Winter Stacks Challenge

Over a week ago, I finished Pale Horse, Pale Rider, a very short novel by Katherine Anne Porter. Last October, I posted about hearing about this novel on NPR's You Must Read This. As planned, I only read the one short novel in the from the book of the same name that contains three short novels. It was my third book in the five-book Winter Stacks Challenge.

The novel is set during World War I and an influenza epidemic--fear is pervasive, which makes this book very relevant today. The main character Miranda, a reporter, has fallen in love with Adam, a soldier waiting to be shipped out. She fears that he will never return from the war, but she is stricken with the flu, and he nurses her until she can get a room at one of the overcrowded hospitals. Porter's descriptions of Miranda's delirious thoughts are amazingly unsettling. I will have to find the time to read more of Porter's novels in the future, especially the other two in the book Pale Horse, Pale Rider.

I have started Snow by Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish novelist who won the Nobel Prize this year. If the blurbs on the back cover and inside the front cover are accurate, I should enjoy this book immensely. It is a political thriller, and I usually like those kinds of books. So far, I have found it very interesting, but I have not found enough time to read it--work and now grad school are keeping me too busy.

I spent a solitary Monday, grading papers for hours, and I am still not caught up. I have much reading to do between now and Wednesday, when I have to submit a response to my reading before midnight. I haven't even started on the assignment that is due next week, and, unfortunately, I have to go to work the rest of the week. I can't call in sick every day, but I wish I could.

I guess I better go to bed now though. It's late, and I can't be late in the morning. Maybe I can read a page or two of Snow before I go to sleep.