Title: Atchafalaya Houseboat: My Years in the Louisiana Swamp
Author: Gwen Roland
Genre: Memoir
This memoir tells a story about the kind of people I dream about knowing and becoming like. People who live by choice in near complete isolation in a swamp where they live and make their living on the water and the land. They tend gardens and chickens, collect rain water to drink, bathe in the river, nap in the sun, swim naked in the intense Southern heat. They trade and barter fish and vegetables and labor for other goods instead of only surviving in a currency economy. They listen to Robert Frost tell stories on a tape while they construct their houseboat from recycled materials. They write poetry about the seasons and the stars. They read books and stories for their own deep pleasure and aloud for entertainment. They welcome artists and writers to their home and the serenity of the swamp. They live alone without lonliness and commune with friends wihtout being bound within a community of homes.
For nearly a decade the writer and her then companion lived in the swamp and lived totally on their own terms. They survived and prospered by the work of their hands and minds. They grew their own food, nurtured culture and knowledge within themselves and put nothing but goodness into the world. I envy them.
I loved this book and the fact that these two lived this kind of life. Even though their relationship ended and they keft their swamp utopia it heartens me to know that at least it existed for a while. It also makes me want to buy my grandmother’s farm from my father and build a farmhouse of my dreams there. I’ll milk my cows, make my own cheese, grow organic vegetables in the rich Kentucky soil, watch the sun set over my back pond and let the breeze blow through my long hair as I sit in the porch swing. I’ll grow into an old, fat happy Southern woman and it will be good. If only that could be my world even for a little while.

Title: The Mists of Avalon
Author: Marion Zimmer Bradley
Genre: Fiction
This is a wonderful fantasy novel. A feminist re-imagining of the Arthurian legends. I like Bradley’s version so much better than all the traditional ones. Even in it’s fantasy setting this book casts a scathingly critical eye to Christianity’s mysogny and inherent sexism. It is glorious. It took me a good week to read as it’s nearly 900 pages but it was well worth every minute.

Title: The Time Traveler’s Wife
Author: Audrey Niffenegger
Genre: Fiction
This book is so long it surprised even me that I read it as fast as I did. A deeply entertaining and sometimes confusing love story involving travel through time and place is right up my alley. Though they have basically nothing in common occasionally while reading this book I would think of the film I Heart Huckabees and laugh. That entertained me. The love story aspect wasn’t so great in a traditional “I will find you!” epic movie kind of way but more in the quiet resignation that “yes, I have in fact found the one and it will be good and sometimes hard but I have chosen this person over all others, the end.” I like love stories like that.
There were a few things in the book that irritated me greatly though so if this were a traditional book rating system it would only get like 3 stars instead of 3.5. One was a convoluted and pointless plot twist, the other was the straight character repeatedly referring to lesbians as dykes. I think I’ve become one of those people who think if you aren’t one, you can’t refer to others as one, in relation for reclaimed slurs toward a group of people. Particularly in this book when it was so unnecessary, simply say lesbian, that’s all. Totally unnecessary and thoroughly irritating.

Title: The History of Love: A Novel
Author: Nicole Krauss
Genre: Fiction
This book was heartbreaking. To quote a movie character “nothing is sadder than wasted potential” and the characters in this book suffered through lots of wasted potential. Potential love, potential success, potential lives, potential deaths. It’s hard to know if I enjoyed this book or not. I am glad that I read it and it definitely touched me as I find myself quite sad whereas before I sat down to read it this afternoon I was quite happy. So I guess then yes, I enjoyed it.

Title: Revenge of the Paste Eaters : Memoirs of a Misfit
Author: Cheryl Peck
Genre: Non-fiction
Cute title, cute cover, not so cute book. It wasn’t awful, there just wasn’t much there to really get into. It’s mostly a collection of very brief remembered stories from the writer’s life. There is absolutely nothing wrong with collecting funny/cute stories from your life into a book, this one just runs a little too shallow for my taste. Again nothing wrong with shallow but if it’s going to be shallow I’d like it to be funnier.
My dearest darling love B bought me this book and she’s always so proud of herself when she buys me a book and a like it. So of course I told her I really enjoyed it. Don’t give my secret away.

Title: The Sun Also Rises
Author: Ernest Hemingway
Genre: Fiction
Of course I’ve read this at least once before. Maybe twice though I can’t remember. What I do remember is not particularly liking it the first time round. This time was very different. I think I was never ready for Hemingway until I read A Moveable Feast earlier this year. Now Hemingway is a friend and a companion. I hate to feel so common (it’s very trendy and popular to love Heminway) but one can’t help who she falls in love with.

Title: The Final Solution
Author: Michael Chabon
Genre: Fiction
I’ve been a fan of Chabon’s since I read Wonder Boys shortly after seeing the film version. So it’s not terribly surprising that I loved this short, tender detective story. It’s a story of a boy and his pet, murder and detection, youth and age, the bonds and lack thereof with the people we share space with. It doesn’t touch on all those nerves equally but enough so that those are the themes that stuck with me. The book is absolutely perfect for reading in one summer afternoon (like I did today).