☘️💧🇮🇪🦡⚔️😈 Maggie O'Farrell's Latest

    Land is Maggie O'Farrell's latest book. Maggie O'Farrell is another of my favorite authors, who, like Anne Patchett, gives me mixed feelings when I start a book written by them. I know I will read impressive prose, clever plots, and authentic, human characters. That's the problem. In Land,  the humanity of the family forged from the brutal remnants of the Great Hunger. Father and Mother, Tomás and Phina, are their family's sole survivors. It shapes their lives and choices, leaving them with fears and loneliness that affect how their four children navigate the world. Even as I was reading, I sensed that each child, imbued with personality and vividness, was also representative of Irish culture: a priest, a musician, a steady, silent worker, and a loyal, hardworking daughter. Another great novel.

Reviews of other Maggie O'Farrell books: https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/search?q=Maggie+O%27Farrell

☘️💧🇮🇪

 

    The Village of Noobtown by Ryan Rimmel is the second in the series that I have read. I gave the first one three stars on Goodreads, and I will give this one the same. I'm surprised that it has a four-star rating. The concept is classic LitRPG. A human finds himself in an actual video game scenario. They need to figure out what is happening, level up, and stay alive. Our hero, Jim, does those things with a lot of fart jokes, crazy companions, and inadequate character development. The author gives a lot--maybe too much-- technical detail. It reminds me, I'm not the target audience. The series reads like video game fan fiction. I have been reading LitRPG because of Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman. I think he's exceptionally talented. 

Review of the first in the series: https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/search?q=Noobtown

🦡⚔️😈

Tigers and Trust

       Maggie O'Farrell's writing is atmospheric and immersive. The way she writes seeps into the cracks in my brain, and I'm experiencing what her characters are living. This is hard because she loves a tortured, disregarded, lonely, prickly main character. The Marriage Portrait presents Lucrezia de Medici, who became Duchess of Ferrara at fifteen and died at sixteen. There is debate about her death. Most believe she died of tuberculosis, and a minority hold her husband killed her. O'Farrell produces a fierce character who struggles like a caged tiger for freedom from her sociopathic husband. The book opens with Lucrezia declaring her husband has brought her to an isolated hunting lodge to kill her. The story moves between her early life and her current situation. It's a tense dance of thinking there is no way she survives, but the more I know about her, the more I want her to. 

    I read a review that condemned the book as being "overwrought." I could see his point, and at times, when reading, I wondered why spend space describing minutia? My conclusion is O'Farrell sees it that way. Her style in The Marriage Portrait reminds me of Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert. One's persons lush and verdant is another's overgrown eyesore. 

 Review: maggie-ofarrell-marriage-portrait.html

🐅🐅🐅🐅🐅

    This was a week for historical fiction. Trust, by Hernan Diaz, takes place in America and Europe in the early 29th century and revolves around a wealthy, reclusive couple. Reading Trust was like opening a Russian nesting doll. Each subsequent doll is similar and, yet, unique from the previous doll. The are four narrators, and each one reveals more of the central couple. In the book, themes of money, patriarchy, and media are unpacked in living color. Diaz writes convincingly in several different voices; his plot and characters display a sophisticated talent. As a result, this book is both substantive and surprising. 

🪆🪆🪆🪆🪆

Hot Summers and Baptism

 

I have read several books by Rebecca Serle. One Italian Summer, like  In Five Years and The Dinner List involves time and magical realism. Her plots are exciting, and she usually has a moral to what she writes: appreciate what you have, live your life for yourself, and people are complex, so don't judge others. It feels there isn't room for another point of view besides hers, but she does write transfixing, steamy stories. I don't regret reading them, but I also don't seek them out unless someone recommends them. One Italian summer made me want to go to Positano, Italy, because of Serle's lush descriptions of the sun, beaches, and food. Yes, please!

I love Maggie O'Farrell's books, and I've read many of them: Hamnet; I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death, This Must Be the Place, The Hand That First Held Mine. This week I read Instructions for a Heatwave. I hesitate when I start a Maggie O'Farrell book because her writing is piercing in its understanding of humans. Instructions for a Heatwave is historical fiction about an Irish family living in London during a famous heatwave. 

1976_British_Isles_heat_wave 

It is so hot it makes people do crazy things. The story moves between family members who are quirky, hot, and trying to figure out what to do when their husband/father disappears. It pulls the mother, the two oldest siblings, and the self-exiled baby of the family together to solve the mystery of their missing father's past. Secrets boil out, old wounds are enflamed, and tempers flare. It's a terrific read.

   I'm in a theological book club, and this was the book for April. The most valuable part of reading this book was discussing it with my Dear Husband. I didn't change my position (I'm Presbyterian in my beliefs, and we practice infant baptism). Still, it did sharpen my understanding of why I hold to it and what other denominations believe. I didn't feel that the book was coherent or easily readable. Perhaps it was intended for academics, but I think it would have done better to aim at interested lay readers. I don't recommend it.

New Series and End of Year Round Up

    I started reading the Longmire series by Craig Johnson. The Cold Dish and Death Without Company are the first two. I'm really enjoying them. Craig Johnson writes a tight mystery- always enjoyable- but I'm most captivated by the dry humor and the supporting cast. The protagonist is mildly depressed, and it would be a much darker book if it weren't for the strong women surrounding him and his faithful best friend. If he can keep this up throughout the series, it will be a fun year for me reading through his catalog. Book 19 is due to come out in 2023. In a future post, I'll compare the book series with the Netflix version. 

🤠🤠🤠🤠🤠

    I have done the GoodReads reading challenge for several years. I have settled on aiming for 100 books and usually pass it, but I'm reluctant to up the number. 100 is a satisfying number, and 125 or 150 just isn't. 

I see some trends in the latest books I read. One is the multiverse and, perhaps related, time travel within your life. Another is same-sex relationships. If it's not the centerpiece relationship, there is one somewhere in the book.

I read several terrific books this year, and a few I wish I hadn't.

📚📚📚📚📚

Most Helpful: Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert

Favorite Mystery: The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

Most brutal to Read, but Worth It: The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to the Sexual Revolution by Carl Trueman

Favorite Sci-Fi: The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson

Most Disappointing:  The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

Most Comforting: The Penderwick Series by Jeanne Birdsall

Favorite Fantasy: Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

Most Interesting Relationship: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Favorite Memoir: Taste: My Life Through Food by Stanley Tucci

Most Surprising: Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark

Made Me Think: Hell of a Book Jason Mott and The Sentence by Louis Eldrich

Most Disturbing: The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives by Lola Shoneyin

My Favorite Book of 2022 is:

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

2022 READING 
CHALLENGE

Participants	6,758,337
Books Pledged	334,703,276
Avg. Books Pledged	49
Time Left	3 days, 17 hours

You have read 134 of 100 books in 2022.

YOUR 2022 BOOKS

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•