Sunday Bulletin – December 7

Last week was very mellow and uneventful. December is the slowest time of the year in the library business. We’ll have a flurry of activity as local high school students come in to study for finals, but other than that the library is quite calm. It is nice to have work so quiet when the rest of the world is not. All of the hustle and bustle of the holidays is here in full force. There’s lots more traffic on the roads, the shops are bursting and I have to stand in long lines just to buy cat food and toothpaste. Ah, Christmas.

Books finished this week:

Euphoria by Lily King – After seeing this book on multiple ‘Best Books of 2014′ lists I decided to give it a try. I brought it home from work last Sunday and almost immediately started reading it. I didn’t stop until I went to bed several hours later. It is one of those stories that you fall into very easily because the writing is so vivid and intense. It is set in the thirties in New Guinea and centers on the love triangle between three anthropologists. Two of them, Nell and Fen, are married. When their rival anthropologist, Bankson, helps them out of a rough spot a tense and invigorating relationship forms among the three of them that can only end badly. King used an incident in the life of Margaret Meade as her inspiration for this tale and the anthropological aspects of the novel are fascinating. Unfortunately, about 3/4 of the way through the book I started to lose interest as the characters melted into caricature and melodrama set in. The ending was incredibly disappointing, as well, and I can only say that this book was just mediocre, though I wanted to like it so much more.

I hope to have more luck with my reading this week as I am joining in the Willa Cather Reading Week and you usually can’t go wrong with her. Is anyone else planning to read Cather this week?

Have a lovely Sunday!