Weekend Reading
This weekend I’ll be reading Doris Lessing’s novel The Grass Is Singing and, also, a history of whaling called Leviathan by Eric Jay Dolin.
The Grass Is Singing is written by a woman who spent her younger years in the former Rhodesia. (Now Zimbabwe) The book, published in 1950, is set in apartheid South Africa.
It tells the story of a relationship between a white farmer’s wife and a black servant on the farm. As you might suppose, such a relationship was not quite the program in apartheid South Africa.
Imagine writing something people are still reading nearly 60 years later. How many bloggers will ever be able to say that?
I’ve just begun Leviathan. However, I’ve already learned that the explorer Henry Hudson played a large part in starting the British whaling business.
Looking for the Northwest Passage in the early 1600’s, Hudson encountered the bowhead whale. Hudson never found a shortcut to the east, but he did find a whale worth killing for its oil and other products.
I just finished the historical novel Augustus by John Williams. This was the 1973 National Book Award winner for fiction. It is the story of both the rise to power and the long rule of the first Roman emperor.
The story is told by the use of imagined letters between notable and not so-notable figures of the time. I was at first turned off by the format, but I was won over quickly.
What a great reading list and a reminder of the power of words, whether fiction, commentary, poetry or journalism. Let each of us writing echo Emily Dickinson’s thought:
A word is dead when it is said, some say.
I say it just begins to live that day.
Amen.
Thanks for the nice comment. I think that is is two nice comments you have left about my posts so maybe a double-thank you is in order.