(Mostly) Sad Reads

62. The Quangle Wangle’s Hat by Edward Lear
What a joyous jumble of words! The pictures in this version by Janet Stevens add so much to the text.

63. Into That Good Night by Ron Rozelle
I read this memoir again and loved it just as much. An admirable man, a father, a husband, a teacher, a superintendent.

64. A Bear Called Paddington by Michael Bond
How have I overlooked this fabulous book? Paddington is Amelia Bedelia…ET…Ramona…a naïve little teddy bear thrust into the scary big world. Fabulous.

65. Seven Pleasures by Willard Spiegel

I hate to write negative reviews. It doesn’t make me happy. Just for the record.

I always make a mental list of books I might want to buy when I go to the Texas Book Festival each year. This book was on my list. Then I heard the author speak and I reconsidered: No, a library choice, I decided.

I was right. The author is an erudite man, a professor, and this book reeks of his desire to share what he knows with others. I’m quite certain there are many who would love to read of his encounters with his seven pleasures, and perhaps, given the right mindset, I would have enjoyed these, but the truth is that I did not. I had to force myself to keep reading what came across to me as mostly autobiographic tidbits and slices from lectures.

Just so you know, the seven pleasures are reading, walking, looking, dancing, listening, swimming and writing. He got that much right.

66. The Girl With the Brown Crayon by Vivian Gussin Paley

Who knows why, but I wasn’t crazy about this book either. I thought I would love it, but it seemed to be a very personal account of a teacher’s last year, focusing especially on her encounter with one special student who led the class in a love for the books of Leo Lionni.

67. The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen

I started out loving this book. It’s a cool mix of a great story (young prodigy is selected to win an award by the Smithsonian) with side panels containing fascinating extensions of the plot illustrated to match the skills of the prodigy. Very clever. Unique for a fiction book, perhaps.

But the book became work. It was hard to focus on the story with all those clever side panels leading you off in a hundred different directions.

Very mixed feelings about this book. Brilliant but difficult.

68. The Spare Room by Helen Garner

Helen prepares her spare room for her friend, Nicola. Nicola has advanced cancer and is coming to stay with Helen while she undergoes an unorthodox treatment.

I can’t say enough good things about this book. The relationship between Nicola, the gadabout, and Helen, the steady and loyal friend, is fascinating. The contrast between Bess, the young granddaughter and Nicola, dying friend, is fascinating. The author allows the story to tell itself, a simple story, yet full of complexity.

I felt every emotion reading this book…hope…despair…joy…mourning…

Very wise book. Thank you, LibraryThing, for this copy.

65. Fateless by Imre Kertesz

My online bookgroup read this book a few weeks back, but I couldn’t put my hands on a copy in time. Then I received the offer to join a bookring for it at BookCrossing.

The setting, a concentration camp during World War II, and the main character, a Jewish boy, have been done many times, but never quite this way. Our main character, George Koves, has a strangely detached point of view during the time he spent in the camp. Though he almost starves to death at times and is beaten and sees others put to death, Koves finds solace in the experience. His experiences are related philosophically, as if he is trying to get to the deepest truths.

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