What I'm Reading Today

My reading is all over the place this week. Not that my reading is ever very disciplined. But these delicious books keep popping up. What else can I do?

Sandy brought no books in the mail yesterday, but just as I was finishing Johnson’s CREATORS, Wilhelm brought home from the library two books I had requested.

One of them is a children’s picture book (one of my favorite genres, along with oversized 19th century novels and murder mysteries.) This is Jane O’Connor’s FANCY NANCY (2006), illustrated by Robin Preiss Glasser. It’s great. I couldn’t resist buying it, though I was a little embarrassed to buy it for myself, so I sent it to Ella.

I hope she likes it. Her grandmother tells me she enjoys dressing up. Besides, the parents in the book look like Tim and Anita, and Ella isn’t unlike Nancy. The little sister even looks like Piper. (At least I think she does. Nobody ever sends me pictures.)

The other book I got yesterday is one that Sandy (the other Sandy, my sister, not the letter carrier) urged me to read. Sandy keeps me informed of what she’s reading, but she doesn’t usually go any further than asking if I've read a book, or suggesting I might like it, or mentioning how much she liked it herself. So when she tells me to read something I usually do so.

THE TEA HOUSE ON MULBERRY STREET (2003), by Sharon Owens, is a sweet romance-ish novel that takes place in Belfast in the late 90s. It’s a Grand Hotel sort of book that tells the stories of otherwise unrelated characters who visit the tea room (which they always call a café, I notice) and sometimes help one another resolve their problems.

MULBERRY is what Sarah calls non-serious non-trash. It's not great literature, but it’s well written and very well plotted with a couple of characters that are so real I’d like to give them a hug – or in a couple of cases punch them in the nose.

I’m on page 256 of MULBERRY, which is good because the Wells Fargo Wagon arrived at our door today with Penelope Fitzgerald’s EDWARD BURNE-JONES (1975.)