Category: Books

Posted in 2023, Books, Writing

Short Stories

Posted on by nancyb422

May is Short Stories month and I enjoy reading them. This book caught my eye at the library last week so I checked it out.

The title doesn’t really seem to match the stories which all contain some type of illicit affair. A high school senior with her teacher, a couple of long distance relationships that get by between visits with phone or computer sex, and few, there are 11 stories in all, with the same characters at different stages over the course of a few years.

They were humorous for the most part and I actually enjoyed them (I spent most of the afternoon reading!), but in some of them I was fearful they would get caught, or annoyed that they could be so rotten to their spouse.

I cast no judgment but know it’s not something I’d ever do to my husband of 35 years! But in my 20s at the end of a couple of shitty relationships……

Posted in 2023, Books

Unaccustomed Earth

Posted on by nancyb422

I fell in love with every story in this book, Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri. I read Interpreter of Maladies but no other of hers since then. Shame on me because she is an incredible writer!

Most intriguing were the final three stories – they were a trilogy! First in one voice and then in another and then….read it and you’ll see.

I seem to find takeaways from books lately and in one story I found it. A character says, “…grieving freshly for my mother as neither my father nor I had done. Being with her through her illness day after day had denied us that privilege.”

That is something I’m unpacking in my Seasons of Betty series on my blog centered around family and, for me anyway, it spoke such truth to my memories of that time that I reached for my phone to take a picture so I wouldn’t forget it.

If you enjoy short stories and stories about families, I recommend this and I’m going to catch up on all her other books that I’ve missed since reading Interpreter of Maladies!

Posted in 2023, Books, Writing

Make Me a Time Traveler!

Posted on by nancyb422
Daily writing prompt
If you could be a character from a book or film, who would you be? Why?
View all responses

If I could be a character from a book or film I would want to be a time traveler in one of Connie Willlis’s books! Doomsday Book, Black Out, or All Clear. To examine the past and travel back to the middle ages or WWII would have been amazing to explore and bring back information to use in their research.

Sometimes it was scary being in the middle of the plague or the bombings in London but they made it through.

Posted in 2023, Books

My Bathroom Book

Posted on by nancyb422

Don’t we all have one? That book that remains in the bathroom to pass the time while your <ahem> “contemplating life”?

This is mine.

It has a wide collection of books – classics, old, recent, obscure, and popular. They are short entries that tell where the author got their inspiration.

I every time I read from it I think, “I need to make a list of the books I want to read.” But then I put it down and don’t remember until I pick it back up again!