Welp, that Krakauer book really slowed me down. I'm halfway across the board at least. 

Books Completed/Bank

Game Play

And my first Le Guin book! I've been meaning to read her forever, but just now getting around to it. I don't know much about this one, but "coming of age" is one of the popular shelves for it, so it must fit the BL lot. 

Not much is known about King Henry’s third wife, so Weir had to rely on her imagination more than in previous books, and I found her imagination somewhat lacking. She portrays Jane as a pious anti church reform woman who once believed she’d been Called to a spiritual life, but gave up on her dream of being a nun in favor of a posting in Queen Katherine’s household at Court. The nun thing is an invention of Weir’s and doesn’t really add much to the story other than to unnecessarily reinforce Jane’s piousness. This piousness is referenced again and again, but rather than portray Jane as a straight-laced goody-two-shoes, Weir tried to make her more complex. Which is how we get a Jane that loves Queen Katherine and hates Anne Boleyn for having an affair with the King (among other reasons), and later justifies her own affair with the King by telling herself that his marriage to Anne wasn’t legitimate and therefor it’s not adultery. (It’s still fornication, but pious Jane doesn’t bat an eye at that. It’s true love, so God will totes understand.) She feels somewhat responsible for Anne’s ultimate fate and is haunted by her specter (literally—she starts seeing an Anne-shaped shadow in her bedchamber at night), but not even a mild ghost infestation can spice up the blandest of Henry’s wives. Basically, boring queen = boring book. Without a truly interesting character to distract me, I was painfully aware that Weir’s prose isn’t much more than a checklist of historical events as she thinks her version of Jane would have perceived them.

I don't think I could do this book of short stories justice with a review. Munro writes stories about ordinary people in everyday situations that are a turning point in their lives. To have an affair, to stay or leave, to wait or act, to be silent or speak. She writes without any literary tricks and often at a remove from the characters, but each story still pulled at me in some way. 

Paperback. I discovered Munro while vacationing at a rental beach house and had finished the book I had brought with me, so was browsing the completely random selections on the bookshelves. I didn't get to read more than the first story in this collection, but it was enough to know that I needed to have a copy for myself. 

I read this book for Booklikesopoly 2020, lot Mountain Cabin 15: Read a book with a tree or a mountain on the cover, or read a book that features a main character who is a father. This book has a tree (or tree trunk, I guess) on the cover with a woodsy background.

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She had existed and now she did not. Not at all, as if not ever. And people hurried around, as if this outrageous fact could be overcome by making sensible arrangements. He, too, obeyed the customs, signing where he was told to sign, arranging - as they said - for the remains.

Ahhh. I love Munro's ability to write a simple story about normal people in normal situations and to somehow make them so very interesting.