I’m not sure if I signed up officially for the very popular What’s In a Name challenge, hosted by Andrea at Carolina Book Nook, but I have been reading in order to finish it. Here are the titles I’ve read.

Title that contains an ampersand: Daisy Jones & the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I’ve also used this book for two other challenges this year. That’s probably the greatest satisfaction I’ll get out of it. Lots and lots and lots of hype, but I was disappointed. It just seemed clichéd.  

Title that contains antonyms: I had difficulty finding a title for this category but finally settled on Alice Munro’s Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage. Somewhere in all those ‘ships’ there must be opposites. Munro also gets lots of hype – but it’s well-deserved and her work is enduring. I loved these stories.  

Title of four letters or less: Akin by Emma Donoghue. The problem with having such a phenomenally successful book as Room was, is trying to live up to it ever after. I did enjoy Akin, the story of an 80-year-old man given temporary custody of his eleven-year-old great-nephew just before his scheduled departure to Nice. It was, actually, delightful, if a little predictable.

Title that contains a given/first name: Autumn Laing by Australian author Alex Miller. I’ve had this book on my shelf for years, entranced every time I picked it up while dusting, by its cover. An elderly Autumn tells the story of an affair that she had with a man in her and her husband’s group of friends. These things are always entered into so selfishly, with little regard to the consequences, both short and long-term. The fact that it would happen, though, was evident from nearly the beginning, but Autumn kept us waiting far too long and I expected something much more spectacular by the time she finally got the story out. All in all, not really a very spectacular book.  

Title that has a reference to children: Jake and the Kid by W.O. Mitchell, a collection of short stories about a Canadian prairie farm boy whose dad is overseas in WWII, and the hired hand who’s keeping an eye out for him. Canadians of a certain age will remember the “magazines” that came with the weekend newspaper: Weekend Magazine or the Star Weekly, depending on where you lived. I think I read both over the years and as a teenager fell in love with the stories of Gregory Clarke.

My bet is that in the prairie provinces, the stories were by W.O. Mitchell. These are heartwarming family stories: the kid is loveable and naive about the ways of the world, and Jake is a hero – and not just the kid’s but also the reader’s. This book is going up on my “keep forever” shelf next to Greg Clarke.

Title with the word water, air, fire or earth: The Edge of the Earth by Christina Schwarz. The referenced edge of the earth is an island off the coast of California in 1898. The thing about Schwarz is that she’s enjoyable enough to read at the time, but other than scattered scenes,almost immediately I forgot what happened. I found the same thing when I read her highly acclaimed Drowning Ruth in 2012.

And that, as they say, is a wrap. Have you read any of these? Are you participating in this challenge this year?
 

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