How I read now

Where do you find out about books? Recommendations from friends and family? New York Times Review of Books? Browsing the bookstore or library? Do you insist on a physical copy, or do you use a kindle app or some such? What about audio books? Personally, I love a physical book, and I have become quite enamored with audio books. I’m not really fond of the e-reader, though I think it’s great if you travel, or commute via public transportation, or if you have arthritis or something that makes holding a book uncomfortable.

Anyway, here are some books I have read recently, or will read soonish, and how I came to them.

Anxious People – Nance mentioned this one in the comments on her blog awhile ago, and someone else said how much they loved it, so I bought it on Audible and listened to it during my morning walks.

Anxious People is the story of a bank robbery in Sweden, where the robber runs into an apartment building, happens upon an open house, and takes hostages.

That doesn’t sound very interesting to me, but it was really good, engaging, and funny. I liked it so much that I thought that my daughter might enjoy it as well, so I bought her a hard copy. That’s one downside to audiobooks. My daughter lives in my house, but I couldn’t really loan it to her. And actually, I really liked another book about a hostage situation, Bel Canto. I guess it’s a good conceit to bring people together and learn about them.

The Scent Keeper – Do you have those little neighborhood libraries where you are? Where you can drop off a book or pick up a book? We have several in our area, and one day while we were out on a walk, I came across this book. It is a ‘Reese’s Pick’, which is a book club curated at least in some fashion by the actress Reese Witherspoon. I’ve read a couple of other books with this label, and I always love them. So I took it.

The Scent Keeper is about a girl and her father, who live alone on an isolated island in Canada. The father has a device that is like a Polaroid camera for scents. He uses the device to capture a scent on a little piece of paper, and keeps them in little bottles. When you open the bottle, you can smell the scent that he captured…like a room with a fire in the fireplace, or a perfect summer day at the ocean. Of course the story goes on from there, but I won’t ruin it for you.

Hamnet – I heard about this one a couple of times, on NPR I think. I heard about it a couple of times, actually, but the one that hooked me was when someone was talking about their favorite books of the year, and she said, “We read this one for our book club, and the comment I heard the most often was, ‘can we read it again?'” So I asked for it for Christmas.

I just started this one, but so far I like it. It is the story of Agnes Shakespeare, William’s wife, and their family. In real life, Hamnet was one of Shakespeare’s children, who died at the age of 11.

The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock – In the same vein as the little free libraries, I got this book for free. I recently joined a ‘buy nothing’ group on Facebook, which I find fascinating. The idea is to reduce hyper consumerism and tossing stuff in the landfill by giving things away, or also asking for things, from your neighbors. What a great idea. I’ve seen some really interesting things given or loaned. One was a woman who had recently had a premature baby, and needed a specific type of baby scale to make sure her tiny baby was gaining weight. That’s the sort of thing that one doesn’t need for very long, so happily someone else on the group had one and gave it to her. Made me feel good. Some people give away food (like flour that is about to expire, but is unopened.). I find that more strange. It is citrus season here, so I have seen some people overloaded with lemons or oranges offering them. We’re planning on giving away my old bike, as it was a hand me down and is really a bit too big for me, and is very heavy, and I haven’t ridden it in about 6 years. Ted has some golf clubs he wants to get rid of, as he hates golf. That kind of thing.

But I digress. A lot. One woman was giving away four books that she had read and enjoyed, and two of them were books that I also had read and liked a lot, so I felt like we might have similar taste. So I asked for the other two, and she gifted them to me. I went and picked them up from her doorstep, and here they are, awaiting me to finish Hamnet and give them a try.

Here’s the blurb from the back of the book. Might be good, might suck, who knows? That’s part of the pleasure of life, right? The not knowing? Especially when you get the book for free. And when I’m finished, I’ll likely pass it on somehow.

One September evening in 1785, Jonah Hancock hears an urgent knocking on his front door near the docks of London. The captain of one of Jonah’s trading vessels is waiting eagerly on the front step, bearing shocking news. On a voyage to the Far East, he sold the Jonah’s ship for something rare and far more precious: a mermaid. Jonah is stunned—the object the captain presents him is brown and wizened, as small as an infant, with vicious teeth and claws, and a torso that ends in the tail of a fish. It is also dead.

As gossip spreads through the docks, coffee shops, parlors and brothels, all of London is curious to see this marvel in Jonah Hancock’s possession. Thrust from his ordinary existence, somber Jonah finds himself moving from the city’s seedy underbelly to the finest drawing rooms of high society. At an opulent party, he makes the acquaintance of the coquettish Angelica Neal, the most desirable woman he has ever laid eyes on—and a shrewd courtesan of great accomplishment. This meeting sparks a perilous liaison that steers both their lives onto a dangerous new course as they come to realize that priceless things often come at the greatest cost.