite resource, I was surprised that I had not ever heard of her. In college, I earned, by accident, an English minor, and I was drawn to the literature of 20th century American writers. She has written only one novel, Ship of Fools, and was far better known for her short stories and essays which might help explain the gap in my knowledge.

All three of the novellas were completely different, but focused on similar themes of life and death, morality, and what society expected as acceptable behavior. The first, Old Mortality, was my least favorite. This story was told through the point of view of two sisters, Miranda and Maria, but focused on the story of their late Aunt Amy and her widower, Uncle Gabriel and how the entire family seemed to compare all others’ behavior using Amy and Gabriel as the standard.

In the last novella, Pale Horse, Pale Rider we again encounter Miranda, this time about 6 years after the end of Old Mortality. She is 24 years old, a society reporter who has just fallen in love with Adam, a soldier about to head off to Europe in World War I. During their whirlwind romance, Miranda feels she is becoming ill, but does not want to miss a minute of time with Adam. Funeral processions are a constant sight when they are out and about, as the story takes place during the 1918 flu pandemic. Surrounded by those dying of the flu at home, and the boys dying in the war abroad, death is constantly on Miranda’s mind, and she has indeed come down with the flu.

Porter’s descriptions of both Miranda’s dreams and her hallucinations when she is ill are vivid and dark, and compelling. In all 3 novellas, Porter writes with careful detail, letting the reader know exactly how the characters are dressed, their surroundings, etc. This did not detract from the stories. After reading the collection, I was drawn into the setting and stories and would call them page-turners.

My favorite, and also the darkest novella, was the middle story, Noon Wine, which surprisingly has very little to do with any alcohol until near the end. This is the story of the Thompson family, Royal Earle and Ellie and their two sons Arthur and Herbert and life on their small south Texas dairy farm. The story begins in 1896 when Olaf Helton, a Swede from North Dakota comes to the farm asking for a job. He is a quiet, strange fellow who never tells the Thompsons his story, and Mr. Thompson frankly doesn’t care because Helton is such a great worker, increasing profits and the quality of life for the family for 9 years until his past catches up with him which is, of course, when the pedal hits the metal and the story comes to a disturbing resolution.

Reading a book published before a reader was born (in my case 1960) gives a reader a glimpse into life decades before one’s own and reveals that those lives were not so different than our own when stripped down to basic themes of humanity. There is also opportunity, when reading older books, to stretch your reading and writing skills with the different styles of writing you might encounter.

 

 

Book Report: All the Light We Cannot See (no spoilers)

The Modern Mrs. Darcy 2017 Reading Challenge has begun and my first book was not the one I originally said would be first, but one falling in the Reading for Fun Group: a book recommended by someone with great taste. All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr.

This book was recommended to me a while ago by my friend with great taste in books, Julie. I had it on hold at my library, so when it became available, I scooped it up, and put the other book aside for later. All the Light won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2015 so it fits in that category, but at least right now, in the very beginning, I don’t want to have any books doing double category duty. We’ll see how I feel about that in December.

Read this book. It has scene after scene after scene of beautiful writing and a compelling story. The story takes place during World War II and alternates between the story of a blind French girl whose mother is dead and father that takes care of her, and a young German orphan boy who lives with his sister and other orphans under the care of Frau Elena. Orphanage would be too grand a word for the place they live.

There is almost no way to say any more about the story without spoiling it, as each little nugget of information has meaning and purpose. If you want to see what I mean, you will just have to read it.