What are you reading in April?

Time for a new thread!

Over the Easter weekend I read The little shadows by Marina Endicott. This Canadian novel tells of three sisters working in Vaudeville before and during WWI. It's a fascinating and well-researched look into a world that is both colourful and dark. Aurora, Clover and Bella are very young when the book opens and despite their mother's chaperonage, they are vulnerable to sexual and economic exploitation. But there are plenty of people to help them out too and even when things get very bleak their determination and grit keeps them going. I really enjoyed this book; there is plenty of drama and many larger than life characters, but it never goes over the top or wallows in melodrama. The sisters are quite different in personality but all are likeable and easy to empathise with, and the genuine love they share for each other is good to see when so many authors prefer to put women at odds with each other.

Now I'm reading a mystery by Fred Vargas (who is in fact female), An uncertain place.

I am nearing the end of A Discovery of Witches. It is a light, fun read so far.

Haven't read anything written by a woman in a while. I am currently reading a nonfiction book titled Double Cross about spies during World War II. Some might be surprised to hear that women served integral roles as spies and spymasters.

I am reading Cats in the Belfry by Doreen Tovey, which was recommended by another member of LT. Laugh-out-loud hilarious look at life in the 1950's with Siamese cat companions.

Aw, I loved the Tovey books as a child! I am reading Sense and Sensibility for the umpteenth time and enjoying it mightily.

I'm finishing off a reread of Wuthering Heights and also reading Five Bells by Gail Jones.

I've started the next in the Barbara Pym Centenary Read, Less than Angels, and, although A Portuguese Escape and The Case of the Murdered Muckraker are in my Currently Reading collection, I'm not really reading them yet.

recently finished a reread of jane eyre and then wide sargasso sea. hadn't read either in many years, since college. really enjoyed (again) jane eyre, but less so sargasso.

I'm rereading the Laura Ingalls Wilder/Little House books, which I do every few years...and on this reading, it's striking me what an unpleasant person Mary comes across as--humorless and unimaginative and fond of reminding everyone that she can knit and sew after sunset because she's blind.

Not written by a woman, but about one: Colm Toibin's Testament of Mary. Fiona Shaw will play the title character in a Broadway adaptation.

http://www.playbill.com/news/article/176433-Fiona-Shaw-Talks-About-Playing-an-Ic...

I've just read Smile As They Bow by Nu Nu Yi, a Burmese novella about a spirit festival and the transvestite "spirit wives" who participate in it.

>9 Marissa_Doyle: how did i go through childhood as an avid reader and never ever read these books? i'll have to put them on my list now. ::chagrined::

I hope you do, elisa, and come back and say what you think. I love them because I read them over and over and over in fourth and fifth grade...but I wonder what it would be like, coming to them as an adult. They're certainly of a different time and with some very different values and viewpoints...but I love them anyway. :) And if it makes you feel better, I didn't read the Narnia books till I was an adult. I expect I would have liked them better as a child than I did as an adult reader.

i try to take "different time" in to account when it comes to gender roles and racism and things like that, so hopefully it won't get in the way too much. i look forward to getting to them, but my tbr stack is (literally) about 9 years long right now so it might be a while before i get to tell you what i think. =)

Yeah, those TBR piles...

I am about to begin The Poisonwood Bible. I hope I enjoy it. I am in the middle of Les Misérables, which is wonderful, but I don't think I can read it all in one stretch. I don't have the temperament for tomes that I had in my younger days...

Am about midway through The Good House by Ann Leary.

>16 krazy4katz: oooooh, the poisonwood bible is one of my favorite books. she can be a little heavy handed for some people but i think this is a brilliant book. enjoy!!

Thanks, elisa. I will let you know how it goes. k4k

After a brief spell with bloke books, I am now juggling four books by women (meep!).

I'm supposed to be reading The Kindness of Your Nature by Linda Olsson (a New Zealand author) for bookgroup, but it is profoundly failing to capture me. Everyone else in the group is loving it, so ignore my comments.

I'm being much more entertained by Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton, which is Victorian pastiche. With dragons. (Squeee!)

And Owl Came to Stay by Claire Rome is quite charming as well.

But I really need to get through the delightful High Rising by Angela Thirkell before I have to return it to the library this weekend. I think it may have been recommended by a fellow GirlyBooks contributor, if so, thanks! (If not, well, it certainly was a LibraryThinger, I'll track them down for thanks somehow.)

I'm about halfway through The Accursed by Joyce Carol Oates and am contemplating giving up. I've wanted to read Oates for some time and thought I'd start with this gothic novel, as I tend to be fond of gothic and sensational stories. I'm finding this book overlong (not in length, but rather overstuffed and bogged down in the storytelling) and the action slow-moving, and as a consequence I just don't believe in any of the tension.

I'm 35 pages into A Good House, by Bonnie Burnard, which one the Giller Prize in 1999. It's been in my TBR pile since 2002 and always looked boring, but so far I've been pleasantly surprised. Very interesting writing style.

Devouring Amy Wilentz's Farewell, Fred Voodoo. She approaches Haitian history, culture, and politics humbly and respectfully. Fascinating!

(Fixed title so touchstone works now.)

I recently started Laura Lippmann's I'd Know You Anywhere, a book I've been interested in reading for a while. So far it's compelling.

I'm enjoying a long wallow through And Ladies of the Club which at 1100 pages is definitely loooong. But it's wonderfully absorbing as well--I hadn't re-read it in quite a while, and knowing more of the political history of the time now, I'm appreciating that aspect more.

Ooh I LOVE And Ladies of the Club must be due a re-read some time!

Following up my last update:

The Kindness of Your Nature failed to grab me and was returned unread to the library.

High Rising was a highlight of my reading year, I was thoroughly charmed. As was Shades of Milk and Honey and I bought the sequel to that yesterday.

An Owl Came to Stay was rather sweet, but I did have to roll my eyes at her belief in animal telepathy and dowsing. Sorry, just not my thing.

I'm currently reading The Windup Girl which has "girl" in the title....

>27 wookiebender:: Shades of milk and honey has been on my wishlist for ages. It's hard to find here in the UK though. I'll start looking harder based on your praise for it!

I'll be interested to hear what you think of The windup girl. It took me about 100 pages before I got into it, and I can't say I exactly enjoyed it, but I found the future Thailand to be a fascinating setting.

I am partway through Fever by Mary Beth Keane, which I could not find a touchstone for! It is a fictionalized account of the life of Typhoid Mary. Can't say I'm enjoying it considering the subject matter but it is very interesting.

Just starting Bread Givers. It was given to me by a friend who has become the executrix of her longtime friend's estate. She has found many great but forgotten books in this woman's library. I am intrigued by the description of this book as the immigrant story of a jewish woman from Poland in the late 19th-early 20th century and her striving to become a "person" in her own right and not just an extension of her husband.

>#27 & #28. I really liked The Wind-up Girl. The world building did predominate over the plot and characters, but there was plenty of those elements as well.

>30 vwinsloe: that's a flash from the past. i read this for one of my favorite classes in college - it was called jewish women in international perspective, but ended up being mostly about jewish lesbians in the world. *that* is what i remember about this book, not anything about the book itself. ::sheepish grin::

>#31, Thanks. At least someone has heard of it!

I've heard of it too, but have never read it. It's prominently displayed in the excellent boosktore at New York's Tenement Museum, or at least was the last time I was there.

I'm reading A Student of Weather by Elizabeth Hay. I think this is one of those novels that received a lot of great critical praise, but not a wide readership.

>#33. Cool!

> 29 I've heard good things about Fever. Will be interested to hear your thoughts when you're finished with it.

>32 vwinsloe:

let us know if you like it. i think it's still on my shelf at my parent's house with all my other college books. maybe i'll bring it back home with me on my next visit if it's worth a reread.