April 2022 books read

  • The Dispossessed – Ursula K. LeGuin, 1974. Amherst College slow read group. I was the only one who’d read it before (multiple times) and it was fascinating to go through with non-SF readers. Quotes pulled, TBD.
  • À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs – Marcel Proust, 1913. Two friends from the Amherst slow read group and I are tackling all of À la recherche du temps perdu fifty pages at a time, and we are absolutely loving the experience! Quotes pulled, TBD.
  • The Final Day – William R. Forstchen, 2017. I should have stopped, but I read through the third in this “After” trilogy. This has a bit more plot than the second, with a “big twist,” but ehh…
  • Breakfast With Buddha– Roland Merullo, 2007. This was recommended by a book group friend and I was intrigued, but I didn’t read any background so it took me a while to settle into what genre it was even trying for. Good Reads reviewers reference Mitch Albom and Robert Pirsig – there’s a lot of room between those two and I guess this is in there somewhere. Not successful as a novel IMO, but not bad as a spiritual journey. Some of the images, especially the pinch of dirt clouding a glass of water until time lets it settle, really stuck with me.
  • Never Cry Wolf – Farley Mowat, 1963. Quotes pulled, TBD.
  • How to Meditate: A Practical Guide to Making Friends with Your Mind – Pema Chödrön, 2008. Pretty good. I’ve been doing a short practice (using Insight Timer) for several years now, but I’m still a beginner and find going back to the basics helpful. Coincidentally I’d been researching eyes-open meditation, and Chödrön recommends it “because it furthers this idea of wakefulness. We are not meditating in hopes of going further into sleep.”
  • The Horse and His Boy – C. S. Lewis, 1954. Re-read for #Narniathon21.
  • Wed Wabbit – Lissa Evans, 2017. I saw a more recent Evans recommended – maybe on a Twitter thread on “the book you’d most like to read again for the first time”? – and checked this one out because it was in the library holdings. Middle grade humorous fantasy – not as funny as promised on the jacket copy, but well-done and a pleasant read.
  • The Metamorphoses – Ovid, 8 AD (tr. Allan Mandelbaum, 1993) – quotes pulled, TBD