last month...

Since returning from our foray into the romantic Pacific Northwest last month, I've felt compelled to finish books that have been lying around my house, waiting to be read. Something about the looming Minnesota winter demands that I take some constructive action against clutter in my home so I don't feel burdened by its weight. Rather than complete reviews, I'll sum...

• Little Bee by Chris Cleave. This is a book about a 16-year-old Nigerian refugee girl written by a middle-aged British white guy. In the same way that I felt troubled by the way Kathryn Stocket wrote The Help (first person), this book seemed awkward. Alternating chapters told a terribly heartbreaking story from the perspective of this Nigerian girl and a thirty-something woman, neither of whom seemed particularly well-written. It was, however, a very compelling story that gave an interesting perspective of illegal immigration that is totally different than what we in the United States encounter.
• Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland. (This is the same author, fellow promiscuous reader, Lindsay, will recognize, who wrote The Passion of Artemisia.) This book is eight vignettes telling the story of a painting by Johannes Vermeer. (Vermeer, one might recall, is the similarly glorified painter of Girl With a Pearl Earring, book written by Tracy Chevalier, who writes beautifully.) I read this over Labor Day weekend on the North Shore and it was a pleasant book to keep coming back to. Gently written, concerned with the way light creeps along the edges of days.
• Storey's Guide to Keeping Honey Bees: Honey Production, Pollination, Health by Richard E Bonney and Malcolm T Sanford. Because one must keep one's options open.
• Animal Farm by George Orwell. I'll get to this when I finish 1984.
• King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild. This was assigned in one of Dr Poole's history classes at Scholastica that I, unfortunately, didn't get a chance to take. It explores the Belgian king's complete takeover of the Congo River Basin and the gross human rights violations that ensued as he viciously destroyed the indigenous communities for ivory and then rubber during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is gruesome and terrible but readable and informative. An estimated ten million Congolese people died during this period. Look it up.

So! On to other things...