The Books I'm Reading Now
I'm reading Our Evenings, Alan Hollinghurst's novel of a young man in boarding school; I'm listening to the quirky Japanese story We'll Prescribe You a Cat; and I'm listening to Patrick Bringley's memoir about working as a guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, All the Beauty in the World.
What are you reading these days, bookworms?
01 Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst
Did I have a grievance? Most of us, without looking far, could find something that had harmed us, and oppressed us, and unfairly held us back. I tried not to dwell on it, thought it healthier not to, though I'd lived my short life so far in a chaos of privilege and prejudice.
Young Dave Win, the son of a Burmese father he never met and a devoted, kind seamstress mother, attends a prestigious boarding school on scholarship.
His social position is fragile because of his heritage and his modest background. He dodges unwelcome attentions, begins to love to act in plays, and explores his feelings about other boys.
Alan Hollinghurst is the author of The Swimming-Pool Library; The Folding Star; The Spell; The Line of Beauty; and The Stranger's Child.
02 We'll Prescribe You a Cat by Syou Ishida
“You know the old saying: ‘A cat a day keeps the doctor away.’ Cats are more effective than any other medicine out there.”
In the charming Japanese story We'll Prescribe You a Cat, a winding, hard-to-find Kyoto alleyway leads to a strange building. Inside, the mysterious Kokoro Clinic for the Soul prescribes medicine to those looking for support and help. Patients are given basic animal care instructions and "take" their cat prescriptions for a period of time.
Ishida's offbeat story tells the tales of various characters, lost or in pain, who find themselves transformed by spending time with feline companions.
I'm listening to this as an audiobook.
03 All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me by Patrick Bringley
Patrick Bringley, a former New Yorker staffer, after facing the tragic death of his beloved brother, spent ten years working as a guard in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The slow pace and straightforward duties of the job suited Bringley, who, along with his fellow guards, enjoyed having "nothing to do and all day to do it."
For years, Bringley prevented careless, clueless, or overly passionate museumgoers from stumbling into priceless works of art; assured visitors that all of the works were real; and showed meditative appreciation for thousands of the 1.5 million works of art in the Met's permanent collection.
I'm listening to All the Beauty in the World as an audiobook.
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