My List of Uncommented-upon Books

I’ve checked my most-recent Reading History at the library and I see a group of fiction and nonfiction books I haven’t discussed here, as well as a number of plays from LA Theatreworks I listened to over the summer in my car. The plays are 2 CD’s each, so great for the car in these days of little travel.

The books:

The English Assassin by Daniel Silva – I read this art-based murder mystery because one of my fellow-docents highly recommended Silva’s books. This isn’t my normal genre, but it held my attention.

The Night Portrait by Laura Morelli – More fiction centered around art, switching back and forth from the time Da Vinci painted “Portrait of a Lady with an Ermine” and Hitler’s theft of art during the war.

City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert – Fiction that made me laugh out loud. The escapades of a 19-year-old college dropout whose parents send her to her aunt, who operates a fading theatre company in NYC. Set in the 40’s. Nothing like falling in with a group of showgirls who party, party, party!

Amoralman by Derek DelGaudio – What is truth and what is a lie? A sleight-of-hand artists tells his story. This man puts on a show that is, apparently, pretty much indescribable and blows audience members’ minds. I think I heard about this book from a virtual event wherein Neil Gaiman was the interviewer. Friends told him that he simply HAD to go to the show, and so he did.

We the Animals by Justin Torres – A look at life in a dysfunctional family, a very poor one, with 3 young boys that basically run wild. Mom was 14 and Dad was 16 when the first unintended pregnancy occurred. The dark side.

Fool by Christopher Moore – Moore rewrites King Lear from the Fool’s point of view, and allows the Fool to change some of the facts. Very, very bawdy, cringeworthy at times, but you gotta love the Fool and his sidekick, Drool. The witches from Macbeth are important characters, as is a ghost. “There’s always a bloody ghost.”

Lev’s Violin by Helena Attlee – Nonfiction I learned about during this year’s virtual Hay Festival from Wales. It was more interesting to hear it talked about than to read the book. 🙂 This instrument is old and has a unique sound that stopped the author in her tracks. It was thought it might have been made back in the heyday of Cremona, but after a investigation that takes her many places, it proves to have been made much later in Germany. Oh, well. I did enjoy reading about violin making in Cremona.

Now, here are the plays:

Ruby McCollum by Ron Milner, The Heidi Chronicles by Wendy Wasserman (so clever!), The Constant Wife by W. Somerset Maugham (also clever), The Rainmaker by Richard Nash, Oedipus the King by Sophocles.

So, there you have it: what I’ve been up to.