Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Beach/Reading



I rarely read anything at the beach,
but spend most of the time looking at the water.


Yesterday a lifeguard paddled his canoe.


However, some book suggestions:

Non fiction:

Virginia Nicholson's fascinating Singled Out --about the generation of   "surplus" women after the First World War. Splendidly informative and grippingly readable.
 Just Kids Patti Smith's memoir of Robert Mapplethorpe and the 1970's, brilliantly evocative of the era in both good and bad ways. Brings it all back.


Hints of mortality on the shoreline.

New Fiction:
The Last Storytellers: Tales from the Heart of Morocco Richard Hamilton's elegant retelling of traditional tales told by the vanishing storytellers of Marrakesh. Not new stories exactly but recently published. Grimm's fairy tales meet A Thousand and One Nights!
A.M Homes: This Book will Save Your Life. Set in Los Angeles and addressing contemporary angst etc. Funny, sad, quirky and sharp.



Tried and True:

Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd. I've only just read it for the first time.
Vanished England in a capsule. What weather! Such rustics.
Charles Dickens'A Christmas Carol. In view of current American politics, I rather like Scrooge saying, "Are there no workhouses?" and suggesting that the poor die and reduce the surplus population.......


After the beach, lunch at the Shipwreck Diner in Northport.


What a bizarre lunch....quiche, fruit, homefries, a pickle.
Oh well, now I needn't eat for a week.

I look forward to hearing what you're reading.
 Weaver of Grass has some super suggestions as do the people who
have commented on her post.




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