What I'm reading now.
"Why don't you dance?" is, I think, my favorite from the collection, or maybe "So much water so close to home", but they are all shattering little things. Reading them, I was very much aware that Bonnie Jo Campbell's 2009 National Book Award finalist collection , American Salvage, seems to inhabit the same the raggedy vinyl-sided America as Carver's characters.
Oh, I loved this so much it is hard to write about it. Noel Streatfeild, my favorite writer, wrote this "autobiographical novel" about growing up the middle daughter in a family living in a vicarage in the years between 1910 and 1914. I am starting to cry as I type, it was so good. An absolutely unvarnished, clear eyed look into what must have been one of the last homes of it's kind- a kind of late Victorian life lived in the early 20th century, with all that was to come hidden from view, thank god. This really might be the best book I've read all year, all sentiment aside- absolutely magical, and unexpectedly devastating. I'm hunting down a copy to own. I love this book.
Beautiful, haunting novel. 17 year old Mariette Baptiste joins a convent in upstate New York in 1906, and her passionate faith disrupts the calm orders of the priory. Made for a fantastic book discussion!!!
One of my reading equivalents of comfort food- I read this over and over, and laugh myself silly every time. Pel and Ursula are one of my all time favorite fictional couples.
"You wrote down that you were a writer by profession. It sounded to me like the loveliest euphemism I had ever heard. When was writing ever your profession? It's never been anything but your religion. Never. I'm a little over-excited now. Since it is your religion, do you know what you will be asked when you die? But let me tell you first what you won't be asked. You won't be asked if you were working on a wonderful, moving piece of writing when you died. You won't be asked if it was long or short, sad or funny, published or unpublished. You won't be asked if you were in good form or bad form while you were working on it. You won't even be asked if it was the one piece of writing you would have been working on if you had known your time would be up when it was finished—I think only poor Sören K. will get asked that. I'm so sure you'll get asked only two questions. Were most of your stars out? Were you busy writing your heart out? If only you knew how easy it would be for you to say yes to both questions."
My favorite book. I seriously cannot begin to estimate how many times I've read it- I would honestly think its in the hundreds. I love it each time. It still even makes me cry.
