Recent Reads

Some of the Scrabble night gals (Betsy, Ginny, Susan, Susie, Barb, Maureen, Rebecca, me, joined by Ginny's friend Rikki) started a book club in February, and we've read some good stuff:

• The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt (Good, controversial)
• Lily, Marilynne Robinson (I loved it, not everyone did)
• Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, Haruki Murakami (Strange, and I was bored because I thought it was too thin)
• The Paying Guests, Sarah Waters (Fine, but not my favorite of Waters's novels--I'd recommended it!)
• H is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald (Wonderful! But I'm just 50 pages into it)

I also have read a few non-sabbatical things on my own recently:

• One Stayed at Welcome, Maud Hart Lovelace and Delos Lovelace (1934)
• I read the original 1934 edition that I found while browsing the new Highland Library shelves. It's a sweet story of settling Minnesota, a town called Welcome, in the 1850s. 
• The Lodger, Marie Belloc Lowndes (1913)

  

  Pocket in The Lodger

• I also picked up this old book (I read the 1935 edition) while I was browsing because its title reminded me of The Paying Guests: it has some similarities (a London couple has to invite a lodger because they need the income), but it's also a kind of mystery about killer on the loose. The internet tells me that quite a few movies have been made based on it: in 1927, a silent film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and with a changed ending; in 1944, with some slight changes in plot and names; in 2009, set in Hollywood this time.
• We are Water, Wally Lamb (2013)
• Barb Z recommended this novel, saying it's one of her top-five of all time. It's good, with interesting characters, good writing, and dramatic plotting, but the ending gets a bit too preachy for my taste (did Lamb really need to explain just exactly how the title is a metaphor??).