This is my symphony

What I read & what I lived …

The Leftovers Tom Perrotta As I mentioned last post in my ‘Next Up’ blurb, I loaded The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta on my Kindle after leaving behind (pun!) Misfortune at my daughter’s. When the Left Behind series was all the rage several years ago I had no desire to even pick up the books. In …

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The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht Magical realism is just not my thing. I want to feel oh-so-cultured and understand the hidden meaning and deeper beauty. But Love in the Time of Cholera, Beloved and Like Water for Chocolate were just too obtuse for my story-loving taste. (Although, Time Traveler’s Wife and Life of Pi …

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By George Wesley Stace I love a book that puts me in a place I’ve never been before with people I’ve never met—By George did just that. The novel’s opening starts with a ventriloquist act, waiting in the wings to take their places on stage. That brief prologue ends with, “The great ventriloquist is more than …

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Swamplandia!by Karen Russell This book sat tucked away for several months– a reader’s copy, passed on by a lucky friend who attends the Michigan Booksellers Association every year– until it finally wormed its way off my bookshelf when I heard NPR’s own Nancy Corrigan add it to her “10 Best Novels of 2011” list.  Now …

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Secret Daughterby Shilpi Somaya Gowda Somer and Krishnan have it all. Meeting in med school he was drawn to her American optimism  and drive, she to his British accent and exotic Indian homeland. Marrying to improve their chances of being assigned a shared residency program, they set out (as most do) with the dream that …

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What Is Left the DaughterHoward Norman I chose this book, plain and simple, for the title. I have a kind of fascination with daughters, being one and all. And so it was with some disappointment that I realized the novel was really a father’s letter to his daughter, a daughter he had never lived with and hadn’t …

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The Coffins of Little HopeTimothy Schaffert Give me an octogenarian obituary writer–and one named Essie, at that–and you’ve got me hooked. And while it took nearly the entire book to figure out the title (and, quite frankly, I don’t really understand why it was chosen–although the wordplay was clever), I wasn’t disappointed. Essie Myles, twice-widowed, …

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