My husband bought me A Life Discarded: 148 Diaries Found in the Trash by Alexander Masters. It is a biography procedural, if there is such a thing. It’s a true story. The author obtains these diaries, which were rescued from a dumpster (called a skip because it takes place in England). The book is the biography of the unknown diarist.
Masters reads a bit, makes an assumption, then investigates it. Sometimes he completes a bit of his puzzle, sometimes he finds he was way off. Through it all, a picture of the diarist begins to form for us. I can’t tell you how it ends, because that would ruin it for you if you read it. It really is like solving a mystery.
In the first quarter of the book I was a bit bored with a lot of the description. In the next 50% I was pretty sure I didn’t like the person we were coming to know, and I wondered why he even bothered. When I came to the end, I had to admit that I liked the book, liked the technique, and even liked the diarist (flaws and all).
One last comment: You all know that I read almost exclusively on Kindle. This book has many photos and images from the diary. Although I could enlarge them on my Kindle, the resolution and appearance was not satisfying. That was disappointing because I think they certainly add to the book and his descriptions of why and what he was investigating at any given time (e.g., handwriting analysis). You might enjoy a print copy best.
Thursday, January 12, 2017
Wednesday, January 11, 2017
Easy reading & heartwarming but not sappy
I've just finished my third book by Catherine Ryan Hyde and would recommend them (and probably others by this very prolific writer), if you're looking for something uplifting but not too sweet.
The plot lines are different, but I've noticed that in each of these books, strangers are brought together and become closer than family -- then circumstances intervene that separate them. Resolution doesn't come quickly; often years go by before the characters find out what happened to each other.
In Take Me With You, August Shroeder, a burned-out teacher, has been sober since his nineteen-year-old son died. Every year he’s spent the summer on the road with his son, but now August is making the trip with Philip’s ashes instead. An unexpected twist of fate lands August with two extra passengers for his journey, two half-orphans with nowhere else to go.
In When I Found You, childless, middle-aged Nathan McCann finds a newborn abandoned in the woods. Fifteen years later, the widowed Nathan discovers the child abandoned once again—this time at his doorstep. The teenager has grown into a sullen delinquent whose grandmother can no longer tolerate him. Nathan agrees to care for him, and the two engage in a battle of wills that spans years. Still, the older man repeatedly assures the youngster that, unlike the rest of the world, he will never abandon him ...
In Don't Let Me Go, Former Broadway dancer and current agoraphobic Billy Shine has not set foot outside his apartment in almost a decade. He has glimpsed his neighbors—beautiful manicurist Rayleen, lonely old Ms. Hinman, bigoted and angry Mr. Lafferty, kind-hearted Felipe, and 9-year-old Grace and her former addict mother Eileen. But most of them have never seen Billy -- until Grace begins to sit outside on the building’s front stoop for hours every day, inches from Billy’s patio. When Billy makes it far enough out onto his porch to ask Grace why she doesn’t sit inside where it’s safe. Her answer: “If I sit inside, then nobody will know I’m in trouble. And then nobody will help me.”
These have been my "in-between" books recently. Now on to something else. I'm anxious to find out what we'll be reading for Feb.!
The plot lines are different, but I've noticed that in each of these books, strangers are brought together and become closer than family -- then circumstances intervene that separate them. Resolution doesn't come quickly; often years go by before the characters find out what happened to each other.
In Take Me With You, August Shroeder, a burned-out teacher, has been sober since his nineteen-year-old son died. Every year he’s spent the summer on the road with his son, but now August is making the trip with Philip’s ashes instead. An unexpected twist of fate lands August with two extra passengers for his journey, two half-orphans with nowhere else to go.
In When I Found You, childless, middle-aged Nathan McCann finds a newborn abandoned in the woods. Fifteen years later, the widowed Nathan discovers the child abandoned once again—this time at his doorstep. The teenager has grown into a sullen delinquent whose grandmother can no longer tolerate him. Nathan agrees to care for him, and the two engage in a battle of wills that spans years. Still, the older man repeatedly assures the youngster that, unlike the rest of the world, he will never abandon him ...
In Don't Let Me Go, Former Broadway dancer and current agoraphobic Billy Shine has not set foot outside his apartment in almost a decade. He has glimpsed his neighbors—beautiful manicurist Rayleen, lonely old Ms. Hinman, bigoted and angry Mr. Lafferty, kind-hearted Felipe, and 9-year-old Grace and her former addict mother Eileen. But most of them have never seen Billy -- until Grace begins to sit outside on the building’s front stoop for hours every day, inches from Billy’s patio. When Billy makes it far enough out onto his porch to ask Grace why she doesn’t sit inside where it’s safe. Her answer: “If I sit inside, then nobody will know I’m in trouble. And then nobody will help me.”
These have been my "in-between" books recently. Now on to something else. I'm anxious to find out what we'll be reading for Feb.!
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