Paging All Bookworms! discussion

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Read any good books lately? We want to know about them.
How about real stinkers? We want to know about those too!


Enter your reading list and/or reviews here. Did you like it? Hate it? Feel lukewarm?

Share your thoughts with us.

Happy reading!

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic – Alison Bechdel – 3.5***
Bestselling memoir of a young woman growing up in a dysfunctional family. The graphic novel is full of Bechdel’s marvelously detailed drawings. Her confusion, anger, disappointment and sadness come through on almost every page.
My full review HERE

Moby-Dick, Or, the Whale – Herman Melville– 4****
Melville writes in great detail – ad nauseum – about the intricacies of whaling, the various species of aquatic mammals, the arduous and dirty (even disgusting) job of butchering the carcass. But he also explores the relationships developed among the crew, the sights of new ports, the weeks of tedious boredom broken by a day or two of exhilarating chase. I understand the enduring quality of the work, so despite its flaws, I still give it a high rating.
My full review HERE

Ismail Kadare, Chronicle in Stone [1971, tr 1987] 301 pages

An autobiographical novel about the author's experiences growing up during the Second World War, as the city he lived in (also the home town of Enver Hoxha, who is briefly mentioned but not one of the characters) continually changed hands over two or three years, from the Italian fascists to the Greeks to the Italians again to the partisans and finally to the Germans. Some of the reviews I have seen give the impression that the novel is about the fighting between the different Albanian groups, the collaborators, the nationalists, and the Communists, but this is only briefly alluded to on a few pages near the end. The book finishes up on the second day of the German occupation.

The descriptions of the city, which is personified, are fascinating, the events are all interesting and well-described, and there are a whole cast of memorable characters, from Grandmother to the narrator (Kadare, presumably, though never named) and his friends, as well as the inventor, the man who likes living in prison, and the old women who come to gossip with Grandmother.

The book is a sort of coming-of-age story, although the narrator is still quite young at the end. The history is told from a child's perspective, who has a somewhat wild imagination and who misunderstands many things at first but ultimately comes to know what is happening in the war, perhaps more realistically than many of the grownups with their traditional ideas and superstitions.

A combination of nostalgia, humor, and the horrors of war and occupation -- the horrors are presented in small doses, and well-balanced by the humorous passages so the book never becomes uncomfortable to read, this novel gives the background to the modern history of Albania.

The Lost Girls of Paris – Pam Jenoff – 3***
Another WWII story featuring women working as spies through the underground resistance and facing untold dangers. There’s much to like about this tale, though I am frankly tired of the back-and-forth timelines used by so many writers these days. Still, the story, which is partly based on true events, moved quickly and held my attention.
My full review HERE

The Fabulous Bouvier Sisters – Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger – 4****
The subtitle is all the synopsis anyone needs: The Tragic and Glamorous lives of Jackie and Lee. The authors have crafted a mini biography and exploration of their complicated and tight relationship. I found it fascinating and full of the kind of gossip that enthralls me. It’s an interesting look at the dynamic between these two sisters and their claims to fame.
My full review HERE

Sudden Death (FBI Trilogy #1) by Allison Brennan
5 ★

Three former Delta Force members are murdered and FBI special agent Megan Elliott is determined to find their killer. Jack Kincaid What she doesn’t know is that one of the killers has another victim in mind once the Delta Force members are gone.
Finally, a book that gives up more background on Jack Kincaid. He has been a great supporting character in some of the other books and it's good to see him get his own story. The story line is great and the characters better. Jack's whole crew are interesting and fiercely loyal to each other. Hans Vigo is back and him and Megan, along with Jack, make a great team. The romance part was expected, but it didn't overpower the story.
The torture technique used in the story was truly gut wrenching. I found myself cringing during it. I can see why Ethan's mind was so frazzled. His partner, Karin, is even more dangerous than him. It's scary how sociopaths can blend in with everyone else and no one knows any difference.
The ending is expected, but still a bit shocking. There are some things you just don't see coming. I'm looking forward to seeing where Megan and Jack go from here.

Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton, trr., The Future of Silence: Fiction by Korean Women [2016] 216 pages [Kindle]

This anthology of nine short stories was the last Korean reading for the World Literature Group on Goodreads, which is moving on to Arabic fiction in March. Like the previous anthology I read this year, Modern Korean Fiction, it was co-edited by Bruce Fulton; this one was co-edited and translated with his wife, Jo-Chan Fulton. The first story, "Wayfarer" by O Chŏng-hŭi, was also in the other anthology. The stories date from the 1980s through the first decade of the twenty-first century, and are in the order of publication. All nine stories are essentially about the alienation of women in a still fairly traditional society; the first five stories are fairly realistic psychological stories in a more or less traditional narrative style; the last four are more experimental in various ways.

"Wayfarer" is about a woman who is ostracized because of an event in her past; "Almaden" by Kim Chi-wŏn is about an unhappily married salesclerk who fantasizes about a customer; "Dear Distant Love" by Sŏ Yŏng-ŭn is about a woman in a masochistic relationship with a toxic married man; "Identical Apartments" by Pak Wan-sŏ (also spelled Park Wan-suh, by whom I have previously read a book of stories and a novel) was the best of the earlier stories, about conformity and competition, and "The Flowering of Our Lives" by Kong Sŏn-ok is about a woman and her daughter who both rebel in different ways.

The more experimental stories begin with "I Ain't Necessarily So" by Han Yujoo, a sort of surrealist fantasy which I thought was the least successful of the nine (although since there is much wordplay it might have been very good in the original Korean); it's followed by Kim Sagwa's "It's One of Those The-More-I'm-in-Motion-the-Weirder-It-Gets Days and It's Really Blowing My Mind" is about a white-collar worker in a boring job who fantasizes about violence, and it's ambiguous whether the later violence is real or imagined; then Ch'ŏn Un-yŏng's "Ali Skips Rope", my favorite of the nine, about a mixed-race person whose father is a boxer and named her/him after Mohammed Ali (the protagonist is biologically female but identifies as a boy); and finally the title story, "The Future of Silence" is another very good and very experimental story, a bitter satire told from the perspective of the spirit of a dead language after the death of the last speaker in a museum of dying cultures.

These are all good stories and this anthology was a good ending to a year of very interesting readings from authors I might otherwise never have known about (of all the books we read, only one, The Vegetarian, was in the library without my requesting it.)

Look Alive Twenty-Five (Stephanie Plum #25) by Janet Evanovich
4 ★

The Red River Deli’s managers keep disappearing and since Vinnie owns the place, Stephanie Plum is tasked to become the new manager. Can Ranger and Morelli find out what happened to the others before Stephanie disappears too?
These books never get old. Stephanie and Lula work well together and this book a lot of Ranger and Morelli in it. Also, Wulf is back, but no Diesel. There are multiple laugh-out-loud moments as usual and some cringe worthy parts. Lula almost found a new calling making subs at the deli, but with her own unusual flair that made me glad she doesn’t work at a deli close me. :-) Stephanie and Lula also get a chance to work a food truck. So funny! There is a great twist at the end with Grandma Mazur that moves us right into the next book. I’m enjoying the ride.

Honolulu – Alan Brennert – 3.5***
Regret / Jin is a marvelous character. She starts out a shy, subservient girl and grows throughout the novel into a strong woman. I’ve visited Hawaii several times and could picture many of the settings depicted in the novel, despite the vast differences in today’s Honolulu from that of 1914. I was fascinated by the history lesson and the glimpse into life during that time period.
My full review HERE

Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead [2009, tr 2018] 274 pages

This novel is different from the other books I have read by Tokarczuk in that it is not written as separate stories or fragments but as a more or less connected narrative. Formally speaking, it is a murder mystery, although in a postmodernist sense that bends the conventions of the genre to focus on other things. The protagonist is an astrologer and fanatic animal-rights activist, and much of the book is detailing her diatribes against the hunters of the area, as well as her bizarre theory that the murders are revenge of animals against the hunters. The language as one would expect from Tokarczuk is poetical and mythical, although perhaps less so than in her earlier novels. The protagonist and her friend and former student Dizzy are translating Blake (the title is a line from Blake) but this is not developed to the extent I would have wished (I'm a Blake fan.) Definitely worth reading, but I would not say this is her best book.

Erotic Stories For Punjabi Widows – Balli Kaur Jaswal – 4****
I was expecting something light and breezy and I was pleasantly surprised to find some depth here. Nikki is a wonderful character but I really loved the women in her “creative writing” class. Some of their stories were heartbreaking, but all of them were so willing to be open and honest in their writing. That their subject matter would “shock” their peers was not a deterrent to their need to express themselves. Brava, ladies!
My full review HERE

Two short books.

Peter Handke, Wunschloses Unglück [1972] 89 pages

A memoir of the author's mother's life and ultimate suicide, this is somewhat easier to understand than his fiction, and has a lot of observations that made me think about rural poverty and European culture differently. It takes place against the background of the Anschluss, World War II, and the postwar era in Austria; his mother is born in a small rural town in Austria, eventually goes to the city (Berlin) twice, but both times is forced by events back to the rural area, which seems like somewhere out of the nineteenth century. The concerns of his fiction are present, especially the observations of language and the way our view of the world is constructed.

Ismail Kadare, The Three-Arched Bridge [1973, tr 1997] 187 pages [Open Library]

This historical novel about Albania as it is coming into conflict with the Ottoman Empire (and experiencing the rise of a mercantile economy) is set in 1372-73, about half a century earlier than the events of The Siege. The main focus of the novel, narrated in first person by a monk who is also a translator, concerns the building of a stone bridge over the river next to a small feudal principality to replace the earlier ferry; in the end, the bridge becomes the site of the first armed conflict with the Turks. As with The Siege, it can be read as a comment on modernity and tradition.

The Cat Who Came For Christmas – Cleveland Amory– 3***
On a snowy Christmas eve, Amory helped to rescue a bedraggled stray cat. This is a memoir of their first year together. Interesting and entertaining for the most part, even for this reader who is not much of an animal lover. Despite the title there’s nothing very “Christmassy” about the book.
My full review HERE

Twisted Twenty-Six (Stephanie Plum #26) by Janet Evanovich
4 ★

Grandma Mazur’s marriage lasted 45 minutes. Jimmy is dead and the rest of the local gangsters think Grandma has “the keys”. Unfortunately Stephanie has no idea what the keys look like and Grandma swears she doesn’t have them.

It was nice having Grandma as the center of attention in this book. She’s actually pretty insightful. Her attitude throughout the whole book is very carefree and nothing seems to bother her. I wish I had her positive and “I don’t care what others think” attitude.
The older generation in the Burg is quite the group. They are all feisty and quite funny at times. They are also pretty ruthless. I enjoyed this aspect of the book. It felt like the reader was finally getting to know someone other than Stephanie.
Stephanie questions her profession a lot in this book, but she also steps up more than she has in the past. She uses her head and gets the job done. She seemed to have less fear in this book and I liked that. Lula continues to entertain and shock. I hope that never changes.

Al Capone Shines My Shoes – Gennifer Choldenko – 3***
Book two in this entertaining middle-school series, set on Alcatraz Island during the Great Depression. Moose Flanagan’s dad is a guard at the maximum security prison, and the family lives in the apartments provided for workers and their families. I was completely charmed by the first book, and certainly interested in this second outing. The relationships between the kids seem real to me. Moose deals with many of the things most 12-year-olds have to face, including bullying, peer pressure, and adults who don’t understand him. But he’s also burdened by a unique relationship with one particular inmate: Al Capone.
My full review HERE

Another Handke and another Kadare.

Peter Handke, Der kurze Brief zum langen Abschied [1972] 196 pages [Open Library, in German]

This novel by Handke traces the fairly random travels of an uninteresting Austrian male on the border of middle age (he turns thirty in the book) through the United States over a period of one or two weeks, looking for/being looked for by/trying to avoid his wife with whom he is trying to break up. He begins in New York City, spends a short time in Philadelphia, hooks up with a former girlfriend and her two-year-old daughter and stays with them in St. Louis for a few days, then spends a couple days in Tucson, meets up with his wife in Seattle, and travels to California where they end in a conversation with the retired movie director John Ford.

The book is written in the same style as his earlier novels, where everything seems unmotivated and is described in excessive detail; the protagonist spends page after page analysing his own character or being analysed by his girlfriend; at the beginning he is reading The Great Gatsby and imagines himself as Jay Gatsby, then he reads Der Grüne Heinrich (which I haven't read, but I don't think it matters) and is sure that he is just like that character, or his girlfriend thinks he is, or something. I say "girlfriend" but although they occasionally sleep together they seem to have almost no emotional or even erotic connection with one another. Actually, the two-year-old is the only character who seems like a real person (but also seems to be autistic.)

Along the way there is a sort of travelogue about the United States full of generalizations which seem absurd to anyone who lives here, but may correspond to European stereotypes of America.

Handke was a controversial choice for the Nobel Prize because of his politics, which may or may not be as bad as his critics contend but has nothing to do with his literary credentials, and because his choice represents the Eurocentric bias of the Academy, which is a criticism of their choices in general and can't be applied to a particular choice; my criticism of his selection is that his writing, as much as I have read of it so far, is basically just boring and pretentious. I won't buy any more of his books but will finish his Theaterstücke in einem band and Die linkhandige Frau which I have already bought and the three or four more books available free from Open Library -- maybe he gets better in his later books, what I've read so far is all fairly early.


Ismail Kadare, The Traitor's Niche [1978, tr. 2017] 200 pages

Another "historical novel" (which really isn't one, as he correctly insists), The Traitor's Niche is set during the time of Ali Pasha's rebellion in the first half of the nineteenth century. The narrative moves between "the Center of Empire" (Istanbul) and "the Frontier of Empire" (Albania).

Although his novels do not form a series and are not written in the order of the events, the "Traitor's Niche" is referred to in Chronicle in Stone set during World War II, and this novel refers back to historical events in The Three-Arched Bridge set 500 years earlier.

As with the other "historical novels", the historical events are just the setting for imaginary and deliberately anachronistic episodes/discussions which are symbolic of events and tendencies in contemporary world and Albanian politics; here for example the Ottoman bureaucracy has teams of anthropologists and linguists developing sophisticated long-term plans for suppressing national identities of conquered territories with centuries-long timetables for corrupting the grammar of the languages, kinship structures and wedding customs, etc. (of course the Ottoman Empire did suppress native cultures in a much cruder way, to impose their own culture, as all conquerors try to do.) The description of the extinction of languages reminded me strongly of "The Future of Silence", a Korean short story I read two weeks ago.

The President is Missing – Bill Clinton and James Patterson – 3.5***
This is a fast-paced thriller, with a believable (if somewhat over-the-top) scenario. There were several times when I thought I knew where it was headed but was surprised by a twist in the plot. The basic plot line is something we should all be concerned about and I found myself wondering about our reliance on technology. The last 50 pages were particularly nail-biting.
My full review HERE

You (You #1) by Caroline Kepnes
5 ★

When Joe Goldberg meets Guinevere Beck his life changes for the better. Social media helps him learn everything he needs to know about her and her friends. As he slowly inserts himself into her life everything she knows and loves changes. And friends start to disappear.

I watched the Netflix show before reading the book and, as usual, the book is better (IMO). The book is only told from Joe’s point of view I found that I really didn’t like Beck much. She was very self-centered and materialistic in the book. She knows that men fall all over her and she uses that to her advantage. Her playing the poor little girl to her rich friends got annoying.
Joe on the other hand is brilliant. I loved his knowledge of books and his thoughts about them are pretty genuine. His obsession with Beck is terrifying and sadistic. He challenges fate many times just to get closer to her. He really does see her in a different light than the reader does. He doesn’t see her downfalls (well, until the end of the book). His obsession dominates his life at times and I guess it would for most stalkers.
All in all, the book is great. It held my interest long after I put it down. I would question why the characters did certain things and how. That makes a book great to me. For those who have watched the TV show… don’t expect the same from the book. There were many changes made for the TV show (not bad ones).

Ike And Kay – James MacManus – 3***
In his work of historical fiction, MacManus explores the relationship between General Dwight D Eisenhower and his assigned driver during WWII, Kay Sommersby. Rumor, innuendo and gossip have surrounded their affair for decades. It was interesting to see how the relationship unfolded and to get a glimpse of what they may have meant to one another, especially during the stress of wartime. MacManus gets at least one detail VERY wrong, and it makes me wonder what else he flubbed. Oh well, it’s historical FICTION, and it held my attention.
My full review HERE

Bae Suah, North Station [2010, tr. 2017] 212 pages

Seven stories by Bae Suah, written in a very poetic and surrealistic style which is highly individual, although one can also see the influences of German (mainly Austrian) writers, especially Kafka and Handke. All seven revolve around relationships. The first story, "First Snow, First Sight" and the title story, "North Station" are told essentially from the man's perspective, two related stories, "Owl" and "The Non-Being of the Owl" are second-person interior monologues addressed alternatingly to the other person, and the remaining three, "Mouson", "Dignified Kiss of Paris Streets" and "How Can One Day Be Different from the Rest?" are from a woman's perspective.

In the first story, the protagonist sees a couple he recognizes at the beach and the story is told basically in flashbacks; the other stories mix present and past even more thoroughly, as Bae did in Recitation, and "Dignified Kiss" especially mixes dreams and memories in an ambiguous way. There are leitmotivs which run through several different stories -- street performers and lost keys, for example. The final story, "How Can One Day" is the one I liked best; it begins with an unsuccessful attempt to stage a play (which could almost have been written by Handke) and then focuses on the life of the female playwright.

Ismail Kadare, Ghost Rider [1980, tr. 2010] 208 pages

This novel was originally published in 1980 in Albanian, translated into French in 1986 as the second novel in the first volume of the Collected Works (which were in chronological order by the time they were set in, rather than the order they were written in), translated into English as Doruntine in 1988 and then with additions and revisions as Ghost Rider in 2010. The setting is some unspecified time in the Middle Ages, after the Crusades but before the Ottoman invasions; unlike Kadare's other "historical" novels the basis is not a historical event but a folktale. It is based on the Albanian folktale of Doruntine and Kosradin, which is a variant of the "Demon Lover" motif, except that in the Albanian version the knight who comes back from the dead and reclaims the bride is not a lover but her brother.

Doruntine is the only sister of nine brothers (twelve in the original folktale, according to one description of the ballad on the Internet), who is married to a husband in Bohemia, a ten to twelve day journey away through often warring countries. When the rest of the family hesitates about allowing the marriage, one brother, Kosradin (i.e. Constantine) gives his word, his Besa, that he will bring her back whenever their mother wishes. Three weeks later, all nine brothers are killed in fighting off a Viking invasion. The novel begins three years later, when Doruntine returns home and claims that she was brought back by Kosradin, only to be told by her mother that he has been dead for three years. The novel is essentially a detective story, as Captain Stres, the skeptical head of the local police (which seems to me to be somewhat anachronistic for the feudal age, but I don't know how Albania was organized at the time) investigates, trying to find out who brought her back. Was it, as she claims and most of the peasants believe, her dead brother? Was it an imposter who deceived her? Was it a lover she was eloping with? The story is set against a background of religious conflict -- not between Christian and Moslem, as in the novels set during the Ottoman period, but between Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox.

The novel as all of Kadare's that I have read was very good, but I was disappointed in the ambiguous way that it ends; although I expected it to be ambiguous in the sense that we could not be sure whether the solution was the "true" one, I expected that there would at least be a clearly presented apparent solution. I know that this is part of the postmodernist way of writing, trying to show that historical reality is inherently inaccessible, but it clashes with the conventions of the genre that it is playing off.

Riders Of the Purple Sage – Zane Grey – 3***
I hardly know what to write about this classic of the Western genre. It’s full of adventure, violence, strong men and women, tenderness, brutality and an abiding sense of justice. And, of course, there is the landscape, which Grey paints so vividly it is practically a character. I found myself laughing at the ridiculousness of some of the "love" scenes with Grey’s melodramatic, “bodice-heaving” dialogue.
My full review HERE

Ahmed Saadawi, Frankenstein in Baghdad [2013, tr. 2018] 281 pages

This is the first Arabic novel for the World Literature group I'm in on Goodreads. It is a "magical realist" novel, set in Baghdad in 2005, under the Iraqi government after the end of the official American occupation, but with the Americans still in control, to the extent that anyone is in control. The city is a violent battleground with suicide bombings and fighting by Sunni and Shiite militias against the government and each other, not to mention ordinary criminal gangs. Against this historical background, a half-crazy old woman, Elishva, an Assyrian Christian who refuses to believe her son Daniel died twenty years earlier in the Iran-Iraq war, and to whom her neighbors ascribe paranormal powers, a poor junk dealer named Hadi, who lives next door, and for reasons even he doesn't understand, is sewing together body parts of victims of the violence to make a complete corpse, and a hotel security guard named Hasib Mohammed Jaafar, who is incinerated by a car bomb, unintentionally create a monster devoted to vengeance for the victims whose parts he is made up of. The final major character is a magazine journalist named Mahmoud al-Sawadi, who puts together the story and sells it to an unnamed writer who is the supposed author of the book. Other memorable but less central characters are the neighbors of Elishva and Hadi in Lane 7, Mahmoud's wealthy boss Said, and Brigadier Sorour Majid who heads up a mysterious agency called the Tracking and Pursuit Department which uses occult methods to try to predict the violence and ends up pursuing the monster.

While the resemblance to Frankenstein's monster is obvious and refered to by the characters as well as in the novel's title, functionally the creature reminded me more of the legend of the golem, a creature who exists to avenge the innocent and helpless victims of the various power groups. But it becomes obvious that in a situation where every group is both aggressor and victim, using violence to prevent violence against themselves, and "the innocent are not wholly innocent and the criminals are not wholly criminal", it is increasingly difficult to decide who he is supposed to avenge. This is the real theme of the novel, that the violence is self-perpetuating and while none of the groups is completely justified, none, perhaps not even the Americans, are wholly evil.

The Baghdad of this novel reminded me strongly of the Kingston of the novels we read two years ago from Jamaica; in a way, the Korean novels were dealing with a situation that was somewhat clearer.

Girl, Wash Your Face - Rachel Hollis - 3***

Hollis holds nothing back in her book, Girl, Wash Your Face. She gets into the nitty gritty of the "lies" about her life that she had been lead to believe. She gives intimate details of her relationships, takes us through her experiences with both fostering and adopting children and her struggles as a young adult. But, even with all these details I found this book to be a lot of -meh-. It took me forever to get through, and a lot of that could have been because I found her completely unrelatable. My personality is very different from hers, so maybe I'm part of the minority in this but I did not find her to be inspiring. I finished the book out of obligation - I have a really hard time just giving up on books. I wanted there to be something in this book for me to learn from, but I skimmed a lot and skipped some parts of chapters and just found the book extremely lackluster.