Tag Archives: Bookish Chatter

Chatter about books, reading and anything related to either one.

Sunday Matters: I’m Here

Sunday Matters

My weekends have been busy these past two weeks so I took a break from my Sunday posts but I am back today! My daughter’s visit went pretty well. It was all together too short but we managed to get a few days with her which included a lovely museum visit for the two of us.

Right Now:

Student ministry this morning includes Slip N Slide Kickball. It’s always wild. The students love it.

This Week:

I really don’t have much planned for the upcoming week but I do have lunch scheduled with one of my favorite retired colleagues! Every time she is in the area she schedules a lunch and it’s always fun to catch up with her and her husband.

Other than that, I am tempted, very tempted to sell everything in my garage but it definitely won’t happen until it’s cooler out. I have to go through all the bins left behind by my two adult kids. There is a lot but it’s way too hot in there to do it during the summer. I need my garage back. I might be able to get rid of some of the furniture pieces now though.

Reading:

My reading slowed down a touch because of my daughter’s visit but also because this audio book I am working on is very long. I did finish and posted the reviews for:

I started The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami, which comes out in November. I am only about ten chapters in and I can say this, it’s taking me a little bit of time to get into the characters. But there’s already been a cat mention so if you know Murakami you know that cats always seem to make it in.

The City and Its Uncertain Walls

My next read will be All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker. So many of you have said wonderful things about it. I am intrigued. I loved his last book.

All the Colors of the Dark

Watching:

Not much. Trying hard not to fall down a rabbit hole with all this election news. I like to know what’s going on but man, it’s so easy to spend too much time on it. I’ve watched a little bit of the olympics. I did enjoy all of the gymnastic events and some of the track and field events. The other day I became very interested in the Table Tennis and Archery events. They are really fun to watch.

Grateful for:

Lately I’ve been noticing all my progress since my brain surgery. It’s a good thing and I appreciate all of it. I can now jump off a curb and not wobble! This is huge. After surgery and during the pulmonary embolism event, I could not take a step off of any curb, even a low one. Of course that made stairs out of the question. If I tried, I ended up on the floor with absolutely NO strength to get back up again. Now I can step up, step down and hop off! Huge.

Hope you are all well and enjoying the weekend.

Review: The Catcher in the Rye

The Catcher in the Rye

The Catcher in the Rye
By J.D. Salinger
Back Bay Books, 9780316450867, Nov 2018, 288pp.

The Short of It:

Read back in high school and re-read today for book club, and it’s just as wonderful as I remembered.

The Rest of It:

The Catcher in the Rye is of course, a classic. Everyone’s heard of it but I’ll tell ya, not everyone will love it. Why? Because Holden Caulfield is a piece of work! Tossed from private school for failing nearly all of his classes, Holden goes on a three day sabbatical from life. Delaying the inevitable, when he has to return home to his family for the holidays and clue them in to the fact that he has once again been kicked out of school.

Holden packs up his belongings, smokes a lot of cigarettes and ponders life as he hits bar after bar, considering his options. He’s underage but wise beyond his years so he goes from place to place making observations and hoping, longingly for people to spend time with him. He makes a few calls. Meets a few friends. Feels a bit homesick for his baby sister Phoebe, but mostly just flits from one interaction to the next, lost.

Holden is ALL of us. That’s what makes this such a good read. His insecurities are balanced by his overblown opinion of himself. Minus the bluster, the fancy hat, the cigarettes and booze and what you have is a teenage boy desperate for love. His loneliness screams at you while turning those pages.

Funny story. When I was pregnant with my first child, the name Holden was a frontrunner. We decided to go with Evan, instead. But after reading this classic again, my son really IS Holden in real life. I highlighted many passages because they could have actually come right out of my son’s mouth. I shared this observation with him and he wasn’t impressed or compelled to read the book. See? He is Holden.

What stays with me after reading this book is Holden’s voice. Salinger creates this living, breathing, sometimes seething Holden. He’s not the most well-liked guy but he can be charming, and often is, when not overcome with  loneliness and doubt.

If you haven’t read this classic, or you read it long ago. I mean, I was 16 the last time I read it, I highly recommend you pick up a copy.

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.