Two More Novels

Thursday's reading was Catcher in the Rye. Can you believe I'd never read it? The setting really surprised me: Manhattan! A good, fast read. The kind I could plow through on the treadmill and forget I was huffing and puffing.

Today I read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn. Though set in a Soviet work camp with horrendous conditions, it offers hope in the darkest of circumstances. The author's reference to Jesus' teaching in the end particularly surprised me--coming, as it did, out of the USSR in the 1960s. It took only about four hours to read. Way underrated. If you've not read it, put it on the list. In the meantime, learn more about the author, who died two years ago on August 28: