Scott Alexander Howard

Fiction 2024 | 290 pages

In this debut novel by Scott Alexander Howard, an intriguing premise is set.  The valley where the townspeople live is surrounded by mountains. But the mountains are very unique.  If you pass over them to the east, you will be in the same town twenty years ahead in time.  If you pass over them to the west, you will be in the same town, 20 years behind current time.  More than anything, this book is about the rules, constraints, values, principles, policies, fears, and possible joys of “allowing” people or not allowing them to cross over.

I really enjoyed the first half of the book, where our main character, Odile Oxanne, is 16-years old and applying for apprenticeships.  She most wants to apprentice to a coveted Counseil position, a seat on the board that controls the borders.  Many think she can make it … she is smart, wise, a rational and emotional thinker.  Then her best friend Edme dies, and Odile withdraws from the apprenticeship education.

In Part Two we find Odile nearly 20 years later, where she serves as a gendarme, her dreams shattered.  I found Part Two sad, disappointing, and even depressing.  It became so hard for me read, that eventually I lost the plot line and could not figure out who was who.  Part Two transformed this book from four hearts to two hearts.  I cannot honestly recommend it.

Suggested by a book review in New Scientist, August 3, 2024.

September 2024

Ian Rankin  |  Fiction

1987, 179 pages

An eleven-year-old girl is killed.  A nine-year-old girl is sexually assaulted and then killed.   A baby is sexually assaulted.  Every conversation occurs over cigarettes, spilled food, and alcohol.  And I am only on page 28.  My heart and soul do not need this kind of depressing vitriol.  I am reading no more Ian Rankin.

August 2024

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Ann Napolitano

Fiction 2023 | 400 pages

Ann Napolitano writes of four women, in homage to Little Women. In Hello Beautiful, we meet the Padavano sisters as they navigate their lives from childhood to adulthood and beyond. Julia Padavano is the eldest of the sisters.  She is an ambitious and serious young woman who locks onto William Waters the moment they meet and becomes his wife. After their first conversation, Julia has already decided on their future together, and William is more than happy to let her lead the way. With Julia comes her three younger sisters.

Sylvie is the dreamer.  Happiest with her nose in a book, Sylvie is obsessed with intense romantic love. She refuses to settle for anything less than her wildest dreams.

Cecelia is the artist. Profoundly emotional and unique in every way, Cecelia is destined for a life of beauty.

Cecelia's twin Emmeline is the mother of the group. Always concerned with how she can best care for those around her, Emeline is endlessly patient and considers herself the quiet sister.

We follow their lives, from teen years into young womanhood and for some, new motherhood.  The characters are well-developed, especially the older ones ... William, Julia, and Sylvie.  And yet, somehow, I just did not care. I found them unbelievable, boring, sometimes insipid.  Though recommended by two friends, I just never really grabbed onto this book. it never drew me in. I considered abandoning it at 100 pages and again in the middle, but I was intrigued to learn why my two friends ....one of whom is quite a good friend ... were so compelled by this book.  I never discovered the answer.  But I did potentially figure out why Hello Beautiful never touched my heart.  Perhaps it is because I have no sisters. The relationships, their actions of caring for (and being disappointed by) each other, the solidity of their hearts in deep love for the other sisters was, perhaps, too much fantasy for me; too untranslatable?  When I asked Marian yesterday what she loved about this book because I was struggling with it, the first words out of her mouth were, "Oh, this book may not make sense to you because you have no sisters."  So, I guess my self-study was right on.  Marian has four sisters.  I never liked Little Women either.  I don’t recall if I ever managed to finish it.  But I probably read Little Men eight or ten times.

The story is really quite amazing, and if you can find a home in the bosom of the Padavano sisters, I think you will enjoy it.  Julia marries William and has a daughter Alice, whom William rejects.  Later, after their divorce, William falls in love with the next younger sister, Sylvie.  Meanwhile the twins buy two houses side-by-side, and tear down the fence between them, creating a "super duplex" .... the heart of the Padavano family. Various family members reject each other for years, even decades, at a time, but the ending, with the death of one of the sisters, sets up the scenario in which all might be well, healed, safe, and loving again.

I cannot really recommend this myself.  However, I think it is important that you check it out for yourself.  The book is not flawed, and just may bring you great joy.

June 2024

Robert Parker's Spenser Series

A few decades ago, I read every book written by Robert Parker in his Spenser series.  He wrote 39 of them before he died in 2010.  (Some of you may recall we had two cats named Spenser and Hawk, after the primary characters in this series). Inspired by the chapter in Why We Read by Shannon Read (see my blog post on this intriguing book), I decided to reread some or all of them. These mysteries are still fun, easy, page turners all, though more violent than my current taste.  I read seven of them in four days, and yes, still did some hiking and eating!

• The Godwolf Manuscript, 1973 (#1)
• God Save the Child, 1974 (#2)
• Mortal Stakes, 1975 (#3)
• Promised Land, 1976 (#4)
• Judas Goat, 1978 (#5)
• Pastime, 1991 (#18)
• Double Deuce, 1992 (#19)

You might enjoy rereading all or part of a series you enjoyed years ago!  If you choose to, please post what you are rereading.

May 2024

Lauren Beukes

Fiction 2023, 427 pages

Do you ever read an author who seems to be writing out her internal stream of consciousness?  (Unedited ...) That's how Bridge reads to me, and I don’t care for the writing, so I am closing the book and moving on to something else.

October 2023

Thich Nhat Hanh

Nonfiction 2017 | 206 pages

Concepts and teachings keep repeating themselves.  Perhaps that is the only way for us to truly remember.  I read in The Art of Living some teachings I have read and heard before ... the eight bodies (the human body, the Buddha body, the spiritual practice body, the body outside the body, the continuation body, the cosmic body, and the ultimate body) and the seven concentrations (emptiness, sign-lessness, aimlessness, impermanence, non-craving, letting go, and nirvana). I note that I am a different person today than when I read about all of these a few months ago. They speak to me on a different level, offer different meanings today, support me in a meaningful way today.

You may experience something similar.  It is a spiritual practice to reread Thich Nhat Hahn.  I recommend this short book.

August 2023

Maria Amparo Escandón

Fiction 2021 | 319 pages

I stuck with it but didn't much enjoy LA Weather.  The relationships in this close-knit family moved so slowly and were quite depressing.  Oscar and Keila are the parents, and their three grown daughters are Olivia, Claudia, and Patricia.  We travel for a year (each chapter is one month) through the lives of this Mexican family in Los Angeles.  From the start, Oscar is obviously withdrawn, in pain, depressed.  The family does Sunday dinner together and spends all the holidays together and claims to be so close, and yet it takes half the book (half of a year) for someone to ask Oscar why he is so depressed.  The story line includes numerous medical crises, and multiple marriages fall apart. The characters were surface. I kept plowing through, but started to track the number of pages to the end.  What a disappointment after Gonzales & Daughter Trucking Company, which I so enjoyed and still remember bits of, even though I read it in 2006.  (It was our library read that year, and LA Weather is one of four library community reads in 2023).  I really would like to give this three hearts and suggest you try it on for size, but I would be unfaithful to my rating system, and will stick with two hearts.  I don’t recommend it.

February 2023