Category: Fiction

Calligrapher’s Daughter

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Kim, Eugenia. The Calligrapher’s Daughter.  New York: Henry Holt, 2010.

This is the story of Najin Han from childhood to womanhood in early 20th century Korea. Najin Han begins her life on Korea’s cusp of Japanese occupation as a curious child who often tests the boundaries of her small world by spying on the adult conversations of her parents. As a child she sees and experiences the beginnings of the Japanese occupation but does not completely understand it. As she matures her world changes colors and she watches the political boundaries and tests the cultural ones. From a young age she has wanted to determine her own destiny and as a result Najin grows up to be a headstrong woman, having been pulled in different directions by everyone around her. Into Korean adulthood (by age 12) her mother continues to encourage Najin to foster personal growth and even helps her pursue an education. To avoid a prearranged marriage Najin’s mother sends her to a king’s count to be a companion for the princess; a very unconventional idea for a woman in early 20th century Korea. Meanwhile, her father is a staunch believer in Old World traditions and customs. He fiercely tries to hold onto Korea while the country slowly loses independence.

As an aside, I can’t imagine growing up without a parental given name. But that is what Najin Han experiences. She is nameless until an American misunderstands an introduction. To Kim’s credit it is beautiful the way she comes full circle with Najin’s maturity concerning identity.

Author Fact: The Calligrapher’s Daughter is Eugenia Kim’s first book.

Book Trivia: The Calligrapher’s Daughter is based on the life of Eugenia Kim’s mother and most of the political aspects of the novel are true.

ps~ If you ever get the chance listen to the audio version after you read the print. It’s amazing.
BookLust Twist: From Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Korea – North and South” (p 127).

Headless Cupid

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Snyder, Zilphia Keatley. The Headless Cupid. New York: Atheneum, 1971.

I have to admit I felt kind of funny reading this while waiting for my spa appointment. Women around me were reading Cosmopolitan and Women’s Day while I was nose-deep in a story for kids (illustrated no less)!

The Headless Cupid is a really cute grade school book about a poltergeist. Sort of. After the divorce of her parents twelve year old Amanda has come to live with her mother. Only everything about Amanda’s new life is horrible. She has a new stepfather and four step-siblings to contend with, not to mention the fact she has been uprooted from her city life and transplanted in the country, an hour away from any “town.” Needless to say, Amanda comes to the Stanley household with a baggage. To compensate for her unhappiness Amanda studies witchcraft and the occult. She convinces the four Stanley children to be her “neophytes” and go through a series of “ordeals” to join her in magic making. As a Newbery Honor book, The Headless Cupid is about family dynamics. Any child going through a divorce would relate to the pain, anger and confusion Amanda in going through. I won’t tell you how she finally learns to accept her new family, but suffice it to say it’s a cute book.

I didn’t have any favorite lines or sentences that grabbed me, but I did have a favorite part. One of the “ordeals” the Stanley children must go through in order to join Amanda’s occult is to not touch metal all day. David, the oldest boy is very creative in how he is able to get dressed (zippers), open doors (handles), and eat (silverware).

Author Fact: Snyder has won three Newbery Awards (one being for The Headless Cupid. Wait. I said that already.

Book Trivia: The Headless Cupid is the first in a series of books about the Stanley family. I don’t think I read any of the other books in the series. Bummer. I liked this one.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Best for Boys and Girls” (p 22).

June ’12 was…

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I had high hopes for June. Unreasonably so, I think. I don’t know what I was thinking when I decided the difference of a day would make everything better. What’s May 31 into June 1st other than Thursday into Friday? One day into the next? Silly me. June was a few things – a return to the run, a funeral heard around the world, a trip to an exotic island…

Here is the book list:

  • A River Runs Though It and Other Stories by Norman MacLean ~ in honor of river cleanup month. I can see why they made the first short story into a movie, but why not the other two? They were equally as good as the first. I read this in five days.
  • Death of Ivan Ilich by Leo Tolstoy ~ in honor of June being the best month to travel to Russia…that is, if you even want to travel to Russia. I guess you would need the desire before you decided the best time to go…I read this over three lunch breaks.
  • Kristin Lavransdatter: the Bridal Wreath by Sigrid Undset ~ again, chosen for the best time to travel somewhere. In this case, Norway. Note: this is only part one of a three part story. I will be reading the rest in July and August.
  • The Stranger by Albert Camus ~ in honor of I honestly don’t remember what. Something celebrating Algeria, I’m sure. This was deceptively simple to read. Read over five lunch breaks.
  • The Duke of Deception by Geoffrey Wolff ~ read in honor of June being family month. Some family!
  • Damage by Josephine Hart ~ in honor of Father’s Day…well, sort of.

Two Early Review books came in, courtesy of LibraryThing:

  • Waterlogged: The Serious Problem of Overhydration in Endurance Sports by Tim Noakes, MD. I didn’t finish this in time to consider it an official June read, but at least I started it in June.
  • Who Should I Be? a Novel From Life by Sheila Heti ~ this was slightly delusional but I loved it.

    One audio book on cassette while I worked out:

  • D-Day by Stephen Ambrose ~ in honor of well, D-Day – June 6th 1944. Duh.

I should also note that I had an audio book for the flight to HI. I listened to July’s selection for the entire trip to and from the islands.

How Should a Person Be?

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Heti, Sheila. How Should a Person Be? a Novel From Life.New York: Henry Holt & Co, 2012

This is a clever book. Because it is fictional nonfiction nothing has to make sense or be tied to the truth. When other reviewers use words like “candid” and “honest” I don’t know what they are talking about. What’s truth and what’s fantasy is not up to us. Maybe there is a Margeaux and maybe there isn’t. As readers we are just along for the ride and in the end, while I tried to keep that in mind, I found myself asking who the hell cares? If read as a fictionalized memoir it is murky and smudged like a dirty aquarium full of beautiful and exotic fish or a greasy fingerprinted champagne flute filled with the finest bubbly. In other words, gorgeous writing wrapped up in some psychobabble musings. When trying to read this as an existential “who am I?” it was cumbersome and meandering. However, read with an “I Could Care Less” attitude it was sexy and raw and funny and smart. All the things I am looking for in a good book, truthful or not. I wouldn’t want to classify this as self-help, self-indulgent, or self anything.
To play out the main plot is a struggle. When it was all said and done I’m not exactly sure what Heti was going for. A struggling playwright who can’t decide what kind of life she wants? A chance to wax poetic and wane philosophic?

Damage

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Hart, Josephine. Damage. New York: Ballantine Books, 1991.

Damage was on my list as a Father’s Day read, if you can believe it. I read it over two lunch breaks. Some father! Told from the point of view of a doctor turned politician who has an affair with his son’s girlfriend-turned-fiancee. What makes this (short, only 200 or so pages) story so intoxicating is the slow descent into hell this man willingly makes. When he first introduces us to his life he had been a well-to-do man who has a seemingly perfect family.  Two smart and beautiful adult children, Martyn and Sally, a gorgeous wife Ingrid and a stable, well respected career. He does not deny that he had a good life…pre-Anna, his son’s girlfriend. Then he meets Anna and all hell breaks loose in a slow unraveling sort of way. Inexplicably there is an instant attraction between the two of them and an affair ignites abruptly. While the physical relationship is spontaneous the mental obsession builds gradually until it is all consuming…for both of them.

There is a sense of foreshadowing, a warning of sorts in the line “Can’t you sense, smell, taste disaster waiting in the corners of the house?” (p 36).
Anna’s explanation as to why she is the way she is, “I have been damaged. Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive” (p 42) is probably the most often quoted in reviews.

Book Trivia: Damage was made into a movie in 1992 starring Jeremy Irons. Yet another one I haven’t seen.

Author Fact: Josephine Hart died of cancer in 2011.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “Fathers and Sons” (p 85).

Kristin Lavransdatter

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Undset, Sigrid. Kristin Lavransdatter: the Bridal Wreath. Translated by Charles Archer. New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1922.

The first thing I have to point out is there were two things going against this book (for me, anyway). One is sheer size. The entire novel is a trilogy, well over 1,000 pages. Add another sixty pages if you want to include the author’s notes. And the print is small. Real small. The second “negative” is that it is a translation, originally written in Norwegian. It seems I never do well with translated works. It’s almost as if the translator, no matter how hard he or she tried, lost something essential to the flavor of the book. I can’t explain it other than something always gets lost in translation. I know that’s cliche of me to say, but in this case I mean it literally, 100%. Note: I just found out that there is another, more recent translation that seems to be superior to the one I read. Darn.
Having said all that I should also point out (again) Kristin Lavransdatter has three volumes: The Bridal Wreath, the Wife and the Cross. I decided to read The Wreath in June, The Wife in July and The Cross in August. My chances of actually finishing the thing are much better when broken out this way. Another confession: while this might be a lengthy tale it’s also very good and easy to read.

I read this book because a) June is the best time to visit Norway and if you haven’t guessed by my tirade, the author is Norwegian; and b) June is the best month to get married (or divorced) in and Kristin is about the marriage of Kristin…eventually. The book starts with “The Bridal Wreath.” Kristin is a very young child traveling with her father across Norway. In true 14th century fashion Kristin is betrothed to a wealthy, reputable man in a neighboring town. As Kristin grows up she becomes increasingly rebellious, so much so that when she is nearly raped her community has doubts about who is telling the truth. As a result her family decides to send Kristin away to a convent to hide out until the rumors die down. While at this convent she falls in love with the dashing Erlend, a man who has reputation problems of his own. Excommunicated by the Catholic church because of an affair with a married woman, Erlend manages to seduce Kristin as well. Before they can be married Kristin becomes pregnant. The title of this section of Kristin Lavransdatter is in regards to the wreath wears on her wedding day. It is supposed to signify virginity but Kristin wears it with shame, too embarrassed to tell anyone it is a lie.

Author fact: Undset was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1928.

Book Trivia: Kristin Lavransdatter was made into a movie in 1995.

BookLust Twist: From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Digging Up the Past Through Fiction” (p 79)’, and Book Lust to Go in the chapter called “Norway: The Land of the Midnight Sun” (p 162).

The Stranger

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Camus, Albert. The Stranger.Translated by Matthew Ward. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993.

The quick and dirty about The Stranger: Meusault kills a man while on a weekend vacation with his girlfriend. Part I entails the events leading up to the murder and Part II is post-murder arrest and trial. The interesting component to the story is Meursault’s (although not surprising) attitude towards the crime. From the very beginning Meursault has an apathy towards life in general. When he is confronted with a marriage proposal or a job offer he feels nothing. He barely shows emotion when his mother dies. It’s as if he doesn’t care about anything and yet, curiously, he keeps an old scrapbook where he collects things from the newspapers that interest him. He doesn’t seem to understand love/hate relationships like the one his neighbor has with his dog of eight years. Meursault’s attention span is also something to note. He is often distracted by lights being too bright, the ringing of bells and the chatter of people around him. the presence of light is particularly interesting since it is the sun that “causes” Meursault to murder.
When Meursault murders a stranger for no apparent reason the fact he did it is not up for debate. It is the reason why that is questioned. Calling Meursault The Stranger is a contradiction because he is not a stranger in the traditional sense. He is not a loner or outcast. He has friends, coworkers, even a girlfriend. What Meursault is a stranger to is expected societal behavior, like mourning the loss of a parent or having feelings for someone he is in a sexual relationship with. Nothing that happens around Meursault has an emotional impact on him.

Favorite line: “I had the whole sky in my eyes and it was blue and gold” (p 19).

Book Trivia: The Stranger has inspired musicians and made its way into pop culture. It was made into a 2001 movie.

Author Fact: Camus won a Nobel Prize for literature in 1957.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “North African Notes” (p 159). The Stranger takes place in Algiers.

June ’12 is…

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June 2012 is…not late! For once! I have to rejoice in simply being on time for the first time in oh, I don’t know how long and I’m too lazy to look. June. What about June? June is a retirement luncheon with some people I barely know. June is a graduation party for someone I love more than a sister (and only she will really get that statement and not misinterpret it as some lesbo love declaration). June is another charity walk – a no-pressure walk of sorts. No fund raising, no training (3.1 miles, a walk in the park – or around a business park as the case may be). June is a few birthdays, but no parties. June is the opening of the pool and June is the beginning of our Hawaiian vacation (lest I forget). We’ve already nixed horseback riding due to age and weight (over 65, under 10 and under 235lbs). That wipes out all but two of us. Anyway, more on that later.
June is also National River Cleanup month, the best time to visit Norway and the month to celebrate fathers. And that is the perfect segue to books:

  • Kristin Lavansdatter by Sigrid Undset ~ in honor of Norway. This is actually in three parts (totaling over 1,000 pages) so I’m going to parse it out: The Wreath in June, The Mistress of Husaby (The Wife) in July and The Cross in August.
  • A River Runs Through It and Other Stories by Norman Maclean ~in honor of river cleanup month.

For Hawaii, two books I can read and leave behind**:

  • Damage by Josephine Hart ~ in honor of Father’s Day
  • Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (a reread) ~ in honor of Father’s Day as well

I have been notified that I have “won” two Early Review books from LibraryThing (such an honor). I have been having some problems with delivery but if they arrive they are:

  • How Should a Person Be: a Novel From Life by Sheila Heti ~ this has been described as “seriously strange” by a respected author on Heti’s website. I’m intrigued!
  • Waterlogged by Tim Noakes ~ this is something I cannot wait to read. I have been told I need to drink more water and while I don’t consider myself an athlete (this book focuses on them) I am curious about “the facts of hydration.”

** I should add that I plan to load the iPad with ebooks in case I finish the Father’s Day books sooner than expected. I really want to read on the beach one or two days and of course I’ll need to read on all those flights!!

May ’12 was…

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Is it okay for me to say I am glad May is over? May was the search for a new boss (we found one), a 60 mile walk for breast cancer awareness ($180,000 raised) a funeral/memorial/burial – whatever, and just a little time for books. Here they are, in no particular order:

  • Carry on, Mr Bowditch by Jean Lee Latham ~ kind of reminded me of other historical biographies for kids. Read in one week.
  • Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan ~ in honor of Asian American heritage month.
  • Of Men and Mountains by William O. Douglas ~ in honor of deadly Mount Everest. I read this in one weekend (up to Maine and back)
  • Kon-Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl ~ (probably my favorite book of the bunch. I now want to see the documentary).
  • Death of Ivan Ilich by Leo Tolstoy ~ in honor of May being a good time to go to Russia (I’ll take their word for it).

Here are two I didn’t finish:

  • Little Women by Louisa May Alcott ~ this was a reread so I don’t feel bad I didn’t get through it again this time, and
  • China To Me by Emily Hahn ~ I got the point after 120 pages. Since Pearl mentioned this in three different Lust books I feel as though I have to give it another chance…maybe another time.

For LibraryThing and the Early Review Program:

  • Letters to Kurt by Eric Erlandson ~ read in one weekend, and
  • The United States Coast Guard and National Defense: a History from World War I to the Present by Thomas P. Ostrom ~ I didn’t get through this one either which is really sad since I wanted to enjoy it.

So, there it is in a nutshell. Not a ton of good reading. More unfinished stuff than I’m used to. Oh well.

Death of Ivan Ilich

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Tolstoy, Count Lev N. Dramatic Works: the Death of Ivan Ilich.Translated by Leo Wiener. New York: AMS Press, 1968.

Death of Ivan Ilich opens with Ilich’s death already a reality in the year of 1882.

As a person struggling with the death of a loved one there were certain parts of Death of Ivan Ilich that struck a nerve with me. Early in the story Ilich’s colleagues are standing around discussing his death, having just learned of it. One man exclaimed, “And here I have not called on him since the holidays. I was meaning to all the time” (p 4). That bears repeating. I was meaning to all the time. Exactly.
I found Death of Ivan Ilich to be extremely psychological and painful. Here is a relatively young man of 45 who dies from an unexplained illness after falling off a chair. He bruises his side and mysteriously falls ill a short time later. Even more troublesome – he never recovers from this fall. Was it cancer? Many scholars seem to think so. What I found particularly disturbing is the lack of care and sympathy his family feels for him. His wife and daughter all but cast him aside once they realize he is dying. Only his long-faithful butler remains true to him.
The actual death of Ivan goes largely unexamined. Instead we crawl into Ivan’s mind as the dying process takes its toll. In the beginning he is indignant, believing as a good man who has led a moral life he does not deserve such a fate. He questions his life’s purpose and begins to compare it to that of his butler. While he never accepts his death at the end he seems to understand it.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “Russian Heavies” (p 210).

Joy Luck Club

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Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club. New York: Ivy Books, 1989.

Yeah, yeah. I know what you’re thinking. This should be a reread for me at this stage of the game. Believe it or not, I’d never read it before. Nor have I seen the movie. It bears repeating. I didn’t know this story. At all. Surprised? Don’t be. There are a lot of books I need to catch up to. I have a lot of words to chase. Still.

So. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan. In a word, magical. In two words, thought provoking. In three, very well written. In four, impossible to put down. I’ll stop there but you get the point. I liked it.

I feel a little redundant writing about a book that has been around for so long. Everyone knows it either through reading it (hey, it did spend nine months on the best seller list) or from seeing the movie. I’m the only who has been living under a rock! But, anyway:
The Joy Luck follows the lives of three immigrant Chinese women who had started up a Mahjong club called Joy Luck in 1949. (There is a fourth founder but she dies before the book starts.) When the fourth founder dies from an brain aneurism her adult daughter is invited to join the group. Each chapter is a vignette, alternating between the Chinese mothers of the group and their American-born daughters. Through memories, parables, heritage and tragic history the visuals and dialogues make each character come alive.
One of the elements that makes The Joy Luck Club so fascinating is that it is structured like the game Mahjong the Joy Luck Club plays. To be fair, I had to do a little research about  mahjong because I wasn’t sure how it is played. After learning how the game is set up it dawned on me it was the identical design of Tan’s book.

Four parts that are divided into four sections totaling 16 different slices of story.
Personal joke: “…Ted introduced me to all his relatives as his girlfriend which, until then, I didn’t know I was” (p 124). Been there!

Book Trivia: The Joy Luck Club was translated into over 30 different languages, was a best-seller for nine months and was made into a movie in 1993 starring Tsai Chin. Chin also starred in Memoirs of a Geisha, another book on my list.

Author fact: Amy Tan co-authored a book with one of my favorite authors, Barbara Kingsolver, in 1994 called Mid-Life Confidential: The Rock Bottom Remainders Tour with Three Cords and an Attitude .

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “Asian American Experience” (p 26).

Scared by the Numbers

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Since adding all of the books from Book Lust To Go to my challenge list (all 1,600+ of them) I have been wondering how much time this has added to the challenge. I was curious. How many years will it take me to finish reading 5,500+ books? Exactly how old will I be when it is all said and done?
First I needed to know how many books I have left to read. The grand total is 5026. This includes books of varying lengths – anything from graphic novels, children’s picture books to 1,000 page biographies. Yikes. Yikes. Yikes.

Then I needed to find out my average reading “speed.” What did I accomplish in a year’s time? On average, I read 109 books a year – give or take a poem, short story or article or two. This average of 109 books included books for fun, books for LibraryThing, and the books on the challenge list. However, here is what I found out from doing the math: if I only read challenge books from here on out it would take me 45 years to finish every book indexed in Book Lust, More Book Lust and now, Book Lust To Go. Scary. I honestly don’t think I will live that long. Frightening. Seriously.
What to do? I refuse to give up reading the books from LibraryThing’s Early Review program. And, and. And! I will not ignore the gift books I receive from family or friends. So. What happens now? I either have to face facts that I will never finish reading 5026 books in my lifetime OR be a little more selective about what takes up my time. I like option #2 better.

Here are my ideas for amendments:

  • Instead of reading 50 pages before giving up on a boring book I only read one chapter or 25 pages – whichever comes first. I’m a pretty good judge of what books will bore me to death and which ones I will “book” through (pun totally intended).
  • Of the books I have read before instead of rereading them I will install the “Odd page rule.” The odd page rule is to only read the odd pages and skip the evens. (the rule right now is if I don’t remember the plot, key characters or how it ended I have to reread the entire thing. Not happening).
  • Third and final change: the movie rights rule. If a book has been made into a movie AND the book author has had a hand in writing the screenplay AND the movie has won an Academy Award I give myself permission to watch the movie instead. I am not a movie person so I doubt this last rule will really come into play that often.

I will be in my 90s when I finally finish the challenge. People have asked me why it matters. They like to point out that Nancy Pearl didn’t read every book she recommends. She had help. People made suggestions. I get it. I don’t care what Pearl has or hasn’t read. Her reading list is not my concern. The pages MY eyes fall upon are what matter and I want to read them all. If I’m lucky.

Little Women

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Alcott, Louisa May. Little Women. New York: Scholastic, 1987.

I think it goes without saying that Little Women is a classic. Who doesn’t know the story of Meg, Jo, Amy and Beth? Okay, so female readers of all ages probably know it better than men but either way there is no denying it’s a classic! Plus, they made a movie out of it!
So. To repeat the obvious: This is the story of the March women – Mrs. March and her four daughters. Too old to be drafted into service, Mr. March enlists to be a chaplain in the civil war. While he is away Mrs. March and her girls keep a modest house house in Concord, Massachusetts. The story centers around the four daughters and their four very different personalities. Alcott was ahead of her time when she created the character of Josephine (“Jo”). Jo is an ambitious tomboy who cuts her hair and wants to be a unmarried writer. She is referred to as male by herself (saying she is the man of the house while Father is away) and by her father (who calls her “son”). It’s an interesting dynamic to the plot. The rest of the March women are as Victorian as can be. I try to refrain from seeing them as prissy. They are all very pretty and wishy-washy and have talent. As a aside, the storytelling reminded me of Anne of Green Gables.

Disclaimer: Alcott intended Little Women to the first of a two volume set (with Good Wives being the second). Because Good Wives is not on my reading list I didn’t read it with Little Women.

Author Fact: Louisa May Alcott is buried in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, MA. I wonder if I’ll have time to look her up while I am there in another week?

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “Three-Hanky Reads” (p 236). Of course Pearl is referring to the part when Beth dies.

Carry On, Mr Bowditch

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Latham, Jean Lee. Carry On, Mr. Bowditch. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1955.

Read this in a day. May is National History month and while that alone was a good excuse to read Carry On I also chose to read it because of Kon-Tiki. Seemed like the perfect transition.

This was reminiscent of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s account about growing up in the unorganized territories of the midwest in the Little House series; better known as historical fiction. I call it biographical with a little imagination thrown in. It covers the life of Nathanial Bowditch, navigator extraordinaire. While the details of his childhood and subsequent personal adult years are somewhat abbreviated for adults, the content is perfect for children. I appreciated the way Latham didn’t minimized or sugarcoat the tragedy in Bowditch’s life. Nor did she gloss over his relationships with his first wife Elizabeth, or Polly, his second. What does come across is Bowditch’s love of mathematics and the seriousness with which he applies it to navigating the high seas. He does not suffer fools easily but his passion for teaching is enthusiastic and patient.

Favorite lines: “Sometimes women get a little upset about the sea” (p 71). Well, can you blame them? Husbands were gone for months and even years. Sometimes they didn’t come home at all. Another line I liked “You know, you’re real humanlike – in spite of your brains” (p 86). Funny.

Book Trivia: Carry On, Mr. Bowditch won Latham a Newbery Medal.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “Historical Fiction for Kids of All Ages” (p 114).

May ’12 is…

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Hawaii. Hawaii. Hawaii. This is going to sound sick but I am trying to get psyched for an upcoming trip to the islands. Not The Island that I know and love. The Sandwich Islands. Hawaii. Or, more specifically Oahu and Maui. My first time to either. Here are the books that are helping me learn about Hawaiian culture and history:

  1. Hawaii’s Story by Hawaii’s Queen , Lilioukalani
  2. West of Then by Tara Bray Smith
  3. Six Months in the Sandwich Islands by Isabella Bird
  4. Volcano by Garrett Hongo
  5. Kon-Tiki by Thor Heyerdahl (don’t you just love his name?)

In addition to that (completely unplanned) list I am trying to stick to the reading schedule. That would include

  1. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott in honor of May being Eeyore’s birth month (in other words, something sad)
  2. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan in honor of May being Asian American Heritage month,
  3. and last but not least, Charlotte Gray by Sebastian Faulks in honor of May being sex month.

It’s a bit of reading but I think West of Then and Kon-Tiki are going to be really quick reads. Volcano might also be quick…not sure yet.
Oh! Two last books! For the Early Review Program (LibraryThing) – I almost forgot! I have the United States Coast Guard and National Guard by Thomas Ostrom and Letters to Kurt by Eric Erlandson. Both arrived this month. The Coast Guard book is a January book and I think Letters is a February book. So, a little late, but I’ll get to them! Letters to Kurt I’m sure I’ll read in a weekend or less. Hello coffee in bed!
What else to tell you? In less than two weeks I will be walking 60 miles for Just ‘Cause. In less than four weeks I will be saying goodbye to my cousin. What can I say? I can’t wait for June.