Monday, October 29, 2012

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Hope everyone in Hurricane Sandy's path are keeping safe this week. We're waiting here in the Boston area for the storm to pass. So far, so good!

I'm reading Witches on the Road Tonight, by Sheri Holman, a Shirley-Jackson-Award-winning novel about three generations of an Appalachian family and their legacy of involvement with the occult. Cora Alley is a mountain woman who may have done something to a pair of WPA workers who visited her family; Eddie Alley, her son, becomes the host of a horror movie-of-the-week show and keeps a secret from his wife and daughter; Wallis, his daughter, struggles with her understanding and relationship with her father and grandmother. It's beautifully written, atmospheric and suspenseful as it goes back and forth through time and different perspectives.

I'm also reading Harry Hearder's Italy: A Short History, a thumbnail-sketch survey of Italian history from prehistory to the present. I'm about to start the section on the Late Middle Ages and I'm picking up interesting anecdotes and facts, like how the Greeks settled the island of Ischia as a trading post (we didn't visit Ischia on our trip but we did visit its neighbor, Capri, and the Bay of Naples area) and that Sicily was once an important Arab region where many mosques were built.

Finally, I'm still reading Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend, her latest English-translated novel about two friends from Naples and how their relationship tracks the changes in that city over the years.

What about you? Riding out the storm or just having a regular Monday, what are you reading?

See more at BookJourney.Wordpress.com.

4 comments:

Mystica said...

Elena Ferrante's book sounds good.

bermudaonion said...

I hope you have a great week in books and come through the storm unscathed.

Zibilee said...

That first book looks interesting! I hope that you are able to cuddle up with a good book while the storm blows through. I have been thinking of all my friends in Sandy's path. Take care over there!

Kathleen said...

Witches on the Road Tonight sounds wonderful!