★★★★★

Night Shift by Stephen King

★★★★★ | Horror | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads

An amazing collection of early short stories.  My favorite — because of the utter difficulty I had in reading it — was The Ledge. The story involves the protagonist having to climb over a balcony railing on the 43rd floor of a luxury apartment building onto a 5″ ledge that he must use (without handholds) to climb around the entire building.  Gusting winds and pecking pigeons make him stagger and sway, along with his antagonist who is there watching and taunting him.  Mr. King tapped directly into my singular fear. I had to stop reading at different times and remind myself that it was fiction. I am sure my blood pressure was spiking. I tried to close my eyes a few times, but it’s awful hard to read with your eyes closed.  What a storyteller!

The Odyssey by Homer

★★★★★ | Ancient | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads

It was high time I reread this classic.  I found the story much more engaging that The Iliad — crafty Odysseus and his wily ways.  There are so many stories in this epic that are embedded in our literary subconscious — Circe, Calypso, the Sirens, the Cyclops, revenge against the suitors, etc. Because of its legacy, I can’t rate this any lower than a five.  And yet, I didn’t find myself rooting for Odysseus after all his hubris and, in particular, thinking of all the grieving fathers who lost sons during his exploits.  And what for?

The Big Rock Candy Mountain by Wallace Stegner

★★★★★ | Literary Fiction | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads

A bleak, bleak story that could have been written about my upbringing.  I am giving this book a five-star rating because of the writing and how perfectly Stegner captured the angst of living in the perpetual get-rich-quick ambition that plagues some people.

Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley

★★★★★ | Literary Fiction | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads

What a delightful little book.  I read this 36 years ago, so parts of it were vaguely familiar.

When you sell a man a book you don’t sell him just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue-you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night-there’s all heaven and earth in a book, a real book I mean. 

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

★★★★★ | Literary Fiction | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads

I enjoyed this book so much more than I expected.  Perhaps it’s the grief I have been feeling that has opened up new emotional channels.  I found myself tearing up at multiple points in reading this book.  I really cared for the characters: Lily, August, May, Rosaleen, these beautiful, wise women.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

★★★★★ | Literature | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads

A beautiful, wise book touching so many themes: true love, societal pressures, women’s rights, nobility excesses, religious zealotry, jealousy, the fruitless search for the meaning of life, angst over landowner privilege, thinking vs. feeling/living, capitalism vs. communism. Reading Tolstoy is the study of life.

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