Reading Rodent

  The Friend by Sigrid Nunez is about a woman’s journey with grief after losing her best friend, an elegy of sorts. It reads like a stream-of-consciousness journal of a writer, because no non-writer would write so elegantly in a diary. The prose is unique to me. I am definitely going to read other books by this author. Many of the sorrowful passages resonated with me on a very personal level since I lost my best friend recently too. Mine just happens to be a dog, whereas her’s is a human. Regarding how we speak on what those we lost “could have” done, or what they “would have” liked:  “ Would have, would have. The dead dwell in the conditional, tense of the unreal. But there is also the extraordinary sense that you can become omniscient, that nothing we do or think or feel can be kept from you. The extraordinary sense that you are reading these words, that you know what they’ll say even before I write them.”  One entire chapter was dedicated to an ending that she had wis...

The Cat Who Saved Books is an ode to book lovers and avid readers. It’s a feel-good story about a boy who mysteriously meets a talking cat who encourages (well, more like forces) our main character to go on some bookish adventures in order to save books. Each quest presented an interesting parallel to some issues in the book industry we have today, like book hoarders who collect books to look impressive (guilty!), and some others that I don’t want to spoil. The atmosphere of the entire book reads like a short Studio Ghibli movie; think “Spirited Away” but with a moral lesson that is much more conspicuous and ephemeral, if not charmingly predictable. I imagine that this book would be perfect to read out lout to your kid over a couple of cozy nights. While it was something completely out of the norm for me to read, it was the perfect pick-me-up book during the long Labor Day weekend. Overall, I’m pleased to have tried something new, and can’t wait to read it for my 6 year old niece. ...