Sample Saturday is when I wade through the eleventy billion samples I have downloaded on my Kindle. I’m slowly chipping away and deciding whether it’s buy or bye.
In My Defence, I Have No Defence by Sinéad Stubbins
Why I have it: No idea.
Summary: Stubbins raises the white flag on trying to live up to impossible standards and owns her complete inability to ‘self-improve’.
I’m thinking: No – it’s funny but I think the humour will wear a bit thin.
Things I Don’t Want to Know by Deborah Levy
Why I have it:
Summary: Part one of Levy’s ‘living biography’.
I’m thinking: Maybe – not arresting in the way I have found her novels to be.
A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis
Why I have it: Because it is so frequently referred to in grief texts.
Summary: Lewis’s reflections on grief and mourning after the death of his wife, including the ‘mad midnight moments’ in which he questioned what he had previously believed about life and death, marriage, and God.
No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.
I’m thinking: Yes (and I probably need it immediately, instead of waiting for my end-of-year Sample Saturday top ten).
Oooh, for once I’ve actually read some of your samples! I really enjoyed the Levy and the Lewis, hope you do too.
Have you read all of the volumes of Levy’s autobiography?
I haven’t read the most recent but I’ve read the first two. Of the two, I preferred The Cost of Living but they’re both interesting and her voice is so distinctive and strong.
My attitude to grief lit is — as you know, and I won’t labour the point — different to yours.
But when after the death of someone dear to me I read A Grief Observed on the recommendation of a well-intentioned friend, it made me so angry, I was surprised that a book could make me feel that way.
So you should probably read it to probe why it made me feel that way. I mean, it might be me, but there might be others like me, and it might be the book…
I will read it with interest. For the record, I would never recommend grief-lit to a recently bereaved person (and in fact, although I am always interested in reading it for myself, I’m reluctant to push it on others), simply because grief is a very personal and varied experience and suggesting that there is comfort in a similar story can backfire terribly.
I’ve read the other two installments of Levy’s living autobiography and enjoyed them very much.
Oof, I broke your rules and gave my sister a copy of A Grief Observed (plus The Year of Magical Thinking) the week after she was widowed — this is 7+ years ago now. And actually, they were perfect and sparked a couple of years of really intensive reading for her: mostly bereavement memoirs, but lots of other stuff too. She’d previously been the sort of person who only read People magazine. Life eventually got too busy for her when she remarried and went back to school for nursing, but for those couple of years when she was in the thick of grief, reading about others’ experiences really helped her, and it was special that she and I could connect by comparing notes on books.
I’m currently reading the third in Levy’s trilogy (though I’ve not read the first), after The Cost of Living was my top NF read of last year.