The ongoing bus strike has messed with my life in any number of little ways, but one is putting a serious dent into my reading. I've seen people applying makeup, shaving, and (I'm not making this up) flossing while driving in Los Angeles, but reading novels is somewhere beyond my own personal line. That said, I have read a couple of books in the last month or so since I last blogged on books.
Rock Springs by Richard Ford equals 42 down on The List. This is the part where I'd say something clever about it, if it weren't for the fact that I finished it three weeks ago, forgot to write about it until now, and basically don't remember much about it. I do remember thinking the title story was the best one and that the stories were Carver-esque--generally about lower-class men living lives of quiet desperation.

I have more to say about Tell Me A Riddle by Tillie Olsen, since I finished it a few hours ago. First of all, the bookkeeping--43 down on The List, 7 to go. Tell Me is a short book consisting of three short stories and the titular novella originally published between 1956 and 1960. "I Stand Here Ironing" is a strong story about the roughly 39-year-old mother of an approximately 20-year-old daughter. As she, in fact, stands there ironing, she thinks back on the type of upbringing she gave her daughter--the difficulty of being a mother so young, without a father around, the early maturity of an oldest child caring for younger siblings, the struggles of being a gawky teen, and the surprise when that gawky teen blossoms into a vibrant young adult. This story mixes pathos and positive outcomes into an emotional whirlpool in a very small amount of space.

The title story, "Tell Me A Riddle", is definitely my favorite, though. This is the story of a couple married for 47 years but now with vey different ideas about how to spend their final days. The wife wants no part of the retirement community picked out by her husband, and after she gets sick, the real tussle ensues about where they should go and what they should do. Olsen walks an incredibly fine line here in showing the ways these two people have grown apart but the ways in which love (and perhaps just being accustomed to one another) abides. This is not to say that this is a sappy story, and in fact she deeply rejects religious and familial ideals in ways that some might not find sympathetic. But I found the emotion and honesty of this story to be incredibly affecting and powerful. This story really blew me away, bottom line.

Finally, over the past few weeks I was reading John Henry Days by Colson Whitehead. Back in July I raved about Whitehead's first book, The Intuitionist. I still think very highly of Whitehead as a writer, but I agree with a number of the amazon reviewers who say that Whitehead writes better sentences than books. On a sentence-by-sentence level, some of the passages of this book are incredibly impressive, but the narrative could be stronger in many places. The general subject matter is that a magazine writer ("junketeer") has travelled to rural West Virginia to cover the unveiling of the new John Henry stamp. His fellow junketeers, stamp collectors, and the daughter of a major collector of John Henry memorabilia also descend on the town for the weekend's festivities. Additionally, we get glimpses into Whitehead's version of the John Henry story, and various moments throughout U.S. history where that story has been rewritten and re-interpreted. Like The Intuitionist, John Henry Days is a fascinating meditation on race in America when it is at its best. But it's much choppier in ways that I found distracting; I'd suggest checking out Whitehead's first book if you are choosing between the two.