Quick Lit: What I’ve Been Reading Lately
Poor Nathaniel Hawthorne! This is how he appears in the discarded version of The Scarlet Letter I got to keep in junior year English.
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
How do I describe this one-of-a-kind book? A literary sci-fi mystery? A time travel romance? I’m not exactly sure, but I’m still thinking about this utterly original read. Our main character (whose name we never learn) has been hired by a secret British government agency that is testing to see if time travel is possible. Our character is a “bridge,” a guardian-guide meant to teach and monitor Commander Graham Gore for a year. Gore is an “expat” who was rescued from a doomed 1847 Arctic expedition and relocated to our time. As the year passes, the bridge and Gore grow close. But something is odd about the Ministry of Time. What exactly is it trying to accomplish? I love these key lines: Forgiveness and hope are miracles. They let you change your life.
James by Percival Everett
I first saw this book last June on a return flight to Albuquerque. The cover was compelling, so I later looked it up and immediately requested it on my library’s audiobook holds list. The premise is just too good to miss.
James is the story of Jim, the runaway slave who is Huck Finn’s companion and friend on a river raft traveling the Mississippi. (You might remember I’m partial to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I’ve even written a book with my own Huck-like character — river raft included.) There are elements and scenes in this story that are immediately recognizable but told through Jim’s perspective, and there are plenty of scenes that are Jim’s alone. Percival Everett has done a stellar job retelling and further developing a story that is almost universally known in the US (a challenge I can’t imagine undertaking). He has given Jim a full, rich story. I couldn’t help thinking how satisfying it must have been to write this well-known character with the agency and depth this telling affords him.
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
I read The Scarlet Letter in high school and again in college, so when my book club picked it as a recent read, I was curious how I’d view the story thirty years later. (By the way, I’m one of the few people [from what I’ve gathered from friends and acquaintances] who loved every bit of assigned reading in school apart from Melville’s Billy Budd. We read a lot of dark and dramatic books in high school, and I’m just now realizing how much this shaped my reading preferences.) The Scarlet Letter did not disappoint!
The book opens in 1642 Boston. Hester Prynne, accused of adultery, is publicly shamed on the scaffold in the town’s square. She wears the letter A on her breast and holds her child, Pearl. Hester has refused to name the baby’s father, and while looking through the crowd she spots her husband, Roger Chillingworth, a man she hasn’t seen in years. He is unknown to the community and makes himself over to be a kind and caring physician…whose secret goal is to suss out Pearl’s father. I won’t give the rest of the story away, but I will say that structurally the book is nicely set up with three different scaffold scenes that move the plot in interesting directions. There’s great discussion fodder on the destructive nature of hidden sin / shame. My views have changed on Pearl’s father since my early readings. I used to find him only weak, but this time through I was able to relate to his humanity. Lots of drama with a tinge of the gothic — all the things I love.
And if you’re looking for a fun gift idea,
these personalized hand embroidered corner bookmarks (a bookmark that fits on the corner of book pages like a cute little hat) are adorable.
What have you read lately?