What are you reading now? May 30, 2026

I have about 200 pages left of The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub. It's been an exciting journey!

What are you reading this week?

Wrapping up The Death and Life of the Great Lakes; Brave the Wild River, Cathedral of the Drowned and Tojo will follow.

I finished and very much enjoyed A Fool's Errand by Albion W. Tourgee, a novel about, a written during, Reconstruction. I've also just written and reviewed Joseph Conrad's short novel, The End of the Tether. Both are reviewed on my Club Read thread.

I'm now about a quarter of the way into, and also enjoying, What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez.

The Country Girls – Edna O’Brien
4****

This is the first in a trilogy of short novels that tell the story of two young Irish girls as they grow to womanhood in the mid-20th century. They are frequently packaged as one novel, with this same title. I, however, only read the first book in the trilogy.

In this first novel we meet Caithleen (Kate) Brady and Bridget “Baba” Brennan … girlhood friends in their small village. Baba tends to be the instigator, with Kate following along. And Baba is frequently the “mean girl” to her supposed best friend. Over the course of this story, they girls go away to a convent school for a time, then wind up in Dublin working entry-level jobs and attending a “commercial course” with the hope of moving up into a civil service post. Kate has several crushes, all on unsuitable or unavailable men.

It's a wonderful coming-of-age story, full of drama and angst of teenagers everywhere and at any time. Who among us hasn’t “suffered” the pangs of unrequited love, struggled with awakening sexuality, rebelled against the restraints of our parents or society? The girls’ issues struck a chord with me, even if the specifics of our respective journeys differed. I wanted to warn them. I wanted to shake them. I wanted to applaud them. I wanted to buy them lunch. I wanted to lock them in a room until they reached their mid-thirties.

When the novel was first published in 1960 it caused quite a sensation. From the introduction: …banned by the Irish censor for sexually explicit content, publicly burned by a local parish priest in search of some post-rosary drama, and O’Brien herself subjected to a series of malevolent, anonymous letters, which in turn led to the author being hailed as a both cause célèbre and national pariah. … The moral hysteria which greeted the book’s first appearance has since ensured that both it and O’Brien have become era-defining symbols of the struggle for Irish women’s voices to be heard above the clamour of an ultraconservative, ultrareligious, and institutionally misogynistic society.

It seems pretty mild by today’s standards, though.

I don’t have time to read the other two novels right now, but I definitely want to do so in the future. I just have to find out what happens to Kate and Baba!

I have just started reading 4th Man Surf Club Jesus at Walmart Season #2 by Rick Leland

>2 Shrike58: My goal is to read Brave the Wild River this month. I have only seen good reviews. I hope you're liking it too!

>4 BookConcierge: I read the trilogy and I enjoyed it. They are not very long. (The Country Girls)

I am rereading Bury Our Bones In The Midnight Soil by V. E. Schwab and I am enjoying it!

>6 PaperbackPirate: 2/3's done and I'm liking it quite a lot.

Almost finished with No Small Thing, A Novel of the American Revolution by Harold Coyle.

The new thread is up over here.