Books for August, 2002
Aug. 31st, 2002 10:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pegkerrThe Fires of the Faithful by Naomi Kritzer. Here's my blurb, which I will be sending to the editor via e-mail tomorrow: (ahem) "A confident debut . . . Kritzer captures a young woman's coming-of-age with heart and verve. A polished performance. I look forward to her next."
(Whew!)
The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman. I gave my report on this book earlier this month.
Then, I decided I needed to read more non-fiction, and so veered off into biography:
Me, by Brenda Uehland. I'd already read her If You Want to Write but had never yet read this, her autobiography. She seemed quite a likeable person. I liked that she adamantly refused to bad-mouth anyone--her ex-husband she referred to only as a discrete initial ("R."), and she candidly admitted that she, too, bore blame for the breakup of her marriage.
Dearest Friend, A Life of Abigail Adams, by Lynne Withey.
Hans Christian Andersen: The Life of a Storyteller by Jackie Wullschlager. I read this with great interest, of course, because of The Wild Swans. It seemed a very candid yet sympathetic portrait. The roots of Andersen's gaucheries and fragile sense of self, not to mention his constant hunger for approval, which manifested itself as gross vanity, are clearly explained. In reading both Andersen's and Ueland's stories, I found much that felt very familiar to me in terms of my own creative history: dry periods (which Ueland blamed on "sloth") periods of restlessness, awkward times in childhood, a history of depression, among other things.
What if Our World Is Their Heaven: The Final Conversations of Philip K. Dick, edited by Gwen Lee and Doris Elaine Sauter. Thanks for the loan, Bruce! (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
minnehaha)
None of these books this month, I am pleased to see, were re-reads. It's a short list. The Andersen book took longer than usual to finish (it's a very peculiar sensation for me to take more than three days to finish a book. Most I finish within about twenty-four hours.) I also had a period of about a week when I just couldn't figure out what I wanted to read.
Peg
(Whew!)
The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman. I gave my report on this book earlier this month.
Then, I decided I needed to read more non-fiction, and so veered off into biography:
Me, by Brenda Uehland. I'd already read her If You Want to Write but had never yet read this, her autobiography. She seemed quite a likeable person. I liked that she adamantly refused to bad-mouth anyone--her ex-husband she referred to only as a discrete initial ("R."), and she candidly admitted that she, too, bore blame for the breakup of her marriage.
Dearest Friend, A Life of Abigail Adams, by Lynne Withey.
Hans Christian Andersen: The Life of a Storyteller by Jackie Wullschlager. I read this with great interest, of course, because of The Wild Swans. It seemed a very candid yet sympathetic portrait. The roots of Andersen's gaucheries and fragile sense of self, not to mention his constant hunger for approval, which manifested itself as gross vanity, are clearly explained. In reading both Andersen's and Ueland's stories, I found much that felt very familiar to me in terms of my own creative history: dry periods (which Ueland blamed on "sloth") periods of restlessness, awkward times in childhood, a history of depression, among other things.
What if Our World Is Their Heaven: The Final Conversations of Philip K. Dick, edited by Gwen Lee and Doris Elaine Sauter. Thanks for the loan, Bruce! (
minnehaha)None of these books this month, I am pleased to see, were re-reads. It's a short list. The Andersen book took longer than usual to finish (it's a very peculiar sensation for me to take more than three days to finish a book. Most I finish within about twenty-four hours.) I also had a period of about a week when I just couldn't figure out what I wanted to read.
Peg
