Update on books I've been reading.

"The Gingerbread Woman" by Jennifer Johnston
I haven't read much of her lately and felt this wasn't too bad , some good moments, but not great. I think "The Christmas Tree" was the best book she's written.

"The Good Soldier" by Ford Madox Ford
An amazing book...some wonderful ironies. Very funny and tragic.

"Oryx and Crake" by Margaret Atwood
I didn't approach this one with a lot of pleasure because I figured it would be a rather grim tale...it is. The usual self-indulgent humour but also intelligent and timely issues. I don't think it really works because you can't summon up any sympathy for any of the characters. She does know how to tell a story...I was motivated to keep reading to the end to see what happened.

"To the Lighthouse" by Virginia Woolf
Oh, yes. Absolutely brilliant. Very interesting to re-read it after all these years. Life experience makes it much more meaningful.

"The Red Tent" by Anita Diamant
Apparently all the rage in women's book clubs. I enjoyed it - quite a realistic interpretation of biblical times, I think.

"Small Wonder" by Barbara Kingsolver (book of essays)

A couple of quotes:

From the essay "Small Wonder"
...but maybe being perfectly happy is not the point, while the truer measure of humanity is the distance we must travel in our lives, time and again, "twist two extremes of passion - joy and grief" as Shakespeare put it.

From the essay "Going to Japan"
"I remember my Japanese friend's insistence of forgiveness as the highest satisfaction, and I understand it really for the first time: What a rich wisdom it would be, and how much more bountiful a harvest, to gain pleasure not from achieving person perfection but from understanding the inevitability of imperfection and pardoning those who also fall short of it."