My Life Today (in books)

Rainy day today

I read a story today called "The Lawn Party" by Ann Beattie (1976). As I was reading I wondered how Beattie could put so much background into the life of the main character so seamlessly in a fairly short story.

I continue to make progress on Takarczuk's epic Books of Jacob. Being more than 900 pages, there is a lot going on in the story. One of those things is the (completely erroneous) idea of blood libel -- the idea that Jews drained children of their blood to use in religious rituals. This conspiracy brought to mind Bernard Malamud's masterpiece The Fixer. The main character in Malamud's novel is a Job like figure accused of killing a child and draining his blood in Russia circa 1910.

I checked out three books by authors who were all in the news today:

Don Winslow published his latest and, what he says is, his last crime thriller City in Ruins.

Claire Jimenez was awarded the PEN/Faulkner award for her novel What Happened To Ruby Ramirez.

John Barth has died. I loved his epic novel Giles Goat-boy when I first read it decades ago. I am curious to read his (2008) short story collection The Development.