Random Harvest – James Hilton, 1941. Preposterous but I liked reading it again. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the movie, but I love Greer Garson (and Ronald Colman!) so will put it on my to-watch-someday list.
The Pole – J. M. Coetzee, 2023. Second Monday selection which I didn’t care for much, and didn’t mark up much either. The female protagonist attended Mount Holyoke for two years; I looked up tumbet, a regional Majorcan dish; and the (deluded? but romantic and touching) male protagonist says: “An ordinary life side by side—that is what I want. For always. The next life too, if there is another life. But if not, okay, I accept. If you say no, not for the rest of life, just for this week—okay, I accept that too. For just a day even. For just a minute. A minute is enough. What is time? Time is nothing. We have our memory. In memory there is no time. I will hold you in my memory.”
Ballroom of the Skies – John D. MacDonald, 1952. MacDonald’s second SF novel and second attempt to explain why humans are self-destructive (equally improbably, but it’s an interesting pairing with Ira Levin’s This Perfect Day.) A re-read, but I hope it’s for the last time. I don’t mind being pulled to comfort reading, but I could try harder to limit it to books that I think are actually great and not just familiar.
Starship Troopers – Robert Heinlein, 1959. Here’s another case in point. I re-read this because we briefly mentioned the movie at the Far Out Film group. Heinlein is one of my “I wish I could quit you” writers (which I’ve also described as “love-them-despite-their flaws“), but this is one I like the least. Maybe don’t need to read again? Maybe?
Where the Water Goes: Life and Death along the Colorado River – David Owen, 2017. Nature/Enviro selection; quotes TBD.
The Girl, the Gold Watch, and Everything – John D. MacDonald, 1962. I definitely don’t need to read this ever again. The Fermata by Nicholson Baker is the same idea, so maybe it was somewhat influential, but it feels tedious and the characters are unbelievable. Especially Bonny Lee Beaumont, who is memorable (Pam Dawber played her in the movie adaptation – good casting!) but not in a good way. Sample of her dialogue: “I got to be a woman entire afore I learned up on being a lady. I had four year of schooling, all told. You want you a tea party lady, you just go get yourself one, hear? Go grab one offa the P.T. and A.”
A Passage to India – E. M. Forster, 1924. Great Books selection; quotes TBD.
You Dreamed of Empires – Álvaro Enrigue, 2022. For the Massachusetts Center for the Book challenge, “A book about a time in history you’d like to know more about.” This had been on my TBR list for a while, and it was on the short side so I picked it as the month was drawing to a close. I wrote “A fascinating if confusing short novel about the conquest of what is now Mexico, told mostly from the point of view of the Aztecs. It very successfully immerses the reader in a world completely foreign to modern sensibilities, while using anachronistic touches to bring it closer.” It got off to an amazing start but didn’t quite keep up that level. I still highly recommend it if you’re interested in the time period.