When I set out to learn about my mother's bridge club, the Jewish octogenarians behind the matching outfits and accessories, I never expected to fall in love with them. This is the story of the ladies, their game, their gen, and the ragged path that led me back to my mother.
I’m between books and you’d think I was searching for an iceberg shard to get hold of in the icy Atlantic for all the desperation I feel. It’s like being friendless or wearing a t-shirt on an unseasonably cold day. My grandma Rae always used to say when you have a book you’re not alone. And I could see her at bus stops and in line at the butcher or on a train to visit us in Connecticut reading her Chekhov or Pushkin or Pasternak. Though learning English was the first thing she set out to do when she arrived in America, she read her writers in her mother tongue. There really is no better friend than a book.
What are you reading?
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Betsy Lerner 
Just finished A Town Called Solace by an amazing Canadian writer, Mary Lawson. She never disappoints. Now I’m re-reading Breathing Lessons. I find Anne Tyler comforting somehow.
“Wild Seed” on my own. “Vesper Flights” and “Late Migrations” with my wife. (I hate putting book titles in quotation marks, btw, but I don’t see italics as an option. Sigh.)
I’m loving Vesper Flights so much I’m rationing it.
Totally! We checked it out from the library but we’re going to buy it, so we can just pick it up again and again. So much wisdom in there.
This is Happiness, Niall Williams.
Irish storyteller like no other.
The Book of Joy, Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama. Comforting, inspiring, easy smile-inducing read.
“The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Including the Letters,” eds. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns
“The New Testament,” trans. David Bentley Hart
“The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Illustrated,” pub. Gramercy Books
I will be with these friends for some little while.
THE SWEETNESS OF WATER by Nathan Harris – for a review.
I don’t see how I could ever be without a book. I’ve bought too many over the years . . . it’s a real problem. I admit it. I’m book poor.
I’m rereading QUIET by Susan Cain. It’s a good reminder of who I am, especially as things start opening up.
The God Equation by Michio Kaku, because I’m waiting for one of these physicists to tell me that the Earth is merely a dot on Mandelbrot’s fractal. Seems like they want to…
Klara and the Sun – Ishiguru. I’m not usually a big fan of dystopian, but so far, so excellent. (and I think you could write about your grandma Rae. I’d read more.)
I’m still digesting the one I finished a few days ago, The Overstory, by Richard Powers. It covered a lot of territory and I’m not quite ready for another commitment. Next up is either Desperation Road by Michael Ferris Smith or Give Us a Kiss by Daniel Woodrell. I’m leaning toward the former.
I’m reading This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger.