Books: August

Books read:
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Big Rock Candy Mountain by Wallace Stegner

Books bought:
Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby
Bird by Bird by Ann Lamott
Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner

I read two books. Both were long and both were good. Half of a Yellow Sun is a novel about Nigerian civil war in the 1960s, told through the eyes of two university professors, a businesswoman, an expat, and a servant. One of them dies and it breaks your heart. Beautiful book.

Big Rock Candy Mountain is 563 pages of perfect prose about the Mason family's struggles to build a life in the early 20th century American west. It's about mothers, fathers, sons, cars, baseball, bootlegging, life plans, failure, violence, abuse, loyalty, and law school. Mostly I'd say it's about family. Also it's about the myth that there's a corner to turn- that some amount of money or accomplishment will set you free. It won't. Eventually we'll grow old and look back and these days of hard work and no income will be the ones we most loved. So we should love them now.

Here's the chorus from "Harvest Moon," not for any particular reason:

Because I'm still in love with you
I want to see you dance again
Because I'm still in love with you
On this harvest moon