nomadreader

Happy New Year, y'all! As always, I start the new year by looking back at the best books I read last year. Admittedly, 2013 was not the best reading year for me. I went through several reading droughts and several slow blogging periods. I thought of walking away from this blog more than once (and I'm so glad I remembered why I love sharing my reading with y'all. I'll be sticking around for quite some time.) Despite some reading and blogging disappointments, the year itself was a delight. Mr. Nomadreader and I bought our first (and I hope last) house. I discovered my new favorite band, American Aquarium , and took a solo road trip to one of my favorite cities, Nashville, to see them in concert for my birthday. I continue to love my job and all around, I feel very blessed and happy. In terms of reading, I didn't even manage to read 100 books in 2013. (It's the first time since graduate school I haven't read 100 books, and I'm disappointed in myself for ...

The basics: Spanning three generations of the Porter family and fifty years of their relationships with their hired help, The End of the Point  focuses on the family at four different times in history, beginning in the 1940's. Much of the novel takes place at their summer home in Ashaunt, Massachusetts. My thoughts: Reading The End of the Point  made me realize how much I love present-future narrators. As the story of the Porter family unfolds, the reader gets hints of how things are now, even though the story is told in the moment: "If things had turned out differently, she would have begun the story here--or no, Smitty would have told it; unlike Bea, he loved an audience, he'd have made it funny, drawn it out." These moments aren't frequent, but as I encountered each one, it felt as though I was unwrapping a present. We don't have the certainty of the future in our own lives, but literature can provide us with one for these characters. It's a testa...