Hi all, how’s everyone doing? Did your April showers bring May flowers? We were having a very dry month here until yesterday when we had a slushy snowstorm hit. I kid you not. I was at a friend’s house and took this photo out the window of their pretty back yard.
Good thing we hadn’t planted the vegetable garden yet … other than a few rows of potatoes underground, but they’re safe … despite the overnight frost warning, which has confused me. What month are we in? Is this a time travel thing? I guess the novel Yesteryear is on my mind lately as Tina and I are continuing our buddy read of it. And there is an element of some hocus pocus going on. It seems the main character Natalie has bit off a bit more than she can chew.
Meanwhile, we still plan to plant the vegetable plants later this week when it heats back up (you can see from the photo it was nicer earlier last week). And I’m starting to think about which books will go on my summer reading list this year. I’ll likely post my list on Sunday May 31. Usually it includes mostly new releases — from the present to the past eight months or so — that I hope will be captivating. New books by such popular authors as Elizabeth Strout, Ann Patchett, and Maggie O’Farrell will likely “make” my summer list but then I’ll be looking for others I want to include. Do you have any books — old or new — that you’re looking forward to reading this summer?
Also you might have seen that recently the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper put out its list of the 100 greatest literary novels ever published in English, as voted on by authors, critics and academics worldwide. Many classics dominate the list but a few contemporary authors have made it on as well. Though it’s George Eliot’s long novel Middlemarch from 1871 that has the #1 spot and I never have read it, but there’s still time to get to it and some others.
I’ve read about 25 books from their list but others were so long ago that I couldn’t recall if I had read them or not. So this list is a good reminder of what to revisit or pick up for the first time. I like lists. And it might remind you of the list the New York Times put out in 2024 titled “The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century.” Perhaps if you cross-reference both lists it’d be interesting which books made both and at what number. Though many of the considered best books came long before the 21st century.
And now I’ll leave you with a review of what I finished lately.
The Bright Years by Sarah Damoff / Simon & Schuster / 288 pages / 2025
3.6 stars. This debut novel is cut into three parts each told by a member of the Bright family … first the mother Lillian narrates telling of her up and down marriage and life — starting in 1979 Texas — with Ryan, an artist, who after she divulges a secret to him, carries on with his father’s alcoholic tendencies; then their daughter Georgette narrates detailing tragic circumstances of what happens next as she’s growing up; and finally the father Ryan narrates the last part in a letter to his granddaughter.
I’ve tried purposefully to be vague so you can find out the ins and outs of this strained family. Alcoholism plays a part and missed years and opportunities and how that affects each of them. The story of the family kept me engaged as it went along, though the characters come to annoy at certain points. The last part with the father Ryan’s narration and character seems the weakest developed part .. and at that point you want a bit more from the story and him. Still I’m glad to have found out what the commotion over this novel was about. It reminded me very slightly of Patrick Ryan’s novel Buckeye since I finished that recently and it also involves a broken family and its various members.
That’s all for now. What about you — are you making summer reading list plans and what’s on it? Enjoy your week.
