Clearly another blog which didn't post when scheduled! Ah well.
This 52 books in 52 weeks challenge, week whatever. I have lost count and had to check the calendar. I have also found it quite hard to keep this up on a weekly basis. Last week I was knackered by Saturday night after a busy week in work. ~The feet are still a bit swollen from my Easter flight home from New York and it was easier to lie with feet on a cushion. Unfortunately there was no greek god to feed me grapes, peeled of course. I am fairly sure though that I'll have read the 52 books by the end of the year. Holiday weekends I do read more and that will keep up the quota.
I have finally finished Nora Webster by Colm Toibin. It wasn't that it was difficult, just life got in the way. After setting down the book, I had to flick through it again to remind myself of some of the detail. It is a lovely book, beautifully written. I always think that Colm Toibin is a very elegant writer. He doesn't need bad language or lots of graphic sex to sell his books, he just tells the story as it is. He has a clever insight into women as well. In both Nora Webster and Brooklyn the main protagonist (isn't that a big word? Miss Lester of A level English would be proud). is a woman and her thought processes and feelings are beautifully captured. Yet, these aren't "women's" books, they can be read be either men or women. They definitely aren't chick lit. Both capture very well the life of a woman in an Ireland, in 1950s Ireland in Brooklyn and the more contemporary 1970s in Nora Webster. In both books the main character struggles to find her place in society.
I don't want to spoil the plot, but Nora is a young widow with a family of two older girls finding their way in the world and two younger boys. The young boys are struggling with the loss of their father and Nora is struggling with the loss of her husband. She wants to hide every time she has a sympathetic visitor, run away. Yet, she knows folk mean well and only want to help. Yet this books is not a weepy by any means, it has is a story of hope and a new beginning. Thank goodness it wasn't weepy as I finished it in the hairdresser's this morning.
This was a book from my book crossing friend, Liz. She has previously reviewed it much more eloquently than I have. (I say that so she will "lend" my her Ann Tyler's A Spool of Blue Thread)
This is the bank holiday weekend in the UK, so no work and lots of reading, hopefully.
Helen
This 52 books in 52 weeks challenge, week whatever. I have lost count and had to check the calendar. I have also found it quite hard to keep this up on a weekly basis. Last week I was knackered by Saturday night after a busy week in work. ~The feet are still a bit swollen from my Easter flight home from New York and it was easier to lie with feet on a cushion. Unfortunately there was no greek god to feed me grapes, peeled of course. I am fairly sure though that I'll have read the 52 books by the end of the year. Holiday weekends I do read more and that will keep up the quota.
I have finally finished Nora Webster by Colm Toibin. It wasn't that it was difficult, just life got in the way. After setting down the book, I had to flick through it again to remind myself of some of the detail. It is a lovely book, beautifully written. I always think that Colm Toibin is a very elegant writer. He doesn't need bad language or lots of graphic sex to sell his books, he just tells the story as it is. He has a clever insight into women as well. In both Nora Webster and Brooklyn the main protagonist (isn't that a big word? Miss Lester of A level English would be proud). is a woman and her thought processes and feelings are beautifully captured. Yet, these aren't "women's" books, they can be read be either men or women. They definitely aren't chick lit. Both capture very well the life of a woman in an Ireland, in 1950s Ireland in Brooklyn and the more contemporary 1970s in Nora Webster. In both books the main character struggles to find her place in society.
I don't want to spoil the plot, but Nora is a young widow with a family of two older girls finding their way in the world and two younger boys. The young boys are struggling with the loss of their father and Nora is struggling with the loss of her husband. She wants to hide every time she has a sympathetic visitor, run away. Yet, she knows folk mean well and only want to help. Yet this books is not a weepy by any means, it has is a story of hope and a new beginning. Thank goodness it wasn't weepy as I finished it in the hairdresser's this morning.
This was a book from my book crossing friend, Liz. She has previously reviewed it much more eloquently than I have. (I say that so she will "lend" my her Ann Tyler's A Spool of Blue Thread)
This is the bank holiday weekend in the UK, so no work and lots of reading, hopefully.
Helen
Ann Tyler waiting with your name on it! I have more Colm Toibin to read - The Empty Family (short stories) and The South. So many books, so little time! X
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