It's Monday! What are you reading? is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey. For this meme, bloggers post what they finished last week, what they're currently reading, and what they plan to start this week.
My comments are not meant to be recaps of the story lines as I include a link to Goodreads for their synopsis of the book. I am merely stating how I felt about the book without giving any spoilers.
We've been home for almost two weeks now. We have been getting organized, unpacking and decluttering. Yesterday was Easter dinner with some family members.
44 COMPLETED READS TO DATE!
1 ABANDONED
1 not finished as it expired so I will have to borrow it again. The Nightmare
FINISHED:
I had hoped to be swept away into Manhattan in it's glory days. Smoky nightclubs, penthouses rising above Central Park, hobnobbing with the rich and famous. Instead I felt like I was in a remake of The Great Gatsby.
Alison Wearing led a largely carefree childhood until she learned, at the age of 12, that her family was a little more complex than she had realized. Sure her father had always been unusual compared to the other dads in the neighbourhood: he loved to bake croissants, wear silk pyjamas around the house, and skip down the street singing songs from Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. But when he came out of the closet in the 1970s, when homosexuality was still a cardinal taboo, it was a shock to everyone in the quiet community of Peterborough, Ontario—especially to his wife and three children.
Alison’s father was a professor of political science and amateur choral conductor, her mother was an accomplished pianist and marathon runner, and together they had fed the family a steady diet of arts, adventures, mishaps, normal frustrations and inexhaustible laughter. Yet despite these agreeable circumstances, Joe’s internal life was haunted by conflicting desires. As he began to explore and understand the truth about himself, he became determined to find a way to live both as a gay man and also a devoted father, something almost unheard of at the time. Through extraordinary excerpts from his own letters and journals from the years of his coming out, we read of Joe’s private struggle to make sense and beauty of his life, to take inspiration from an evolving society and become part of the vanguard of the gay revolution in Canada.
Alison’s father was a professor of political science and amateur choral conductor, her mother was an accomplished pianist and marathon runner, and together they had fed the family a steady diet of arts, adventures, mishaps, normal frustrations and inexhaustible laughter. Yet despite these agreeable circumstances, Joe’s internal life was haunted by conflicting desires. As he began to explore and understand the truth about himself, he became determined to find a way to live both as a gay man and also a devoted father, something almost unheard of at the time. Through extraordinary excerpts from his own letters and journals from the years of his coming out, we read of Joe’s private struggle to make sense and beauty of his life, to take inspiration from an evolving society and become part of the vanguard of the gay revolution in Canada.
I loved the story, it is candid and honest. It is an honest memoir and ultimately universal one full of empathy and compassion.
The story of a family in a pivotal time in Canadian history. The history of the struggle for gay rights in Toronto was new to me.
We have come a long way!
What if you found yourself divorced and penniless? With no skills and a teenage daughter to support? What if the only way to survive was to do things you never thought possible, to go places you never knew existed …
These are questions Sally has never really thought about before. Married to a successful business man, she’s always been a bit of a dreamer. Until now.
Her sister Zoe is her polar opposite. A detective inspector working out of Bath Central, she loves her job, and oozes self-confidence. No one would guess that she hides a crippling secret that dates back twenty years, and which – if exposed – may destroy her.
Then Sally’s daughter gets into difficulties, and Sally finds she needs cash – lots of it – fast. With no one to help her, she is forced into a criminal world of extreme pornography and illegal drugs; a world in which teenage girls can go missing.
These are questions Sally has never really thought about before. Married to a successful business man, she’s always been a bit of a dreamer. Until now.
Her sister Zoe is her polar opposite. A detective inspector working out of Bath Central, she loves her job, and oozes self-confidence. No one would guess that she hides a crippling secret that dates back twenty years, and which – if exposed – may destroy her.
Then Sally’s daughter gets into difficulties, and Sally finds she needs cash – lots of it – fast. With no one to help her, she is forced into a criminal world of extreme pornography and illegal drugs; a world in which teenage girls can go missing.
The ending, not a big surprise but I felt there were some pieces that didn't get tidied up. A good read. I'd read her again as shown below.
STARTED:
Evening is closing in as murder detective Jack Caffery arrives to interview the victim of a car-jacking.
He's dealt with routine car-thefts before, but this one is different. This car was taken by force. And on the back seat was a passenger. An eleven-year-old girl. Who is still missing.
Before long the jacker starts to communicate with the police: 'It's started,'he tells them. 'And it ain't going to stop just sudden, is it?'
And Caffery knows that he's going to do it again. Soon the jacker will choose another car with another child on the back seat.
He's dealt with routine car-thefts before, but this one is different. This car was taken by force. And on the back seat was a passenger. An eleven-year-old girl. Who is still missing.
Before long the jacker starts to communicate with the police: 'It's started,'he tells them. 'And it ain't going to stop just sudden, is it?'
And Caffery knows that he's going to do it again. Soon the jacker will choose another car with another child on the back seat.
At present I'm reading Billy Crystal's memoirs.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the mini-review of Rules of Civility... I was asking someone about it the other day (she was in mid-read) and I wondered if she was being diplomatic about it.
ReplyDeleteRight now I'm reading a book called The Icelandic Sagas, which is a bit of a misnomer. Really it's summaries of Icelandic sagas, and then a description of what the physical setting of the saga looks like now. Sometimes the sagas are very accurate, sometimes more poetic/metaphoric. I thought it was going to be dry, and it was for about the first 30 pages, but now I'm into how it's organised and quite enjoying it.