Back to the Irish

Last night I ended up staying up late - reading just one more chapter (about ten times, I think). Finally having reached the 3/4 of the way through the book, I decided I really needed to go to bed so I stopped. Then, this morning, I just barely finished reading The Good Earth before I had to go to work.

For quite a while, I was reminded of The Grapes of Wrath while reading this - the whole traveling elsewhere looking for work during a famine, with a result of barely being able to keep fed. I was intrigued at all of the Chinese cultural descriptions, although I don't know for certain that they are (or perhaps at least were) accurate. I didn't really like that their success essentially came from theft (especially after Wang Lung's statement to his younger son that "we may be beggars, but we're not thieves." For Wang Lung at least, the theft was mostly unintentional/random chance, but still it just felt a little funny. At one point in particular Wang Lung reflects/comments on O-lan's large feet; until her response that her feet weren't bound because the time her parents would have started the binding process she was about to be sold into slavery, I hadn't realized he meant unbound feet when he said large feet.
I'm looking forward to seeing what the rest of the book club thought of this book and to hear what discussion there is.

Having finished the book club books, I'm moving on to the next book I'd checked out from the library: Irish Eyes by Andrew M. Greeley. This is another Nuala Anne mystery - Nuala and Dermot now have have a daughter - Nelliecoyne - I wasn't quite sure I liked the name chosen until I read the discussion of how it was chosen; she's named after Dermot's grandmother Nell Pat (aka Ma) but they couldn't use the exact same nickname and the coyne part of her name is actually her last name, that just gets elided into the Nellie part. As usual, I'm quickly falling back into this world and this family - I love these people. Sometimes I still wish they were "real" people that I could meet and/or sit and talk with, but I'm just out of luck.

I'm also starting to read Build a Highway for God: Isaiah 40-55 by Kevin Perrotta. This is the book for a fall/advent Bible study at church. So far, I've only read the introduction, but I think I'm going to enjoy the Bible study, even if it may involve more group discussion than I'd really prefer - besides that discussion part will be good for me. I was intrigued to learn, somewhat by accident that the NAB translation of the Bible does not have Ezekiel 11: 22-23; chapter 11 just stops after verse 21. Included in the main text there are recommended readings that expand the current topic a bit more - usually they occur where Kevin Perrotta is referencing a Bible passage that wasn't part of the assigned reading and he gives the reference for it so that if you're so inclined you can read it for yourself. However, because of this discrepancy, I'm going to use my grandmother's Bible instead - her translation does have those verses.