Two new books for your reading pleasure

 My reading activity since March 17th has had its ups and downs and stalls.  At first I was delighted with all the time I had on my hands to read for hours.  I read several books on my shelf and my sister Kate sent me a box of books from her shelves and I read those.  Having always wanted unlimited reading time, I was quite happy. Well, I was happy for a few weeks.  Then came the Brain Fog: inability to concentrate, lack of interest in anything, mental and physical restlessness.  The only books I could read were old detective/private eye novels. Downloading books onto my phone became a real thing for me (something I hated previous to the Covid invasion) and I reverted to old-school authors:  John D. MacDonald (The Travis McGee series) and Robert B. Parker (Spenser series) and even James M. Cain (what's with the middle initials, guys?) and his noir classics like "Double Indemnity."  Those I could read on my phone and they got me over the Brain Fog months of this Sheltering in Place situation.

Now my reading abilities have returned!  While I will continue to read old detective novels, the thrill of reading a really good book has given me a new lease on my reading life.

Two novels recently released:

"The Cactus League" by Emily Nemens is a story about minor league baseball players and coaches and owners, but it is so much more than that. It is also about the geology of Arizona, about gambling, relationships, greed and goodness.  Plus baseball!  Some of us are missing the baseball season this year and getting to read about spring training (albeit fictionalized) helps. This is Nemens first novel and I am often disappointed in first novels because of their cliched over-writing. This one, however, is worth a read.

"The Glass Hotel" by Emily St. John Mandel follows her brilliant and quirky novel "Station Eleven" from several years ago.  This novel is so good but rather difficult to describe without giving too much away.  The characters draw you in even if you don't really like some of them.  The plot does not follow along linearly, it jumps around a bit which can feel gimmicky in mediocre writers but St. John Mandel is anything but mediocre.  There is flat-out greed and love of money at play in this story as well as the search for the meaning of life in small, measured ways.  Betrayal, redemption, selfishness and generosity:  all are represented here.  As I read this book, I kept thinking of the William Faulkner quote: "The past is never dead. It's not even past."  That is definitely true in "The Glass Hotel."  One cannot count on the dead being dead but that doesn't mean they come back to life.  You'll have to read this novel to see what I mean.  I hated for it to end and I look forward to reading it again.

Finally, I am listening to a book on CDs as I drive aimlessly around these days.  Simon Winchester is one of my favorite non-fiction authors ("The Professor and the Madman" is one of his early books, about the creation of the Oxford Dictionary and you should read it if you haven't) and he often writes about geology and the formation of our physical world. This book I am listening to is "A Crack in the Edge of the World" about the April 1906 San Francisco earthquake but it is about more than just that earthquake. It is a look at plate tectonics, fault lines, geological makeup of the world and so much more.  Way better than trashy detective novels, fascinating and educational at the same time!

The next book on my list is the first in a series by Louise Penny.  I have read several of her Inspector Gamache novels but have never read the first one, "Still Life."  I will start that one today along with a book by Michael Lewis, "Liar's Poker" about the Stock Market in the 1980's.  I will report back on those......  keep reading!