Welcome to Litsy!

I took about 10 books to a charity shop the other day and came home with only two new ones! ?
Raymond Briggs's "When the Wind Blows" was one, the tagged being the other.
When first published in 1925, it seems it was presented as the diary of J.S. Bach's wife, not, I think, with an intention to deceive but as a literary device. Anyway, its reception was positive in terms of sales, but critically panned as mawkishly sentimental.

I love the gorgeous cover of this book, and how the title is displayed like sheet music. As a lover of classical music with a profound interest of the darkest time in Europe, this story grabbed me. A secret hand written musical script is kept throughout the centuries, nearly destroyed after WW2, and discovered again many years later. Its new guardians soon discover that anti-Semitism is not so distant in the past.

The Great Passion is beautifully written historical fiction based on the life of Bach. In this passage Bach is helping a student get through a particularly difficult passage on the organ but I thought he was giving good life advice:

“This is how we master a problem… We run up to it until we find that it is so familiar that it no longer holds its terrors… Then we can continue without anxiety. You could give it a cheery wave as you say goodbye.”

My third Richard Powers, and the earliest and longest (675 pages) of his that I've read, this one had the least favourable effort to reward ratio. The plentiful, and lengthy, discussions of molecular genetics largely went over my head. (I didn't fare a whole lot better with the Bach.) The fact of someone's thinking to make this a major theme of their novel is strangely pleasing to me, but in practice reading it was hard work. Still a pick, though.

This was just ok considering how much I wanted it to be more. I loved the historical fiction and bit of mystery - seeing major classical music figures come to life was so cool.i could have done with a lot more of that and a lot less of love interests. I didn't really connect with the main character, but she was interesting and it made sense how she was confused about how she felt and through it.

I hope I made the right choice. Huge stack of TBR and this one floated to the top.

This did start a little slower for me, but very much picked up at the end that I actually wanted a little more. I am not sure, if my timing was slightly off for reading this and maybe in a month or so, I would have loved it even more, but it was still a solid read. If you love baroque music or just want to read a good story, then give this one a try.

#selfiescavengerhunt a selfie with a loved one! My son has his first ever Christmas concert since he started playing the cello in September tonight and he‘s both excited and nervous for it. #teamgamesleighers @StayCurious