For the last few years, I have not read new books during the school year. Maybe just tired after all the reading of papers and books and lessons that I must do as an English teacher. But recently I have started losing myself in books, rediscovering the delight of engaging with the characters, the narrative, the description.

Here is the most recent one checked out from the library. The Bear and the Nightingale is Katherine Arden’s first book. She studied Russian and French at Middlebury and lived in Russia for a year and her deep knowledge of the Russian language, folklore, and history gives this story its depth and resonance as she weaves together fairy tale elements in a restrained love story between the human female protagonist Vasilisa and the immortal frost demon. This book I read twice to appreciate how Arden wove in appearances by the frost demon at key moments so the ending is completely foreshadowed. Here is a link to Arden’s website.

About month ago, I read Hotel Silence by an Icelandic author (see the cover because that is the only way you will see the name spelled correctly. I thought it might work for summer reading for the students, but there is just too much suicide in the book — both imagined and real. It is told from the point of view of a middle-aged man who just feels like his life has no purpose. He does not want to burden his daughter by committing suicide in Iceland so he buys a one-way ticket to a war-torn country (feels like Serbia), brings along his tool box (hey why not?) and checks into a hotel. Gradually he does find a new purpose as people there ask him to fix things for him.

Then I read Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck which I borrowed from the little free library down the street. I borrowed the book last summer from the little free library down the street but it had been sitting on the bedside table. Finally I picked that one up. It is set in Germany before, during and after World War 2. The third person narrative point of view shifts between three female characters and tells the story of their lives during the way and the decisions they made: either acquiescing to the Nazis or fighting against them. But each woman trying to protect their children. Sometimes the women support each other but there is a great deal of judging going on because the women are sometimes myopic. This novel I found both eye-opening and disturbing as Shattuck describes how often ordinary Germans loved Hitler and supported his policies because he alleviated the shame and poverty caused in the aftermath of World War 1 and the vindictive policies put in place by the Allies to punish Germany.

Then I also read Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being. This was another book which we thought might be good for summer reading. The narrative structure is interesting as it oscillates back and forth between a young teenager living in Japan and contemplating suicide (again) and a woman living in the Pacific Northwest who finds the girl’s journal washed up on shore and begins reading it. It became a definitive no when I got to the part where the young girl becomes a sex worker! The tale ends with some magical realism to conclude the strands in a positive way, but I admit I rushed through that because … well, because I found the story a bit wearying.

Then I read two books by B.A. Shapiro about the art world and art forgery. Not bad.

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I also read The Light in the Ruins by Chris Bohjalian. This novel was set in Italy during World War 2 and the 1950s. It has a mystery-murder component to it. I had this book on my list to read for years — collected from a New Yorker advertisement. This book was hugely disappointing because it was just too brutally violent and seemed to be a proposal for a movie script.