Hi all. Time has flown by this month. You might already be gearing up for Thanksgiving. It’s that time of year. Gobble, gobble. Winter hit us full on this past week! We were lulled into thinking fall would continue on, but no! All of sudden it was snow, snow, snow!
I can’t complain too much because the drought wasn’t good for a while. So it’s better to snow. And it’ll be good for the ski areas. We might have a foot of snow on the ground by Sunday, lol. I keep filling all the bird feeders around the house. The birds are very hungry these days and are emptying the feeders so quickly. Meanwhile I hope those who live along the West Coast weren’t too hard hit by the “cyclone bomb,” which brought a lot of rain and wind this past week. It was crazy in some areas apparently.
In book news this week, Percival Everett’s novel James, a retelling of Huck Finn, won the National Book Award for fiction. Yay. I think it was quite deserving of a big award. While the Booker Prize chose Samantha Harvey’s novel Orbital recently, James took the NBA, which was hosted by comedian Kate McKinnon. Her speech was pretty amusing and can be heard here if you’re in need of some levity.
Also this past week author Anne Michaels won Canada’s Giller Prize for her novel Held, a multigenerational tale that looks at war and trauma and spans more than a century. While I have read James, I have not read Held yet. So I will give it a go sometime.
Also in book news, we had good news this week that the city’s library system here was coming back online after being down for a month. Around Oct. 18, they shut it down due to an apparent cyberattack. You couldn’t put books on hold, or return books. The whole library system was virtually shut down. And it went on for four weeks. Gosh we all learned how much we value the library after that. It is finally back open again and our flow of incoming and outgoing books can be restored again, hooray. Both dogs are happy that their mother is happy about this, and Willow, at right, is celebrating her fourth birthday today. 🙂 But Stella doesn’t want her to get all the attention.
Also in good news, I had the great fortune to see Bruce Springsteen in concert last Saturday night. I’ve been a big fan of his ever since I was a teenager when I saw him in concert in 1981 at the L.A. Forum. News of the show came up quite suddenly. I found out about it late, the morning of the concert, but I knew I had to go. I worried it might be the last time I saw Bruce perform, so I went all out to see the Boss: driving an hour, parking in craziness, trying to get a ticket at the box office! Which I did somehow, someway.
And of course, I wasn’t disappointed. Bruce gave a 110 percent and rocked so many of his great songs throughout his career for nearly three hours. He and the E Street band brought the house down! I was moved beyond belief. He gave an amazing show! I never sat down. I know I won’t soon forget it. It was like a healing balm after the election. And at 75, Bruce is still more energetic than most of us combined. You might recall I wrote about the last time I saw him in 2012 here. But it seemed even more poignant this time. For his song setlist of the show you can look here. And yes, he did sing “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” which is sort of silly and fun, even though I’m not even thinking about Christmas yet.
Lastly, I don’t have a book review to feature this week as life was busy. But I’ve been reading the novel Pearly Everlasting by the Canadian author Tammy Armstrong lately, and it seems good so far. I’ve also been working on a project for Publishers Weekly, which asked me to do an author Q&A. I can talk about it more next week once it’s published. But I was a bit nervous since I had to come up with questions about a new novel by a previous National Book Award-winning author and talk with the author on Zoom about it. I’m sort of an introvert so things like that don’t come too easily. Luckily the chat went well and I just need to pare the interview down now.
That’s all for this week. What about you — have you read anything good lately? Happy Thanksgiving to those in the States.
Snow, oh nooo! 🙂 We’re about to have it here too. The western part of the state was supposed to get snow today. We’ll probably get it by Thanksgiving, if not sooner; I’m not ready for that yet. Great news from the book world with all those prizes/awards announcing their winners. I was happy for James. The Booker should have gone for it too… still the NBA is one of the biggies so I don’t think Everett will be complaining. Now he just needs the Pulitzer (fingers crossed). Wasn’t Pearly Everlasting longlisted for the Giller? Don’t quote me on that though, I never get those things right. 😀 I’m making progress with Martyr! I’m liking it so far. Your PW project sounds exciting and terrifying at the same time. Be sure to let us know the outcome and the personality behind it. Are you traveling at the start of the month? Have a nice week and happy reading!
And, Happy Birthday Willow! I forgot about that. 🙂 I can’t believe she’s already four!
Your post brings back memories of a Springsteen concert that we attended a few years ago. He ALWAYS gives 110 percent – I don’t know where he gets the energy! I still have “James” and “Orbital” on my to-be-read list and will be getting to them soon.