As you all know, WHIRL stands for What Have I Read Lately, and I must say, I have read some wonderful books lately.  Don’t you just love it when your reading is on a roll, so to speak?  So.what have I read lately?  Read on to find out:

You know from my previous post that I loved The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham.  I loved it so much, I went to the library and took out another novel by Maugham, The Razor’s Edge.  This was one of those books that you look forward to returning to when you’ve finished whatever else it is you must do.  Many of the same themes are present in this novel that are in The Painted Veil, and there’s much here to ponder, but, as we all know, it’s the story that matters most, and this story is compelling.

Isabel is in love with Larry and he’s in love with her.  However, Isabel wants the good life, the fun life, the high society bourgeois life.  And Larry is in search of something else.  Something else entirely.  So how to reconcile their differences and hold onto their love?  This is a large part of the story–but not all of it.  You’ll meet other wonderful characters, you’ll contemplate what “love” really is, you’ll ponder how one should live, and what makes a successful life.  This is a slow-paced page-turner, if that’s not too much of an oxymoron for you.

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes.  Oh, we all know by now that this novella won the Booker Prize this year, and you probably have read many reviews on it.  I quite enjoyed it, but I have to say, and you won’t understand this until you’ve read it, I felt a little cheated when I was through.  Yes, it is worth reading.  Absolutely.  And YES, I get that my feeling was part of the point of the book.  But I just think that it came up just short of being a WOW of a book for me.  I can’t say why because that would give too much away.  So you’ll just have to read it and see what I mean.  Enjoy!

Obviously I liked Barnes’ writing because I went straight to the library and took out Arthur and George by the same author.  Now, this book I loved.  It is a bit on the slowish side, just a tad, but it is so good.  It is based on the true story of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle helping to clear the erroneous conviction of George Edalji, a half-Indian son of a vicar.  This is a fantastic book–it was short-listed for the Booker in 2005, and there is MUCH to ‘dig deep into’–I may just choose it one of these days for a Literary Masters Salon selection.

What about you?  What have you read lately?