Have you ever played Bookshelf Roulette??
On the bookish podcast Literary Disco, http://www.literarydisco.com/ they play a version of bookshelf roulette. I am going to modify it a bit but I will use their numbers. This month their numbers are 4, 5, and 13. Please play along if you want to. So go to bookshelf #4, go to the 5th shelf (I counted from the bottom to the top) and scroll over (right to left) and pick book #13. Then talk about it.
The book I picked is: The Heartsong of Charging Elk by James Welch
Published in 2000. James Welch died in 2003. Have you read this book or heard of this author??
James Welch wrote Fools Crow which is probably his most famous novel. I have not read The Heartsong of Charging Elk and I bought this copy as a used library book. I forgot this book was even sitting on my shelf. It is 440 pages.
Here is the synopsis from Goodreads:
From the award-winning author of the Native American classic Fools Crow, a richly crafted novel of cultural crossing that is a triumph of storytelling and the historical imagination.
Charging Elk, an Oglala Sioux, joins Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show and journeys from the Black Hills of South Dakota to the back streets of nineteenth-century Marseille. Left behind in a Marseille hospital after a serious injury while the show travels on, he is forced to remake his life alone in a strange land. He struggles to adapt as well as he can, while holding on to the memories and traditions of life on the Plains and eventually falling in love. But none of the worlds the Indian has known can prepare him for the betrayal that follows. This is a story of the American Indian that we have seldom seen: a stranger in a strange land, often an invisible man, loving, violent, trusting, wary, protective, and defenseless against a society that excludes him but judges him by its rules. At once epic and intimate, The Heartsong of Charging Elk echoes across time, geography, and cultures.
Wow, it sounds really good. So I'm adding this to my Goodreads shelf and am going to read it.
Now it's your turn. Play bookshelf roulette and let me know what book you pick.
Have fun!
