I set out to blog about Thomas Paine’s pamphlet, “Common Sense,” which was published on this date in 1776. Common sense seems to be in short supply these days, so I thought the topic was appropriate; however, I opted for another topic.

Last week’s blog post was about the books I read in December. Today I’ll tell you about the books I attempted to read last month but, for various reasons, didn’t finish. The problem was me, so I wanted to share my thoughts about them. You might find a gem among them that you’ll enjoy reading.

Having Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, I find mental work just as tiring as physical activity. I quite honestly ran out of mental energy by the last week of December and had to face the facts of my circumstances.

I trudged to the public library and returned a tote bag full of books.

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A Single Rose, by Muriel Barbery and translated from French by Alison Anderson

I have fellow blogger Davida Chazan of Israel to thank for bringing this author and novella to my attention. She reviewed this book in her “The Chocolate Lady” blog post on September 14, 2021.

Ms. Barbery’s exquisite prose immediately immerses the reader in the beauty of Japan. It begins with a field of 1,000 peonies. Since the peony is one of my favorite flowers, I was hooked.

Rose is approaching her fortieth birthday when a lawyer summons her to Kyoto for the reading of her father’s will. She and her father have been estranged for many years, so Rose goes with many feelings of emptiness and foreboding.

However, her father has left an itinerary for his assistant to guide Rose through. The journey laid out by her father leads her to meet various people in his life and Rose comes to capture some of what she has missed out on due to the estrangement.

As Ms. Chazan wrote in her blog post (and I couldn’t have said it better,) the descriptive prose is written in a “sparse, yet extremely evocative style.”

I had to keep reminding myself that this was an English translation of a book originally written in French. I can’t read the original language, but it appears to me that the translator, Alison Anderson, did a meticulous job. The prose is extraordinary.

As with a few other books I wanted to read last month, I didn’t get to finish this one.

If you’d like to read Ms. Chazan’s full blogpost about this novella, here’s the link: https://tcl-bookreviews.com/2021/09/14/among-the-flowers-2/.

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The Dictionary of Lost Words, by Pip Williams

This historical novel is about the compilation of the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary and how dictionaries have historically been compiled by men. I don’t mean to throw all men “under the bus,” but it is something to consider. Men determined which words should be included in dictionaries and men determined their meanings.

The Dictionary of Lost Words, by Pip Williams sheds light on how the Oxford English Dictionary was compiled around the turn of the 20^th century by a handful of men who worked in a shed. Esme was a little girl who sat under their work table and gathered slips of paper the men let fall to the floor – sometimes on purpose and sometimes by accident. Esme started collecting those slips of paper – those words – in secret and hiding them in a box owned by her household’s bondsmaid.

The book follows Esme from early childhood through early adulthood as she decides to make her own dictionary – a dictionary of lost words.

Spending too much time reading other books meant I didn’t finish reading The Dictionary of Lost Words before it disappeared from my Kindle and went back to that great library in cyberspace.

Reviews I’ve read have pointed out that the first third of the book moves rather slowly. I agree with that, as we follow Esme day in and day out as she goes to the shed – called the Scriptorium – to sit under the table. She eventually is old enough to be trusted with running errands to a library and to the press. She wants to know how books are physically made but finds that this isn’t work girls are supposed to be interested in.

That notion connects directly to the overall message of the novel. It’s the belief by men 100 years ago that women just weren’t cut out to be interested in or have the mental ability to work in many occupations. What a waste over the thousands of years of history! It boggles the mind, and it infuriates me that there are people – both men and women – who still hold to those misguided beliefs.

Don’t get me started!

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The Stranger in the Lifeboat, by Mitch Albom

I’ve enjoyed several of Mitch Albom’s books, but this one just didn’t make sense to me. Perhaps I’m just dense. I just made it through the first couple of chapters.

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Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone, by Diana Gabaldon

Whether it’s due to my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, my habit of trying to read too many books, the season of the year, or whatever… I just couldn’t read this 900-page novel. I love the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon, but I had to throw in the towel after reading the first 200 pages of Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone.

It was me, not the book. I tried listening to it on CD, but my hearing problems made it too difficult to follow the accents. I checked out the book from the public library and started over. I was really drawn in by the continuing story of Jamie and Claire, but my eyes started to rebel. Life is too short.

I guess I’ll have to wait until the TV series catches up with the book.

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Call Us What We Carry, by Amanda Gorman

I admit I’m not a big poetry reader. I wanted to like this book of poetry by Amanda Gorman after being impressed with her at the Inauguration of President Joe Biden; however, I just couldn’t get into it on the written page.

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Since my last blog post

I’ve attempted to organize myself week-by-week to get some projects completed in 2022. I’m a list maker, so doing such a thing gives me a sense of accomplishment. Now, if I can only stick to this plan….

A few months ago, I paid a few dollars for InfoStack 4.0. It includes many online writing classes and writing webinars. Over the weekend, I finally got around to listening to the 3.5-hour webinar about writing a book series. It was fantastic and now I’m brainstorming using my novel-in-progress as the second book in a series. I don’t know if I can pull this off, but I won’t know until I try.

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Until my next blog post

I hope you have a good book to read. I’m giving When Ghosts Come Home, by Wiley Cash another chance. This time, it’s in large print. Also, I have Peter Frankopan’s The Silk Roads: A New History of the World from the library on my Kindle.

The risk of catching Covid-19 has me more or less hibernating again (or should I say still?) The pandemic seems to never end, but I believe better days lie ahead.

Janet