What's new this week?
Started a new semester which is always tiring, meeting and trying to remember all the new faces. But it's the last time, so that is exciting. With my daughter back from her semester in Brussels, ringette games are back on the schedule, including a road trip this weekend to Moncton (~2 h away) for Atlantic Championships.Wandering Stars - Tommy Orange
"Wandering Stars traces the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Industrial School for Indians through to the shattering aftermath of Orvil Redfeather's shooting in There There"
I only kinda liked There, There, and I felt the same about Wandering Stars. It was a little disjointed for me with all the characters. Sections were engrossing. It felt a bit like a series of connected short stories, where I didn't always feel the connected parts. If you liked the first book, I'd recommend the second.
Wisdom in Nonsense: Invaluable Lessons from My Father - Heather O'Neill (paper) NF
This is a series of short essays given at a lecture, where we realize that Lullabies for Little Criminalswas much more autobiographical than you would like to believe. Very short but amusing and enlightening of how other people live and how it frames their present lives.
This might be a big Heather O'Neill year, for me, with her last book to read (Capital of Dreams) and a new one coming out this summer.
The Last Runaway - Tracy Chevalier (paper)
Chevalier is one of my most favourite authors, and I've been holding off on this last book to read as I do not like reading about slavery (see also: holocaust). I know it was awful and I don't need to read more about it to know how awful. I did like this take on it, as Honor Bright, immigrant Quaker from England, faces many new challenges in a new country, and with her faith. Set in Ohio, she is left alone in a new country and has to figure out her life, as a woman with not a lot of choices. Quakers were staunch abolitionists, but as with today, when others are in power, it takes a lot of fortitude to fight for right.
Martyr! - Kaveh Akbar
Lots going on here, but I liked it better than Wandering Stars. Cyrus Shams is a young American of Iranian descent, struggling. He is an orphan now, recovering addict, trying to find his place in the world, writing about martyrs. I didn't always like the martyr stories interspersed, but his family's stories - father, mother, uncle, gave more background. Actually a lot of similarities between this and Wandering Stars. I liked the parts with Cyrus best, and even the ending, which while slightly improbable, worked for me.
