My Literary Obsessions

What to read?  It’s harder to decide what not to read.  Sometimes I leave the library feeling guilty about how many books I’ve checked out.  But that’s the best part of the library:  if you get home and find out it’s not the right book for you, you can immediately return it, no harm, no foul, and someone else can check it out.  Whether fiction or nonfiction, I have certain genres that I return to over and over with which I am, perhaps, more than a little bit obsessed.  I’m intrigued by the lives of women living in the Middle East, and I am horrified and fascinated by the way Jewish women tried to manage their lives and their families in the most nightmarish of circumstances. I love to read about treacherous travel from the safety of my little bed, and I imagine being a pioneer woman, once again trying to manage self and family under harsh conditions, whenever we drive to the Sierra.  My favorite genre is the “seamy side of London” category (I don’t know what else to call it).  Pickpockets, prostitution, and insanity in Victorian London? Well, it makes me happy, what can I say?  Reading is one of life’s great pleasures, and I am sad that Kids Today forsake reading for any manner of electronic stimulation.  Maybe one day they will find their way to books–we can always hope.  And now, a few of my favorites…

Books about women in the Middle East:

Princess by Jean Sasson (nonfiction); Eight Months on Ghazzah Street by Hilary Mantel (fiction);  A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini (fiction); Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi (nonfiction, comic-book style);  A House in Fez: Building a Life in the Ancient Heart of Morocco by Suzanna Clarke (nonfiction)

Travelogues (Armchair Tourism):

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer (nonfiction);  Sand in My Bra edited by Jennifer L. Leo (nonfiction);  How to Shit Around the World by Dr. Jane Wilson-Howarth (nonfiction);  Notes from a Small Island and A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson (nonfiction); Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick (nonfiction); Baghdad without a Map by Tony Horwitz (nonfiction)

Holocaust  Women:

Holocaust by Gerald Greene (fiction);  All But My Life by Gerda Weissmann Klein (nonfiction); Day After Night by Anita Diamant (fiction)

Pioneer Women:

Pioneer Women: The Lives of Women on the Frontier by Linda Peavy and Ursula Smith (nonfiction);  Impatient with Desire by Gabrielle Burton (fiction); One Thousand White Women by Jim Fergus (fiction)

The Seamier Side of London:

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters (fiction); Slammerkin by Emma Donoghue (fiction); Hubbub: Filth, Noise, and Stench in England by Emily Cockayne (nonfiction); The Sexual History of London by Catharine Arnold (nonfiction); Dr. Johnson’s London by Eliza Picard (nonfiction); The Crimson Petal and the White by Michael Faber (fiction); The Dress Lodger by Sheri Holman (fiction)

So many books, so little time!