Recently Read

Yeah, I KNOW, posting's been light.  This whole "job search" thing is taking of more of my time than I though it would.  Go figure!

As always, skip it if you wanna.

1.  Gone to Soldiers by Marge Piercy - Giant novel about the people who stayed behind on the home front in World War II.  I only got about thirty pages in, because every. single. character. was an insufferable twit.  While I understand that the author was probably making the characters really, really vacuous in the beginning, so that she could show how they matured after experiencing the horrors of war, I just couldn't with these people and gave up.  Ech.

2.  Spellbound:  Growing up in God's Country by David McKain - Memoir of growing up in central PA in the 1940s and 1950s.  I read a TON of childhood memoirs, and most of them are along the lines of, "Sure, times were tough and we were poor but we loved each other and we had a lot of fun!"  This memoir was ... not that.  The author's father was unstable and the home life wasn't the greatest, and the author was not shy about discussing it.  Interesting.  We tend to sugarcoat the "good old days", and this book helped me remember that good old days were not good for everybody.

3.  The Dollhouse by Fiona Davis - Novel about a young woman living in the Barbizon Hotel for Women in NYC in the fifties, and another, modern-day woman researching her story.  I liked the part of the story set in the fifties, but I had zero sympathy for the modern-day character, and stopped reading about halfway through.

4.  Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones by Ann Head - Novel, written in the sixties, about a high school couple who "have to" get married.  Kind of quaint, and the way it ends is a copout, but still a good read.

5.  Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor - Novel set in Mississippi during the Depression about a rural black family and the struggles they faced.  Technically for younger readers (it won the Newberry Medal), it was an interesting and involving book.

6.  Miss Jane by Brad Watson.  Novel about a girl with an unspecified gynecological birth defect growing up in the Depression.  This book got glowing reviews, but I found it kind of meh.

7.  A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton Porter - Century-old novel about a young woman who catches moths to fund her schooling.  It was interesting in the beginning, but by about halfway through I just felt sorry for all those poor moths.  Did not finish.

8.  Intensive Care:  The Story of  Nurse by Echo Heron - Nonfiction about the author's years in nursing school and her career as a critical care nurse.  Interesting. I also enjoyed her book Tending Lives.

9.  My Old Neighborhood Remembered by Avery Corman - Author's recounting of growing up in the Bronx in the 40s and 50s.  A quick, interesting read.

 
And that's what I've been reading lately.  How about you?