Happy New Year from the staff of the Port Townsend Library.
THE
BOOK OF STRANGE NEW THINGS. By Michel Faber. Faber
is a master of the weird; in his defiantly unclassifiable novel, a pastor from
Earth is picked to satisfy an alien planet’s mysterious yen for religious
instruction.
THE SPARROW by Maria
Doria Russell
A Jesuit space mission makes contact with two species and
civilizations co-existing in a complex eco-system. Explores what happens when even the best
intentioned intervention unalterably changes lives and cultures.
These two books speak to a part of me as a reader that I
normally don’t recognize. I’m not a
science fiction fan nor am I drawn to the religious. Yet, I found each of these to be captivating. They share some similarities—first contact
with alien cultures, spiritual underpinnings within and across species. But the Faber novel is as much about
relationship, marriage, communication as it is about space. And the Russell book explores character and
faith within and without cultural norms.
MY
STRUGGLE. Book 3: Boyhood. By Karl Ove Knausgaard. Translated by Don
Bartlett. (Archipelago, $27.) The
third installment of Knausgaard’s Proustian six-volume autobiographical novel.
This book
represents another departure from my usual reading habits. I haven’t read this volume yet, but raced
through volumes one and two of this series.
How, you might ask can an author who is only now 46 years old write
about the minutiae of his life, spread it out over six volumes and end up with
something anyone would want to read? I
don’t know how he did it, and can’t exactly say why the result is so
engrossing. But, he did and it is and I
look forward to the continuing saga.
