What better way to spend your tax refund this month (if you’re getting one) than by buying a book? There’s nothing like sitting outdoors in fine spring weather with a good read. Some titles I’ve recently read “spring” to mind and I’d like to share:
1) Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen
Claire has everything she thinks she needs, until one day she wakes to find a stranger has moved in next door and a vine of ivy has crept into her garden… and her carefully tended life is about to run gloriously out of control.
2) The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
On the eve of her ninth birthday, unassuming Rose Edelstein, a girl at the periphery of schoolyard games and her distracted parents’ attention, bites into her mother’s homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother’s emotions in the cake. And to her horror, her favorite cake tastes of despair and desperation.
3) 32 Candles by Ernessa T. Carter
Davie Jones–an ugly duckling growing up in small-town Mississippi–is positive her life couldn’t be any worse. She has the meanest mother in the South, possibly the world, and on top of that, she’s pretty sure she’s ugly. Just when she’s resigned herself to her fate, she sees a movie that will change her life–“Sixteen Candles.” But in her case, life doesn’t imitate art.
4) The God Patent by Ransom Stephens
Set in the age-old culture war between science and religion, The God Patent is a modern story that deftly blends scientific theory with one man’s struggle to discover his soul. This novel written by an honest-to-goodness scientist and author local to San Francisco, was recently re-released in a new version and with a great new cover by amazon.com
Now, it’s your turn. Read any good books lately? In the comments section please leave us the titles of some of your faves.
I just finished reading “Wide Sargasso Sea” by Jean Rhys, an amazing book that could be called a prequel to “Jane Eyre” and yet it stands alone as well. Published in 1966 as a breakthrough novel before feminists began to revision classic literature, it is breathtaking in its concise style, vivid imagery, and untamed female characters. You might recall the Mad Women in the Attic in “Jane Eyre,” and Charlotte Bronte’s description of her. This novel is from the POV of that Mad Women, narrated from her childhood in Jamaica to her arranged marriage. How this book intersects with the classic and enriches it is fascinating. The author, Jean Rhys, who grew up in the West Indies captivates us in the light/dark beauty of the tropical islands.
I read that book ages ago and saw the film as well, which was also brilliant. Loved it!