- Breathing Lessons – Anne Tyler, 1988 – quotes pulled, review tdb
- Flight Behavior – Barbara Kingsolver, 2012 – quotes pulled, review tdb
- Native Son – Richard Wright, 1940 – quotes pulled, review tdb
- The Chemist – Stephenie Meyer, 2016 – Similar insubstantial can’t-stop-reading as The Host but not as good.
The Irish Writers group read two plays this month:
- A Skull in Connemara – Martin McDonagh, 1997 – Super-stereotypically black humor Oirish comedy (like Waking Ned Devine) which feels kind of exploitative/easy but is still very funny. One of my favorite lines: Mairtin asks what the guards were doing at the disco anyway, and Mick replies “Routing out the yobbos who started the bottle fight that the two week girls got taken the night to hospital from.” A reference to Dana singing “All Kinds of Everything” led me to the video.
- Translations – Brian Friel, 1981 – Excellent. I only pulled one quote: when Manus accuses Owen of not accurately translating what Captain Lancey has been saying, Owen responds “‘Uncertainty in meaning is incipient poetry’ – who said that?” I love that and tried to track it down. George Steiner says it in After Babel (1975), and Wikipedia indicates that’s the origin, but the play is set in 1833. Interesting…