What are you reading this week of August 20, 2017?

[hermetic]

Hope everyone is feeling better this week.

I finally found a copy of The Master Butchers Singing Club by Louise Erdrich, a macabre mystery that draws on Erdrich's Native American and German American heritage. As expected, the writing is ever so exquisite.

Some interesting news about Erdrich from her FB page: She started writing Future Home of the Living God in 2002. Still in shock from 9/11, she felt like things were moving backward. Regressing. "I started wondering why evolution started and wondered what would happen if, just as mysteriously, it stopped. I started writing about a young woman named Cedar."

She left it for several years then, until this year when she had only "to look at photographs of white men in dark suits deciding crucial issues of women's health to know the timing is right." The book comes out Nov. 14.

"Right now, many women in the world are living out a reproductive dystopia. As I finished this book, writing speculative fiction felt like writing a form of truth. Still, as I kept on working, I forgot why I started the book. I lived again through my fearless and fearful Cedar as she hides, writes secretly, escapes, adventures, is hunted down, falls in love and evolves toward faith in the natural world even as the world irrevocably changes around her."

Sounds like it will be another award-winner for Ms. Erdrich. For sure a must-read.

Any award winners on your reading list this week?

Getting kinda busy around here today. I'm about 80 miles south of the totality with near-perfect weather predicted tomorrow so something like half a million visitors are descending upon my state now, looking for a place to park. I'll be staying home, watching from my yard. Hope you are in a good spot to enjoy...