The Heart of Grief: Death and the Search for Lasting Love by Thomas Attig

The Heart of Grief: Death and the Search for Lasting Love by Thomas Attig
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Actually it took me nearly five years to decide to stop reading it. It was pretty painful every time I read it. I'm not sure if it helped, but my ability to read some of it at a time was an interesting measure of the progress of my grief. Over five years, I mostly came to the same conclusions as the author, so I do agree with him.

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Reading Resolutions 2014

Last year I discovered that it's a little tough for me to read more than about 24 books a year, so this year I wanted to steer myself in the direction of the books I most want to read.

First of all, I will be rereading Kevin's short story collection that comes out this year: We Were Flying to Chicago.

Obviously, the reason I started this blog was to encourage myself to read my dad's books, so I want to make it a priority to read his five favorite books this year. I've already read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, though it was many years ago, so I'll reread it. Gravity's Rainbow is going to be super hard. I might dip into some of the extra picks if I can't get through any of the main books.

Dad recs:
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein (read)
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter
The Shining Mountain by Peter Boardman
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
Extra:
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy by Douglas Adams
The Decay of the Angel, Spring Snow, and The Temple of Dawn by Yukio Mishima

I also asked Kevin for some of his favorites. Obviously this is a tall order for someone who studies and loves literature as much he does, but he gave me the following. I very recently reread Gatsy, and read Jesus' Son and Invisible Cities, so I'll need to read the three on his extra list too.

Kevin recs:
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (read)
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson (read)
American Pastoral by Philip Roth
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino (read)
Extra:
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munroe
Esther Stories by Peter Orner

I also asked my friend Michele because she reads a lot, my list needed a feminine perspective, and in the past I've enjoyed her recommendations.

Michele's Recs:
Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler
Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushde

Extra:
Anything by Richard Russo or Isabel Allende

So that's about 16 choices...

Wild Cards:
I want to finish The Tempest by Shakespeare (because I already started it), and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon because a bunch of people on my Facebook recommended it. I want to finish reading or rereading my stack of baby-related books before my second baby is born. And I want to read the Game of Thrones books because FUN. I might reread some of my favorites (The End of the Affair by Graham Greene, Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson) or throw in some non-baby non-fiction (to be determined).

If I manage to get through all that, I can either read whatever I feel like or just start working my way backwards through the list of recent Pulitzer Prize winners.

Pulitzer Prize in Fiction:
2013) The Orphan Master's Son by Johnson, Adam
2012) No award... Finalists:

          Train Dreams by Denis Johnson

          Swamplandia! by Karen Russell
          The Pale King by David Foster Wallace

2011) A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (read it)
2010) Tinkers by Paul Harding
2009) Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
2008) The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
2007) The Road by Cormac McCarthy
2006) March by Geraldine Brooks
2005) Gilead by Marilynne Robinson,  (I really want to read this one)
2004) The Known World by Edward P. Jones
2003) Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (read it)
2002) Empire Falls by Richard Russo
2001) The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
2000) Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Someone gave me this book as a gift in 1999, I guess I read it for the first time in 2009, but I didn't remember any of it when I read it again this year. It's a really short novel that's organized more like a short story collection of a short book of poems.

I grew up on what could be called a Mango Street. I lived in an apartment on Boulevard East in a town in New Jersey that had once been half Italian but was then mostly Hispanic. Like the main character, I never had a house, and to this day, I have never had a house. While I can relate to the longing to own my home, it only developed later. As a kid, you're usually mostly happy with what you have.

--SPOILER ALERT--

As for the rest of the novel, I found it a very heavy-handed in places (the rape chapter in particular), and incomplete in others. Maybe who you are is in part where you're from, but there's no special case made here as to why Esperanza is Mango Street, especially when she's presented as fundamentally different from the other residents and eager to leave.

Not a favorite of mine.

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