It took me almost 2 months, but I have finished reading A House for Mr. Biswas. This book creates a sense of character and place that far exceeds the sum of the words that fill its many pages. The sense of place plays a critical role in the story. This is not just a story about the events of a man's life. It's the story of a life. Where things happen proves just as important as what happens. This isn't much of a stretch to make as chapter titles are mostly where Biswas happens to live at that point of his story. His story could not happen as it does anywhere other than the Hanuman House (which I can finally read without thinking of Baljeet as Hanuman Man) or Green Vale or any other place on Trinidad. The power of this novel is undeniable if subtle. The novel's action lies within Biswas. It's not about thrilling adventure or a gripping plot full of suspense and intrigue. It the slow unfolding of a life and all the limits and struggles that come with living our allotted place. I wasn't ready to read this novel when I bought it over 15 years ago. Life needed a chance to buffet me around a bit. I empathize with Biswas and understand his struggles. He's easy to dismiss as weak and ineffectual, but in dismissing him, we would be all too eager to dismiss so much of what each of us struggle with every day.
It took me a few days to settle on which book to read after finishing the Naipaul. (Brief aside, I fully intend to purchase another Naipaul book in the not too distant future. A Bend in the River will likely be that purchase. I would like to take a look at it first, but it's not in stock at any of the B&N locations near me. I could borrow it from the library as an ebook without too much hassle, but I kind of like the process of going to the store and looking at it. I enjoy the process of buying the book (obviously, that how I ended up with so many of them to read!). The failure of any retail location to figure out how to stock books that appeal to a limited audience is a real bummer. Maybe the existence of the limited audience is the real downer. Anyway, this is the kind of situation that heralds the demise of the mass book seller. Well, the end of mass everything is the real trend. Books are just a marginal enough product that it's dying faster than some other industries. Long live the niche! At least online resources will provide a way for me to keep getting books like this. Opening a box just isn't the same as going to the store.) After spending 7 weeks with a single physical book, I was not eager to engage with another several week long reading project. A field trip with my daughter to a Civil War battlefield had me in an historical frame of mind for the last month or so. After some looking around on my shelves, I found the Virginia at War books. I have four of the five volumes (only 1865 remains to be purchased), but I have only read the first one, 1861. The books are a series of chapters on different aspects of the war with an exclusive focus on events in Virginia. Each one of the volumes is pretty slender, not quite 200 pages including notes, with the final chapter of each being an excerpt from the diary of a woman who lived in Fairfax during the war. These skinny little books on the Civil War were a perfect fit for my current reading needs.
So Virginia at War, 1862 is moving along smoothly. Each chapter is the right length to be read in a single session so the book moves with a nice cadence. I'm very familiar with the events of the Civil War in Virginia in 1862 (that is really the only period and theater of the war that I really know anything about) so the books move quickly. The chapters focus on events outside of battles and generals. The topics are minor but provide very interesting context for the larger events that I already know a bit about. There are always a few pages of notes at the end of each chapter so I get some bonus pages to record in Goodreads with each one I finish. I've read three chapters in as many days. I should finish the book next week.
I'm also making nice progress with Dragonflight, yet another NPR 100 book that I borrowed from the library. I'm not very impressed with this one. It's decent enough, but it's not very well written. It's short, and I'm about 3/4 of the way to the end. I will finish it this weekend.
I'm tired of being stuck around 155 books to read so I'm going to hold off on buying anything for a little while. I really need to pick a harder ebook that I already own to take on while reading something engaging in the physical format. I have some plans for how to make that happen. We'll see if I follow through.
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