It's Monday, What Are You Reading?

Last week I finished All the Light We Cannot See on audiobook. The ending made me cry, from sadness and from the beauty of the book and from the redemption evident in the midst of the sadness. Books don't usually make me cry, so I'm not sure if it's a testament purely to the power of the book, or if it also has something to do with the audio format. This is the first book I've actually listened to rather than read on the page, and it was such a positive experience that I will definitely try again with another book. I think this was a good book to start with, since the writing is beautifully descriptive and the narrator read in such a way as to bring out that beauty. I honestly think I would have missed some of the beauty of the writing if I'd read it on the page, since I tend to read quickly and to skim description in order to get to the action more quickly. I also read The Silent Sister: A Novel by Diane Chamberlain, which was a quick and fun read, enjoyable mostly for the fast-paced plot rather than for particular beauty or high literary quality.

This week I started a book of poetry, The Woman Who Died in Her Sleep by Linda Gregerson, which is just fabulous so far. Here's a sample poem from the book from The Poetry Foundation website. If you're never visited The Poetry Foundation website, you should check it out! They've got a huge archive from all eras of poetry, and you can browse it by topic, or search for poems using keywords. I also started reading the novel An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England by Brock Clarke. So far this book is quirky, weird, and darkly humorous -- which means I'm enjoying it very much.

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