By The Bespectacled Reader – Marty Round

Editor’s Note: A warm welcome back to Marty, the best known writer in Marsh Creek, who has been waging an effort to regain her mobility. We’ve missed her insights about life. And here, she is back to tell us about about good books she’s had the time to read while convalescing.

     Hi, it’s me (grammatically incorrect, I know), the Bespectacled Reader. All those baby steps I wrote about earlier seem to have come to a standstill.  As I recently told Louise Nelson, I occasionally have a “pity party”, but when no one shows up to indulge me, I have no choice but to snap out of it.

     But I have lots of time to read and that is a good thing for keeping me entertained.  I no longer have a stack of unread magazines cluttering up my house!  I should keep a list of the books I have read, but…the Marsh Creek Book Club has served up some really good ones this year, all of which I’ve enjoyed on various levels: The Splendid and the Vile (non fiction and about Churchill’s life as prime minister during WWII) by Eric Larson; Anxious People by Fredrik Backman; The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (also non-fiction by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer, about a young boy who is very bright and inventive); The Only Woman in the Room, about the life of Hedy LaMarr, by Marie Benedict; The Four Winds, about a young family escaping the Dust Bowl and relocating to California during the Depression, by Kristin Hannah; The Book of Lost Friends, about Black families attempting to reunite after the Civil War, by Lisa Wingate;  and American Dirt, about a mother with her young son who are escaping the cartel and become part of the mass migration from Central America to the United States, by Jeanine Cummins.  The last two titles of the season are The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel and Next Year in Havana by Chanel Cleeton.

     And since I have more time on my hands, when you remove 4 or 5 days a week for tennis, I have grabbed a few titles that have lain on shelves for a long time.  Again, I wish I had kept a list, but I do remember a few of the titles.  Earlier I wrote about purging myself of over a hundred books, books I wanted to read but realistically realized that I’d never get to them all.  (And there are 100’s more at the lake cabin in Maine! Remember my crazy use of an old freezer?).  In no particular order, I have indulged my passion for reading with the following titles, some of which I know you have probably already read:

     The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris.  A WWII story based on the real lives of Lale Sokolov and his wife Gita Furman.  Although not always an accurate picture of life in Auschwitz, according to scholars, it is a fascinating story about one man’s determination to live and be with the girl he loved.  I understand that there is a sequel on its way.

     Heads You Win by Jeffrey Archer. One of my favorite fiction writers.  This novel is very different from Archer’s usual fare.  Alexander Karpenko must leave Leningrad in a hurry, along with his mother.  It is arranged for them to hide in a crate on a loading dock, but there are two crates, one heading to New York, one to London.  A coin is tossed and they climb into the appropriate crate.  We then follow the Karpenkos lives in two ways: one ending up in New York, the other in London.  Unique storytelling and an attention grabber!

     Forever by Pete Hamill. This novel would be classified as fantasy, not a genre I would normally bother with, but I am glad I did. We follow an Irish Jew, Cormac O’Connor, who, in 1740, heads to New York in pursuit of the man who killed his father.  I don’t want to spoil the story for you, so I will just say I learned a ton about the city’s history by reading this book….and Cormac was involved in it all, to include 9/11!

     The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant, a NY Times bestseller about 18 years ago.  Set in Renaissance Florence, this is the story of Alessandra Cecchi’s life.  I would expect this was a controversial book as it spare nothing of what life was like in 1492 when the city was held captive by the fanatic Savonarola.  It can be quite shocking, but it is also a novel of hope!  And very well written!

Time to do my second go-round of exercises for today!  Wahoo!!