Read this Book!

our souls at night kent haruf
Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf is incredible. It’s low-key, but the operational definition of a page-turner. It opens with Addie Moore calling Louis Waters and inviting him to sleep with her. The twist is that they are seventy-something widow(er)s, and there’s no explicit sex. They defy the town gossips and family opposition. As the St. Louis Post-Dispatch said, “A fine and poignant novel that demonstrates that our desire to love and be loved does not dissolve with age.”

 

Kent Haruf is a best selling novelist. But this is the first book of his I have read. I literally couldn’t put it down. Haruf has a spare style—like Hemingway, without the macho. It’s a fast read, but you might want to linger. It’s truly gripping.

Books from a Snowbound Weekend

books snowbound weekend

Truth: Marathon euchre and cribbage got us only so far. It’s only natural that talk turned to books. So here’s a list of books the four of us recommended to each other.

behind beautiful forevers katherine boo
[Source: Goodreads]
Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katharine Boo is beautifully written nonfiction. It’s about striving and hope in a Mumbai under-city, and won both a National Book Award and the LA Times Book Prize.

Another excellent nonfiction read is Escape From Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey From North Korea to Freedom in the West, by Blaine Harden. It’s a gripping story.

The novel The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery is moving, funny and good writing.

our souls night
[Source: Goodreads]
Two people praised the novel Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf as excellently written. It’s the story of a seventy-year-old widow and widower who become soulmates, written as Haruf was dying.

Purity by Jonathan Franzen was described as a “weird” but excellent novel about two young people with strange mothers, searching for their real fathers, one in San Francisco and one in East Berlin.

iron hearted violet kelly barnhill
[Source: Goodreads]
Iron-hearted Violet by Kelly Barnhill is YA fantasy, about a princess who is very smart, not pretty, living in a land of dragons and magic castles.

When we got to mysteries, there were too many to list, so we just went with authors: pretty much anything by Tara French or Donna Leon for books set abroad, Greg Isles, Kathy Reichs, Lee Childs, Jeffrey Dever, Janet Evanovich, Nevada Barr, or Dennis Lebane.

Good reading even when you aren’t snowbound!

books snowbound weekend