What I Read – June 2018

READ:

Little Fires Everywhere – Celeste Ng (Penguin Press, 2017)

This book wasn’t at all what I expected but it was so much better. Such a compelling read and Ng nails so much of what is wonderful and terrifying about motherhood. Highly recommended.

Our Animal Hearts – Dania Tomlinson (Anchor Canada, 2018)

Full review here.

The Silmarillion – J.R.R. Tolkien (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1977)

The Eldar, you say, are unpunished, and even those who rebelled do not die. Yet that is to them neither reward nor punishment, but the fulfillment of their being. They cannot escape and are bound to this world, never to leave it so long as it lasts, for its life is theirs. And you are punished for the rebellion of Men, you say, in which you had small part, and so it is that you die. But that was not at first appointed for a punishment. Thus you escape, and leave the world, and are not bound to it, in hope or in weariness. which of us therefore should envy the others?

I finished it! It took a long time. I had to finally let go and accept that I couldn’t remember all the names. Once I got to the parts about Beren and Luthien and Hurin and more of a connected storyline I enjoyed the book quite a bit more. If you love The Lord of the Rings you may enjoy some of the background here on Middle Earth. If you are new to Tolkien, I’d say stick to the narratives and adventures.

Warlight – Michael Ondaatje (McClelland & Stewart, 2018)

She had walked between Olive and me that night up the slow incline of hill in Streatham woods, being told that when she was in the darkness with us there would be no danger, that there was no danger even in dreams or during the unstable tumult of her seizures. There were only crickets in song above us, only the scratch of a badger as it turned in comfort, only the hush and then a sudden whisper of the oncoming rain.

Review coming. But I’ll give you a hint and tell you that Ondaatje is either my very favourite writer or tied for first.

CURRENTLY READING:

Adjacentland – Rabindranath Maharaj

“It may interest you to know that the worse type of criminal is not the man who gloats in his darkened room but the man who is blind to his felonious acts. Why you ask? Because he feels no remorse and will repeat his actions over and over and over. There are men like that, you know. Men, who in pursuit of a presumed obligation, have sent hundreds to their death.”