Reading with Bleue

Bleue wants to know if:

“… there is a book you have read in the last four years that you think everyone should read?”

This is kind of a stinker of a question, ma’am!

There are a lot of books that I enjoy and like to think everyone will read… but do I think they should read them? Well, no. Not every book is for every person. 

I was reminded of this recently with one of our book club selections. It was touted as having universal themes to be appreciated by all women, everywhere. Which was almost true. 

The story detailed the struggle of a middle-aged wife to cope with the death of her husband of nearly 40 years. It was also a story of how that loss exacerbated the woman’s inability to let her grown daughter live her own life. 

Love! Marriage! Mothers and daughters!

Everyone else in the group loved the book, identifying from all three standpoints, be it wife, mother, or daughter. Except - for this childless 58-year old lifelong singleton who has herself been motherless since she was a pre-teen. 

I felt like an idiot but I had to tell them all that this book simply does not compute. 

I can imagine it… but I cannot feel it… making it a fairly pointless book for me to read.

So, there’s my long exemplar as to why I don’t believe that there’s one book that can suit everyone. Let me return to the actual question now, shall I…?

There have been, however, a couple of books that I like to think of my friends reading. Partially for no better reason than that we can share the delight I’ve felt in these works, and partially so we can have fun sitting down together and picking them apart. I'll share those, instead.

I have been slowly savouring “If on a winter’s night a traveler” by Italo Calvino. SP recommended it, BookMan provided it, and I have been loving it. I’m only doing a couple of chapters at a time, so that I don’t fall into my habit of speed-reading, because that would make me miss something and I don't want to miss a word. This is one amazing, terrific book. (Big smooch to He Who Suggested It.) I’ve never read anything quite like it before. It's full of the kind of writing that stops me in my tracks and makes me want to meet the man, so I can watch him think and go along for the ride!  ;-D

“The Shadow of the Wind” by Carlos Ruiz Zafón is another book I’ve really gotten into lately. It’s another story about books but with a completely different feel. I’m sort of amazed that I’ve enjoyed it so much, as I’m not generally wild about Spanish Civil War things, but anything that starts out with a visit to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books has my heart.