A brief summary of what I’m currently reading or have recently finished, why I read it, and whether I’d recommend it. Although really, it’d have to be truly terrible for me to bother writing about a book I wouldn’t recommend……
The Secrets We Kept (Lara Prescott) – Historical fiction about the CIA’s efforts to smuggle Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago back into the Soviet Union, where it had been banned because of its portrayal of life under Communist rule. It features one of my least favorite literary tools, a split storyline that alternates between a secretary-turned-CIA-agent, and Pasternak and his real-life mistress. It’s still a good read though, full of intrigue, deception, espionage, and the threat of murder as well.
Becoming (Michelle Obama) – Most of the memoirs that exist should not, in my opinion, but this is an exception. I have heard a few remarks that she comes across as perhaps bemoaning tension in her life that she could have easily resolved herself. I can see where that view originates in the book, but I also found it refreshing. I know the tension and self-doubt and concern, the competing priorities, that arise when a mother chooses to work outside the home, and to have them verbalized by someone who on all fronts presents herself as confident and capable was refreshing to me. It also left me grateful that my husband isn’t in politics and has zero aspiration to such a career.
The Lost City of the Monkey God (Douglas Preston) – It’s hard to tell from the title alone whether this is an Indiana Jones movie or a nonfiction account of a 2015 expedition to Honduras to research and excavate an ancient city. It has a Lost World appeal with all the feel of a 19th-century explorer utilizing 21st-century technology.
Island of the Lost (Joan Druett) – Shipwrecked. Not my worst nightmare, but also very low on the list of things I’d like to experience. Island of the Lost tells the story of not one, but two, ship crews that were shipwrecked on Auckland Island in the mid-1860s at the same time and never knew the other group was there. No outright cannibalism, but the suggestion is there, unsurprisingly.
So there you have it: 4 books I’m reading right now or have recently finished. If you’ve read any of these (or decide to after reading this post), drop me a note and let me know what you thought of them! And let me know what you’re reading right now too.
I’m curious as to which of these you would most recommend…or if you could go back, which would you still read, or not bother with?
Knowing you as I do, Becoming would be my top recommendation for you. They were all worth reading the first time, but Becoming is the only one I might read a second time. (Not much of a re-reader though.) It’s also the only one that might change me; the others just poured information into my head.
I am reading again A Higher Call by Adam Makos. It is a true story of chivalry in December 1943 in WWII. A German fighter pilot ace so admired the courage of a stricken B-17 pilot (from Weston, WVA, my families’ hometown) with his plane and crew badly damaged that he escorted him through German flak batteries. It talks of the horrors of combat and how both survived the war to meet as elderly men in 1990.
This sounds like something right up my alley! I’ll have to add it to my list of to be reads.