Reading Notes April and May

I kept picking up books to read, and then drifting off them, sometimes within a short sprint to the end.  I couldn't seem to stay on track, and I hadn't finished a book in weeks.  To counteract this decision fatigue and ennui I picked a bookcase, and a shelf, and just read from left to right.  No choices, no decisions, just books.

So, here we go!  I guess this is the April reading notes, then...and May

 I'm read the second shelf on the blue bookcase in my bedroom.  Book #1 is The Piano Shop on The Left Bank: The Hidden World of a Paris Atelier by T.E. Carhart.

Ah, I remember buying this book!  Actually I picked it up somewhere and then later bought it all over again because I couldn't remember if I'd bought it the first time.  Now I had two copies of a book I still hadn't read.  Sounds like me.  Apparently this is Carhart's first book, let me just look here and see when it was published...2000!  Has he written anything since?  Ah, yes he has - apparently a memoir and a historical novel.  There you go.

This nonfiction look into the secretive world of the atelier - the purveyors of pianos - is focused on a single dusty shop in Paris but Carhart stretches to bring us into the off passages of the instrument's history.  It's very light, a little whimsical, an excellent start to the shelf and I'm glad I finally read it and can give away my extra copy.

And the next unread book on this shelf is...The Gate of Angels by Penelope Fitzgerald.  A novel!  Fun!  Well, it wasn't...FUN... exactly.  I did laugh aloud several times, especially at the ridiculous traditional Oxbridge style college (so reminiscent of my own dysfunctional college education).  But, oh, there was sadness.  And a horrifying ghost story before Fitzgerald brings you back to the possibility of the closed and barred doors in our lives opening to some hopeful future.  She never gives us the 'happy ending', though.

Right next to the Fitzgerald we have the next unread title - My Invented Country: A Memoir by Isabel Allende.  Oh, this one was such a good read!  I think it was around this time I started recording little videos about my books on Facebook, actually.  Having only read one Allende title before, and that many years ago, I was surprised at how FUNNY and relevant she was and how appealing and cozy her writing style came across.  It was like a very interesting and vibrant friend and I were sitting down discussing fascinating things together and she was telling me all the stories about Chile.

Okay, now the next one is...The Voice of Matthew by Lauren Winner.

Well.  What a disappointment.  It wasn't a Bible study, it was some sort of odd artistic Bible translation that, really, didn't do very well and it looks like many of the other books were scrapped.  I bet Winner wishes she could sweep this title under the rug.