It’s already the first Monday of February, and my winter reading time still hasn’t materialized. We haven’t had any snow days yet and there’s been no forced hibernation, so what I’ve been reading is mostly audiobooks again.
FIrst off, I have to say that There There by Tommy Orange lives up to all the rave reviews. I waited a long time to get the audiobook from the library and when I finally got it, it was worth the wait. I didn’t know much about it except that the main characters and the author were Native, and that it was literary fiction. One chapter seemed familiar as I was listening, and it turned out to be a story that I had read in The New Yorker called “The State,” so that was probably another reason I added There There to my TBR list.
There There is a novel made up of interconnected stories. (I used to dislike that format for a novel when I was younger, but now I like it . Hopefully not because of a decline in attention span.) The characters and the story lines eventually converge around the Big Oakland Powwow in California. The author (who is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes) says in an interview in The New Yorker that he wanted to write a “multivoiced, multigenerational” novel reflecting the urban Native experience in the city of Oakland, where so-called gentrification is taking over neighborhood after neighborhood.
You must read this book if you haven’t already. That’s all I’m going to say! (Except that the title is explained in the novel and it doesn’t refer to the comforting phrase “there, there” as you might say a child, which is how I was taking it at first.)
Other audiobooks since my last update:
I finished The Witch Elm! Whew! Another audiobook that was worth the wait on a long holds list. If you like Tana French’s dark, character-driven mysteries, you will like this one, although it’s a departure from her Dublin Murder Squad books as it’s narrated by a crime victim rather than police detective.
In my eternal quest for self-improvement I listened to My Morning Routine, a collection of interviews with prominent people about their morning routines with the idea that a reader would experiment with different ideas found in the book to tweak his/her own routine.
This is a book that didn’t translate well to audio, as it became rather tedious to hear the same questions intoned over and over, and after a while the answers started to seem repetitive also.
I’m reading Gretchen Rubin’s Better Than Before in print, and finding that more enjoyable as I try to find more time to blog and read.
Also reading in print this week:
Happy Monday, and please tell me what you’re reading this week!
It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? (#IMWAYR) is hosted by Kathryn at Book Date. It’s a place to meet up and share what you have been, are, and about to be reading over the week. It’s a great post to organize yourself. It’s an opportunity to visit and comment, and er… add to that ever-growing TBR pile! This meme started with J Kaye’s Blog and then was taken up by Sheila from Book Journey. Sheila then passed it on to Kathryn at Book Date.
Nice assortment of books. I seldom listen to audiobooks. I find I’m too dis tractable for that format. Come see my week here. Happy reading!
I’m not a huge fan of the interconnected stories format and I think that’s why I didn’t love There, There as much as most people. I wanted it to spend more time on a few people and instead I felt like it just skimmed the surface. I would definitely read another of his books if it was something with less characters though.
Great reading week! I also loved There, There. One of my favorites of last year. The Witch Elm did not work for me- but I think it’s one that would be better on audio. The middle dragged for me.
Most of your books are new to me. Have a good week. My weekly update