Monday, March 24, 2014

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

I had a good reading week last week. I read The Palestinian Lover, by Selim Nassib, an odd book that I enjoyed about a fictional love affair between Golda Meir and a Palestinian aristocrat, covering the late 1930s until 1948. More on that later this week. I've had this book in my piles for a long time so I'm glad I finally got to it.

This week I started reading Jan Elizabeth Watson's new book, What Has Become of You, which is coming out next month. This book is her second; her first book, Asta in the Wings, was one of my favorites and remains one of the best books I've read about childhood. This new one is about a teacher at a girls' school in Maine and some creepy goings-on. We'll see where it goes but I like it so far. It feels more commercial than Asta, a very literary book published by the small press Tin House Books.

I also started listening to The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot, which I'm enjoying. This book, which has been very popular, is about the HeLa line of cells that were taken from a woman dying of ovarian cancer. The cells became the first immortal line of cells to be used in medical research and have had a huge impact on the treatment of many diseases and conditions, yet before this book little was known about the woman from whom they came. Skloot's mission was to correct that gap. It's interesting, and it's not sending me for PTSD treatment like Devil in the White City did.

I'm still working on Hild and The Siege of Krishnapur. What are you reading this week?

See more at BookJourney.wordpress.com.

4 comments:

Mystica said...

The Golda Meir book sounds intriguing!

bermudaonion said...

My book club ended up having an impromptu discussion of the Henrietta Lacks book last week - most of us had read it on our own.

ImageNations said...

A lot going on on your front. I am reading Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

Becca said...

Those all sound great!

I am, of course, reading a hundred books, but I am especially enjoying The Queen of the Tearling by Erika Johansen and The Lost City of Z by David Grann.