Book Resolution

[rachelmanija]

Many people are making book resolutions. Here is mine.

I resolve to read whatever I want, however I want. If I feel like whittling down the number of books that have been lurking unread for 20 years, I will do that. If I feel like reading the entire Anthony Award longlist, I will do that. If I feel like making a poll, I will do that. If I feel like diving into contemporary horror, I will do that.

Rec me a book?

Comments

[pameladean]

Oh, it's funny how reading your resolution actually made the tension go out of my shoulders for a while, even while I was giggling.

I can't recall if you have read Jessamyn West's Cress Delahanty, but I do recommend it. It's a series of linked short pieces and she rings the changes on so many kinds of fiction. It's funny and eye-opening and sad and both very shrewd and in some ways just shiningly innocent.

P.

[rachelmanija]

Haha, I'm glad.

I've actually never read anything by Jessamyn West.

[pameladean]

This is the only book of hers that I've read. I'm sure the others might be good, but wouldn't be the same. (Elise, who introduced me to the book, has read some others, and seems to concur that no, none of them is like that.)

P.

[carbonel]

I haven't read that one, but I read The Friendly Persuasion and Except for Me and Thee several times -- both novels about Quaker family and community in the 1800s.

[pameladean]

It sounds just the sort of thing I should like.

[carbonel]

I think you would. They were originally published as short stories, so they're quite episodic. They're mostly low-stakes stories, except for one or two involving the Civil War and the Underground Railroad.

Sadly, they're out of print (and I didn't steal my mother's copies, which I should have), but the Hennepin County library system has copies of both available.

(I see Amazon has Cress Delahanty in ebook format for $5. I don't think I've read that, but perhaps I should.)

[pameladean]

I've made a note of those titles!

Cress Delahanty is the one that Elise used to read from sometimes in performance circles or open mics or whatever. Usually the passage about King Sadim and the olive pit. I bought the Kindle edition of it because my used hardcover has very brittle pages. It's mostly okay, but it has a major formatting glitch. If somebody says a line of dialogue, and then there's a new paragraph and somebody else replies without there being a speech tag, that line is taken up into the previous paragraph, so that it looks as if the same person said both lines. I know the book very well and it still just annoys the hell out of me.

P.

[ethelmay]

I remember reading Cress Delahanty numerous times as a teenager, but am not sure I have read it since. I remember a lot of odd details like making cocoa mud (which I subsequently made myself several times).

[pameladean]

Cocoa mud is a great example. Cress has it for lunch in the first story and then much later introduces it to some friends at a house party when they're teenagers. It helps fuel some interesting events.