Reading My Shelves: February Update

I read six books from my February shelf! It feels so good to actually read books I've been intending to read for so long.

The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
One of my favourite Christmas picture books is Christmas Day in the Morning by Pearl S. Buck. This book is of course nothing like that one, but it was equally good. I was completely transported to the China she wrote of.

My Antonia by Willa Cather
I loved this book. For some reason I was waiting for a tragedy to happen to Antonia in the end, I don't know why. And then it was so beautiful instead!

And in light reading, Agatha Christie:
Death on the Nile
Dumb Witness 
After the Funeral 
The Mystery of the Blue Train 
...of which my favourite was The Mystery of the Blue Train. I liked the inclusion of "Miss Grey," a very likeable character who helped Poirot solve the murder.


Also finished this month:

The Life and Writings of the Historical Saint Patrick by R.P.C. Hanson
The little biography at the front of this book was written by someone who obviously loved Saint Patrick, and his enthusiasm was catching. I also read most of a couple other books on Celtic saints: The Illustrated Columcille (on Columba) and The Voyage of Saint Brendan. I'll list them next month when I finish them.

Michael Faraday: Father of Electronics by Charles Ludwig
I read this aloud to the boys, and I think they will always remember Michael Faraday. I was a bit disappointed in the writing (or maybe in the editing). I read some Charles Ludwig as a child and remember enjoying his books then. Now I see his tendency to add irrelevant information to try to make the story come alive, and it doesn't work very well. You find Michael Faraday imparting scientific knowledge to his wife around bites of toast, for example. I ended up editing some of the more annoying irrelevancies as I was reading aloud.

Audiobooks:
The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson
I sometimes like listening to this sort of thing as I clean. I am not in the target demographic for this book, but I thought it was lovely anyway. The narration by Juliet Stevenson was particularly soothing.

Stephen Fry Presents A Selection of Anton Chekhov's Short Stories
You may remember that I was very interested in reading a collection of Chekhov's Short Stories that was on my February shelf. Unfortunately, that collection turned out to be a "bad" translation. It was really hard to get into and I gave up after one story. So that book is now off my shelf, and I listened to this selection to soothe my disappointment. It was well written, well translated (At least, it sounded good in English. I always love Constance Garnett.), and well narrated by Stephen Fry. All the same, I didn't love Chekhov the way I love Tolstoy, and wasn't fascinated the way I was fascinated by Dostoyevsky. Of course that's a very high bar.  It's as silly to think all Russian authors are equally good as to think that all English authors are equally good. The fact that the first two Russian authors I read were so amazing still manages to colour my expectations, though.

Total finished: 9 books
7 from my shelves, 2 borrowed
6 Fiction, 3 Nonfiction
7 Female, 2 Male Authors
1 written in the last 10 years, 6 written more than 50 years ago (and 1 more than 100 years ago if I count Saint Patrick's Confession contained in The Life and Writings of the Historical Saint Patrick).

I'll be back soon with my March shelf. I look forward to seeing what you recommend!

Reading My Shelves in 2019: Literature Shelf 2

As I settle into reading my shelves, I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed by the magnitude of the project. At the same time, I am really looking forward to making progress, small as it may be.

On my February Shelf, I have 8 read books and 21 unread books. (In volumes containing more than one book, I have counted each book separately.)

Read: (and these are all books I consider worth re-reading, otherwise I wouldn't be keeping them)
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Shirley by Charlotte Bronte
Villette by Charlotte Bronte
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The Innocence of Father Brown by G.K. Chesterton
The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

Unread:
Bridge on the River Kwai by Pierre Boulle
Lorna Doone by Blackmore
Prester John by John Buchan
The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
The Arabian Nights - Sir Richard Burton
The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler
The Plague by Camus
The Outsider by Camus
My Early Life (excerpt) by Churchill
The Island Race by Churchill
Call for the Dead by le Carre
My Antonia by Willa Cather
Don Quixote by Cervantes
Don Quixote (abridged by Susan Sheridan)
Don Quixote (retold by Judge Parry)
The Riverside Chaucer
Selected Stories by Anton Chekhov
The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie
Dumb Witness by Agatha Christie
After the Funeral by Agatha Christie
Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie

Of these, I find myself particularly attracted to Selected Stories by Anton Chekhov, Don Quixote retold by Judge Parry, My Antonia, and The Good Earth. I will probably read one or two of the Agatha Christie titles when I need light reading, too. There's a lot of good reading on this shelf.

I expect that, like last month, I will only be able to get through a couple of these books. I have several additional books to read with my study group (on Saint Patrick and Saint Columba and the Brendan Voyage), and Middlemarch to read with my book club (though I have till the end of March for that).