Rotation update

Two books have moved off The Reading Table and onto the Currently Reading list.

Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo, a family saga based in the fictional Thomaston, New York.

I’m picking this up again after its several months on the table, starting at page 212, where I left off. I’m hoping I merge swiftly back into the narrative flow with Joe Queenan capability.

Joe Queenan wrote an essay for The New York Times Book Review (August 6, 2006), “Why I Can’t Stop Starting Books,” in which he writes, “I have an excellent memory that allows me to suspend reading, pick up a book six months later, and not miss a beat.”

It’s a hilarious explanation about the adventure of starting more books than one finishes:

“Starting books always makes me feel that a long-awaited voyage has already begun; that while it may take five years to finish Boswell’s Life of Johnson or Remembrance of Things Past, these are no longer dimly envisioned projects like learning to play the accordion or fly a helicopter, but in some way a real part of my life. Other people say, ‘One of these days, I’m finally going to get to Ulysses.’ Well, I’ve already gotten to Ulysses. I’ve been getting to Ulysses for the past 25 years.”

The Novice’s Tale by Margaret Frazer, the first in a series of historical murder mysteries that take place in a monastery in Medieval times. (Yet more monastery subject matter.  Not surprising, given I’m soon to be staying at a Benedictine monastery for a few days.)

Finally, added to The Reading Table is Kazuo Ishiguro’s A Pale View of Hills, his first novel about a Japanese woman living alone in England and dwelling on the recent suicide of her eldest daughter and the aftermath of the WWII bombing of Nagasaki.

Also added, as they’ve just arrived, the two books I ordered from the London bookshop: Ulysses and Us by Declan Kiberd and The Children’s Book by A. S. Byatt.