The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai

 Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2020--San Antonio

The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai is a very good book.  It was a finalist for the National Book Award and was named one of the top ten books of the year by the New York Times.  There are multiple stories going on as the book jumps forward and backward in time, but they all tie together.  There's the woman who studied art in Paris and was the mistress of a known painter before WWI and returned after the war to be model for a number of famous artists; in her old age, she wants to donate her private collection of sketches and paintings by these famous artists--pieces that no one else even knows exist.  There's the story of the young gallery acquisitions director in Chicago who is gay and is negotiating in the 1980s with the woman to get her to donate her art to his gallery.  There is the story of a young girl who leaves her family in the 1980s with her brother (both teenagers at the time) when the father kicks the brother out of the house for being gay with her story continuing as far as 2015.  There is the story of the AIDS epidemic from the point before it even had a name through the loss of so many friends, colleagues, and relatives to it in the 1980s and 1990s while there still were no treatments that would allow them to continue to live.  There is the story of a young woman who is alienated from her mother, runs off with an older man to join a cult, and eventually is seen in a photograph with a young girl (daughter?) on a bridge in Paris.  And there is the story of the photographer who documented so many of these lives and eventually became world famous, so much so that he was known by just his last name and was having major exhibits around the world.  The book builds slowly at first.  By the time the reader gets halfway through it, it is hard to put it down.  And toward the end, it becomes impossible to put it down.  No wonder it was so well recognized as a great book of the year.  I gave it 4 1/2 stars out of 5.

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Friday, Aug. 14, 2020--San Antonio

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller is the imagined story of the personal interwoven lives shared by Achilles with the exiled Prince Patroclus from the time they are children (age 10) until their deaths in the Battle of Troy when they are in their late 20s.  All the known truths of their story are woven together by the author, a professor of Latin and ancient Greek, into a well-written and fascinating story involving many of the famous names from Greek Mythology and history.  I was a fan of both Greek and Norse mythology when I read them in high school, and this book kept me very interested and invested in the story.  The closer I got to the end, I kept looking at the page number/percentage of book already read hoping it still was not yet going to end.  I gave the book a rating of 4 1/2 stars out of 5.

Days Without End by Sebastian Barry

 Saturday, Aug. 8, 2020--San Antonio

Days Without End by Sebastian Barry is one of the most beautifully written books I have ever read.  Line after line within the book is a marvel.  And since it is set in the American West of the mid-to-late 1800s, the writing skills of the author are further magnified by his apparently authentic use of terms and expressions of that time that caused me to touch my fingers to the text (on my Kindle) to get a pop-up definition to be sure of what was being referenced.  The story itself is fascinating--a western covering such often overlooked topics such as the use of young men to dress as women for the entertainment (dancing partners or stage performers) of miners, a young man eventually discovering that he felt internally more like a female than a male even though he had fought as a soldier in both Indian wars and the Civil War, two men being able to have a life-long homosexual relationship that was secret but also often accepted by those close to them, etc.  But homosexuality is a very small part of the story and is never explicitly described.  It's the story of how two young men met and spent their lives finding ways to make a living, help others, and get by while trying to be good people and staying together.  The writing, however, is the star of the book; how wonderful it was to come across gem after gem of insightful wording.  The book won 2 major literary awards in 2017 and was named a top book of the year by TIME.  I gave it 4 1/2 stars out of 5.

The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom

Saturday, Aug. 2, 2020--San Antonio

The Yellow House, a memoir by Sarah M. Broom, won the National Book Award for nonfiction books in 2019, but I could not finish it.  I read 27% of the book and gave up on it.  It is set in New Orleans and is about a family in the area known as New Orleans East.  There are just too many uninteresting details with the story moving too slowly to keep my interest.  At 27% of the way through, the house wasn't even yellow yet, the family is still having babies (#10, I think, was the latest one), and the first one is getting married.  The writing style is easy to read, but I just saw no need to keep going with the story.  After spending a whole week only getting through 27% of it (because it didn't hold my interest for more than 15-30 minutes at a time), I just didn't want to invest any further time in it.  It's not a bad book, just one that didn't hold my interest, so I will give it 3 stars out of 5.