TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE

As I have already shared with some of you, I have upwards of 150 books on my “to read” list. I gather these suggestions from various places – weekend newspaper book review sections, a number of book-focused internet websites that I frequent, and of course (and best of all) recommendations from my friends, especially from my two Nancys – my smart cousin Nancy in LA and and my smart professional parliamentarian friend Nancy in San Francisco. (I have a smart daughter-in-law Nancy who also is a voracious reader, but it is her husband - my son - who forwards their good book ideas to me.)

As you can imagine, my list keeps getting longer and longer because books get added to it faster than I can read them! Just this week I read the new Humphrey Bogart book and another entitled “Twins, A Memoir,” but I added four more books to my list!

Now it was just a coincidence that this week my favorite web booksite, AbeBooks.com, sent out a list of books about twins. Their opening blurb was as follows:

It’s amazing how many novelists use twins as key characters in their books or attempt to explore the complex relationship between twins in their plots.

Romulus and Remus, Artemis and Apollo, and Castor and Pollux have long been left behind in history and mythology. In recent decades there have been numerous novels featuring identical twins, evil twins, separated at birth twins, warring twins, twin sleuths, imprisoned twins, twins that are not twins and so on.

To novelists twins can be very bad, very misunderstood, very mysterious and sometimes badly mistreated. In fact, it would be fair to argue that twins get a bad rap from most writers.

One thing is clear – twins are never dull in literature….

So for today’s blog I thought I’d pass on the “twin” book list that Abebooks.com sent me. Since this company deals with used books, some of these may be hard to find in your library or in your local bookstore. But of course good old Abe would probably have them if one were inclined to pop for a "new" old book.

Anyway, just for fun here are the books – title and author.

Lottie and Lisa – Erich Kastner
Her Fearful Symmetry – Audrey Niffennegger
Chang and Eng – Darin Strauss
Wise Children – Angela Carter
The Separation – Christopher Priest
Black Fox of Lorne – Angel De Maguerite
Jacob Have I loved - Katherine Paterson
The Third Twin – Ken Follett
Juno & Juliet – Julian Gough
Lives of the Twins – Rosamond Smith
The Siamese Twin Mystery – Ellery Queen
The Girls – Lori Lansens
We Lead a Double Life – Ruth and Helen Hoffman
The Solid Mandala – Patrick White
26a: A Novel – Diana Evans
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy
Identical – Ellen Hopkins
The Last Child – John Hart
Many Waters – Madeleine L’Engle
The Nightspinners – Lucretia Walsh Grindle
One Who Kills – Ridgwell Cullum
Red Sky at Morning – Margaret Kennedy

So I leave you to sort through the double-trouble books as you have inclination. I have already read two of them - Cutting for Stone and Her Fearful Symmetry, being that I read anything these two super authors write! But for now, I’m shortly going to put “Chang and Eng” on reserve at my local library.