Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)
My current updated list:
1. Loose Ends: Truth & Beauty by Ann Patchett.
Done. [Beautifully written memoir of Patchett's friendship with Lucy Grealy. Liked the writing; didn't like Grealy.]
2. What You Read: Mopsa the Fairy by Jean Ingelow.
Done. [Episodic and sometimes confusing, but lovely details.]
3. What Your Great-Grandparents Read: The Sketch Book by Washington Irving.
Done. [Could also be Bits & Pieces, a mixed bag, some soporific, some delightful.]
4. You Really Shouldn't Have: Ladder of Years by Anne Tyler.
Done. [How I got it was more dramatic than the book. Book is now out of the house.]
5. No Cliff Notes This Time: Othello by William Shakespeare.
Done. [A classic take on jealousy, gullibility and trust.]
6. Bits & Pieces (or No Hablo): Forty Poems by Juan Ramon Jimenez translated by Robert Bly.
Done.
7. I've Met Them: Playing with Fire by Tess Gerritsen.
Done.
8. Holy Moly: Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford.
9. Support the Home Team: Of Marriageable Age by Sharon Maas [AKA aruna]
Done. [Complicated, but worth the read.]
10. Fired from the Canon: The Late Scholar by Jill Paton Walsh
Done.[A fun read, but not true to the canon.]
11. Better Known For...: The Toughest Show on Earth by Joseph Volpe.
Done. [Frank, fearless, funny and inspirational.]
12. Enter Stage Right: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: The Original Screenplay by JK Rowling.
Done. [Fantastic!
]
Extra-curricular:
1. Becoming Finola by Suzanne Strempek Shea
Done. [Fun, but not well edited.]
I've just finished my "I've Met Them" selection. I knew the girl who became Tess Gerritsen in kindergarten. She was my best friend, but I didn't recognize the name until I saw the connection in her mother's obit. Tess is a pen name; Gerritsen is her married name. And we lost contact after both of us moved to different states. "Tess" is ethnically Chinese; her mother was a mandarin from a wealthy family who was studying in the US when the revolution broke out in China; her father was an American born Cantonese seafood chef; friends arranged the marriage so the mother could stay here and not be killed.
Playing with Fire ought to have been a fast read, but it contains one of my triggers, an evil child subplot, so I had to take breaks. The writing is excellent. It's not a Rizzoli and Isles book. It's two stories, one a modern day psycho thriller, the other a historical tale of the Holocaust in Italy. What links the two stories is music, which is why I picked this particular book. You can bet the musical details and the medical details are spot on. A few of the details in the Jewish section seem a bit off or too vague. But yes, if you don't have my trigger, this would be a fast and thrilling read.
I do want to read The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher sometime. But Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is calling to me, so I'm switching my last selection.
Blessings,
Siri Kirpal