BOOKS

I keep meaning to list the books I've been reading, and putting it off. So I've probably forgotten half of them, but here is what I remember from this summer:

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson. 1981
Winner of the PEN/Hemingway award
Book Description (from Amazon.com)

A modern classic, Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, their eccentric and remote aunt. The family house is in the small Far West town of Fingerbone set on a glacial lake, the same lake where their grandfather died in a spectacular train wreck, and their mother drove off a cliff to her death. It is a town "chastened by an outsized landscape and extravagant weather, and chastened again by an awareness that the whole of human history had occurred elsewhere." Ruth and Lucille's struggle toward adulthood beautifully illuminates the price of loss and survival, and the dangerous and deep undertow of transience.

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. 2004

2005 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Fiction

2004 National Book Critics Circle Winner

Book Description
In 1956, toward the end of Reverend John Ames's life, he begins a letter to his young son, an account of himself and his forebears. Ames is the son of an Iowan preacher and the grandson of a minister who, as a young man in Maine, saw a vision of Christ bound in chains and came west to Kansas to fight for abolition: He "preached men into the Civil War," then, at age fifty, became a chaplain in the Union Army, losing his right eye in battle. Reverend Ames writes to his son about the tension between his father--an ardent pacifist--and his grandfather, whose pistol and bloody shirts, concealed in an army blanket, may be relics from the fight between the abolitionists and those settlers who wanted to vote Kansas into the union as a slave state. And he tells a story of the sacred bonds between fathers and sons, which are tested in his tender and strained relationship with his namesake, John Ames Boughton, his best friend's wayward son.

This is also the tale of another remarkable vision--not a corporeal vision of God but the vision of life as a wondrously strange creation. It tells how wisdom was forged in Ames's soul during his solitary life, and how history lives through generations, pervasively present even when betrayed and forgotten. Gilead is the long-hoped-for second novel by one of our finest writers, a hymn of praise and lamentation to the God-haunted existence that Reverend Ames loves passionately, and from which he will soon part.

Aunt Dimity and the Next of Kin by Nancy Atherton. 2005
Book Description
Lori Shepherd, feeling a touch world-weary, decides to become a volunteer at the Radcliffe Infirmary, where she can spread a little good cheer in the community. There she meets Elizabeth Beacham, a kind, retired legal secretary with no family except a brother who has mysteriously disappeared. Lori is saddened when Miss Beacham passes away suddenly after only a few visits. But when she receives an envelope containing a set of keys and a letter Miss Beacham wrote to her just a few days before her death, it becomes clear that there was much more to the gentle invalid than met the eye. Notices start arriving around the village of the large bequests made before her death. And Lori finds that Miss Beacham’s flat is filled with priceless antiques—an inheritance too precious to remain unclaimed. Armed with a few clues and Aunt Dimity’s help, Lori begins to unearth Miss Beacham’s secrets and, ultimately, the surprising truth about her next-of-kin. In this page-turning installment, Aunt Dimity reaches beyond the grave to help another kindly spirit finally rest in peace.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling. 2005
Book Description
We could tell you, but then we'd have to Obliviate your memory.

Hadrian's Wall by William Dietrich. 2004
Book Description
The Wall. When the Roman emperor Hadrian first envisioned the awesome edifice in A.D. 122, he used stone, wood, and iron to shield Roman Britannia forever from the unconquered Celtic barbarians. Stretching over seventy miles to divide the island, Hadrian's Wall has maintained the security of the Roman Empire's northern outpost for more than two hundred years. Now a Roman bride has come who will unleash jealousy, passion, and an epic war that will shake a tired and tottering empire to its core.

Tribune Marcus Flavius has secured command at the Wall not through battles fought or wars won, but through his arranged marriage to Valeria, a senator's daughter. He replaces a brutal veteran, Galba Brassidias, an ambitious soldier whose skill in battle is rivaled only by his Machiavellian brilliance. But Galba will do anything it takes to regain his position and dominate the young woman who fascinates and infuriates him.

The intrigue on the Roman side of the Wall is matched by the plotting of Celtic warriors determined to rid their land of the invaders. They are led by the dynamic and mysterious barbarian chieftain Arden Caratacus, a man who seems to know as much about hated Rome as he does of his own people, and who is determined to win the young woman for himself.

Theirs is a story of swirling emotions, ancient warfare, desperate romance, and the final great clash of Roman and Celtic cultures. All will be decided on the field of battle, where the fate of an empire may rest in the strength of Hadrian's Wall.

Classics : A Very Short Introduction by Mary Beard and John Henderson. 2000
Book Description
We are all classicists--we come into touch with the classics on a daily basis: in our culture, politics, medicine, architecture, language, and literature. What are the true roots of these influences, however, and how do our interpretations of these aspects of the classics differ from their original reality? This introduction to the classics begins with a visit to the British Museum to view the frieze which once decorated the Apollo Temple at Bassae. Through these sculptures John Henderson and Mary Beard prompt us to consider the significance of the study of Classics as a means of discovery and enquiry, its value in terms of literature, philosophy, and culture, its source of imagery, and the reasons for the continuation of these images into and beyond the twentieth century. Designed for the general reader and student alike, A Very Short Introduction to Classics challenges readers to adopt a fresh approach to the Classics as a major cultural influence, both in the ancient world and twentieth-century--emphasizing the continuing need to understand and investigate this enduring subject.

And just finished (I'm setting out to read ALL of this Oxford series of "very short introductions" -- wish me luck -- there's about 200 of them).......
Buddhism : A Very Short Introduction by Damien Keown. 2000
Book Description
This accessible volume covers both the teachings of the Buddha and the integration of Buddhism into daily life. What are the distinctive features of Buddhism? What or who is the Buddha, and what are his teachings? How has Buddhist thought developed over the centuries, and how can contemporary dilemmas be faced from a Buddhist perspective? Words such as "karma" and "nirvana" have entered our vocabulary, but what do they really mean? Keown has taught Buddhism at an introductory level for many years, and in this book he provides a lively, challenging response to these frequently asked questions.

Oops -- almost forgot all the books on tape I've listened to in the car to and from work:
There were at least 4 books in the mystery series about Goldy Bear, the caterer, written by Diane Mott Davidson, including Double Shot and Death by Chocolate.

1776 by David McCullough. 2005
Book Description
In this stirring book, David McCullough tells the intensely human story of those who marched with General George Washington in the year of the Declaration of Independence -- when the whole American cause was riding on their success, without which all hope for independence would have been dashed and the noble ideals of the Declaration would have amounted to little more than words on paper.Based on extensive research in both American and British archives, 1776 is a powerful drama written with extraordinary narrative vitality. It is the story of Americans in the ranks, men of every shape, size, and color, farmers, schoolteachers, shoemakers, no-accounts, and mere boys turned soldiers. And it is the story of the King's men, the British commander, William Howe, and his highly disciplined redcoats who looked on their rebel foes with contempt and fought with a valor too little known. Here also is the Revolution as experienced by American Loyalists, Hessian mercenaries, politicians, preachers, traitors, spies, men and women of all kinds caught in the paths of war.

Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver. 2000
Book Description
Prodigal Summer weaves together three stories of human love within a larger tapestry of lives inhabiting the forested mountains and struggling small farms of southern Appalachia. At the heart of these intertwined narratives is a den of coyotes that have recently migrated into the region. Deanna Wolfe, a reclusive wildlife biologist, watches the forest from her outpost in an isolated mountain cabin where she is caught off-guard by Eddie Bondo, a young hunter who comes to invade her most private spaces and confound her self-assured, solitary life. On a farm several miles down the mountain, another web of lives unfolds as Lusa Maluf Landowski, a bookish city girl turned farmer's wife, finds herself unexpectedly marooned in a strange place where she must declare or lose her attachment to the land. And a few more miles down the road, a pair of elderly, feuding neighbors tend their respective farms and wrangle about God, pesticides, and the complexities of a world neither of them expected.

Over the course of one humid summer, as the urge to procreate overtakes a green and profligate countryside, these characters find connections to one another and to the flora and fauna with which they necessarily share a place. Their discoveries are embedded inside countless intimate lessons of biology, the realities of small farming, and the final, urgent truth that humans are only one part of life on earth.