Paging All Bookworms! discussion

.

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!

.

The Night Masquerade – Nnedi Okorafor – 3.5***
The final book in the Binti trilogy, has Binti trying to broker peace between the Meduse and the Khoush. I really marvel at the world-building that Okorafor has achieved here. The imaginative alien species are a marvel. And because I had come to trust her writing, I went with the flow and didn’t question the abilities of Okwu or New Fish. I really like Binti, and since the ending is somewhat of a cliffhanger, I have to wonder if the trilogy is really over, or if Okorafor will write more about Binti.
LINK to my full review

A little "Christmas in July" ...


A Cowboy Under the Mistletoe – Jessica Clare – 3***
This is the second book I’ve read in this series set in and around Painted Barrel, Wyoming. It is, of course, a holiday cowboy romance. Sage Cooper is the nicest gal in town but nobody’s girlfriend. Jason is a veteran of Afghanistan trying to run from his PTSD by working on a ranch (something he’s never done before). I’m sure you can guess the plot. It’s a fast read and there are the requisite hot-and-steamy sex scenes. Not to mention a great dog, Achilles.
LINK to my full review

--------- * * * * * * * * --------


My Kind of Christmas – Robyn Carr – 1*
In Carr’s defense I have not read any of the previous books in this series (and this one is # 18). So, I had no background on the residents of Virgin River or their previous interactions / relationships. That made me feel a little lost. I didn’t think the relationship between Patrick and Angie made sense. She’s suffered a traumatic brain injury, he’s “in love” with his dead partner’s wife. But they are going to have great sex anyway. Puh-leeze. Plus, there was very little – if any – actual Christmas cheer evident. In the spirit of the season, I’ll grant it 1 star.

Love, Loss, and What We Ate – Padma Lakshmi – 3.5***
I don’t read a lot of celebrity memoirs, but when a friend recommended this one I had to see what the fuss was about. From what she relates of her early adulthood (into her 40s), I got the impression that she identified herself by the man she was attached to, which irritated me. But I liked the portions of the book that took us back to her childhood in India, to the cultures, foods, sights, sounds and smells that helped form her. By the end I grew to appreciate the woman she has become.
LINK to my full review

Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun [1958] 105 pages

One of the plays I will be seeing performed at the Utah Shakespeare Festival later this month, Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun is a classic of Black American literature, and of American literature. Written at the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement, when its focus was still largely on ending Jim Crow in the South, she exposes the racism of segregated housing, anti-Black violence and poverty in Chicago.

The characters of the play, a Black working-class family living in the ghetto of South Chicago (and the play is about class as well as race, critical of the Black (petty) bourgeoisie as represented by Beneatha's ex-boyfriend George Murchison and his rich — for a Black man — father), are at the same time both realistic, rounded characters and also represent various approaches to Black liberation, from the "Black capitalism" which Walter tries and fails to achieve, to the Pan-Africanism of Beneatha and her Nigerian boyfriend Assagai, the pragmatism and resignation of Ruth and the dream of Mama Lena to have a house of her own, even if it means exposing them to the violence of the whites. The play has both humor and tragedy.

The version I read was published in 1961, shortly after the play was first performed, and I understand that some material was omitted which later editions restore. Nevertheless it is a powerful play which I am excited to see performed.

U Is For Undertow – Sue Grafton – 4****
Book # 21 in the mystery series starring private investigator and former cop, Kinsey Millhone. Grafton sure could write a compelling mystery! The plot moves forward at a steady pace, and the series includes a couple of wonderful side characters. Grafton purposely set the series in a time before cell phones and the internet, so Kinsey needs to use the old-fashioned resources of reverse directories and pay phones.
LINK to my full review

James wrote: " Lorraine Hansberry,
A Raisin in the Sun
[1958] 105 pages

One of the plays I will be seeing performed at the Utah Shakespeare Festival later this month, Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Su..."

Wonderful play! And the musical Raisin! is equally good.

Book Concierge wrote: "Wonderful play! And the musical Raisin! is equally good. "

Hopefully I will get to see that some time. The musical they are presenting this year is based on Jane Austen's Emma which is the next book I will read before going.

Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders [1722] 356 pages

The next eighteenth-century novel in my project to fill in my gaps, Defoe's Moll Flanders is, like his Robinson Crusoe, a novel of adventure, but it is also one of the first realistic novels of social criticism, showing how the failings of society produce anti-social characters like Moll. As with Robinson Crusoe, there is also a theme of propaganda for moving to the New World colonies, suggesting that they are an easy way of getting rich.

Upright Women Wanted – Sarah Gailey – 3***
I picked this up because I needed a book to satisfy a challenge and this was readily available at the library. What an interesting plot! Set in a future America under a fascist regime, the Librarians are a network of lesbian spies. It has all the hallmarks of a traditional Western, but with a fresh new twist.
LINK to my full review

Bettyville – George Hodgman – 4****
Hodgman, recently out of a job, moved back home to Missouri to help shepherd his mother along a path neither of them wanted to take. I found this tender and funny, heartbreaking and hopeful. There were times when I wanted to slap him (or Betty) upside the head and force one or both of them to face reality. There were times when I wanted to just wrap them in a blanket and give them little “now, now and there, there” comforting pats.
LINK to my full review

A Loyal Character Dancer – Qiu Xiaolong – 3***
Book two in the Chief Inspector Chen Cao mystery series set in Shanghai. I like this series. Chen is a complicated man. Educated and a poet, he walks the tightrope between political correctness and professional police duty. This makes for a more slow-moving work than is typical for mysteries. But I didn’t mind that so much. I appreciated the time spent on the history of this complex culture.
LINK to my full review

Jane Austen, Emma [1815] 1061 pages

I will be seeing the musical based on this novel next week at the Utah Shakespeare Festival, which is why I am reading it somewhat out of order (my current reading project is still in the seventeenth century.) Before I retired as a librarian, I noticed that whenever anyway needed to read a "classic", whether for school or some book club, their first thought was always, "something by Jane Austen". I've never quite understood that preference. There is a whole industry devoted to writing prequels, sequels and retellings of her novels. Yet apart from Pride and Prejudice a very long time ago, I had never read any of her books before. My impression was that they were basically just literate romances with obligatory weddings at the end. I admit, there was much more to Emma than this, although it did focus on romance and ended with three weddings.

Essentially, this is the story of the "growing up" of a young woman, Emma Woodhouse. At the beginning, she seems rather unlikeable; a popular, somewhat spoiled upper-class girl who is very snobbish about class and very patronizing and manipulative about her "friends" and their personal relationships. She considers herself to be intellectually superior to the people around her (which she is) and to have a special insight into their emotional lives (which she doesn't.) She imposes her fantasies on another young woman, Harriet Smith, who is from a lower social stratum and whom she treats as a protegé. She uses her influence to break up Harriet's relationship with a neighboring farmer, Robert Martin, and manipulates her into falling for the vicar, Mr. Elton, whose character and intentions she totally fails to understand; later she imagines that Frank Churchill, a wealthy young man, is in love with her, but tries to make a match between him and Miss Smith. She is very unkind to two other young women in the village, Miss Jane Fairfax and her aunt Miss Bates.

Not to try to summarize the whole novel, eventually she learns from the disastrous results of her meddling (with the help of Mr. Knightley) and becomes more sensitive to and respectful of the feelings of those around her. The problems get straightened out and the novel ends with everyone getting married (except the unfortunate Miss Bates).

The novel is of course well-written, though a bit too discursive in the early nineteenth-century style; it has a good deal of humor and the lightly tragic aspects are all resolved in the traditional happy ending. I am interested to see how this thousand-page three-volume novel is compressed into a play with music.

Eight Hundred Grapes – Laura Dave – 3***
This piqued my interest because of the setting in the Sonoma Valley, and the book jacket blurb led me to believe it would be a lighter, romantic read. There IS some romance involved … but … Georgia turns out to be a bit more complex that I originally gave her credit for. The resolution of the difficulties has to wait for a few complications to be ironed out, but the ending is still satisfying in a chick-lit romance sort of way. Not exactly tied up in a pretty bow … but the ribbon is there.
LINK to my full review

Candy And Me – Hilary Liftin – 3.5***
Hilary Liftin has had a lifelong addiction to candy. I can relate. As she recalls her childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood, she reflects on the many candies she consumed, adored, sought, hoarded and absolutely without guilt enjoyed. We have, both of us, learned to live with a sweet tooth, and moderate our consumption. But it was sure nice to take a walk down memory lane, when penny candy was plentiful, and I had a whole DIME to spend on it!
LINK to my full review

Hondo – Louis L’Amour – 3.5***
An iconic work of American Western genre, featuring a strong, rather taciturn, loner who lives, and is willing to die, by his principles, and a vulnerable but equally strong woman determined to keep her family home and protect what she holds dear. The setting is practically a character: the southeast corner of Arizona, populated by rattlesnakes, Gila monsters, coyotes, jackrabbits and pumas, not to mention the various Apache tribes fighting to regain their historic lands.
LINK to my full review

Maryse Condé, Ségou: La Terre en miettes [1985] 528 pages [Kindle, in French]

Ségou: La terre en miettes is the sequel to Ségou: Les murailles de terre, which I read and reviewed here several years ago. {The two books are translated under the titles Segu and The Children of Segu.)At that time, this book was out of print and not available as an e-book, but when I recently noticed that it was now available I bought it and added it to my reading list. The previous novel ends (in 1856?) with a battle between the Bambaras of Ségou and the extremist Islamic forces of the Toucouleur El-Hadj Omar. This sequel begins a few years later; El-Hadj Omar has conquered much of the Empire of Ségou, but not the city itself. Meanwhile, the French presence on the coast looms in the background, but is not as yet central. Though even longer than the first book, this is better constructed; it concentrates on a smaller number of central characters which makes it easier to understand. As in the first novel, the central characters are all members of the fictional Bambara Traoré family, now from the third and fourth generations, while most of the other important characters are historical. It is helpful but not absolutely necessary to have read the first book, as most of the back references are explained in the text.

About the first half of the book is concerned with three "brothers" (first cousins), Mohammed, who has returned from the war missing a leg, and considers himself on a mission for Islam; Ahmed Dousika, who is a supporter of the old religion; and Olubunmi who is ambivalent about whether to support El-Hadj Omar as a bulwark against the French or the French as a way of defeating El-Hadj Omar. All change their original positions in the course of the book. Mohammed's wives, especially his first wife Awa, also play a significant role. This narrative is continued through the fall of Ségou to Omar (1861) and the death of Mohammed and his "brothers", to the defeat of El-Hadj Omar himself by the army of Tombouctou (1864). The novel then switches to a second plot, almost a separate novel within the novel, with Samuel the son of Eucaristus, who lives farther to the South and soon migrates to Jamaica. There he immediately falls in with Paul Bogle (just before the Morant Bay rebellion in 1865), whom I remembered from my readings a while back in Jamaican literature (and from the Bob Marley song.) He visits his mother's Maroon relatives and is very disillusioned, as she has presented them as resistance fighters against the Whites but he finds them as the Whites most loyal servants (sort of as if a descendant of the Cossacks had been raised on stories of Stenka Razin and then visited his ancestral family under Czar Nicholas II). The novel then abandons him considering his further actions (it never returns to this part of the plot), and resumes the original story in Africa, where the conflict with the French has moved to the center of events, as they play off the more radical Islamist Toucouleurs and the Bambara against each other to expand their own influence inland. The major characters in this part are Mohommed's youngest son, Omar, his wife, Kadija, and Olubunmi's son, Dieudonné.

The resistence of Omar as "Mahdi" to the French is the one place where the fiction intrudes into the historical events. The French in the last two chapters restore the Bambara chief to rule as their puppet in Ségou (1884), over a much truncated territory. It is hardly a spoiler to say that the novel ends with the former empire of the Bamabaras incorporated into the French colonies of Mali and Sénégal. Taking both volumes together, Ségou presents about a century of a history which is very different from both the Western myth of a static, traditionalist Africa of illiterate savages living in small villages without any real history, and the PanAfricanist myth of a single precolonial African culture. Despite the faults of construction, I would recommend this to anyone interested in African history.

The Owl & Moon Cafe – Jo-Ann Mapson – 3***
Four generations of women work hard to support themselves with their small café, while giving to the community in their northern California town. As happens in real life, things get messy. Major illness, loss of a job, bullying and strained budgets are stressing all the Moon women. Not to mention a couple of men added to the mix. Secrets will come out. Fights will be had. Tears will be shed. At the end, I’m certain the Moon women will find a way to deal with whatever life throws at them.
LINK to my full review

Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year [1722; Norton crit.ed., 1992] 361 pages

I'm not sure I would call this blend of fiction and nonfiction properly speaking a novel, but I will refer to it as one; whatever it is, it is a very interesting book. It presents itself as an eyewitness account of the bubonic plague of 1665, from the papers of one H.F., a saddler who remains in London during the epidemic. The initials are probably referring to Defoe's uncle, Henry Foe. Defoe wrote the book simultaneously with another book on the plague, Due Preparations for the Plague, which is a nonfiction work discussing the actions which should be taken in the event of a return of the plague, which at the time was raging in Marseille; both may have been intended at least partially as propaganda for the unpopular Quarantine Act of 1721. The novel begins with a description of the beginnings of the plague in London, with excerpts from the weekly bills of mortality and the government's Orders, all of which make it seem to be what it claims, and much of the early criticism of the book regarded it as basically historical. Many of the incidents reported may well have been told Defoe by eyewitnesses, or taken from various written sources. But as the novel progresses, we see that the history of the plague is essentially intertwined with the personal and religious development of the narrator H.F. himself.

A major theme of the novel is the question whether the narrator was right or wrong in deciding to stay in the city, and what the ethical implications of the choice was. The longest episode, which H.F. reports from hearsay rather than his own knowledge, concerns three laid-off working-class Londoners who escape from the city into the countryside; although similar things may have happened, the story as Defoe tells it is a combination of the biblical account of the exodus and his own Robinson Crusoe. One of the most interesting things about the book is Defoe's emphasis on the fact that the plague and the measures taken to prevent its spread fell most heavily on the working class; he explains that the working poor unlike the rich were unable to leave their jobs in the city, and that once trade and manufacturing stopped there was total unemployment. He points out that the wealthier persons who remained in the city could stay at home and live on stored provisions, but the people who worked for a living had no way to buy and store food in advance and had to venture out to buy groceries every day, putting themselves and their families most at risk, until their money ran out entirely. This is the only novel I remember reading before the end of the nineteenth century which actually focuses on the problems of the working class rather than the "middle" class or the wealthy. One of the things I learned from the critical material (I read this in a Norton critical edition) was that among the things which put Defoe at odds with the government was his support of various strikes and workers' demonstrations.

The edition I read is divided about half and half between the novel itself and the critical articles; these are in turn divided between documents about the plague and other epidemics (especially AIDS; the book was of course written before COVID), and articles of actual criticism of the novel (some of which were useful, but given the date of the book there was far too much influence of Foucault's theories.) Reading the novel after the COVID epidemic, I could not help but notice the similarities: the fact first of all that the social disruptions caused by both plagues hit working people hardest; the way that people resisted measures designed to slow the spread of the disease in both cases, and relied on misinformation from quacks and charlatans (although at least in Defoe's time there were no nuts claiming the plague was a hoax); and the dilemma between self-preservation and humane behavior.

The Hour of Land – Terry Tempest Williams – 3***
Subtitle: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks. This is a book I would not have picked up were it not for being a book-club selection. Williams is a good writer, and there are times when her descriptions take the reader straight to the park she is visiting. Some of these passages are downright poetic. However, Williams spent less time on the park itself and its natural and/or historic wonders than she did on a political agenda. I don’t even disagree with her point of view, but it wasn’t what I expected or wanted from this book.
LINK to my full review

Blue Heaven by C.J.Box
4 ★

Blue Heaven is the nickname for a small town in Idaho where many retired LAPD officers move to. Most of them are the good guys, a few not so much. When Annie Taylor and her brother, William, witness a cold blooded murder they run for their lives and end up hiding in the barn owned by Jess Rawlins. Jess is an older rancher on the brink of losing his ranch, but he will fight with his life to protect the children.

This was a great story with some pretty intense moments. The bad cops have no regard for human life and think nothing about ending someone’s. Just a heads up to the squeamish, there is a bit of graphic violence in the book. I was a bit surprised by how easily the retired officers were able to take over the search for the missing kids, but I also understood it. The sheriff was new and very inexperienced.
I really enjoyed the story line and characters in the story. There were a few scenes that got me upset, but things ended up working out. The ending was bitter sweet, but it made me smile. C.J Box is a new author to me, but I look forward to reading more by him.

West With Giraffes – Lynda Rutledge – 4****
As the world struggles to escape the Great Depression, and on the cusp of a new World War, orphan Woodrow Wilson Nickel finds himself cast adrift in the wake of the devastating Hurricane of 1938. Stumbling about hoping to find some shelter he comes across a scene that completely changes his life. Rutledge based this work of historical fiction on an actual event; in 1938 two giraffes were transported across America from the Port of New York to the San Diego Zoo. Woody is a wonderful character, and narrator, and I was completely captivated from beginning to end.
LINK to my full review

The Department of Sensitive Crimes – Alexander McCall Smith – 3***
Gosh, but I enjoy visiting with Alexander McCall Smith’s characters! This is somewhat of a farce of police procedurals. Detective Ulf “the Wolf” Varg and his team certainly have “interesting” cases. There is no case too strange or confusing for this team. I particularly liked the case of the missing imaginary boyfriend!
LINK to my full review

The 57 Bus: a True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime That Changed Their Lives by Dashka Slater
4 ★

Sasha and Richard never would have met if neither of them had taken the 57 bus. Both were high school students in Oakland, California, but from completely different worlds. Richard’s senseless and reckless actions on the 57 bus one afternoon changed both of their lives forever.

As the parent of a transgender man, this book really hit home. Ever since my beautiful daughter came out and told me she wanted to become a handsome man, I have feared for her safety. I understand that Richard did not know that Sasha’s skirt would flame up like it did, but the real question is: would he have even done it if it had been a female sitting there in a skirt that day?
This book follows the case well and the author is never biased to one side or the other. Sasha’s family is very forgiving and a good example for all of us. Richard was being charged with a hate crime, but they never really looked at it that way. They knew that Richard was sorry for his actions on that day and they whole heartily believed him. I think their actions after the fact helped Richard tremendously.
The book is mainly about the crime committed by Richard and how it changed his and Sasha’s lives, but it also contains some shocking statistics about the juvenile court system and how being charged as an adult effects them. This case did bring about a lot of change in certain areas, but I feel like the juvenile court system still has a long way to go.

Trouble in Mudbug (Ghost-in-Law #1) by Jana DeLeon
4★

Maryse Robicheaux’s husband took off two years ago and she hasn’t heard from him since. She has been paying off his debt to his mother, though. Now her mother-in-law, Helena Henry, has passed away and Maryse feels like things will get better. That feeling doesn’t last long though. Helena Henry is back in ghost form and tasks Maryse with helping her find her killer.

This is a great cozy mystery filled with humor and surprises. Maryse is a strong independent woman who is determined to get on with her life and continue her research in the bayou when Helena comes back and puts all that on hold. The will reading scene is amusing and starts most of Maryse’s problems.
Luc LeJeune falls for Maryse pretty quickly, but his attention to detail and quick thinking helps her out quite a bit. She is unlike any girl he has ever dated and she intrigues him. They make a cute couple.
Someone wants Maryse dead throughout the book and when that person is revealed I was shocked. Definitely not who I was thinking it was.
I really look forward to continuing this series. The characters are great and the humor is spot on.

The Frederick Sisters Are Living the Dream – Jeannie Zusy – 3.5***
This is a novel of family in which the key events are the kinds of everyday disasters many families must deal with: a hospitalization, a teenager learning to drive, an accident, a holiday dinner that goes awry. The family dynamics in this book are spot on. Ginny may have some intellectual disabilities, but she is a master manipulator. Maggie, albeit the youngest, has taken on the role usually assigned to the oldest sibling. And the supporting cast includes two wonderful home health aides, Philomena and Lika. A lovely debut work.
LINK to my full review

The Spies of Shilling Lane – Jennifer Ryan – 3***
What a delightful romp! While this is a novel of espionage and daring deeds in a time of war, and the background of the blitz adds a consistent and real danger, there are many lighter moments to lessen the tension, and the focus is really on the characters and their personal journey rather than on the war. Ryan writes the formidable Mrs Braithwaite so the reader has no doubt that she will prevail. She may bumble and misconstrue most clues, but she is resolute and WILL find and rescue her darling daughter.
LINK to my full review

Odd Interlude (Odd Thomas #4.5) by Dean Koontz
5 ★

Odd Thomas is back on the road and has his new friend, Annamaria, with him. They stop to rest at a small roadside outpost called Harmony Corner and find out that there is more going on than meets the eye.

This installment in the Odd Thomas series has a very interesting topic and some pretty gross scenes. There are secret projects hidden underground and a mad scientist who did the unthinkable. Annamaria doesn’t do much in this book, but we meet a pretty impressive 12 year old named Jolie. She has a quick tongue like Odd and some of the chapters are written from her point of view. I really enjoyed that change of scenery. There is violence, but it’s done in good taste and for a good reason. Odd hates what he has to do, but knows he has no choice. Sometimes it’s nice to have a character with doubts and a conscience. I am thoroughly enjoying this series and look forward to the next book.

Eden Close – Anita Shreve – 3.5***
When his mother dies, Andrew, an advertising exec in New York City, returns to the family’s upstate New York farm for the funeral. Intending to stay only a few days, he gets caught up in memories of his childhood, of the girl next door, and of the tragic event that changed all their lives. There is some mystery to unravel here regarding that long-ago summer night. Andrew has always been a person who doesn’t really see things, even when they are right in front of him, and he will have to open his eyes to the truth before he can move forward.
LINK to my full review

The Adventure Of the Christmas Pudding – Agatha Christie – 3***
This is actually a collection of short stories, in which Hercule Poirot addresses a variety of cases, and Miss Jane Marple solves the final case. Agatha Christie is one of my go-to authors when I want a break from everyday life and heavier, more literary reads. I just plain enjoy them. I’m also a fan of short stories, and this fit the bill nicely for winter evenings … one story per night.
LINK to my full review

Secrets of a Summer Night – Lisa Kleypas – 3***
This is the first in the “wallflower” series featuring four young women of marriageable age but who are at risk of becoming spinsters if they don’t find a suitable mate. In this first outing, the girls decide to pool their resources to ensure that Annabelle (who is the oldest and most in need of a husband) snags her man. This is a typical regency romance with plenty of heaving bosoms, devastatingly handsome men, one or two scoundrels, and a clash between the classes. The plot may be predictable, but it’s still great fun to read. A lovely escape!
LINK to my full review

The Devil Wears Prada (The Devil Wears Prada #1) by Lauren Weisberger
4 ★

It’s not really her dream job, but it’s a step in the right direction. Miranda Priestly is the hotshot editor of Runway magazine and when Andrea Sachs gets a job as her junior assistant she figures that a year there will put her right at the doorstep of ,The New Yorker, her dream job. It does not take her long though to find out that it’s not going to be an easy year.

Andrea Sachs is truly a saint in this book. The humiliation she endures and the dressing down was sometimes too much to read. Miranda Priestly really upset me throughout the book and I would not have made it 1 week, let alone a year. The author did a great job creating characters that were so realistic and that many people could relate to. The sad part is that I am sure there are many like Miranda in all walks of corporate life.
The fashion industry is a weird place. I’m not sure how much of this book may really go on, but the many times that Andrea mentions what the other employees and models are eating, it makes sense. Many models are so skinny and it’s encouraged sometimes. What I liked about Andrea was that she didn’t fall into any of that nonsense. When she was hungry, she ate. And it was usually the fatty soup from the cafeteria.
It was sad watching Andrea spiral down during her year of hell. She has no personal life and it really look a toll her friendships and relationship. She does finally come to her senses and I loved her final scene with Miranda. I wanted to high five her. The next book in the series sounds interesting, but I’m not in a hurry to read it. I do look forward to watching the movie though.

Blood Echo (The Burning Girl #2) by Christopher Rice
4 ★

If you have read the first book, Bone Music, then you know that Charlotte Rowe was raised by serial killers and is now taking an experimental drug that has killed many others. She is a weapon and being used to take out serial killers and other human predators. The book starts out with Charley on a mission that does not go as planned. As she recuperates in Altamire, CA, with her boyfriend, Luke, they end up stumbling upon a possible terrorist group.
This was an interesting book with some pretty intense moments. Charley’s “job” is dangerous and the drug she takes before each mission has a short active time frame. If things go wrong she could be in over her head, but she a strong fierce character that takes her “job” very seriously. Her relationship with Luke is also strong. It gets tested in the book and I’m glad it went the way it did. Charley isn’t the most secure person when it comes to relationships. I look forward to reading the last book in this intense, sometimes humorous, trilogy.

The Last Chance Library – Freya Sampson – 3***
This was just lovely. June’s growth throughout the book is wonderful to see. I also like how initial impressions of people are sometimes proven quite wrong, and how the various relationships / friendships developed. The cast of supporting characters give a sense of community to the novel. It was a charming diversion from everyday life – perfect for when you want a cozy read with a happy ending.
LINK to my full review

Gaudy Night – Dorothy L Sayers – 2.5**
Book # 10 in the Lord Peter Wimsey series focuses not on Peter, but on Harriet Vane. She is attending an event as an alumnae of Shrewsbury College at Oxford, but what promised to be a pleasant, if awkward, homecoming, turns decidedly ominous with a series of destructive “pranks” and malicious, vile graffiti. Harriet does her best, but has to call in Lord Peter to solve the case. I found it slow-moving and dull.
LINK to my full review

Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson – 3.5***
A classic coming-of-age adventure tale set in the 18th century. Shiver me timbers, but this was good! There are intrigues, dangers, plots, mutinies, battles, and double-crosses galore to keep the reader engaged and turning pages. And if danger isn’t enough, there are the added lures of the tropics and of treasure. If the story line is somewhat farfetched, well, who cares. It’s fun and exciting.
LINK to my full review

Mercè Rodoreda, The Time of the Doves [1962, Eng. tr. 1981] 207 pages [Kindle, Open Library]

One of the most influential modern novels in Catalan, La plaça del Diamant has been translated into English three times, as The Pigeon Girl (1967), The Time of the Doves (1981), which is the version I read from Open Library, and most recently In Diamond Square (2013). It has also been made into two plays and a film, and Harold Bloom includes it in his list of the Western Canon.

The narrative is told in the first person and in an almost stream-of-consciousness technique by Natalia, a resident of Barcelona, a rather ordinary young woman, literate but not an intellectual, who is at least at the beginning very passive, accepting the direction of other people with no initiative of her own. The novel begins with her going to a Festival dance in Diamond Square, rather against her will, at the insistence of her friend and co-worker Julieta. A young man, Quimet, asks her to dance, and although she doesn't feel like dancing and tells him she is engaged, she gives in. He nicknames her "La Colometa" ("little dove") and tells her he feels sorry for her fiancé — because she is going to marry him. Which, on the advice of another friend, Senyora Enriqueta, she does.

The account of their early marriage is thoroughly comic. He begins by telling her that she needs to be totally submissive to him, and like everything he likes, because if she doesn't it just means she hasn't understood properly. She accepts this without question. In another kind of novel, this could lead into a serious protest against female oppression, but in Rodoreda it is so over-the-top that it is really parody. When they find a dove with a broken wing and nurse it back to health, Quimet decides they can get rich by raising doves, and soon not just the dovecote on the roof but their entire apartment is filled with doves.

About half-way through the book, however, it turns tragic, as they are caught up in the events and privations of the revolution, the Civil War, and the victory of the Falangists, and the novel becomes a powerful description of the suffering of the ordinary working people of Catalonia.

It doesn't stop in that period, though; it continues into the more "normal" times after the war and concentrates more on the children and their later lives, and the novel becomes much more optimistic. Here is where I had a problem with it, because Spain, and Catalonia especially, was not normal under the Franco dictatorship; the novel says nothing about the lack of freedom and the national oppression, including the suppression of the Catalan language and culture. If one knew nothing about the author, one might think the novel was saying it didn't matter which side won as long as the war ended.

The book is worth reading not only for the content, but for the language which is sometimes close to poetry, very rich in striking images and metaphors.

The Narrowboat Summer – Anne Youngson – 4****
This was a charming coming-of-middle-age book. As Eve and Sally help out Anastasia by taking the boat through a series of canals and locks to dry dock for servicing, they get know one another and, more importantly, themselves. I’m not sure this would be the life for me, but I sure enjoyed spending some time with them, and imaging myself lulled to sleep by the gentle rocking of waves, or feeling the sun on my skin as we gently moved through the canals.
LINK to my full review

The Dog Who Came In From the Cold – Alexander McCall Smith – 3***
Book Two in the Corduroy Mansions series, starring Pimlico terrier Freddie de la Hay. I love these ensemble works that Alexander McCall Smith writes, where we get to the residents of a building or neighborhood over time.
LINK to my full review

You’re Not You – Michelle Wildgen – 4****
This was at times very difficult to read. I could see Bec identifying more and more with Kate, and Kate relying on Bec as one would a best friend rather than an employed helper. And yet, Kate, kept a certain distance, because only she could, after all, truly experience the debilitating and ultimately terminal condition that is ALS. It’s a great debut, and I’d be interested in reading more of her works.
LINK to my full review

Michael Drayton, Idea's Mirror [1594] 51 pages [Facsimile, Google Books]
Michael Drayton, Idea [1619] 75 pages [Online]
Michael Drayton, Nymphidia: The Court of Fairy [1627] 40 pages

I read these three books completely by accident; I read some excerpts in an anthology of seventeenth century verse I am reading (the oldest poet included), went online to find more information about him, and started reading them on my computer and kept going so that in about two or two-and-a-half hours I had read all three. Drayton is a bit earlier than my current reading project (which was at first intended to start with Blake, then with Dryden, then with Butler and I keep going farther and farther back rather than forward.) After reading them I went out to my garage/library to put away some newly acquired books and again purely by accident I stumbled on a short biography of Drayton, which I will probably read next week, since I doubt whether I will ever come back to Drayton in the future.

Born the year before Shakespeare, but living fifteen years longer, Drayton bridges the period between the Elizabethan era and the early seventeenth century. While somewhat of a minor figure, he is interesting. Idea's Mirror (1594) is a collection of about fifty sonnets supposedly written by a shepherd named Gorbo to his love, Idea. Idea (1619) is a revised version of the same work, although many of the earlier poems have dropped out and more have been added (the collection contains seventy-three poems); of the sonnets contained in both versions, most seemed to have been revised quite a bit. Although Drayton is considered a literary "conservative" continuing Elizabethan traditions into the new century, the differences do show a certain receptivity to seventeenth-century style.

Nymphidia: The Court of Fairy is a comic poem about fairies. Obviously influenced by A Midsummer Night's Dream, it features King Oberon and Puck, and although Titania is replaced by Queen Mab from Romeo and Juliet, their marriage hasn't improved. The fairies continue to shrink in size; much of the comedy is based on their smallness, with helmets made of cricket's heads, a coach made from a snail's shell, a hornet's sting as a sword and so forth. (Shakespeare's fairies are already very diminished relative to the mediaeval Auberon who was more like one of Tolkien's elves.) The poem was very popular throughout the seventeenth century and influenced much of the later fairy literature down to the Disney Peter Pan rip-offs.

These also gave me three more books in a month that would otherwise have been my worst reading month in at least fifteen years.

Harlem Shuffle – Colson Whitehead – 4****
Whitehead is a talented writer and I love the characters he creates. I was invested in Ray and Elizabeth. I worried for his safety several times, especially in the last third of the book. I could feel his fear and anxiety when things went wrong. I may not have agreed with all of Ray’s decisions, but I certainly came to understand why he acted as he did. He had his own code and he stuck to it. The novel spans five years, from 1959 to 1964, and Harlem is practically a character. Whitehead’s descriptions completely transported me to that time and place.
LINK to my full review

The Cat Who Saved Books – Sōsuke Natsukawa – 3***
This is a modern fairy tale and coming-of-age story that explores the long-lasting effects books can have on us. I really enjoyed this fantasy read. Rintaro is a great character, somewhat lost and needing to find his path on life’s journey, he is a person any reader can relate to. Set in a bookshop, the fable is full of literary references, which I greatly enjoyed.
LINK to my full review

Michael Drayton, Minor Poems of Michael Drayton chosen and edited by Cyril Brett [1593-1630, Brett ed. 1907] 209 pages [Kindle, Open Library]

As I continue to procrastinate finishing Lucretius, I read more of Drayton. Besides the sonnets from Idea, and Nymphidia, both of which I read separately last week (I subtracted fifty pages for what I previously read) this had his Odes and Elegies, the "Quest for Cynthia", "Shepherd's Sirena", The Muses Elizium and some shorter poems. An interesting poet; his earlier poems are hard to read, but his later work is worth reading.

"William Shakespeare", The History of Sir John Oldcastle, the good Lord Cobham [1599] 76 pages [Kindle, Open Library]

I read this play in a digitized facsimile of the 1734 edition, from Open Library; it attributes it to "Mr. William Shakespeare". Actually, as we know from Henslowe's records, it was a collaboration between Anthony Munday, Michael Drayton, Richard Hathwaye and Robert Wilson, with Drayton probably contributing the most, which is why I am reading it along with Drayton's poetry. It is a history play about Sir John Oldcastle, a Wycliffite martyr, although he is still alive at the end (there was apparently a second part, which if it was ever performed has not survived, and which would have gone on to his martyrdom.) It's hardly Shakespeare.

Joseph A. Berthelot, Michael Drayton [1967] 172 pages

A volume in the Twayne Authors series, this discusses Drayton's poetic works and how they developed over time, organized by genres. It points out that Drayton was, along with Spenser and Shakespeare, one of the few Elizabethan/Jacobean writers who never ceased to be read in the later seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and thus never needed to be "rediscovered" in the twentieth century.

Fallen Women – Sandra Dallas – 3***
When wealthy New York socialite Beret Osmundsen learns that her estranged sister was murdered in a brothel, there is nothing for her to do but go to Denver and seek answers. Dallas is well-known for her historical fiction, focusing on women in the 19th and early 20th century. Here she gives a very realistic view of 1880s Denver and the brothels that flourished there, as well as taking the reader inside the nouveau riche mansions of the city’s elite. The actual mystery plot isn’t all that well executed, but the historical detail and some of the characters really kept my interest up.
LINK to my full review

Uncommon Type – Tom Hanks – 4****
The stories in this collection are connected in that each story features a typewriter in some way. The stories are varied, from tender romance to science fiction, to family drama. Some are contemporary, some historical, some set in the future. They vary, too, in the emotions they evoke: tenderness, humor, awe, compassion. Clearly, Hanks is a gifted writer, and I look forward to reading more of his works. I’d love to see what he does with a novel.
LINK to my full review

The Daughters of Juárez – Teresa Rodríguez – 4****
Subtitle: A True Story of Serial Murder South of the Border. Beginning in 1993, the residents of Juárez, Mexico, just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas, became aware of a disturbing frequency of murders of young women. Some estimate that at least 350 women were murdered between 1993 and 2005. It seems that the machismo culture put little value on these women. But Rodríguez makes it clear that there was considerable corruption and/or ineptitude among authorities. The most disturbing thing to me is that the book leaves the reader with more questions than answers.
LINK to my full review

Big Panda and Tiny Dragon – James Norbury – 4****
”Which is more important,” asked Big Panda, “the journey or the destination?”
“The company,” said Tiny Dragon
And so, two unlikely friends set off on a journey of discovery. They have no specific plan and go where life leads them over the course of four seasons. The story is told through Norbury’s wonderful drawings and the pair’s quiet conversations. There were times when I just sat and looked at one of those drawings and let my mind take me where it wanted. How refreshing!
LINK to my full review

They Called Us Enemy – George Takei – 4****
George Takei, best known as Lt Hikaru Sulu, science officer aboard the Spaceship Enterprise, recalls his childhood growing up in an internment camp after the US government required that even US-born persons of Japanese ancestry be treated as “enemy” during World War II. I found the graphic novel format really engaging and accessible. Becker’s illustrations were excellent; not too dark so it was still easy to read the text. The facial expressions she gave the characters really helped to convey the emotions they were feeling.
LINK to my full review

Her Last Flight – Beatriz Williams – 3.5***
This work of historical fiction was clearly influenced by the real saga of Amelia Earhart, though it is NOT her story. Although I’ve come to dislike the dual timeline so popular in historical fiction, Williams handles it very well in this case. And it did serve to heighten interest and intrigue. I couldn’t help but try to fit the puzzle together, but I was as surprised as Janey to learn the full truth of the story.
LINK to my full review