Olive Kitteridge

 

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout was a slow start for me, but I’m so glad I stuck with it. Each chapter is like a separate novella introducing different characters that all have had some association with the titular Olive Kitteridge, a crabby but endearing, old woman from Maine. Several of the chapters dig deeper into Olive’s life including her relationships with her stoic husband, Henry and sullen only child, Christopher. 

As I said, it took me a while to warm up to Olive, but by the end I was laughing out loud at her over-the-top reactions to life’s little annoyances. Straightforward and set in her ways with misanthropic tendencies, Olive navigates life like an unyielding bulldozer. A retired school teacher, she manages to touch the lives of a variety of people in her town in both comical and serious ways. 

Now I’m looking forward to reading the sequel, Olive Again, to see what new adventures await the protagonist in her 70s. OMG I’m seeing a bit of my future in Olive Kitteridge! 

New York

I want to read New York by Edward Rutherfurd so bad. So bad that I’m writing about it now, instead of doing school work to prepare for our return tomorrow after a too-short winter break! But not bad enough to actually pick up the enormous hardcover copy I snagged years ago from my cousin Ann Marie and her husband Jeff (who live in the state of New York). It sits in my living room book shelf since 2016, taunting me to resume where I left off at chapter 3 (of 32!) 

Some day, when I’m retired, I envision reading it on a beach somewhere Caribbean-y ☀️🌊 

Fun Fact: My new teaching partner this 2021-2022 school year is a good, old friend of Jeff's.

Add this title to a stack of other unread books acquired from my many Massachusetts Historical Society workshops.

               

And, let's not overlook, the colossal, 777-page Frederick Douglass biography by Celeste-Marie Bernier and Andrew Taylor, If I Survive that I won in a MHS raffle!

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

 

The movie version of The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin was filmed on Cape Cod this past summer. Not surprising since the setting is the fictional Alice Island off the coast of Massachusetts. I heard that scenes were shot at Parnassus Books on Route 6A in Yarmouth and other locales. I was looking forward to reading it during our Christmas break in the Florida Keys, but Covid had other ideas and grounded us on Cape Cod. I’m glad I had this book to keep me company during the isolation period. 

Although hokey and overly cutesy in spots, it was an enjoyable and quick read. Can’t wait to see what the guy from the Big Bang Theory does with the cantankerous bookstore owner main character! Added bonus: I discovered the movie version of another book by the author and watched it on Prime Video. Conversations With Other Women stars Helena Bonham Carter and also entertained me during my dreary but relaxing winter break week.

Summer Into Fall 2021

Blame it on Covid Fatigue. 

My ability to concentrate as well as the speed and rate of completion of my reading seems to have taken a turn for the worse. I have always enjoyed historical fiction, but these four books were all disappointing to varying degrees and in different ways.

First of all, I never even began this highly anticipated depiction of the lives of Puritan women in early America because Elaine said it was boring. After looking over the reviews on Amazon for Beheld by TaraShea Nesbit, I may give it another chance!

Next, I managed to get through the very short, 58 pages of Resist: A Story of D-Day by Alan Gratz mostly because I wanted to clear it for distribution to my fifth graders. (After receiving many bonus copies from Scholastic books.) Sadly, none of my students seemed enthused about the book, other than noticing one of the chapters titled “Pee Break.” Sigh! The author has written several other books about World War II including his most popular, Allies. Even though I don’t teach this time period, I thought it would appeal to more of my kids.

I was so looking forward to reading Monticello by Sally Cabot Gunning because I loved her trilogy of books set during the American Revolution and I wanted to learn more about Thomas Jefferson, who I admire. This book was such a big dud for me that I think I skimmed my way through the last third of it, nodding off to sleep every time I attempted to be done with it. In my humble opinion, Gunning should stick to telling stories about fictional characters during historical time periods.

Last, but by no means least disappointing, was The Four Winds by Kristen Hannah. This wretched account of a woman’s hardships during the Dust Bowl in 1930’s America was tedious, formulaic, and repetitive. Again, I cheated and downloaded the audiobook to listen to (some) of the last chapters because I didn’t have the endurance to stumble through the last exhausting bits of the story. Now I don’t know if I’ll ever attempt to read Hannah’s longer and more celebrated World War II story The Nightingale.

           

Dishonorable mentions go to: The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson that I will someday (maybe) finish reading. The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern that I couldn’t get into even though I loved her book The Night Circus. 

Downloaded and never opened: The Flight Attendant by Chris Bohjalian, The Newcomer by Mary Kay Andrews, Writers and Lovers by Lily King, Circe by Madeline Miller, Normal People by Sally Rooney (I watched the first few episodes on Hulu instead), and Anything Is Possible by Elizabeth Strout (The audiobook did not hold my attention even during a walk in the neighborhood).

And, drumroll …. Nonfiction: The Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door by Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire, How To Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendo, and White Fragility by Robin Deangelo.

Finally, at some point before the end of the school year, Elaine and I need to read and discuss Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?: And Other Conversations About Race by Beverly Daniel Tatum for our educator evaluation goal.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

 I’ve been trapped in the abyss that is The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami for months now! One of the weirdest books I’ve ever read has been oddly comforting and has provided companionship during the long winter/spring season of full-on remote teaching. Many a night when not another particle of sentience existed in my frazzled brain .... I looked forward to climbing into bed and falling asleep to the escapades of the downtrodden main character, Toru Okada. 

So, this book has become a metaphor for my weird life, entering my 60s, pining away for a lost love from long ago, yet oddly hopeful about the next chapter of my life. I finished reading it today—July 8, 2021—a day before my youngest child turns 25. A quarter century of child-rearing and muddling through a life that wasn’t what I planned but richer and more interesting than I ever could have imagined!

Back to the Chronicle, some fucked up shit lurks in the mind of Haruki Murakami; oh but the way he strings words together! Or is it his translator that has this way with words? I was hooked when I read Men Without Woman, a book of short stories that introduced me to some strange characters and unusual yet ordinary plot events from Murakami’s imagination. 

I can’t begin to summarize the Chronicle better than this excerpt I lifted from the last page of the ebook that has inhabited my kindle for so many months, in 21-day intervals!*

“The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is at once a detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets of World War II. In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife’s missing cat. Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo.”

* First download was January 12, then February 4, March 2, March 26, April 18, May 12, and finally June 25. That must be some sort of CLAMS-online-reading record!