So now I know why people make themselves post every day…if you don’t, you suddenly lift your head and it’s been two weeks! I have excuses, plenty of them: house sitting in a not-quite-so-connected house, commuting from said house, a bout of some flu bug, work, work, work, and so on. Nothing special just really off my schedule from the house sitting which leads to a two-hour commute. I used to do this very commute to my job and I guess you get used to it but the fact is, you are spending two hours a day in the car. The good news is that I’ve made good progress on my audio book, Girls Like Us, a great history/biography combination that focuses on Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon.
I did finish an early reviewer book for LibraryThing: Frank Delaney’s Venetia Kelly’s Traveling Show. This time, my review was more in line with the others: this was a terrific book. So you don’t have to click if you don’t want to, here’s the review. I gave it four of five stars.
Review of Venetia Kelly’s Traveling Show
This book isn’t just set in Ireland in the early part of the 20th century. The narrator, the other characters, the politics all combine together to create an Irish book, written by a master Irish storyteller. He warns us about digressions and even labels them in their importance and I found myself looking forward to them. Yet, the plot itself, which pulled together classic themes, drew me along, and even now, the ending haunts me. It wasn’t really historical fiction but I learned a lot about Irish politics and appreciated seeing figures like William Butler Yeats, Eamon de Valera, and John Millington Synge included in the narrative. One of the digressions tells the story of Riders to the Sea, my favorite Synge play.
It was a great story interwoven with stories and I enjoyed every word! Yet, I only gave it four stars: I found the ending somewhat abrupt with the various threads coming together too quickly. After many pages of digressions and stories, it suddenly seemed to end.
I haven’t read much this week: just not feeling well, I guess, and mostly sleeping. I finally started the book group selection, Spirituality for Our Global Community: Beyond Traditional Religion to a World at Peace by Daniel Helminiak. I’m not very far along so I shouldn’t offer an opinion, but I am a little put off by the rather broad brush strokes he paints of our world in crisis. It’s all bad and getting worse and he’s got the answer to it all. Hmmm…pretty big claim buddy. And I suppose if you’re making it, you have to overlook all the pockets of good stuff that might be going on. I also fundamentally disagree with him about how communities are falling apart. More later, when I’ve read further.
