saturday march 14
Despite J.M. Coetzee's reputation and numerous awards, I only discovered him a few weeks ago. "Diary of a Bad Year," published in 2008, is a lovely book.
The main character is an aging writer, with many biographical similarities to Coetzee himself, who has been asked to write "Strong Opinions" about the state of the world to contribute to a larger collection. The top half of each page are his "strong opinions," written in very broad, formal language about everything from torture and war to religion and democracy. At the bottom of each page is a personal, first-person narration from the main character. We discover that he is a lonely and even frail man. He asks a young woman to transcribe his "strong opinions" and, page after page, we read his public, intellectual voice while simultaneously following his day-to-day life, told in a private and almost intimate voice. We get to know Anya, his typist, as well as the man she lives with, a loud and unthoughtful man who is quite the opposite of the narrator.
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friday march 13
The history of Ireland is thick with political and religious oppression, magical folklore, and Guinness, of course. Everyone I know who claims an Irish ancestry has a bit of a rebellious streak and they are damned proud of it. What makes them tick? Is it the Guinness, or is it their long and cherished history of fighting for freedom? Probably a little - or maybe a lot - of both.
There are two "big names" in Irish historical fiction: Frank Delaney and Edward Rutherfurd. Each of these authors has written a few big thick tomes weaving fact and folklore into fascinating tales just right for the month of March:
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wednesday march 11
As I confessed a couple of weeks ago, I’m still catching up on the 2008 novels I had scribbled myself notes about last year. Of course, the most common reason for scribbling those notes was that somebody else had reviewed the books and made them sound wonderfully tempting to me.
Well, here are a couple of 2009 books that have already gotten many tempting reviews, including mentions elsewhere on our webpage. (Are you familiar with our Reading Recommendations page?)
That makes me feel a little sheepish blogging them—do you already have your own scribbled notes on these books, and will you all roll your virtual eyes if I add another review recommending them?
On the other hand, I really enjoyed these books and I’d hate for you to miss them! So on the principles of a) this blog is all about celebrating wonderful books, even if they are celebrated elsewhere, too, and b) it’s hardly the first time in my life that I’m behind the times, here are two gentle boosts onto the bandwagon for those of you who may want just one more nudge to place your holds on these books.
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sunday march 01
Move it - this is the slogan for National Multiple Sclerosis Awareness Week, March 2 - 8, 2009. People with MS know that they need to keep moving in order to stay at least one step ahead of this disease.
Since 1996, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society has been committed to "recognizing self-improvement authors who inspire". This year's award ceremony was held on February 23 in New York City. At that event, the 2008 Books for a Better Life Awards were bestowed upon authors in ten different categories - a great deal of wisdom is contained in those collective pages.
The complete list of finalists is an interesting one - following are the award winners, each of which can be found in the Library's collection.
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