My Week in Books: October 24-30

Welcome to my new Saturday feature here at Erin Reads that I’m calling:

My plan is to highlight what new books have entered my life, what I’ve been reading, and what’s happened on Erin Reads over the past week.

New Acquisitions

The following books found their way into my home this week:

The Fates Will Find Their Way by Hannah Pittard

This one won’t be published until February of next year. It looks a little different from what I usually read, which I’m excited about. From the jacket flap:

“Sixteen-year-old Nora Lindell is missing. And the neighborhood boys she’s left behind are caught forever in the heady current of her absence.

“As the days and years pile up, the mystery of her disappearance grows kaleidoscopically. A collection of rumors, divergent suspicions, and tantalizing what-ifs, Nora Lindell’s story is a shadowy projection of teenage lust, friendship, reverence, and regret, captured magically in the disembodied plural voice of the boys who still long for her.

“Told in haunting, percussive prose, Hannah Pittard’s beautifully crafted novel tracks the emotional progress of the sister Nora left behind, the other families in their leafy suburban enclave, and the individual fates of the boys in her thrall. Far more eager to imagine Nora’s fate than to scrutinize their own, the boys sleepwalk into an adulthood of jobs, marriages, families, homes, and daughters of their own, all the while pining for a girl–and a life–that no longer exists, except in the imagination.”

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

I read this gentle novel when it first came out, but my book group chose it for their November selection. My copy just came in from the library, and I’m looking forward to the reread! From the jacket flap:

“He is a brilliant math Professor with a peculiar problem–ever since a traumatic head injury, he has lived with only eighty minutes of short-term memory.

“She is an astute young Housekeeper, with a ten-year-old son, who is hired to care for him.

“And every morning, as the Professor and the Housekeeper are introduced to each other anew, a strange and beautiful relationship blossoms between them. Though he cannot hold memories for long (his brain is like a tape that begins to erase itself every eighty minutes), the Professor’s mind is still alive with elegant equations from the past. And the numbers, in all of their articulate order, reveal a sheltering and poetic world to both the Housekeeper and her young son. The Professor is capable of discovering connections between the simplest of quantities–like the Housekeeper’s shoe size–and the universe at large, drawing their lives ever closer and more profoundly together, even as his memory slips away.”

Read This Week

In print:

• I finished A Thousand Splendid Suns this week for the World Party Reading Challenge. I had mixed feelings, which should be posted early next week.
• I dipped briefly into A Suitable Boy, the mammoth chunkster I’m reading with my sister. The writing is lovely, and I’m enjoying it so far. Thankfully, family trees are provided. Otherwise, I’d have no idea who anyone is!
• I began rereading The Housekeeper and the Professor for my book group.

On audio:

• I finished listening to The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for Dueling Monsters: Round II.
• I got about half way through Good Omens, which is both Halloween-appropriate and thoroughly enjoyable!

Erin Reads Recap

Here’s what happened around Erin Reads this week:

• I started the week with a Sunday Salon post in which I introduced the 2.75″ thick book I’ll be reading with my sister.
• On Monday I announced that Erin Reads had moved (hooray!) and kicked of a giveaway which is open until tomorrow. Be sure to enter!
• For the rest of the week, I shared my recommendations for non-scary Halloween reads in a feature I called Halloween for the Faint of Heart. If you’re looking for something less creepy to read for Halloween (or any time!), be sure to check out the comments. There are some great recommendations in there!
  • Ariana Franklin’s Mistress of the Art of Death series
  • Franz Kafka’s short story / novella The Metamorphosis
  • The results of the Dueling Monsters: Round II competition: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde vs. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
  • Audiobooks for Halloween: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman and The Gates by John Connolly, plus a few bonus recommendations

Your Turn!

How was your reading week? Do tell!