Joanna Quinn

Novel 2022 | 576 pages

As I prepare to write this blog post, I keep having an image of a stately mature tree ... deciduous, maple I think.  Whalebone Theater Is like that tree to me. The major British characters, who relate as though they are two sisters and a brother, Cristabel, Flossie, and Dingby, play together, come of age together, find a beached whale together, reach to each other for emotional support in a family that abstains from it.  I adored the three of them together and their unyielding love, acceptance, and respect for one another.  They are solid as they weave together, like the trunk of my maple tree.  And that is the first half of the book.

Then the branches separate and differentiate and grow in their own ways, though all three are supporting Britain in the war effort of WWII.  It is here where the book loses its charm a bit for me .... when the trio separates and they become their own unique people in the world.

Though my concern about where Ms. Quinn took the plot is not enough of a problem to reduce my four-heart rating.  The writing in this debut novel is astounding ... beautiful, visual, clear, deep.  Her characters are real, profound, and eminently lovable.  As she carries them forward into the challenges of the War, we also learn something about agents, secrecy, and the Resistance.

This is an astounding debut novel.  How can one person have so much story within herself to tell?  It is broad and deep, spanning decades.

Thank you Josie for this recommendation. I do look forward to discussing in book club in January.

December 2024

Ann Patchett

Fiction 2023 | 464 pages

One friend liked this book ... found it sweet and interesting.  Another couldn't finish it because she was bored.  I was in the middle between these two opinions but have leaned into boredom.

This book has no plot. I did quite a bit of research into reviews to see if anyone identified a plot that I was missing.  Nope.  They all say this book is about love ... romantic love, maternal love, and familial love.  But no one tells us the plot.  The "plot," for what it is worth, is a mother telling the story of her youth to her three grown daughters when they are all in seclusion at the family farm near Traverse City, Michigan, picking cherries, during the Covid Pandemic.  Yep, boring.  Even if she did date someone one summer who would later become a famous actor.

I better get a four-heart book into my blog soon, so you all will have something juicy to read as the snow begins to fall.  I am optimistic about my next two books, including Whalebone Theater.

November 2024

Dennis Lehane

Fiction 2023 | 299 pages

Sharp action, short quick dialogue.  This mystery takes place in the context of the first school busing that occurred in Boston schools, in 1974. It is a fight about busing, which it seems neither black nor white families want.  It is a vivid description of racism at that time. It is a battle on the streets in protest.  And a few nights before busing was to begin, a young white woman, 17, a Southie named Jules, goes missing.  Not so coincidentally, a young black man falls under a subway car and is killed that same night.  We follow Jules' mom, the extremely self-sufficient and violent Mary Pat, as she attempts to discover if her daughter is dead or alive, and, if alive, where she is hiding.

That is a great story line!  Unfortunately, Lehane writes with extreme violence and racist language incorporated into his conflict scenes.   As I close the book for the last time, I am fighting the urge to keep my stomach under control, and I needed to go collect a soothing hug.  I cannot believe we chose this book for book club.  I think I will be absent for the conversation.

I would have liked a historical fiction novel about the beginnings of busing.  Regrettably, this is an ultra-violent gratuitous thriller.  I cannot recommend it at all.

November 2024

Matt Haig

Fiction 2024 / 324 pages

A small, long-ago act of kindness towards her colleague Christina leads to 72-year-old Grace being bequeathed a house in Iziba, Spain.  Puzzled as to why a virtual stranger would do such a thing, Grace decides to go visit the house.

Grace is filled with grief, being recently widowed and also losing her son Daniel in a bicycle accident.

This book is the story Grace writes in a very long e-mail to one of her former students who is struggling in life. Grace proceeds to tell this student how she, too, has been struggling through her life, and how this house changes her life. Once on Ibiza, she is drawn towards La Presencia, where she discovers and claims her psychic fantasy powers.

This book is 100 pages of unmitigated grief, followed by 225 pages of a story.  Now, I like fantasy and magical realism in a novel, but this was about 70% fantasy and 30% real story.  The story is like a skeleton on which Haig hangs the fantasy.  Someone on Goodreads said it read like a first draft and I can agree with that.  Just too much gravy and not enough meat.

I read the entire book and enjoyed it somewhat, but I hesitate to suggest you put this book on your nightstand.

November 2024

Lynne Cox

Biography/Memoir 2006 | 148 pages

Early one California morning, 17-year-old long distance competitive swimmer Lynne Cox was swimming off the coast, nearing the end of her three-hour workout, when she felt something shift in the water.  Swimming near her was a baby whale ... with no mother to be seen anywhere.  This is the remarkable tale of that morning, swimming with the gray whale, whom she names Grayson, and searching together for his mother.  At his young age, he will die without her.  She is his only food source for the first eight months of his life.

The true story is heart-warming and touching, speaking to the connection that can happen between humans and animals.  Cox's sense of the power of our minds to communicate and connect really resonates with me.  I also like how much she shared about the other sea animals they encountered, from dolphins to sunfish.

I cried near the end.

You only need part of a Saturday afternoon with a cup of tea by your side to read this book.  It is short and a fast read.  I recommend it surely!

November 2024

Betty Webb  |  Fiction

2023, 352 pages

Maybe it is Betty Webb.  Maybe it is me.  Maybe it is the distraction of the @#^%$ election.  But 110 pages in, I am disengaged and bored.  Check out my next blog post if you want something juicier.

November 2024

William Kent Krueger

Fiction 2019/ 450 pages

William Kent Krueger is nothing if not a phenomenal writer.  I know the major characters in this book so well ... Odie, Albert, Mose, and Emmy.  I feel as though I could predict how each would act, if they showed up at my home today.  I know their mannerisms, their personalities, their gifts, their values, their fears, their failings.  Krueger truly shines at developing characters.

In This Tender Land, three young White kids and one Native leave an Indian school where they, as well as the many Indian children, were abused.  The year is 1932 and there is no love between the White man and the Native population.  Emmy is six, our narrator Odie is 12, his big brother Albert is 16, and I don't think we know exactly how old Mose is, though we do know someone cut out his tongue when he was four and he is mute.  Odie and Albert end up at the Indian school when their parents die because there is no room at the white orphanage.  Emmy becomes an orphan during the telling of this tale.

The four children, who are fast friends, run away from the school in a canoe, traveling the Gilead River and then the Minnesota and finally the Mississippi.  This Tender Land is all about their travels and who they meet along their way to St. Louis, where Albert and Odie have an aunt, Aunt Julia.

The story is grim at times, heart-warming most often, and full of good people and bad people the four vagabonds encounter in their travels down the rivers.  While it is a novel, clearly the foundation is rich in research and learning about what our Midwest was like during the Great Depression and a time when we had not come to peace with the Natives who occupied this land for centuries.  You will meet many interesting and entertaining characters in this novel in addition to our four main characters.

I give it three hearts instead of four, because I felt it dragged and was slow at times.  Many of you, as well as many reviewers, will disagree with this assessment.  As always, take my assessment with a grain of salt and enjoy This Tender Land for what it gives you.

November 2024

Kristin Hannah

Historical Fiction 2024 | 480 pages

The longest wait at the library finally came to an end!  After months of moving up the wait list, I finally received a library copy of the immensely popular The Women.

It was worth the wait.

I thought it was a non-fiction book until I brought it home and discovered it was a novel.  A novel about Frankie McGrath, who, with two weeks experience after nursing school, volunteers to be a nurse in Vietnam, coincidentally on the morning of the same day she and her parents receive notice that her beloved brother Finley was shot down and killed in Vietnam.

Frankie's story is a conglomerate of the women nurses who served in Vietnam, invisible to most people both in-country and back home, except for those soldiers who were injured and medivac-ed into the nurse's care.  This is a page-turning book, but often not an easy read.  It is by no means light and flowery.

The first section is about her experience in Vietnam.  I would not personally call it gruesome, but the realism is heart-breaking.  You will read about the men who are put in body bags and placed on sawhorses for the morgue; about the "expectants" who are not treated because they are expected to die momentarily; about shrapnel and chest wounds and bomb carnage and buddies carrying in their friend, holding his leg in one of their hands.  You will read about napalm, about bombings done by the US of Vietnamese villages, and about helicopters arriving at 2 am and rousing the nurses out of their beds.

And then Frankie comes home, to parents who were so ashamed of her for going to war that they told their friends she was studying in Florence.  You will read about the myriads of people, including Vietnam veterans, who deny her experience because "there were no women in Vietnam."  You will read about her being spit upon. Most important, you will read a lie that she chose to not question for years ... that her job is to "forget."  This was a time before PTSD was recognized by the AMA, and Frankie had no help, recognition, nor validation of nightmares that threw her off her bed, of her screaming, of anger and fear of noises, of her eventual drug addiction and suicide attempt.

Some reviewers did not like that Hannah included Frankie’s love affairs.  I did!  This is normal for an early-20-something woman.  However, Kristin Hannah says in an interview on her website:  "You’ll probably be surprised to hear that the most difficult aspects of this story for me, as the writer, centered on the love story."  I am not surprised at all. She seemed uncomfortable writing about Frankie's love life.  I didn't feel as though she truly saw and could relate to this part of Frankie.  The one aspect that made this clear is Hannah never saw anything good in these liaisons.  They all end in trauma or tragedy, and never just the way relationships typically end ... a growing apart, or development of different awareness.

Yes, for sure, I recommend The Women. If you were alive during the Vietnam war, you will find this book brings up memories for you.  Perhaps, like me, it may remind you of some action you took personally that you are no longer proud of.  It is worth the introspection.  Thank you, Nina, for your recommendation.

October 2024

Emilia Hart

Fiction 2023 | 356 pages

Many reviewers wrote that this book is about misogyny, rape, abuse.  Many wrote that it was about the resilience, strength, independence, and determination of women,  I agree with the latter interpretation.  To pay too much attention to the abusive men makes them more important and, in this novel, diminishes the women.

The women, who lived in 1619 (Altha), in 1942 (Violet), and in 2019 (Kate) are women who took charge of their lives.  These women loved nature and had a special gift for healing that, in Altha's case at least, would label her as a witch.

I loved the interplay of the three women ... each of the 53 chapters was written from the perspective of one the women, and each moved the story forward.  Combining elements of women’s fiction and magical realism, author Emilia Hart expertly weaves the three different threads of this story into a compelling narrative.  It is a creative and engaging debut novel.

Weyward women belong to the wild. And they cannot be tamed…

I recommend this strong novel.  I am looking forward to our discussion in book club tomorrow night.  Thank you, Jan!

October 2024

Nevada Barr

Fiction 2012 | 368 pages

I am probably not the only one amongst us who has read a number of Anna Pigeon books by Nevada Barr.  Ms. Barr's first Pigeon book of 19 was written in 1993.  Anna is a sleuth who solves mysteries in National Parks.  She is a strong and delightful character in beautiful and inspiring settings.

The Rope is the 17th book in the series and is essentially a prequel.  Nevada Barr fans have been asking her to write a book about how Anna Pigeon gets started as a solver of mysteries, and this is her answer.  Anna finds herself working as a seasonal worker in Glen Canyon National Recreational area after the death of her husband, and her desire to stop being a stage manager for off-Broadway plays.  When she arrives, she is pasty, skinny, weak, and uneducated about the wilderness.

When we first meet Anna, she is at the bottom of a deep sandstone hole in the desert in Glen Canyon.  She is completely naked, drugged, molested, and dying of dehydration. The first third of the book is a macabre story about her time trapped in this hole.  I began to wonder if the entire book was going to be set here, in which case it may just have been too gruesome for me to complete reading.  But Anna finds her way out, and, for the rest of the book, searches for the perpetrators who nearly killed her, and did in fact kill a woman named Kay whom Anna finds buried in her hole (which she calls a "jar."). We get to learn about Anna's motivations, proclivities, personality, decision-making, courage, resourcefulness, wisdom, and grief.

This is a marvelous Nevada Barr, with her crisp, tight writing and creative murders.  If you have not read a Nevada Barr, this would be a fine place to start!  If you have read this author, you can pick up The Rope anytime.  Except it is so popular there are wait lists at the libraries!  Yes, I recommend The Rope for your reading pleasure and to feed your imagination.

October 2024

Anna Quindlen  |  Fiction

2024, 304 pages

Too saccharin and shallow for me.

October 2024

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Kevin Fedarko

Nonfiction 2024 | 488 pages

The depth, the intricacies, the anguish, soul-arresting views, moments of great fear, but constantly prodding on, most of the time on foot, though sometimes rappelled by rope.

Kevin and his friend Pete walk the entire Grand Canyon, 750 miles, in a year which includes untold thousands of feet of elevation gain and loss through canyons, crumbling ledges, slot canyon rappels, endless searches for potholes and springs to provide water, blisters, bites, temperatures in the 90’s and 100’s and occasionally way below freezing, and probably thousands of cactus needles embedded in their skin.

He also integrates the culture of the Canyon, specifically educating us about the atrocious relationship between white people and Native American tribes.  Horrific treatment leading to abject poverty (in the spiritual as well as the financial sense of the word ...)

Another wilderness adventure, which many of you know is a passion of mine.  But sometimes women and men who achieve great feats in the wilderness cannot write worth a darn.  Bu Fedarko?  His writing was so beautiful, so exquisite, so engaging, that I consciously slowed my reading to enjoy his words as well as his sentiment.  It takes quite a while to slowly read a 488-page hardcover book.

At times it was challenging to understand his descriptions because words do not adequately describe the magnificence he was witnessing.  And sometimes his maps were a bit hard to follow. But the story ... what a truly amazing journey!  Of course, I could not experience the heavy packs Kevin and Pete carried, the animals they observed, nor the slippery rocks they navigated.

On balance, I heartily recommend this book if you are a lover of the great outdoors and/or our country's most magnificent scenery.  But do not expect to read it in a weekend.  It may take a bit of time; it took me nearly two weeks.  And it was worth every moment.

October 2024

M.C. Beaton

Fiction 2023 | 242 pages

I will not be watching the Agatha Raisin TV show, nor will I go in search of any of the other 34 books in the Agatha Raisin Series.  Dead on Target was enough for me.  A fairly typical British mystery story, Mrs. Raisin retires, moves to Cotswold, and becomes a private detective.  In this book, she solves the mystery of a murder performed with an arrow.  The writing is light, easy reading, not complex.

However, I really don't care for our main character, the divorced Mrs. Raisin.  She has a sharp tongue, is somewhat brutal in her words.  A good heart, granted, but a mean communicator.   And, perhaps even worse, she is obsessed with how she looks.  What other character would take our her compact and fix her lipstick after just having found a murdered body, but before the police arrive?  She also walks in town, and notices how good she looks in her reflection in the shop windows.  Some readers may find this quirky character trait quite enjoyable, sweet, even funny.  I did not like it one bit.

I don't recommend Agatha Raisin to you.

September 2024

Tony Hillerman

Fiction 1988/ 207 pages

It was fun to reread one of Tony Hillerman's 38 books, especially one from his 18-book Navajo Mystery Series featuring Jim Leaphorn and Jim Chee.  A nice revisit and respite.  Lovely descriptions of Ancestral Puebloan pottery, and the landscapes in which they are found, coupled with the search for a missing anthropologist, makes the plot interesting and quite visual.

Truthfully, though, reading this inspires me to read/reread a Nevada Barr book with the character Anna Pigeon.  I have decided to try on The Rope.

Relax and enjoy!

September 2024

Barbara Davis

Fiction 2023 | 425 pages

Thank you, Donna, for suggesting this fun book, The Echo of Old Books. 

Ashlyn is the proprietor of a rare books store and is gifted with psychometric abilities that allow her to read the vibrations of old books and sense their previous owners' feelings. When she picks up an old book, she feels the emotions of the owner(s) of the book. This is a gift most of the time, even though she can’t really tell people about it, because they look at her oddly!  Sometimes it is challenging, especially when the emotions are dark or depressive.

In The Echo of Old Books, Ashlyn finds two books in a box of donated books, that are without an author or a date or a copyright, but with very strong emotions.  What has she discovered?  She finds herself compelled to uncover who the authors are and the circumstances that caused them to write and bind but not publish two books, Regretting Belle and Forever, and Other Lies.  

Belle and Hemi are all we know about the (female and male) authors as the book begins, but we eventually discover who they are to each other, to their extended families, and out in the world.  And how badly they hurt each other.

This book has an interesting premise and is a pure delight to read!

September 2024

Javier Zamora

Memoir 2022/ 381 pages

This is the memoir of 9-year old Javier Zamora's seven-week journey migrating ("illegally") into the United States from El Salvador in the summer of 1999. He was attempting, alone, to get to his parents in San Rafael, California, who migrated five years earlier.  His journey was supposed to take two weeks; it took seven. A mom, daughter, and one of the men "adopted" Javier and the four of them became a "family" who took care of one another for the duration of the crossing from El Salvador through Mexico and into the U S.

The first half of this book is very slow, which reflected the actual speed of his travel.  He would spend many days and nights in "apartmentos" or hotel rooms, waiting for the next coyote or the next connection to continue his journey.  Just over halfway in, the book sped up as Javier's journey sped up, near the US border, and interactions with border agents made it a scary journey for sure.

A reviewer says this, "I am pretty certain I would have preferred this to be an autobiographical novel or an adult memoir reflecting on this childhood journey. I just could not suspend my skepticism that all the extended dialogue and journey details could be captured so accurately 20+ years later."   I think that is an accurate reflection of what I felt.  How could he remember how many water bottles he carried on a particular day, or how the refried beans tasted 20 years ago.  It degraded the credibility a bit.

I kept feeling I "should" read this book (plus it is a book club read) and I was not surprised to find that the majority of the reviews I read used the words "should read" when describing this book.  It IS important to read.  We don't often see true narratives of immigrants making this difficult journey.  It will inform you, teach you, raise your empathy, and inspire you, as you read about kindness, bravery, family (both blood and adopted), determination, and hope.

I could not find the meaning of the title, even after researching it!

So, yes, I recommend this memoir but know it may take you some concentration.  By the way, there is a lot of Spanish in Solito which some people found annoying.  I found it delightful.

August 2024

Kamala Bremer & Rosalyn McKeown-Ice, editors

Nonfiction 2022 | 232 pages

In 1979, seven women, ages 26 - 40, came together through their connections and interests, to canoe 172 miles on the Fortymile and Yukon Rivers in Alaska for 11 days, from the town of Chicken to the town of Eagle.  This trip, when the women's movement and environmental movements were in their infancies, served as a foundation and mirror for the rest of their lives.  When my friend Carol loaned me From Chicken to Eagle, I assumed it was a book about a thrilling, exciting all-women wilderness adventure. It was that, yes, but it was so much more.

Thirty years after the canoe adventure, the women decided to each write a chapter to create the core of this book.  Each included their own perceptions, perspectives, and memories from the challenging canoe trip ... but they did so much more.  About three pages of each chapter presents each woman's memories.  But the mainstay of their writing is about the impact of this trip ... how it built their strength and self-esteem; how it informed their relationships with the wilderness; how it showed up in marriages and child-rearing in some cases; and mostly how it prepared them to launch into major careers at a time when the cultural belief was that women couldn't and shouldn't do much in the work world.

We have in this team of women a lawyer, a doctor, a business leader, non-profit founders and leaders, a writer, a professor, a public relations person, a public health officer.  More profound and impactful, we have environmental and social justice activists.  These women started day care centers, recycling programs, sustainable education initiatives, climate change strategies, mentoring, political and policy change.  They also remain, at ages 66 to 80, canoeists, kayakers, hikers, bikers, explorers, tour guides, adventurers.

Though it wasn't what I expected, From Chicken to Eagle is a fascinating, empowering, and inspiring read.  If you are anywhere near my age, it will also bring back memories and cast a new light on what we really did accomplish in our 20s and 30s, and how far we still have to go.  Yes, I recommend this short book.

August 2024

Kevin Kwan

Fiction 2024 | 467 pages

I loved this book from page one.  I don't know why books about superbly rich people keep showing up on my bookshelf these days but Lies and Weddings just seems to have none of the ostentatious excess of The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post.

The super-rich characters in Lies and Weddings have depth, unique characteristics, well-developed roles, and Kevin Kwan has subtle, wry humor, and a marvelous way with story.

The gargantuan Gresham legacy is flat broke, though the (not very likable) matriarch Arabella does not know this and spends millions and millions in the 437 pages of this book.  Nevertheless, she wants to marry off her daughters to men with titles and significant fortunes themselves, and she especially wants to marry her (gorgeous) son Rufus into money.  To that end, she keeps fixing him up with entirely inappropriate partners.  He is a man with a kind heart and generous soul and the facade of these heiresses do not begin to interest him.  And then there is “the girl next door” … a physician, Eden, whom Rufus asked to marry him when they were fourteen.

Because the characters are Chinese, or half-Chinese, or in some way connected to international Chinese culture, each new character is introduced to us with their educational pedigree: (pg 71) for example, “Laurel (Balboa/Thacher/Cornell/MIT) …”. This is delightful!  It made me smile every time, though I didn’t know more than a third of the institutions.  The introduction of the filthy rich addict Luis Felipe will touch your funny bone!

The fashion, the designer names, the costs of the dresses the women wear to various weddings and pre-and post-wedding events are not even comprehensible in my mind, as I sit here in J. Jill jeans and a long-sleeve t-shirt that is no less than 30 years old!

Yes, enjoy this novel!  I started it Tuesday morning at camp and finished it Wednesday afternoon.

Another summertime read recommended by The Week.

August 2024

Laura Lippman

Fiction 1997 | 369 pages

My friend and college roommate Janet suggested I try Laura Lippman after my last post, asking for mystery series.  I just finished the first Tess Monaghan novel, Baltimore Blues.  It is fun, fast and feisty.  Tess has lost her job as an investigative reporter at a local newspaper that folded.  At 29, she is trying to get her life together, knitting together small granny squares of jobs, such as working in her Aunt Kitty’s bookstore (Tess lives above the store for reduced rent), and doing administrative work for her uncle.

Less one think she is lazy (she IS accused of this on occasion), she also runs three (?) times a week, rows at 5:30 am six days a week, and lift weights three times a week.

And then her friend and rowing buddy Rock hires her to do some investigation into his fiancé Ava, who disappears at odd and frequent intervals.  This begins a series of mysteries and murders that Tess finds herself compelled to investigate, under the radar screen, and mostly without much-needed compensation.

I loved reading about Tess trying to make her way in this new world of murder investigation, all on her own.  I really like her as a person … free spirited, smart, and energetic.  I will read the next book in the series, Charm City, and I recommend Baltimore Blues.

August 2024

David Nicholls

Fiction 2024 | 349 pages

Since it took me 30 pages to figure out what this book us about, I thought I would make the opening chapters easier for you.  From Wikipedia:

"You Are Here is a 2024 romance novel by British writer David Nicholls. The novel centers on two middle-aged protagonists, who unexpectedly find themselves together on a long-distance walking trail across northern England after being brought together by a mutual friend."

Marnie is stuck in life.  Stuck working alone in her London flat, stuck battling the long afternoons and a life that increasingly feels like it's passing her by.  Michael, on the other hand, is coming undone. Reeling from his wife's departure, increasingly reclusive, taking himself on long, solitary walks.

A mutual friend invites them both on a walk across England, sea to sea.

The story is sweet.  The writing is good.  Yet, I fell asleep about every third page.  I finally figured it out; it was simply a boring book.  It moved too slow for me, with little adventure or intrigue.  I am glad to be done with You Are Here and I do not recommend it.  Suggested as a summer read by The Week magazine.

August 2024

William Kent Krueger

Fiction 1998/ 330 pages

I read and really enjoyed Ordinary Grace (see my blog post; 4 hearts) and then discovered that William Kent Krueger is a prolific writer, with 26 books to his name, 20 of them in the "Cork O'Connor Mystery series."  So, I thought I would try the first book in the series, Iron Lake.

Scatter shot.  Those are the words that come to mind when I think about how to describe Iron Lake.  Too many characters, too many deaths, too much shallowness of characters.  I really don't know what happened, including at the end where the author wraps the story up.

The main character, Cork O'Connor, is the former sheriff in the town of Aurora, near Lake Superior.  Of course, he can't stop "sheriffing."  The descriptions of the snow, the water, the freezing temperatures are vivid and compelling.  Cork is the only character we gain real insight into.

I will not continue with the next books of the series.  I just didn't care for Iron Lake enough to do so.

Which makes me want to ask ... the time may be upon us ... do YOU have a good mystery or time travel series to recommend to me?  Cooler weather will come soon!  (Even though it was 102 today.)  Think Robert Parker’s Spenser series (mystery) or Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander (time travel).

I don't really recommend Iron Lake, but some of you might want to give it a try.

August 2024

Susanna Janssen  |  Nonfiction

2018, 366 pages

The writing is staccato ... almost like a dictionary itself.   Because it is played in a constant 4/4ths time, I find it hard to recall anything.  I wish she had written about way fewer words and given more context.  Then something might have stuck.  Here is an example. On page 63 she talks about the etymology of tycoon, alligator, arena, dandelion, inaugurate, muscle, and pupil.  Not well-organized nor categorized; too much information; not enough knowledge.

Janssen also tries hard to insert humor into her commentary, and I think she is simply not funny.  Her humor feels forced.  It feels as though it was added in afterwards.

I read 76 pages.  My apologies, Nina, for not falling in love with this book!

Let's see ... what awaits on my shelf now?

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Tracy Johnston

Nonfiction 1992 | 356 pages

This is an amazing true adventure book.  The author, Tracy Johnston, is part of a small group of people to raft the Boh in Borneo ... the first trip EVER down the Boh.  It is such an adventure because there are no maps, no guides, no notes from those who have gone before. All they have are stories from native Borneo people who believe the river to be un-navigable and are fearful of the spirits who inhabit the Boh.

A few guides and a few experienced rafters have chosen to take on the Boh.  What they anticipate to be a three-day trip turns into ten days. The rapids are much more difficult than anticipated, the rains can raise the level of the river as much as 20 feet in one hour, and the bugs!  Oh my, the stories of the bugs!  I will never look on a honeybee with quite the same eyes.

Tracy begins this adventure by losing her luggage. So, her well thought out boxes with medicines, salves, and various pills, along with her box that includes her sleeping bag, air mattress, shoes, underwear, flashlight, and all her clothes, end up in the LA airport when she arrives in Borneo.  She has to beg, borrow, and steal all her supplies for this serious adventure.

The tale is a quick read.  Johnston uses very short chapters which keep the pace moving.  At times, the book drags a bit, because the rafting trip drags a bit.  There are days when the three boats travel only yards instead of miles.  The difficulty of staying kind and stable and compassionate in the midst of innumerable delays, and bodies that are constantly sweating and becoming the home base to numerous bugs, is unimaginable.

Tracy is in her 40s, which makes her story even more amazing.  She us not a young super-jock.

Again, if you love real-life wilderness adventure stories as I do, you cannot go wrong with this one.  It reads like no other.  This won't be the fifth book you have read about Everest, or another tale of canoeists in the great north.  Thank you to my friend Joanne for the loan of this not-very-well-known tale.

July 2024

Celeste Ng

Fiction 2022 | 235 pages

The three pillars of PACT:

• Outlaws promotion of un-American values and behaviors.
• Requires all citizens to report potential threats to our society.
• Protects children from environments espousing harmful views.

It is Cambridge, Massachusetts, just about a decade after PACT was passed by the House and Senate and became the law of the land.  PACT was a reaction to the Crisis, an economic, social, familial, cultural, structural collapse of the American Society.  No one actually knows what created this collapse, though within three years after it began, it became easier and easier to blame it on the Chinese, with no documentation or proof, just because a scapegoat was required.

Enter Bird, the 11-year old son of a Chinese-American woman, Margaret, and a Caucasian-American man, Ethan.  As the book begins, we learn that Margaret left her husband and son three years ago, but we don’t know why.  Ethan keeps telling their son to forget about her.

Of course, the consequences of PACT are fairly predictable to us as readers.  People are arrested who participate in a demonstration, or even a conversation that is anti-PACT.   Neighbors report neighbors for the slightest perceived infraction, or no infraction at all … especially if their skin has a yellow tinge.  And perhaps most painful of all for society, children are continually removed from their homes and subjected to “re-placement” if a case can be made that the parents had any anti-PACT influence on them.

Bird begins to search for his mother without telling his father.  This is much harder than today, because most books have been removed from the shelves and some burned, and the internet has been scoured “clean.”  Bird comes to recognize that the absence of his mother, who is not only Chinese-American but verbally opposed to PACT, is actually to protect Bird and keep him united with his father.

Eventually he finds his mother, but I can tell you no more without giving away the plot.

This is a good read; an interesting read; a read that is steeped in world history and even present day.  I do recommend you read it and I thank my friend Michelle for giving it to me!

July 2024

Allison Pataki

Fiction 2022/ 285 pages

I guess it is my fault.  I had heard about The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post and read about it also.  I apparently misunderstood.  I thought it was about a highly successful business tycoon, leader, strategist, dynasty.  It is not.  It is about a woman who plays a peripheral role in the company her father built.

MID-READ REVIEW.  I am exactly half-way through, page 192, and Marjorie Post has not done a bit of business so far.  It has been all about her love life, her children, her entertaining, her parties, her multiple homes, her money, her staffs, and a BIT about non-profit work.  I am sorely disappointed.  That is not what I understood this book to be about.  I thought it was about a business success story.

The story covers a surfeit of money among the Posts, Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, Roosevelts, and a score of others. I found the ostentatious excesses of the super-rich turned my stomach at times.  (Do I have a bit of communism in my blood?) Yes,  Marjorie Post gives away millions for health care facilities, to support our troops in the Great War, to provide food and shelter during the Great Depression.  She uses her money well and for superbly excellent needs.  However, the overabundance still upsets me. The last of many mansions she built for herself and her family had 125 rooms, with huge numbers of staff. And the art she collects is impressive.  Not to mention all the custom gowns and clothing from Paris and other fashion hotbeds.

That all being said, the writing is delicious. Pataki writes a biography in first person; not always an easy feat to accomplish. The main theme of the books is about Marjorie and her four husbands.  I thought these relationships were presented with depth, insight, sorrow, and aplomb.  You may enjoy reading The Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post.  Many readers have.  I cannot advise you to put it at the top of your reading list.

July 2024

William Kent Krueger

Fiction 2013 | 307 pages

Told from Frank’s perspective forty years after the fateful summer of 1961, Ordinary Grace is a brilliantly moving account of a boy standing at the door of his young manhood, trying to understand a world that seems to be falling apart around him. That summer, there are numerous deaths in the small town that Frank and his younger brother Jake live in.

Though their father is a pastor, and the boys are steeped in the ways of church and god, and god is a central theme through the book as well as how community members do and do not process their grief, I did not find it to be overly "god-centric."  It is definitely about grace and forgiveness and being in nature and talking things through and examining one's beliefs and finding inner peace, gentleness, and acceptance.  But you need not believe in god to gain this book's wisdom.

The title is finally stated deep in the story, when a bereaved mother snarls at her husband over the dinner table: “Can’t you, just this once, offer an ordinary grace?”  But grace has already come into play many times.

There are many definitions of "grace" and most of them are religious, but this one really resonated with me, from Dictionary.com, "elegance or beauty of form, manner, motion, or action."  In grace, we forgive, accept, do not judge, are open, we love.  It is truly elegant.

But let's talk about the writing.  That's what really puts Ordinary Grace in the "yes, please read" column for me.  There are numerous deaths over this summer, and I so appreciate the coming-of-age story as told by a man 40 years beyond this summer.  The characters are each unique, with their own quirks, foibles, gifts, ability to love deeply, and, yes, graces.  Kent does a superb job of developing each of these characters and giving us insight into their feelings and actions.  More than anything, this is an enjoyable novel/historic fiction to pleasure your summer afternoons.  Please read and delight in this Oregon Author!

July 2024

Isle McElroy

Fiction 2023 | 245 pages

The plot sounded interesting.  Eli and Elizabeth trade bodies, unintentionally, and he becomes emotionally Elizabeth in her body while Elizabeth becomes Eli in his body.

I thought it had promise. But the promise is unfulfilled.  No science fiction ... no scientists trying to find the answer to this phenomenon and predicting whether it will benefit or hurt humans.  No mystery.  He/she doesn't even think to look for him/her for five days. No context.  Neither the loss of their bodies nor finding each other again in a changed state had any story around it.  It just happened.  Left me scratching my head.  No magic or fantasy.  There seems to be no genre.

No ending to speak of.  Avoid this book.  I am impressed I made it through the whole thing.

July 2024

Kazuo Isighuro

Fiction 1989/ 245 pages

The Remains of the Day is a 1989 novel by the Nobel-Prize winning British author Ishiguro. (See my blog post on another Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun.) The protagonist in Remains of the Day, Stevens, is a butler with a long record of service at Darlington Hall, a fictitious stately home near Oxford, England.  In 1956, he takes a road trip to visit a former colleague and reminisces about events at Darlington Hall in the 1920s and 1930s.

Told in first person, the novel tells the story of Stevens, an English butler who has dedicated his life to the loyal service of Lord Darlington, who is recently deceased. Two important contexts present themselves: Lord Darlington was a Nazi sympathizer; and Stevens perhaps is in love with Miss Kenton, the housekeeper at Darlington Hall.

I love the way our Mr. Stevens attempts to teach himself "bantering" and "witticisms" and usually falls flat on his face.  And his mind is occupied with the ongoing questions, "What is a truly GREAT butler?" And "What is dignity?"   I appreciate the way he keeps exploring and learning and discovering.  "Dignity" might be an apt title! He expresses, however, no emotional depth.  I am not saying he has none .... it is simply outside the scope of his "professionalism" to express either emotion or opinion.  Whether the death of his father, Miss Kenton's announcement to leave Darlington, or being mocked for not having politic opinions, he remains stolid and sober.

There is no plot.  Stevens just travels and reminisces.  And there is no actual ending either.  An old man remembers back and sometimes become confused and regretful, and sometimes joyful and appreciative.

Do I recommend it?  Yes, it is such a turn from what I usually read; it is entertaining in its own right

July 2024

Joyce Maynard

Fiction 2023 | 404 pages

The Bird Hotel is a visual extravaganza.  Reading it, I can see the flowers, the birds, the lake, the volcano, and the 100 steps down to the hotel, La Llorona, that Maynard writes about so masterfully.  I am very moved by an author who can create such a visually compelling and clear narrative.

Joan is an American whose mother dies in a Weather Underground bomb explosion when she is six-years old.  Raised by her grandmother, she changes her name to Irene and receives a new birth certificate and passport, because her grandmother (correctly!) believed the FBI would be searching for the whereabouts of their terrorist daughter and mother.

Irene's life takes some very difficult turns, and she is followed by tragedy, until one morning, leaving her tiny apartment in San Francisco, she walks to the Golden Gate bridge to jump off, but does not do so.  Instead, she climbs aboard a green van with a pile of hippies, not caring where they are going.  Eventually, a number of days later, she finds herself in a small town in Columbia staying in a very quaint and small hotel where she gradually, somwehat unintentionally, begins to heal her life.

Irene is an exquisite character, as are the indigenous and gringo people we meet who live in La Esperanza.  Irene inherits the hotel eventually and lives out her days there, again through turmoil, but surrounded by the daily healing qualities of the land on which she lives, and the watercolor painting she does every afternoon.

I exuberantly recommend this book.  It is gorgeous and will capture your heart and your soul.

June 2024

Natalie Babbitt

Fiction 1975 | 140 pages

Natalie Babbitt conceived of the idea for her now-classic 1975 novel, Tuck Everlasting, from her four-year-old daughter. The girl was afraid of dying, so Babbitt wrote a story for young readers that faced death head-on. In it, young Winnie Foster comes to know a family, the Tucks, who have been granted the seemingly enviable but actually burdensome miracle of immortality after unknowingly drinking from a magical spring in the further reaches of their family’s property.

What a completely enjoyable book! It is a Young Adult book; a very easy read.  Winnie, at ten, is faced with the consequences of drinking from the spring and never aging a moment or letting her natural life progress.  The wise Tuck family advises her to wait until she is 17 or older to make this decision and admonishes her never to tell anyone about the spring.  Knowledge of the spring could certainly wreak havoc among the people.  It is actually an important and valuable concept to consider for all of us adults (and children) who are reading this in our armchairs.

I missed this book completely years ago.  It is listed on the “100 Best Fantasy Novels of All Time,” A New York Time’s publication that has informed a reasonable portion of what I have read these last few years.

If you have an afternoon to sit with a cup of tea, your feet curled under you, read this.  It won’t take you long.  It will make you think.  And it will delight you with excellent writing along the way.

June 2024

Robert Parker

Fiction 2011 | 336 pages

I thought I would read the last book Robert Parker wrote, Sixkill, which is in the Spenser series, as a tribute to Parker ... well, and to Spenser, too.  There is no premonition, no veiled hint of his impending death.  He died of a heart attack in 2010, sitting at his desk, writing his customary five pages per day.  He was otherwise in good health at 77 when he died.

Zebulon Sixkill is a very large Native American, the bodyguard to bad-boy actor Jumbo Nelson, who has been accused of rape and murder.  Spenser's job is to discover what really happened.  Spenser takes Z under his wing because, while big, he does not know anything about how to fight.  Some reviewers thought Z might be a new character in the Spenser series, but if so, he has been silenced by Robert Parker's death.

There are some really nice moments between Spenser and his main and only squeeze Susan.  I  recommend Sixkill to Parker fans.  And now, I am complete with rereading Parker's Spenser series, and am bypassing my beloved Boston ... until another excellent Boston-based novel appears.

June 2024

Niall Williams

Fiction 2019/ 380 pages

Sometimes a simple, dated story can be completely delightful!  This is the story of Faha, Ireland, a small rural town, in which the winter rains finally stop after months of grey, dampness and wet.  The first telephone arrives and then, god forbid, "the electricity" arrives.  The town is divided on whether or not they want to modernize to "the electricity" but once it is in, the Fahaens stridently object to 100-watt lightbulbs.  These bright and sudden disturbances reveal cobwebs have been hidden in the corners, help us learn that a woman with a gorgeous ruddy in fact uses red-colored makeup, and reveals to all that the resident with a handsome head of hair despite his advancing years, does in fact, wear a wig.

We follow Noe, who is seventeen as the book opens and coming of age, living with his revered grandpa Ganga and grandmother Doady, after leaving one year in the seminary. Christy is hired as the "electric man" to bring the town and the county up to speed and becomes a lodger in Ganga and Doady's home.  Christy and Noe, though about 50 years apart, become fast friends and drinking buddies.

Soon we learn that Christy didn't really come to Faha primarily to ensure that the electricity was installed, but he came to seek out Annie, whom he left standing at the altar 50 years ago.  He wants to seek her forgiveness, and Noe becomes engaged in facilitating their meeting and talking.  Noe himself falls in love with all three of Dr. Troy's daughters and has his first kisses.

I really enjoyed this book when it was about electricity and the cessation of rain, but once it shifted to Christy's love interest (and Noe's first love, Sophie Troy), somehow it became boring.  I struggled through the long second half.  Williams' writing and use of palpable mature delicious words, saved this book from being two hearts and three hearts won out. Nevertheless, I don't recommend it.

June 2024

David Grann

Nonfiction 2017/ 362 pages

"In the 1920's the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian Nation in Oklahoma."  (Back cover)

After oil was discovered beneath their land (and was specifically and surprisingly excluded from the contract the Indian Nations had with the US government) the Osage built mansions, educated their children anywhere in the world they wished, and were driven around in fancy automobiles.  By any standards, this Nation had come into extraordinary amounts of money delivered by the slimy black substance beneath their dry land.

And then, members of the Osage Nation began to be murdered.  At least 24 were murdered in a few short years, through guns, poison, tampered cars, and in one case, a devastating house explosion.  (Current researchers and scholars believe this number is woefully inadequate and that there may have been scores, even hundreds, of murders.)  As this blight was visited upon this remote part of Oklahoma, many of the dead were related to one another in this relatively small community.  And, bit by bit, land and untold fortunes changed hands.

In the same time frame, the FBI was being formed and was led by J. Edgar Hoover, who attempted to ferret out the murderers from his office in Washington D C.

The information, painstakingly researched by Grann, is astounding.  The majority of the book puts names, faces, history, and connections to the Indians (their word then) who were murdered and the family members who suffered as a result, emotionally, physically, psychologically, and financially.  I found the formation of the FBI and the identification of the investigators who traveled to Oklahoma to search for answers a bit boring, and this section moved my rating of Killers of the Flower Moon from four hearts to three.

What is shocking is how this critical, important, and essential part of our history was not (is not?) taught in our schools.  How could we (I?) not know about this blight upon our country?  It is important to learn of this time and to read this book.  Not a page-turning novel, but a true and accurate account of a truly devastating time in our history as a nation.

June 2024

Christine Reed

Nonfiction 2021/ 265 pages

I picked up three books at the library earlier this week that were on the shelf, waiting for me.  (All on the shelf under one of the few logistics I have not changed in my life .... my library card still reads "Beryl Rullman").  Though I only read about ten pages in Jane Eyre and in A Little Life, neither spoke to me right now.  They simply didn't feel like what I was wanting to partake of.  So, I cracked the spine on Alone in Wonderland, the current read in my "Solo Female Adventures" Facebook group, and was immediately transported to just where I wanted to be.

Christine Reed tells her true story of hiking the Wonderland Trail 93 miles around Mt. Rainer over 12 days.  But this isn't just a hiking story.  She intersperses it with details of her life that explain how she arrived at this trail.  She is fiercely independent, searching for her strong self, surprisingly insecure, living in a black Dodge Ram van.  She abandoned the Appalachian Trail while grieving her mother's death. She never was athletic or outdoorsy, nor does she have the ideal body for backpacking adventures, but still she feels called to finding herself by challenging herself in nature.

This is not the best book I have ever read, nor is she likely to go on to become a famous author, but hers is an interesting story, told with more depth and insight into her as a person than many hiking books.  It is an easy read, and enjoyable.

June 2024

Jonathon Stewart

Nonfiction 2018/ 329 pages

This is the only book I found by someone who hiked the Hayduke Trail, very different from the hundreds (thousands?) written by people who hiked the Appalachian Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail.  I was excited to get my hands on it!

First, the trail itself.  It isn't really a trail.  It is an approximately 800-mile route through the Southwest, including six National Parks. Most of it is not on existing trails, but rather you find your way through guides, maps, tales others tell. Not many hikers are known to have hiked the Hayduke (but the numbers do include two of my favorite hikers, Carrot Quinn and Erin Saver - Wired).  I can't find an accurate number of people who are believed to have hiked the Hayduke, but in 2019 some research was done by checking trail registers and permits, and the number then was believed to be about 40 hikers.  So now, what, 200 hikers perhaps?  A common phrase among Hayduke hikers is "figure it out."  Probably no two hikers have followed the same route.  There are challenges for getting up canyons, across washes, around waterfalls.

Named after George Washington Hayduke III, a fictional character in Edward Abbey's novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, the trail seeks to pay homage to Abbey for his tireless defense of these fragile and threatened public lands.

Though I loved this book, I must give it three hearts because I think many of my blog readers will not be enamored of it.  You must be a diehard fan of the Southwest geography and history to really enjoy Stewart's story, and be fascinated by ancestral Puebloans, red rock spires, deep rocky canyons, lizards, constant searches for water, the desert in all its glory and threats, box canyons, bitterbrush, ruins, extreme heat and cold, pour offs, and descriptions of ancient stone formation.

In addition to navigating a route, and in tribute to Abbey, Stewart mixes in many topics, which some readers may find fascinating.  The environment; the history of land preservation; water; uranium mining and contamination; climate and climate change; stock management of public and private lands; society's values; politics; endangered species; ATVs; guns; the role the Mormons played in "settling" the west; gates and locks and signs and barbed wire are all fair game in Plateau of Doubt.

The editing is atrocious.  Misspellings, missed words, repeated words. I decided to include this comment in my post when, on page 175, three glaring errors (on one page!) offended my eyes.  So, you must possess a high tolerance of errors such as these to enjoy this book..

All told, I can recommend this book to those who would be fascinated by hiking and a deep exploration of the geography of America's Southwest.

May 2024

Jodie Picoult & Jennifer Finney Boylan

Fiction 2023 | 480 pages

The first however-many pages of Mad Honey were all about beekeeping, as presented by the beekeeper Olivia, and were mesmerizing.  As always, Jodi Picoult did her extraordinary research.

Then, we transition.  Lily is found dead (murdered?) by her boyfriend Asher, both high school seniors.  Lily, Asher, and Asher's mom, Olivia, are the major characters in this mystery.  Told in the first person, each chapter is in Olivia's voice or Lily's voice. The tale moves back and forth in time but is quite easy to follow.  At the beginning of each chapter, we learn who is speaking, the date that person is speaking, and how many days, weeks, or months it is before or after the day Lily died, December 7, 2018.

Superbly written, we learn about love, friendship, abuse, transgender journeys, loyalty, secrets, passion.  Much of the book covers Asher's trial who, at age 18, is tried as an adult for first degree murder.  He is represented in court by his uncle Jordan, Olivia's older brother.

I am in awe at how seamlessly Picoult moves back and forth in time to create a coherent story.  And her character development is rich!  We learn about these three characters' pasts, their present lives, their feelings, their thoughts and how they think.  We truly get to know them as people.

I must highly recommend Mad Honey and am very grateful to Marian for recommending this book for book club.  I regret I will miss our book club discussion!

May 2024

Hernan Diaz

Fiction 2023/ 416 pages

Goodness, this is a challenging book.  Goodreads readers gave it a 3.84 ... quite low. Mixed reviews, for certain.  I loved Diaz' writing.  I thought it was eloquent and it pulled me in and through this unusual novel.

Trust is written as four novellas, or short stories.  The topic is a brilliant financier in the early 20th century, and his management of money before and during the Great Depression.  Andrew Bevel is our financier, though he is named Benjamin Trask in the first section.  All four sections are also an interesting commentary on economics, government, and big business.

It takes a lot to make sense of the interconnections among the four sections, but I will give the structure here to help you read this book.  The first section, a novel, is titled Bonds and it is allegedly a novel that Harold Vanner has written about Andrew Bevel, his life, his financial brilliance, and his quiet, tragic wife, Mildred (renamed Helen in the Vanner novel).

The second section, a memoir, is My Life, which is Bevel's telling of his life story.  This section consists of many placeholders ... where you read that he is reminding himself to cover this topic next, or to expand on that topic later.  Sentences like, "Show his pioneering spirit" and "Short, dignified account of Mildred's rapid deterioration" are frequent.  Bevel's short section is disjointed and poorly written.  I believe this was intentional, as it demonstrates that a financial and math wizard may not have any skills in writing (and, hence, communicating on any scale).

In the third and longest section, A Memoir, Remembered, we read about a young woman who is hired to ghostwrite Bevel's autobiography; both to tell his true story and as a rebuttal to what was written about him and his wife in the novel Bonds. We discover that Bevel is quite disconnected from his life and his inner workings and wants his ghostwriter to write much that is not actually true.  Ida finds herself confused and bewildered as she attempts to draft this book from Bevel's ramblings.

The final section, Futures, is excerpts from Bevel's wife's journal.

Trust is ingeniously constructed.  It is a novel about money, power, brilliance, intimacy, perception, and introversion. It is a story that immerses you, and that also provides a literary puzzle, both in how it is written, and what the truth is in Bevel's life.  Its unconventionality will disrupt your understanding of what a "novel" is.  This is a novel that requires you to think.  Nothing about it is light or fluffy.  If you are ready to engage yourself in a thoughtful analysis of economics, relationships (with self and others), and the role of literature, I suggest you read it.

I am SO looking forward to meeting my friend René for our traditional repast of guacamole made at our table and margaritas with salt rims.  René suggested this book to me.  I keep wondering what she will say about it.

May 2024

Gillian Flynn

Fiction 2012/ 415 pages

You have probably heard the story ... a woman, Amy, disappears on the morning of her fifth wedding anniversary to Nick.  No surprise, he is investigated for her murder, though no body is found.

This is a psychological mystery.  As the book progresses, through various chapters written in the voice of Nick or Amy, many of them in the past, we learn how emotionally and psychological flawed these two brilliant characters are.  They destroy themselves, they destroy their marriage, they destroy the relationships that are trying to keep them safe and secure.

Flynn is a gifted, intense, genius of a writer.  This book is worth reading for her writing alone.  However, the story is difficult, depressing, bothersome.  My man Brian talks about the movie version consisting of the stuff that sources nightmares. Amy is very destructive and scary.

I cannot tell you whether to read Gone Girl or not.  It is the second time I read it, as it kept coming up in conversation.  I am not sorry I read it (again) but I am not uplifted by it.

May 2024

Lisa Jewell

Fiction 2023/ 370 pages

None of This is True opens on June 8, 2019, at a nice restaurant near London. It is Alix's 45th birthday, and she is celebrating with a crowd of her friends ... noisy and boisterous, with a lot of booze flowing.  Josie is also celebrating her 45th birthday at this restaurant, but it is a quiet observance, just Josie and her husband Walter.  The relationship between Josie and Alix is kick-started in the restaurant's bathroom where Josie proclaims, "Hi!  I'm your Birthday Twin!"  They were born on the same day in the same hospital.  (My own personal coincidence is that June 8 is also the birthday of my beau Brian.) And so, a strange and unusual relationship begins.

Alix is just completing a very successful run as a podcast interviewer, featuring women who overcame obstacles and achieved or exceeded their goals.  She is ready to do something else.  Josie is about to make major changes in her life and wonders if Alix might want to do a podcast with someone during her transition ... not afterwards.  Alix warms to the idea, and they begin regular interviews at Alix's studio in her home. And Josie maneuvers her way deeper into Alix's life.

At this point, None of This is True is a page turner.  Easy and fun to read.  We learn about Josie's mom, her husband Walter, who is nearly 30 years her senior, and her two grown daughters, Erin and Roxy, both of whom have cut themselves off from the family.  As Josie draws Alix out, we learn also about Alix's husband Nathan, who has a habit of staying out all night, and their two younger children.

But eventually, about half-way or two-thirds through, the book turns dark.  As Josie's interviews become more and more personal, we learn she is psychotic, a kleptomaniac, violent, and a perpetual liar.  I found the book harder and harder to read as I progressed through the latter pages, because it turned so dark.  And the ending is filled with murders.

I cannot for a moment fault Lisa Jewell's writing.  She is a superb writer, with intensely developed characters and, it seems, tight and engaging plot lines.  I am going to pick another one of her books to read.

The disturbing nature of her main character leaves my stomach a bit upset and knocked me down from four hearts to three.  Read this mystery if you have a tougher heart right now than I have.

April 2024

James McBride

Fiction 2023 | 400 pages

What a rich book this is!  The characters have purpose, meaning, and personality.  The setting is the small town of Pottstown, Pennsylvania, in the late 1920's and 1930's.  This is a time and a town where Jews, Negroes, and White Christians led lives, isolated in their cultural groups, and yet thrown together by circumstance.  This is a time of discrimination, assumption, bigotry.

Our main characters are Chona and Moshe, a Jewish married couple.  Chona is the kindest, most generous woman you'd want to meet.  She runs the Heaven and Earth Grocery store, and cares also for the second floor, which is where Chona and Moshe live.  She treats Jews, Negroes, and Christians alike, with the same compassion and fairness. She lets her neighbors buy on credit, which is seldom repaid.  She lets the children buy candy with marbles, which rotate through the community of Pottstown, and the same marble purchases multiple bits of candy over time.  The Grocery is always in the red.  Moshe, quiet and self-contained, who runs two theaters in town, as well as creating income from other sources, introduces the music of these multiple cultures to the residents of Pottstown, and, in his own way, does his part to break down cultural barriers and build understanding and respect.

Chona becomes very ill, which plays a large part in this book.  They also take DoDo into their home, a black hearing-impaired orphan, which serves to unite the community when the government takes him away and moves him to an asylum for lunatics.  At 12 years old, Dodo is a fascinating character who has much to teach us.

There are other well developed and interesting characters in this astute book that explores race, poverty, bias, and history.  McBride gives us much to ponder.  Yes, I recommend this book, unequivocally.

April 2024

Heather Cocks

Fiction 2016, 496 pages

Too sweet, too saccharin. I read 100 pages to fill up some airplane time and now I am moving on.

April 2024

Emily Habeck

Fiction 2023 | 419 pages

In 21 years of reading The Deschutes Public Library community read, this is the first book I didn’t care for.  I may not have finished it, if it weren’t for its central place among those who read in Bend.

A first novel by Ms. Habeck, but one that didn’t touch me.  A few weeks after Wren’s marriage to Lewis he is diagnosed with “Carcharodon carcharias” mutation.  In nine months, he will be a great white shark.  I like fantasy, mystical realism, and unbelievable premises, but this one never landed for me.  We watch as Lewis and Wren deal with this terrible diagnosis and the eventual absolution of their marriage.  But Wren is so analytical, I never get a feel for her feelings and Lewis is so inward-focused, he doesn’t come alive on the page either.

And the pages?  Many, many, many pages are one or two sentences long; filling maybe three lines on the page.  Why?  What is this literary tool supposed to gain us?  I don’t know.

Of course, there are many poignant moments, many quirky moments, many sad moments, many fun moments.  (Lewis’s diet changes radically as his body transforms, and he consumes copious amounts of raw fish and shrimp every day!)  It may stick with me because the premise it so odd, but not because I thought the writing was either insightful or profound.  I suggest you skip to whatever is next on your list.

April 2024

Shannon Read

Nonfiction 2024 | 329 pages

Why We Read is like a piece of excellent flourless chocolate cake.  Truly yummy!  Shannon Reed has had a love affair with books since she was two, when her Mum-Mum taught her how to read, because she "was ready."  She taught literature to high school and college students and is now a professor in creative writing at the University of Pittsburgh.  And she loves to read!

Her book is delightful.  Each short chapter focuses on a different aspect of reading, such as why we read series, reading for comfort, how we choose a book to read, reading because we have to, reading to feel superior, reading because it is fun.  It is quite an experience for the reader, as we recognize ourselves in some chapters, and not in others.  The entire premise of the book is captured in its title, Why We Read.

Reed has inspired me to reread Jane Eyre and Gone Girl.  She introduced me to The Royal We, and invited the to reconsider reading my favorite series, Robert Parker's Spenser novels and/or Outlander.  

She is a good humor writer, too.

Watch out book club!  I will suggest this book for 2025, unless too any of us have read it by then!

If you love to read, you will love Why We Read?

April 2024

Nita Prose

Fiction 2002/ 307 pages

(Note: To begin with a clarification, this is not The Maid, written by Stephanie Land in the same time frame, with a movie and a Netflix series to its credit.  That is a book about domestic violence and a woman making it on her own. This book, also titled The Maid, is a murder mystery set at the Grand Hotel in England.)

Our main character is Molly Gray, an exemplary maid in the hotel, with a quirky sense of perfection.  Cleaning is her calling in life.  When Molly finds a frequent well-to-do guest, Mr. Black, dead in his suite, things turn quickly awry as Molly is accused of and arrested on drug charges, possession of an unregistered gun, and the murder of Mr. Black himself.  We follow her through one week in her life; the week when her life falls apart.  It seems Molly has been inadvertently used as a pawn in a drug ring being run out of this fine hotel.

Molly lives alone in a slumlord's apartment building.  Her Gran, who taught Molly with an insatiable number of cliches and a firm sense of morality, shared an apartment with Molly, and just died just a few months prior.  Molly has/had no life of her own, other than The Grand Hotel and her Gran.

The story is fun and an easy read. The “whodunit” is revealed very near the end, and it wasn’t a surprise to me.  Was it a surprise to you?

Molly is the most naive character I believe I have ever read about in a book.  This trait, central to the theme and story line, is sometimes entertaining, but often simply frustrating to the reader.  As such, I can’t quite recommend The Maid.  However, if you are seeking a mystery read that is just pure fun, this is a good choice.

April 2024

Claire Keegan

Fiction 2007/ 128 pages

I believe I may simply be tiring of short stories ... not my favorite genre.  But Walk the Blue Fields did not grab me as much as Claire Keegan's other books.  The opening short story was disturbing.  If she had carried that theme throughout, I might have been more compelled.  Other stories were mixed ... some light, some heavy.   And one short story was in another book.  Don't take me too seriously; I probably just need a Keegan break!

March 2024

Lauren Fleshman

Nonfiction Autobiography 2023 | 274 pages

I am a feminist, not naive, was a bit of an athlete in my earlier years, and I know something about women's health.

In the first 50 pages of Good for a Girl, I leaned many things I didn't know ... about how the changes in our body effects our physical performance; about the deeply challenging and disturbing studies and insights into eating disorders; about gender equity in sports.  Lauren Fleshman taught me.

And then she continues to do so for another 200 pages as we walk with her (she is running; we are walking!) through the changes and challenges in her body and in sports culture over the next 20 years or so.  And trust me, the changes have still not been all that profound.  We witness her ... no, we FEEL her win races, lose races,  become injured, develop negative self-talk, regain her confidence, fight battles, over and over. She races throughout the world ... and develops many relationships with teammates, mentors, and coaches.  If you think women who compete with each other can't be friends, read this book!  Women who compete with each can be a wildly supportive network.

I was reading this at first because of my connection.  Lauren is the daughter-in-law of one of my friends, and I had the privilege of hosting Lauren and Jesse for a short while in my Opportunity Knocks group as they were building Picky Bars.   But it didn't me long to realize, this is a well written, educational, mind-and-heart grabbing autobiography.

Every woman will likely learn and benefit from reading this book. Parents of aspiring female athletes (and the athletes themselves) should read this book.  It needs to be required reading for all sports coaches, before they apply to get the job!  And a lot of men will find it fascinating too, especially if there are active women in their lives whom they love. I sincerely recommend Good for a Girl.

March 2024

Claire Keegan

Fiction 2021 | 118 pages

Sometimes a man works hard at his job and provides for his family (five daughters, one wife!) whom he loves.  And these two endeavors sometimes become not enough. Bill Furlong reaches that stage, though I am unsure he recognizes it.  Instead he feels a bit out of sorts, restless, a bit of a wanderer.  But by the end of this novella, he finds what is calling him and what he needs to feed his soul and set him upon his next path.

Another beautiful Claire Keegan discovery of a character, who she makes so very real for us with superb writing.

March 2024

Carrot Quinn

Nonfiction 2015/ 368 pages

I have commented in other blog posts that I am a sucker for real-life-wilderness books. This one is superb!  The manner in which adventurers on long-haul trails, whether on land, on water, or on ice, share themselves with us, the great unknown, is very pleasing. They are typically not authors, but instead are simply opening their hearts and souls to us.  Carrot Quinn is one such writer.  (Around page 100 I finally googled Carrot because I didn't know for certain if he was a he or she was a she.  She is a woman!)

Carrot sets out to hike the Pacific Crest Trail, from Mexico north to Canada.  And her message is clean.  She doesn't fill this book with her life history and what inspired her to load up and put on a heavy backpack.  She doesn't spend a lot of time studying maps and books.  She is not filled with angst like Cheryl Strayed when she began the same journey.  She has the basics that support her ... a PCT trail map and imperatively, a GPS listing and description, mile by mile, of water spots, whether springs, a trough, a cache, or a hotel/hostel/store.  We know these foundational tools support her, but Thru-Hiking Will Break Your Heart does not dwell on logistics, but rather on Carrot's feelings, moods, insights, thoughts ...

Hmm, I haven't read a book on hiking the CDT (Continental Divide Trail), nor the trail I really want to learn about, The Hayduke. (Update .... I found one book on each!  They are now in my possession).

Carrot meets other hikers on the trail and spends many of her days hiking with them.  They are fun and interesting. Sometimes Carrot camps alone; this cab make her uncomfortable.  It was a low-snow year in the Sierras the year she hiked the PCT (2013), so it was more about walking than post-holing.  Finding and hauling and imbibing enough water and food through any section is a constant focus for her and her co-trail-hikers.  The number and variety of Trail Angels astounds me.  Thank goodness for Trail Angels!

At the last minute I changed my rating from four hearts to three, not because I didn't love this book, but because it will appeal to a unique audience which is what my three hearts stand for.  It is a bit long.  However, if you love wilderness adventures as I do, I fully recommend this real-life tale by Carrot Quinn.

March 2024

Elaine Sandberg

Nonfiction 2007/ 124 pages

A Beginner's Guide to American Mah Jongg by Elaine Sandberg, filled with graphics, color, exercises, humor, and extremely clear explanations, is simply delightful.  I believe you could learn the game by just reading this easy 124 page book.

I own this book and it is available for loan.

March 2024

Stephen King

Fiction 1999 | 262 pages

Trisha, nine years old, is on a hike with her older brother and mother, who are arguing so much and so vociferously, they do not hear her say she is stopping to pee.  She goes off the trail to pee, and since she is at a Y, she decides to go cross country a bit, just to pick up the other trail.  She hears voices on both trails.  But she never finds the other trail.

At nine-years-old, she is resourceful and smart.  She makes her tuna sandwich and Twinkies last a few days, and then she finds checkerberries, beechnuts, and fiddleheads to help sustain her.  Though one of these, or drinking straight from the stream, sends her belly on a roller coaster.

She is out for a week and walks miles and miles away from the search site, well into New Hampshire and up the chimney.  Of course, the mishaps are way too many to mention, but do include bug bites, falling, dead deer, torrential rain, swamps, and occasional tears.

Her passion is for Tom Gordon, pitcher for the Boston Red Sox.  She has her Walkman with her and is able to listen to three Red Sox games before it dies.  Tom Gordon is with her, encouraging her on, keeping her sane .... though it is all fantasy in her mind.  As is the evil "thing" that she imagines is out to get her, out there in the woods.

The typical King horror is downplayed in this book.  It consists of what a nine-year-old girl imagines in her mind, and the simple but challenging horrors of being lost in the woods.  There is no axe murderer or rapist following her.

I love Trisha!  She does not do everything perfect, but what a survivor she is, out for over a week until she finally sees a person.  I wonder if I would be as strong, committed, and brilliant as she is.

This is a great Stephen King novel.  He is such a good writer!  If you know other novels of his that are not filled with gore and real terror, and over-zealous bad guys, please let me know.  I would be glad to try another.

December 2023

Shelby Van Pelt

Fiction 2022 | 360 pages

I finished this book about two hours ago and am still smiling about how the title emerges near the end of book.

Once again, a debut novel that astonishes me! The story is scrumptious!  Marcellus McSwiddles is a Giant Pacific Octopus who cannot only think and feel as humans do, but also figures out how to let himself out of his tank every night.  Remarkably, the information about octopuses in this novel is true.  They are warm and intelligent and really do know how to unscrew a jar!  (You will likely learn a few octopus facts.  I did!)

Tova, our main character, cleans at the Sowell Bay Aquarium (a fictional town in Washington).  She is 70, widowed, and also grieving the loss of her son Eric when he was 18.  Tova and Marcellus develop a beautiful relationship, as she helps him navigate his excursions outside his tank.  At the beginning of the book, Marcellus determines that he can be outside this tank for 18 minutes before he encounters "The Consequences."

The novel, however, is not only about Tova and Marcellus, but also about Cameron.  The first few times we meet Cameron, who lives in California, is 30, and cannot hold onto a job or a relationship or any sense of stability, we don't know who is he is or how he will fit into the story.  But eventually, all is revealed, And Cameron and his relationship with Tova are a central theme of the book.  Well, perhaps THE central theme.

This book is warm-hearted, delightful, hard to put down.  The characters have depth, the story line is surprisingly interesting, and the short sections written by Marcellus will tickle you!  Do not hesitate to read this debut novel as soon as possible.  What will she write next?  I have joined her email list so that I will know!

October 2023

Rainbow Rowell

Fiction 2012/ 323 pages

A clever plot .... Lincoln is hired by the Courier, a local newspaper, to provide internet security.  A specific part of his job is to read emails that have swear words in them or some other messages that seem inappropriate for the workplace.  A piece of software called WebFence flags these emails and puts them in a folder for Lincoln to read.  Lincoln has the ability to send people warning notices to cease and desist.

Lincoln is uncomfortable with his job .... he works nights and feels like a Peeping Tom.  But then WebFence captures some emails between best friends Jennifer and Beth, and Lincoln becomes an e-mail voyeur.  He falls in love with Beth, without ever meeting her or even seeing her.

Meanwhile, Beth keeps seeing this "Really Cute Guy" at work, though she never finds out his name or what he does at The Courier.

Of course, you know from this summary where the plot will take us.

As I say, it is a clever plot.  However, its execution is a little too "cutesy" for me.  The book is an easy, entertaining read, but I cannot find a truly redeeming reason to recommend it.   It is entertainment and nothing more.  And so, read it if you want something light and fluffy.  And cutesy.

October 2023

Kim Richardson

Fiction 2019 | 320 pages

(I do not know how to put two photos in my blog, so I am leaving the book cover out and using this photo of the Fugate family instead).

The truth:  The Blue Fugates were a family from Eastern Kentucky, notably recognized for their blue skin, a genetic condition passed down over generations.  The peculiar story of the Fugate family begins with a French orphan named Martin Fugate. In 1820, Fugate claimed a land grant in Eastern Kentucky on the banks of Troublesome Creek.  He, and four of his seven children, were blue.  They married and had children, and the number of blue people in eastern Kentucky grew.

The blue-skinned Kentuckians existed for 200 years, until modern science discovered the genetic reason.  The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek is historical fiction.  The story, the characters are fiction, but the contextual facts are true.

And what a delightful story this is!  Not only did I fall in love with our main character, Cussy Mary (aka "Bluet"), but the writing thrilled me.  Cussy Marie is 19 years old for much of our story, which takes place in 1936.  She is a "book woman."  She rides her mule Junia into the hills five days a week, delivering books, magazines, and other reading materials to extremely poor and very remote homesteads. She is also "colored" by the definition of that time, and experiences all the disrespect and brutality of those times.  She lives alone with her father, who is dying from the grim, sad, and ubiquitous employment in Kentucky, coal mining.

I had many examples of the writing that tickled my inner logophile. Here is a short one.   "Junia raised her upper lip and nibbled the breeze with tall, talking teeth."  (End of chapter six).  I love the visual!

There is a sequel; I intend to read it.

Yes, certainly, read this novel.  You will be glad.

October 2023

Mónica Guzmán

Nonfiction 2022 | 257 pages

The author's personal experiences and convictions make this a very plausible and realistic telling.  She stays in conversation with and continues to love her parents who are Mexican immigrants (she was only allowed to speak Spanish at home) and avid supporters of Trump, while she describes herself as a moderate liberal, who voted for Hilary Clinton.  She is SO committed to listening, finding common ground, respecting, thinking ... with these two people who are very important to her.

This book is really grounded in creating relationships across difficult differences, such as politics, values, race, gender, guns, health care .... However, the skills, tools, and ideas apply in ALL relationships!  I was thinking about a difficult conversation I had recently, and how I stepped over some of what Monica Guzman tells us about curiosity, listening, bonding, assumptions, getting traction, clarity, honesty, attachment and non-attachment.  (Okay, I didn’t step over ALL these skills in my difficult conversation, but you get the idea…!)  Her writing is engaging, light, and it opened me up to new ideas.  She also includes a lot of (IMHO) cute little graphics.

I recommend this book, yes.  Whether you are on a journey to bridge the divides we are facing, or simply want more self-development, you will find some gems in here.

September 2023

Richard Osman

Fiction 2021/ 355 pages

The Man Who Died Twice is the second book in Osman's "Thursday Murder Club Mystery" series.  As with The Thursday Murder Club (see my review in August), we are privileged to be a part of the four-member Thursday Murder Club and watch the (often brilliant, often humorous) interactions of Joyce, Elizabeth, Ron, and Ibrahim. These characters remain interesting, sometimes surprising, always engaging of the reader.

20 million in diamonds (nearly $25 million in US dollars) are at the center of this mystery.  Did Douglas (Elizabeth's former husband) actually steal them?  And why does he come back to her to protect him when his life is at stake?  And the subplot ... who stole Ibrahim's cell phone and beat him up severely?  Both of these plots are interesting and complex, and you cannot miss the love between the four main characters.

I enjoyed The Man Who Died Twice but am giving it three hearts instead of four because the denouement, the solving of the mysteries, is overly complicated, with a variety of minor characters. I am no mystery writer, and I assume it is difficult to craft a meaningful yet hidden "who done it and how was it done" mystery, but I became lost at the roles some of the minor characters played.  I wish we had the same cops (love Chris and Donna and don't need additional investigators), and a sufficiency, but not a plethora, of supportive characters to add juice to the mystery.

I will give Osman the benefit of the doubt and have just requested the third book in the series, The Bullet that Missed, from the library. The Man Who Died Twice was an enjoyable read, but not as engaging as his first book.

September 2023

Jim Defede

Nonfiction 2002 | 244 pages

This is a fascinating and inspiring story that I certainly missed, and perhaps you did, too. On 9/11, thirty-eight jetliners bound for the United States (commercial, military, and private) were forced to land at Gander International Airport in Newfoundland, Canada.  6595 passengers and crew and a dozen animals descended on this town with a population of 10,000.  This is the inspiring story of how the people (the heroes) of Gander cared for stranded passengers with gestures of friendship and acts of kindness and goodwill.

The unintentional visitors were housed in schools, the VA Hall, the Salvation Army, churches, and townsfolk's homes.  The town rose to the occasion, taking the sheets off their beds and the towels and sheets from their linen closet to these locales.  The people of Gander cooked for them, provided showers, medicine, toys, access to phones, beer and most of all, listening ears and hearts filled with compassion. Local businesses such as WalMart and Canadian Tire donated camping equipment and as many clean clothes as they could scrounge up.

It is a hopeful record of the best of humanity ... generous, thoughtful, and deeply caring.  Gander embraced all these strangers for four or five or six days, dropped everything else they were doing, and made these temporary refugees very welcome.

This isn't a long book, and is certainly an easy read.  Frankly, I think we all could benefit from reading this book, and regaining a modicum of hope in our world and caring for our co-inhabitants on Planet Earth.

September 2023

Gu Byeong-Mo

Fiction 2013, 280 pages

This is a story of an organization that provides contract killing services for clients.  The killers, who receive assignments and work on their own, have names like Hornclaw and Bullfight.  Reading about their killings and their relationships with each other seems to have no redeeming value.  Besides, I find the book poorly written.  120 pages in, I am moving on to some other read.

Keep looking elsewhere for your end-of-summer novel!  That is what I am going to do.

September 2023

Pema Chödrön

Nonfiction 2022 | 221 pages

This is one of the more engaging, interesting, inspiring, and provocative books on my recent spiritual quest.  Thank you for the recommendation, my friend.

Chödrön talks about death from a Buddhist perspective, but you need not be Buddhist to gain insight and wisdom from How We Live is How We Die.  As with many (all?) spiritual writings, I think you will take what you are ready to take from Chödrön's writing.  A few concepts and teachings that particularly resonated with me, I include below.

One specific teaching that I especially appreciate is “using our emotions as the path to awakening." She speaks to the five "kleshas" or negative emotions (craving, aggression, ignorance, jealousy, and pride), and how, when we are able to 1) refrain from reacting and 2) adopt a positive view of these emotions, and 3) use these emotions as the path to awakening, we can gain the wisdom that each of these emotions teaches us.  If we build these habits as we live, we will be able to face death with curiosity and learning, and not fear.  Whatever klesha consumes us most frequently and most powerfully is the one we can gain the most wisdom from.

I also found quite fascinating the "stages of dissolution " or the changes our bodies and minds experience as we journey near to death: earth into water (body feels heavy, sight disappears), water into fire (feel thirsty, hearing goes), fire into air (feel cold, smell goes), air into consciousness (hard to breathe, taste goes), consciousness into space (respiration ceases, touch goes).

What you take with you into death are your "propensities."  Your propensities follow you into the death process.  For example, if you have a propensity for anger, you are likely to be angry as you die.  But we can change our propensities now.

There are some concepts Chödrön presents that I have heard too many times, or that simply do not resonate with me.  I will be curious to hear what resonates with you, if you take me up on this recommended and satisfying read.

September 2023

Meg Wolitzer

Fiction 2013, 468 pages

You know what?  The Interestings is not very interesting.  The story line doesn't amount to much.  The characters are awkward and stilted.  Their depth is missing.  The timeline shifts around inexplicably and leaves the reader feeling un-grounded.  I keep falling asleep reading this book; there is no tension. I am on page 135, but am deciding to call it quits.  I see that many people on Goodreads seem to agree with me.

Keep looking elsewhere for your end-of-summer novel!  That is what I am going to do.

September 2023

Tracy Kidder

Nonfiction 2023 | 320 pages

I enjoy Tracy Kidder and his way of presenting reality.  I read House and Soul of a New Machine prior to Rough Sleepers. I expected Rough Sleepers to be about the state of homelessness in general, but instead, Kidder takes us on in-depth tour of homelessness in Boston, following the story of Dr. Jim O’Connell, a man who conceived of and made real actions to create a community of care for a city’s unhoused population, including those who sleep on the streets — the “rough sleepers.” Kidder spends five years following Dr. Jim and his dedicated colleagues as they serve thousands of homeless patients, both at Mass General Hospital and in a van the travels every Thursday night to find homeless people on the streets of Boston who need medical attention.

We also follow Tony Columbo, one of the homeless clients/patients of Dr. Jim, and the roller-coaster ride of homelessness.  We see the system through his eyes; someone who has spent three (or more?) decades on the streets.

I learned a great deal about homelessness from reading this non-fiction, which reads like a novel.  It is easy to absorb the story he tells, though it is often sad, and you may pull your hair out as your read about the challenges of the homeless seeking shelter beds, finding vouchers for studio apartments, staying safe and warm, and addressing the many medical issues that plague the “rough sleepers,” caused by drugs and alcohol addiction, mental illness, physical challenges, and the cold and violence of living on the streets.

I really appreciated this quote from page 349 in the Large Print edition, “At a gala to raise money, in 2018, Jim tells the audience, ‘I like to think of this problem of homelessness as a prism held up to society, and what we see refracted are the weaknesses in our health care system, our public health system, our housing system, but especially in our welfare system, our educational system, and our legal system --- and our corrections system.  If we are going to fix this problem, we have to address the weaknesses of all those sectors.’"

This bleak assessment helps us to see why solutions are so complex and elusive. Rough Sleepers helped me to understand why our myriad of quick-fix solutions don’t work.

I heartily recommend this book.  It will shed a humane light on the challenges of homelessness for you, without being overly solicitous or sappy.

August 2023

Richard Osman

Fiction 2020 | 355 pages

Four septuagenarians in the retirement community of Cooper’s Chase in Kent England, meet every Thursday afternoon over bottles of wine to discuss and attempt to solve cold case files, until they are faced with two actual present-day murders and one mysterious skeleton.  Joyce, Elizabeth, Red Ron Ritchie and Ibrahim each bring his or her own skills and experience to the group.  The mystery ensues as they attempt to discover the murderer(s), occasionally informing the police of their efforts!

The characters are dedicated sleuths, and yet, Osman's writing is quite fun.  He develops his characters well; each has a unique and interesting personality.  The story brings to mind Louise Penny's Armand Gamache series.

While sitting on the podiatrist's office, another woman in the waiting room said to me, "Oh, you are reading The Thursday Murder Club!"  She read it, enjoyed it, and then told me there are four more in a series.  As an aside, I do appreciate the dying craft of people reading books they hold in their hands ... it often leads to meaningful literary conversation!

This is fun, light reading for the dog days (or the smoky days, depending upon where you live).  No hidden or important messages ... just pure entertainment.  Recommended by NPR. I have just requested the second book in the series, The Man Who Died Twice, from the library.  I recommend The Thursday Murder Club for your enjoyment.

August 2023

Megan Miranda

Fiction 2016/ 371 pages

Corrine Preston goes missing ten years ago from a small town of Cooley Ridge in North Carolina.  When our narrator, Nicolette Farrell, returns home from her life in Philadelphia to help her brother Daniel cope with the needs of their aging father, another young woman, Annaliese Carter also goes missing.  What and who connects these two missing girls?  Is it Daniel?  Is it Nic’s high school boyfriend Tyler?  And what do Jason and Nic have to do with it? And what about Nic’s father, Patrick, who has dementia?

The author, Megan Miranda, tells the story backwards, day by day for 15 days, which is an interesting methodology.  It works!  It is helpful to simply trust the author, that you are reading information in the right order.

If someone else has read this, I would love to chat with you.  I am a bit confused ... about the ring (rings?) and the pregnancy test, and the burying of Corrine …

This is a fun mystery (even if I am a bit confused!)  I read it camping, and it was great for sitting by the motorhome.

August 2023

Douglas Preston & Lincoln Childs

Fiction 2009 | 448 pages

“It takes a certain amount of guts to start a novel by killing off a popular recurring character, but no one has ever accused this writing team of lacking guts.” From David Pitt

Pendergast, the FBI special agent who frequently takes on personal assignments on a freelance basis, teams up with New York police lieutenant Vincent D’Agosta to solve a crime that has ties to the supernatural. Apparently these two characters are regulars in the Preston/Childs books.

In the opening pages, a murder is committed by a man who, 10 days earlier, was pronounced dead and then buried. But the eyewitness is sure it’s the same man, and footage from a security camera appears to confirm it. How does a dead man commit murder? And why this particular victim?

I cannot fault the writing of these two prolific and successful writers.  It is a sharp, fast-paced, hard core murder mystery.  However, I had great difficulty in finishing this novel because of the subject matter:  Vodoo, reanimated dead people, animal sacrifice.  I found the content rather repulsive, though again, the mystery itself is exquisite.

As such, I slogged my way through to the end, but find I cannot recommend it.

August 2023

Rev. Jane E. Vennard

Nonfiction 2013 | 176 pages

Regular readers of the Dusty Shelves blog know that I have been exploring spiritual texts for a while now, often with disappointment.  Fully Awake and Truly Alive is the first of many books that I can unequivocally say I enjoyed and found within its pages significant value. It is a book about spiritual practices ... creating actions you can take, perspectives you can hold, thoughts you can align.  The author, calling upon and gently integrating Christianity, Buddhism, the Koran, the Veda, Torah teachings, and a wide range of spiritual tomes and teachers, presents eight practices that you can engage in right now.  Chapters include practices such as silence, rest, community, and service.

Kathy and Leslie and I read this book together, and all three of us liked it and found actions to honor and include in our lives right now.  This is a great book, if you are on a spiritual path.

August 2023

Maggie O'Farrell

Fiction 2022 | 352 pages

A spectacular and delightful book!  Lucrezia de'Medici, at the untenable age of 13, is married off to the Duke of Ferrara, Alfonzo.  The setting is Florence Italy, in the 1550s.  While this sounds as though it might be tepid and boring, it is neither!  This delicious, rich, textured novel, based on historical fact, is a page-turner.  I read it in two days camping (and yes, I also kayaked and hiked.)

The dashing Duke Alfonzo is intimate and caring to Lucrezia one minute, and brutally cruel the next. He has a personality that is either sociopathic, or he has dissociative identity disorder.  Lucrezia, who, in her soul, is independent, creative, and not easily controlled, sits for a court artist during the first year of your marriage, who paints her portrait according to the desires of her husband.  Hence, the marriage portrait.  She attempts to learn the role of a very young Duchess, which is challenging and seriously rubs against her own personality and values. There is vivid description of the servants who serve her, and how they endear themselves to her.

Life in court is described with detail and pizazz, but it is not the center of this novel. The center is Lucrezia and her personality. The 1550’s was not a good time to be a woman – there are not many options open to women.  O’Farrell’s depiction of Lucrezia is deep and detailed.  You gain a great sense of life in Renaissance Florence, and the difficult prescribed roles played by both women and men, as well as Lucrezia herself.

I definitely recommend this book as an engaging read.

July 2023

David Baldacci

Fiction 2023/ 432 pages

I have not been reading much of the “psychological thriller/mystery” genre lately, so perhaps what I am about to type is not very relevant, but once again, I found the mystery, it’s development, and it’s resolution, overly complex.

Mickey Gibson, a single mother with two young children, and a former detective, now works for ProEye, doing investigative work from the comfort of her computer screen in her home.  When someone allegedly from ProEye asks her to go visit a client, she does so, and finds him dead; murdered.  Harry Langhorne (aka Daniel Pottinger) was a former mob account in Witness Protection.

And then she receives a call from a brilliant unnamed woman with a hidden past and hidden motives, who wants Mickey to track down the killer, and the circumstances and people surrounding Langhorne’s death and what is reputed to be an untold fortune, held somewhere.  While she is strong-armed and intimidated by this woman at first, eventually her competence and brilliance wins and the two women become unlikely partners in solving the complex crimes.

Though there are characters which seem to add unnecessary complexity to the story, Baldacci, as the stellar writer that he is, writes the denouement with page-turning, thrilling skill.  If you like this genre, I think you will enjoy Simply Lies.

July 2023

Ore Agbaje-Williams

Fiction 2023 | 192 pages

The story is about a woman, her husband, and the woman’s best friend, who spends way too much time at the couple’s home.  Reviewers call it “very funny” and “astute” and “bold, brilliant satire.”

I found it shallow, not credible, and essentially boring, though I did read it in its entirety.  It is written in three sections … each in the voice of our three different characters, about a single afternoon and evening in the couple’s home.

I find it not so much irritating as distance-creating, that the three characters are always referred to as “my wife” and “my husband” and “my wife’s friend” and “my friend”.  This has a way of keeping the characters in relationship with each other, and not exploring the depth in any of them. An odd literary technique I think …

Dumb ending.  Read something else!

June  2023

Anthony de Mello

Nonfiction 1992/ 184 pages

This is another book that is allegedly about spirituality but seems more about psychology.  That being said, I found some useful perspectives, such as exchanging a concept or idea about something or someone and replacing it with reality.  I also resonated with the admonishment to view emotions as though they are outside of you.  He talks about the difference between “I am depressed” and “there is depression.”  Interesting psychological and emotional advice, but somehow it does not make the link to spirituality for me.

June 2023

Julia Watts

Fiction 2018 / 289 pages

I often enjoy, as you know, teen novels.  This one is a little too teen ... a little too simplistic.  But still, it is such a delightful story, I gulped it down!

Libby (short for Liberty) and her family are devout conservative patriarchal Christians. At 16, she is the oldest of six children (Patience, Justice, Faith, Charity, and Valor are her siblings, with #7 on the way ). They are home-schooled, live under the loving but highly controlling rules of their father, never socialize with anyone outside of their church, and spend their days insulated in their family, studying, reading the Bible, preparing food, playing games together.

And then the Forrester family moves in next door, in their rural community. Zo is Libby's age, and suddenly Libby is exposed to blue jeans and shorts, atheism, vegetarians, equal decision-making between parents, questioning, thoughtful consideration of life, lifestyles, values, and culture.  Libby makes a gender-fluid friend in Zo.

Of course, you know what is going to happen as Libby actually does become liberated.  But the journey is interesting, especially as both sets of parents try to be good neighbors to each other, even though their belief systems are diametrically opposed.

This is a fun, if easy, read.

June 2023

Barbara Kingsolver

Fiction 2022 / 560 pages

Demon Copperhead is Barbara Kingsolver’s retelling of Charles Dicken’s David Copperfield. This is the basis of many reviews … was this a brilliant idea on her part, or inappropriate, baffling, and unwarranted?  Since I read David Copperfield in high school, approximately 55 years, and don’t remember one word of it, I am not entering into the debate at all.  I take Demon Copperhead as a new and original literary work.

Demon Copperhead is born Damon Fields in 1988 in southern Virginia to a teenage mother addicted to gin, amphetamines, and Vicodin.  A troubling attitude earns him he name Demon and bright red hair gets him “Copperhead.”  Demon’s father died before he was born, and when his mother ODs on Demon’s 11th birthday, Demon becomes a ward of the state.

Thus begins this gritty and depressing book, as Demon is moved from untenable living situations to even worse living situations.  The book is a series of unrelenting tragedies, with occasional minor victories on Demon's part that keep you rooting for him.  There is abuse, an excessive amount of illegal and addictive drug use, and sex way too early.  People continue to disappoint hm, but some, like his boyhood friend Maggot, and he new friend Angus, stay as close as they can.

The context, the social message, is about the incessant poverty in Appalachia, and how people survive it, or don't. High school football and, at last, a decent foster home to live in, provide Demon with a respite of success.  Until his knee is badly injured and opioids take over his life and his well-being.  It is rather amazing to learn about how much effort it takes to score illegal or legal addicting drugs.  As Demon is a budding artist/writer, this book also looks at how the artist's consciousness is built.

But for all the difficulties our main character faces, sometimes with astounding weakness of spirit, sometimes with profound resolve, it is, after all, written by Barbara Kingsolver, who is an extraordinary writer. From a New York Times review:  "Kingsolver’s prose is often splendid. There is the 'dog-breath air of late summer,' the guy with 'wrongful' eyebrows,  the man who makes his way down a staircase 'like something dumped out of a bucket.' Episode by episode she persuasively conveys the mind of a teenage boy."  While Demon Copperfield drags a bit in the middle, as many long books do, I keep reading and it keeps intriguing.  I am giving it three hearts because, while it is definitely a good summer read, it is NOT a light beach read!!!

I do recommend it! My high-school friend Mary and I decided to read this book together before my upcoming visit to her cabin.  I will be intrigued to hear what she has to say!

June 2023

Robert L. Weber & Carol Orsborn

Nonfiction 2015 / 233 pages

My friend Kathy and I are exploring books on developing and affirming our spirituality in our latter years.  The Spirituality of Age is our first choice, and I must say I am disappointed.  I would like to re-title it The Psychology of Age.  It is filled with psychological advice, perspective, and counsel, that ties very loosely to spirituality, in my mind.  This is the major contribution of Robert L. Weber, PhD, a former Jesuit and clinical psychologist.  Carol Orsborn, PhD, has her doctorate in History and Critical Theory of Religion.  With her degree, and Weber’s former vocation as a Jesuit, the book is replete with religious and bible references that, try as I may to translate into secular experience or ignore, became tedious and boring.  Furthermore, the entire book is about the lives and stories of Weber and Orsborn.  There is nothing I find quite as irritating as an author telling his/her story because they are so egotistical to think it alone informs others.  A story here and there to elucidate a point is welcome.  But this book is almost 100% their stories.  Yawn me to death!

HOWEVER, my conversation with Kathy was enlightening!  She was less critical and gleaned some useful pieces from this book.  We had a good conversation about one of the questions incited by the book ... What does mature spirituality look like?  The words we used, for us, included acceptance, being present, spaciousness, quiet, prayer and meditation, being in nature, and being in our bodies.  A good question from the book we are both pondering is “What does the divine want to awaken in you now?”  My current answer is gratitude and clarity.  We also spoke about letting go of old beliefs AND creating new ones.

I think the most profound part of our discussion was around loss, and how loss contributes to our sense of the spiritual.  Health issues, loss of strength and stamina, and of course, the loss of very important people (and pets) in our lives, has raised a question for us, i.e., how to be with loss as part of our spiritual practices.

All in all, we had a great conversation, even though I am not enamored of the style of writing of these two authors.  For those of you who are tracking my posts on Buddhism and on spirituality, please note that Kathy and I are next reading Awareness by Anthony de Mello, and will discuss it in late June.  We invite you to read along if you wish!

June 2023

Pip Williams

Fiction 2021 | 376 pages

A novel based on the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, we follow the life of Esme (Es, Essy, EssyMay), the daughter of one of the lexicographers (a person who compiles dictionaries).  As a young motherless child, she often stays under the table in the Oxford Scriptorium where the lexicographers do their work. Looking at the words with her Da, she learns to read, and builds a fascination and reverence for words. At a very young age, she finds a stray paper slip of a word that was dropped on the floor. Wanting to possess one of these special objects, she stashes it in her pocket. She instinctively knows taking it is wrong, but the possession is something so special, she cannot help herself.  Lizzie, the servant girl, offers Esme a hiding place in a small trunk under Lizzie’s bed. Thus begins Esme's collection. This collection becomes an important element in Esme's life, and eventually leads to the creation of The Dictionary of Lost Words.  The lost words are "women's words". They are words about women’s bodies, which many consider vulgar, and the men lexicographers refuse to include in their professional dictionary.  They also include words used by commoners, by poor people, by people not in sophisticated society. "Bondmaid" for example becomes an important word through the novel.

The dictionary was created during a time when social mores are in upheaval.  It is also the time of women's suffrage and the beginnings of WWI.  Esme is living at the end of the Victorian era when the roles of women are defined, restrained, restrictive.  Essy wants out from the shackles of these times.

I am a logophile; I love words.  If you love words, you may just be as fascinated by this book as I was.  Our language both defines us and reflects us.  Word usage changes constantly and is an anthropological study of the history of peoples and cultures.  The Dictionary of Lost Words is not a page turner or a fast read. It is a book to be savored and read slowly.  It is a beautiful history (herstory?) of the times.  The only challenge I had is picturing the Scriptorium and the printing processes.  I never created a fully satisfying visual.  For example, I was two thirds of the way through the book before I realized that "pinning" together the small slips of paper that have word definitions and quotes of the word in actual usage, was accomplished through the use of an actual straight pin stuck through the bits of paper!

This is our May book club read and will lead to a delightful conversation, I suspect.  Thank you, Louise, and Pam for encouraging us to read this novel.  It is a worthwhile read!

May 2023

Bonnie Garmus

Fiction 2022 | 400 pages

From what I heard, I expected this book to be good.  I didn't expect to be astounding!  This is a must read.  Another debut novel to celebrate!

The story is set in the late 1950s and early 1960s.  Elizabeth Zot is a chemist.  It goes without saying, a woman chemist at this time was more than an anomaly.  She was also dismissed, misunderstood, feared, abhorred, discriminated against, and pushed hard towards other, more appropriate roles, i.e., wife and mother. She is serious and cerebral.  No surprise, her cerebral-ness keeps her at arm's length from many people, but it also provides the reader with eye-rolling giggles.

She meets and falls in love with another brilliant chemist ... one who is no smarter than her, but is famous for his work, because he is a he.  Elizabeth and Calvin Evans are soulmates, as is their adopted dog, Six-Thirty (who knows 981 human words by the end of the book.)

Elizabeth Zot's story includes fighting to be seen and respected by the misogynist scientific community.  It includes battling blatant gender-based discrimination, sexual assault, and a man who puts his name on her research, which was funded by a man who believed Zot was a man.  Elizabeth Zot is eventually demoted and then fired from her research position.  I won't tell you why ... too many spoilers if I do!  She goes on to host an afternoon tv show called "Supper at Six" in which she teaches "housewives" the chemistry of cooking and becomes famous in spite of herself.

The sport of rowing, also dominated by men, plays an interesting role in Lessons in Chemistry.  It is its own character, with a personality all its own.  And then there is my other favorite character in the book, Mad.  But I will let you find out who Mad is.

It sounds a little heavy, doesn't it?  Well, Lessons in Chemistry is not arduous, despite the serious subjects it tackles. Bonnie Garmus' writing is fun, engaging, often humorous, and thought-provoking.  Garmus says in her follow-on interview with Pandora Sykes, "I wanted to salute that generation of overlooked women, to highlight their enormous and often underused capabilities."  This is the generation of her mom.

I like this sentence from a review at Amazon.com, so will steal it:  “Laugh-out-loud funny, shrewdly observant, and studded with a dazzling cast of supporting characters, Lessons in Chemistry is as original and vibrant as its protagonist.”

No question, read this book!!  And post your comments when you do, please!  I am actually sorry it is complete.

May 2023

Rachel Wooten

Nonfiction 2020 | 311 pages

Tara is another book about Buddhism that disappointed me.  I was excited about this one, because Tara is the female Buddha, and she is sharing her wisdom with us in 22 meditations.  I was so excited, I bought the Tara cards so I could pull one randomly, when faced with a situation or question or dilemma. There IS wisdom here ... I read about and meditated upon many useful concepts such as patience, peacefulness, energy, focus, love, loneliness, clarity, richness, truth.

As with many Buddhist books I have read so far, there is much filler.  Wooten repeats the process ... the Tara Appearance, the Visualization, the Refuge Prayer, the Praise, the Mantra, and the Meditation, over and over in every chapter.  Once again, it feels like there are so many words in-between the pages and paragraphs of wisdom. And the cards have very little of Tara’s wisdom written on them.  Just a sentence or two; so they too are disappointing.

I will continue to develop my one Tara ... my own sense of feminine (and feminist) Buddhism, as with every aspect of Buddhism, taking what is right for me and what resonates.

April 2023

Akwaeke Emezi

Fiction 2022 | 264 pages

After a tumultuous childhood in foster care, Bitter, 17, is invited to attend Eucalyptus, a special school where she can focus on her painting, surrounded by other creative teens. But outside the residential school, the streets are filled with protests against the deep injustices that grip the city of Lucille.  Lucille is a hotbed of racial violence, though Bitter, Black herself, like many of the kids at Eucalyptus, is tempted to stay inside the safe walls of her school.  She is, however, pulled in multiple directions among her friends, her passion for painting, and a new romance.  Bitter isn’t sure where she belongs—in the studio or in the streets. And if she does find a way to help the revolution while being true to who she is, at what cost?

This young adult novel is being read by the Decolonization book club I used to be a member of.  It explores youth, protest, art, values, innocence, friendship, trust, truth.  It also has an engaging and fantastical component of magic, that is first introduced to us through Bitter’s art as a young child.

Many of the characters in Bitter have remarkable names like Bitter, Aloe, Blessing, and Hibiscus. The author tells us this in an homage to Toni Morrison.

It is a timely novel and is quite riveting.  Bitter and her friends are simply irresistible characters.  Sometimes I really like reading YA novels ... there is a freshness to them that is not always found in adult serous novels addressing similar topics.  (I have two more on my shelf right now!)  Yes, I recommend Bitter.  I believe it will cause you to think.

April 2023

Ian Kerner

Nonfiction 2004 / 22o pages

Yes, if you are wondering if this book is about what you think it is about, it is! She Comes First is about sexually satisfying a woman first. I can't believe someone actually wrote this book, so I had to check it out.

(Not to apologize, but I can imagine some blog readers wondering, “why is she blogging about books on sex?”  I realize it may seem odd from your perspective, but even when you are almost 70 (or maybe especially when you are almost 70!) and new relationships, new love, new sexual experiences present themselves, interest in sex re-emerges.)

This book is fascinating for women as well as men. Did you know there are 18 parts to a clitoris, some visible and some not?  I didn't ... and I learned much more about my own sexual body reading She Comes First.

While jam-packed with useful information and humor, I think it reads like a YouTube video on how to rebuild your car's engine.  It is very descriptive, with lots of "how to" ... prescriptive, detailed, informative.  I would not want to be a man reading this ... it is TOO directive in my opinion.  However, a thoughtful perusal to pick up an idea or two might serve us all?!

My disappointment is that Kerner does not represent older women and our unique challenges.

Overall, I do recommend it for anyone who enjoys or would like to enjoy more satisfaction in giving or receiving cunnilingus.  (Wow, did I actually write that line?)

April 2023

Joyce Carol Oates

Fiction 2023 | 297 pages

Beautiful Marguerite (“M” to her family) disappears from her small town in Upstate New York. But is foul play involved? Or did she merely make the decision to leave behind her claustrophobic life?

Her younger sister Georgene (G) wonders if the flimsy silk Dior dress, so casually abandoned on the floor, is a clue to Marguerite’s having seemingly vanished. The story is set 22 years after M’s disappearance.  The police examine the footprints and other (46 more!) clues. We slowly learn of G's love/hate relationship with the perfect Marguerite.

I don't know Joyce Carol Oates well, but a few reviewers called her "creepy."  Our narrator and main character G IS rather creepy.  This book is more a study of the psychological state of G, than it is about solving the mystery of M's disappearance. Oates' ability to create a character, if this book is a typical indication of her writing skill, is astounding. G is not very likable, is socially incompetent, is angry, bitter, jealous, and resentful.  She has moments of psychological distress and mental un-health, and creates fantastical stories.  The story is both fascinating and disturbing. There is an undercurrent of evil.  G will stay with you four days after you put this book down.

And, an ambiguous end to boot!

Yes, I recommend this book.  It is not a mystery in the truest sense of the word ... it is more a psychological character study.  And I found it quite interesting, engaging, thought-provoking, sometimes amazing.

April 2023