Hi Folks -
I've decided to cut back on my reviewing in and just review one book a month, on the first Friday of the month. That way I can go more in depth in my thinking on a particular topic. The next book review will be for Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote and will be posted on January 7th of 2022. I hope you'll join me for a look at the story and maybe some side notes of interest.
Thanks!
Anxious People
by Fredrik Backman
Our thematic book club
chose a “Nordic” theme for December. To be honest, I had to look up what that
might encompass. Merriam-Webster defines Nordic as “1
: a native of northern Europe. 2 : a person of Nordic physical type. 3 : a
member of the peoples of Scandinavia.”
Aha. One of the best books I’ve read in the past
decade was A Man Called Ove by
Frederik Backman, who is Swedish. My husband and I both loved that story. I
knew he had written a number of other books that I hadn’t read yet so I checked
my digital catalogs to see what might be available. Anxious People looked popular and very interesting so I placed a
hold.
Apparently people were impatient and bought it instead
because it soon became available as both an ebook and a digital book.
From the very first, I was drawn into the story.
The story opens with a police interview between a
young officer and a slightly irritating real estate agent. (She really does
seem very silly.) We focus more on the officer, and the other officer who he is
working with, which turns out to be his father.
The real estate agent was part of a group of people held
hostage by a bank robber. Seems a straight forward statement.
“Shortly after that the police stormed the apartment,
only to discover that it was empty. The door to the balcony was locked, all the
windows were closed, and there were no other exits.”
Then you get to know all the other characters that
were there.
“…it’s always very easy to declare that other people
are idiots, but only if you forget how idiotically difficult being human is.
Especially if you have other people you’re trying to be a reasonably good human
being for.”
It’s about relationships, being human, being a parent,
having the weight of caring for your children and other people on your
shoulders,
It’s beautiful and funny and very relatable, and
utterly silly and absurd at times.
“We don’t have a plan, we just do our best to get
through the day, because there’ll be another one coming along tomorrow.”
I soon felt like I was driving along a mountain with a
crazy number of switchbacks. Just when you got up a head of steam, something
changed and your whole view of the story changed with it. I love that kind of
thing. There are layers upon layers revealed, depending upon perspective, and
some obfuscations. Backman comes at the story from different angles, picking up
the thread of one person’s involvement, then another, then ties them together
in ways you might not ever expect.
As soon as I finished reading this book, I wanted to
go back and read it again, to highlight all the wonderful turns of phrase and
ideas that tugged at me to share with you. But if I shared them all here, then
the review would be far too long and they would be totally out of context.
I highly, highly recommend this story. I don’t think
you’ll be disappointed.
The Lost
Apothecary Shop
by Sarah Penner
Okay, okay, this one was a pretty cover pick again. The title
was intriguing as well.
Told from the perspectives of three different people, the
story opens with Nella, an apothecary whose shop is dedicated to women, in 1791
London. But the shop doesn’t just dispense the usual remedies. Behind a hidden
wall lies a whole other dispensary, one of poisons. Nella uses these poisons to
get women justice, and vengeance. Women put their requests in notes, in a
barrel of barley, and Nella prepares the requested item for them.
Caroline is a modern woman with a problem of her own, a
husband who has cheated on her while he is supposedly working long hours at the
office. She arrives in London on her anniversary trip, without her husband,
though he follows soon after. Part of her goal is to sort out her anger and whether
it’s worth trying to make her marriage work. Complicating things is her concern
that she might, finally, be pregnant.
Drawn into a “mud larking” afternoon, Caroline discovers an
old apothecary bottle that leads her to research Nella and her shop, and its’
secrets.
Eliza is our third character, a young girl just coming of age,
who is sent to Nella’s shop by her mistress for a poison to stop the lecherous
advances of her master. She’s a very intelligent girl but somewhat imaginative
and superstitious. She is fascinated by Nella’s shop and returns there when she
has some troubles of her own.
The fates of the three women have some parallels but they are very
thoroughly unique characters. The setting is richly detailed with historical
details. The plot is intricate and the pace grows quicker as the story
progresses. This is one that kept me up late to finish it. I highly recommend.
Conversion
by Katherine Howe
Did you know that Danvers, Massachusetts is the village once
known as Salem Village? Salem Village,
the site of the Salem witch trials and executions, was renamed Danvers in 1757.
For all of the witchy history, there is very little that
seems supernatural in this story until very late in the book. Until then, it is
a young adult historical fiction told from the perspective of Colleen, a senior
student at the Catholic St. Joan’s school. Interspersed are chapters told from
the perspective of Ann Putnam, about ten years after the Salem witch trials, as
she confesses to a preacher her part in creating the hysteria by falsely
accusing women, caught up in the mania.
I found some parallels between the historical story line and
the modern story line, but not as many as I would have liked to see. I think it
would have been stronger if she tied the two together a bit more.
It’s an intriguing read. Some of the characterization was
good, but some of Colleen’s friends, and her classmates, were a bit one
dimensional. The history is the strong point, definitely. For all that happens
and how it draws you along, it’s a bit of a slow book. There were some scenes
that could have been eliminated to tighten up the pace.
Over all, I enjoyed this book, particularly the dramatized
audio reading, but I would say I have liked the other books by this author
more. If you’re going to start with something by this author, I would head
straight for The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane or the YA The Appearance of
Annie Van Sinderen.
Some Things
I Still Can’t Tell You: Poems
by Misha
Collins
There is
something very intimate about this collection of poems. The moments captured
and shared are sometimes very personal, important to the poet. Presumably, that
is what made them worth preserving. Others are more universal, and yet still
strangely intimate. The back of the book speaks of his trademark “piercing vulnerability.”
I think vulnerability is a very apt phrase for this collection.
There are
moments in our lives that are important only to us, we all have them.
Translating them into something worth pondering for others takes
interpretation. I found an exploration of the world and life as a theme that I
could very much relate to.
I tend
toward eschewing rules when it comes to poetry so I couldn’t tell you if
Collins breaks them. I’m unsure of many rules when it comes to poetry. (For
example, I’ve received a critique that I rhyme when I shouldn’t, though I don’t
set out to rhyme.) I understand meter but have much more trouble recognizing
stress and unstressed syllables. I prefer to punctuate and capitalize as if
writing a sentence, but Collins capitalizes each line. I found that mildly
annoying at first but, much like reading the lack of punctuation in Kent Haruf’s
writing, I soon adapted to it.
Collins
covers a lot of ground, grouped into poems on Love / Hope, joy, running &
other good things / Longing, sadness, running & foreboding / My people
(& other people) / The parents / The
kids. But the poems often feel incredibly disparate, snapshots, rather than a
running continuity as some collections do. They cover a wide span of years, with
a sort of timelessness that leaves the reader wondering when something occurred
in his life.
The cover is
a lovely eagle’s eye view of a city scape at night, the points of light between
the lighter and deeper blue of the sky, and the dark of the foreground below.
The words are given an ombré effect as they fade a little into
the city scape. A lovely cover.
I was
surprised that the author worked in the White House and at NPR headquarters
before beginning his acting career, which is where I knew him from best, for
his role as the Angel Castiel in Supernatural.
A very
enjoyable collection to ponder over a cup of coffee.
Princess Elizabeth’s Spy: A Maggie Hope Mystery
by Susan Elia MacNeal
I chose this book because our book club theme this month is
espionage, because I wanted something from our digital collection to read on my
ereader, and because the cover appealed to me. I know, I know, but an appealing
cover is a factor when I’m deciding, I admit it.
The main character is Maggie Hope, a plucky secretary to
Churchill who grew up in America and becomes a British spy. She is sent
undercover as a math tutor to Windsor Castle during World War II, when a plot
to kidnap or kill the princesses is suspected.
This was a pleasant mystery, as much as anything that
involves murder and World War II can be. The descriptions of unpleasant things
are kept rather matter of fact, giving it more of a cozy mystery feel than a gritty
realistic one.
I would consider this a formula mystery with some good
historical trappings. I enjoyed the characters, particularly the sweet characterizations
of the two young princesses, though everything was somewhat one dimensional. There
was a bit of a romance, but rather perfunctory of the No, no, we mustn’t variety.
It was a bit simplistic at times, some of the thoughts and
actions of the main character didn’t quite make sense, they seemed there to
serve the plot without being true to the character. Maggie leaps to conclusions
regarding her father that are clearly not warranted. Her father sends her a
book with a message and she’s not even curious about it, even though she recently
found a secret message in another book. Then, when she’s angry at him, sure she
knows he’s done something awful, she picks it up to read just to distract
herself. Most people wouldn’t touch it at that point.
The historical trappings are interesting, though the author
goes pretty far afield from what actually happened. They mentioned Operation
Edelweiss several times but never really went into what it was. At one point, I
thought it was a plan to kidnap Princess Elizabeth, but on looking it up, I
discovered it was much more complicated and had nothing to do with the book I
was reading. It was just a point of historical reference.
Would probably appeal to fans of Jacqueline Winspear. A relaxing
type of murder mystery with just enough intrigue to draw me on throughout the
book, but not enough to convince me that I want to read the rest of the series.
In conclusion, meh, it was okay. A good series to buy for
your grandmother to read, or if you are looking to just relax.
The Spy – A Novel of Mata Hari
by Paolo Coehlo
Our thematic book club chose the theme of “espionage” for
November and I went looking in our digital catalog for books about spies. This
led me to The Spy by Paolo Coehlo, translated from the Portugese. I’ve heard
many good things about his writing but never read one of his books before. I’m
on the bandwagon now and will be reading more by him.
It was a fascinating read, though I think it would
have been a trifle easier to follow if I’d gotten the ebook instead of the audiobook.
After getting a look at the ebook, it appears that there was some physical
formatting that didn’t translate well into the audio. Nevertheless, it was a
very interesting listen.
I can’t remember when I first heard of Mata Hari, but
I’d always thought of her a spy who was duly executed, but Coehlo paints a
rather different picture. He begins with her execution, but then he takes the
reader back in time, to when she was known simply as Margaretha Zelle, a Dutch
girl.
In her teen years, Margaretha was sexually abused by
the principal of her school but afraid to speak up for fear of being sent home.
Her parents died when she was just fifteen and she answered an advertisement
for a mail order bride, but the man she married turned out to be just as
abusive as her former principal. There was also the tragedy of her murdered
son.
Things changed when she saw another officer’s wife
choose to commit suicide rather than endure the broken marriage. She decided to
take her life into her own hands. She became Mata Hari.
Coehlo appears to have done a good bit of research for
the book. He presents Mata Hari as someone who traded gossip, not really state secrets.
It is offered that she went to the French authorities when the Germans
approached her but, in the end, she scape goated over a failed military
operation.
Though, of course, there will always be some question
of how events really occurred so long ago, I found the way the story was
presented singularly effective. I definitely want to read more by Coehlo now.
Gmorning, Gnight!
little pep talks for me and you
written by Lin Manuel Miranda, illustrated by Jonny Sun
This is one of those little books you didn’t know you even
wanted until you received it. I believe Miranda began writing these little pep
talks to himself then sharing them with people on Twitter. They became so
popular that he collected some into a book which was illustrated by Jonathan
Sun.
It’s funny, how something that you know wasn’t even written
for you, can be just what you needed to hear at the moment. Miranda has a knack
for conveying comfort and motivation. 201 pages, with one page for morning and
one for night, generally. I tried to read one pairing a day, to start the day
and end it. Of course, there were times I would forget and go on my way, or
feel too rushed to do so. But it was a delightful way to start and end the day.
The illustrations are done as simple line drawings that are usually
quite lovely. The back cover shows a mug of coffee for morning and a cup of tea
for evening. The cover has a bed that looks very cozy and an old-fashioned
microphone. The spine even has a little sun and a little moon.
Unfortunately, some of the illustrations don’t really live up to the sayings, at least for me. There’s one that shows a pie of some kind but seems to have pizza toppings, like pepperoni and mushrooms. In the second drawing, it’s dripping something. Maybe it’s supposed to be cheese but it just looks gross to me.
One of my favorite illustrations is a set of keys with a cloud for the key chain, with Miranda saying, “Gmorning. Check your pockets. Got your keys? *waits* Okay, let’s go!” On the next page, a line drawing of clouds hints at a car and Miranda says, “Gnight. Check your brain. Got your dreams ready? *waits* Okay, let’s go!”
Sun definitely has a talent for conveying something with a
simple selection of thick lines, curving and/or straight, partially by
combining known elements in an unusual pairing or setting. One shows someone
putting socks on over their shoes and toothpaste on the wrong end of a brush.
Overall, the words and drawings are whimsical and delightful,
conveying humor and motivating comfort. I loved receiving this as a gift, and I
would highly recommend it as one.
You Are Here: An Owner’s Manual for Dangerous Minds
(Crayons & matches not included, but recommended.)
by Jenny Lawson
I received this book as a gift from my husband because we
both love Jenny Lawson’s candid memoirs. (If you haven’t read Furiously Happy yet, I highly recommend you pick it up post haste.) She is utterly transparent
about her experiences with mental illness and writes vividly, and humorously,
about events in her life.
This book is a
little bit different. It includes some of her writing, her thoughts, and a few
anecdotes, but mostly her musings, and things she has done to help herself,
along with beautiful pen and ink drawings that she created herself. Many of the
drawings incorporate a thought or musing in writing that meanders around the
lines of the drawing. Almost a meditation. They can be treated as coloring
pages, if the reader wishes, though they are beautiful just to contemplate as drawings.
I’ve found this book very relaxing just before bed.
One of my favorite
pages, though I haven’t even done the exercise yet, asks the reader to write down
five outrageous things that they’ve done, along with at least one that is a
lie. Maybe she uses a bit of hyperbole and interesting word choice to describe
hers, but that’s exactly what we’ve come to expect from Jenny — a colorful reframing
that brings humor to the situation. For example –
“One time I made a
human without even using an instruction manual. Like, hair, fingernails, all
that jazz. It was a tiny human, but still, it was like making a clone except I
did it inside my body where I couldn’t even see anything. Science!”
Many of the musings
are incredibly poignant.
“Not all pain is
visible. But not all love is visible either, and that doesn’t make it any less
real. We believe the pain because we feel it, but we often forget how much we’re
loved because it doesn’t always present itself in ways that make you physically
gasp. It’s real, though. And you’re soaking in it.” P93
Another beautiful
book from Jenny Lawson. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
The Haunting of Hill House
My book club’s theme this month is “Gothic” so I went
in search. I’d never read The Haunting of Hill House, but I was
interested in a solid literary story so I thought I’d give it a try.
This was a fantastic work of fiction that far
surpassed my expectations. When I write, I too often find myself giving in to
the most logical sequence of events or dialogue, but Jackson moves beyond that.
Perhaps it’s a product of her times, but I was constantly amazed and enthralled
by the level of her prose, the surprise of what people chose to do and say, and
the events. The level of characterization and the manner in which it was done,
as well as the slow building of psychological tension and the bizarre but
believable events made for a perfect Halloween read.
Dr. Montague decides to study Hill House and very
carefully chooses a few people to accompany him. One has to be from the owner’s
family, a young man named Luke, and one is the housekeeper, Mrs. Dudley. The
other two are chosen for the events that occurred when they were young — Theodora
and Eleanor. Eleanor had stones falling on her house after her father died,
which seems like a fairy tale element to me, but would fit right in with
magical realism. Indeed, for three quarters of the book, there didn’t seem to
be anything of horror about the book. It is a very slow building of dreadful
anticipation.
In the beginning the tension seemed to be very lax, but the prose carried me along with evocative descriptions. Then the characterization really kicked in, with the outrageous, dismissive bickering between Eleanor and her sister, plus her sister’s husband, over whether she could use the car they had bought together. Eleanor, it appears, is a late bloomer. She has been caring for her recently deceased mother for 11 years and now lives with her sister’s family. It seems dreadfully old-fashioned, but now Eleanor is finally escaping! Will she regret that decision?
It becomes apparent on her drive to Hill House that Eleanor is rather fanciful, which might not bode well in a haunted house. Later, when she sees her room, it becomes apparent, this is a rocky start.
“. . . this is where they want me to sleep, Eleanor thought incredulously; what nightmares are waiting, shadowed, in those high corners – what breath of mindless fear will drift across my mouth . . . .”
She seems horribly susceptible to the atmosphere. In
fact, as time goes on, she and the others seem to destabilize. Eleanor has more
and more violent thoughts and erratic tendencies. Was she always like this or
did she become unhinged by the house itself or some kind of phantasm?
There are wonderful bits of humor throughout the
story, such as when Luke jokes that he wouldn’t expect Mrs. Dudley to murder him
for oil, that it should at least be Uranium.
Mr. Dudley and Mrs. Dudley, the caretaker and housekeeper
at Hill House, are a strange and yet humorous couple. In an old Scooby Doo
cartoon, they’d be running some side scam and be unhappy with people arriving
because it might foil their plans. For most of the book, in fact, they just
seem rather one dimensional, until Dr. Montague’s wife arrives and we overhear
a conversation with Mrs. Dudley. Then she appears in a new light.
We are kept guessing throughout the book – are the events at Hill House real, caused by some spirit, the house itself? Are they all the in minds of some highly suggestible people? The fact that some experiences are seen by more than one person makes it more likely that they are actually taking place. Do different events have different origins? The uncertainty greatly adds to the atmosphere of the book where everything is kept off kilter, like the house itself.
After reading the book, I tried to watch the Netflix series and it's okay, but
completely different with a lot more modern horror elements, like flashes of scary
images that don’t seem to fit with the novel. I'm not sure whether I'll continue or
just get an older film that's more of a period piece and true to the novel. However, I highly recommend the book.
Widow of Rose House
by Diana Biller
Once again I was searching our Overdrive catalog for
anything with a “Gothic” theme to read for my book club in October when The Widow of Rose House caught my
attention.
Alva Webster is planning to restore a Hyde Park mansion in
1875 New York. Unfortunately, her dilapidated mansion comes with a ghost, or so
the people she hires to do the work believe. Professor Sam Moore also seems to
believe it.
This seemed a like a light gothic romance, a ghost story
when I picked it up, but as the story progressed I found something more. The
story seemed deceptively simple at first. Outcast widow and brilliant scientist
meet. There’s an attraction. Plus, she has a haunted house and he is very
interested in those. He has created some of the first ghost hunting equipment that
can sense electrical currents. (I have no idea whether what she wrote regarding
the equipment is plausible in the least, but it seemed plausible enough for me
to suspend disbelief.)
The writing was simple and quick moving. To be honest, the
romance moved a little too quick for
me, but that may be my only quibble with this story. I’m never exactly sure how
much we writers end up applying modern sensibilities to older times and, vice
versa, how much we cleanse the past of its’ grit and reality.
As I read, some deeper themes came to light. Alva left her
first husband before he died, because he was abusive. Sometimes things like
this are glossed over – the character is known to have left because of it but
then they just soldier on, the worst over. In this story, though, that abusive
past has had a deep and lasting impact on the character. It affects the
character and her reactions to a good man, Professor Sam Moore, and the ghost
in the house.
Sam is a little bit too good to be true, idealized hero,
everything a woman could look for – gorgeous, a genius, and wants to fight for
the woman he has fallen head over heels for, but also willing to step back and
let her take the lead. He’s lovely but there’s not much reality there.
This is a solid romance with a fun but sad ghost story, that
offers an interesting read, not too complicated. It has some very witty
repartee between the characters. It is sexually explicit but that is confined
to a couple episodes if you prefer to skip over them. It was a quick, easy read
between heavier material for me.
I was impressed with this first book from Diana Biller and
would definitely read future books from her.
Once Upon a River
by Diane Setterfield
Diane Setterfield is masterful at weaving the shimmering
threads of a simple tale, richly told, into a complex and beautiful tapestry.
There is a saying, variously credited in different places, that easy reading is
hard writing. I suspect that is very true of Setterfield’s stories.
Her writing, in its’ pacing and richness of language, reminds
me very much of Neil Gaiman, and though it is in a gothic vein, there is a touch
less horror to it. There is both the fantastical but also the scientific here.
This story opens in the local drinking house of a village on
the Thames, where a stranger appears, broken nose and eyes nearly swollen shut,
carrying the body of a 4-year-old girl, who is generally acknowledged to be
dead. His burden discharged, the stranger collapses and the local nurse, Rita,
is sent for. A few hours later, the little girl returns to life, or so it
seems. But who is she? No less than three different people claim to know who
she is, but are any of them correct?
Helena Vaughn believes it is her daughter who was kidnapped
two years before, but her husband is woefully certain it is not. Robin Armstrong
claims she is his little girl, who he has not seen for a year, and whose mother
attempted to drown the little girl then took her own life, a week before. His
stepfather, Robert Armstrong sets out to learn the truth. Lilly White, the housekeeper
for the parsonage, is certain she is Ann, her little sister, but Lilly is
middle aged and her sister disappeared when Lilly was a child herself.
Who is this child? And why does she not speak and tell them?
Was she fished out of the river by Quietly, the boatman who it is said haunts
the river, fishing out the drown and carrying those in need to either their
rest or back to the living?
Rita, the nurse, and Daunt, the photographer who arrived
carrying the girl after his own mishap, are both enamored of the child and
brought together by their interest in seeing her safe. Rita has her own
scientific theories and barters with Daunt to help her in testing them in exchange
for sitting for photographs.
Setterfield gives us the action but also gives us scenes which
illustrate the backstory of the main characters in detail then sets about bringing
them all together. It is a rich and engrossing tale told masterfully by a
writer at the height of her abilities. I cannot recommend this story more.
Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult
Times
by Katherine May
I received this book as a gift but I admit it took me
a while to give it a chance. I was expecting something a bit more self-help in
style – do this and don’t do that, so it sat on my bookshelf. The title seemed
to call to me this past week. “Wintering” sounded more restful. I took it
upstairs to read before bed each night, and found a far more deep and
meditative read than I anticipated.
There is a memoir aspect to the book as the author
shares her own struggles with admirable honesty, and uses events in her life to
illustrate her periods of wintering. However, there is a depth and breadth of
topics from which she pulls examples and thoughts about wintering from that I
did not anticipate.
In some ways, the book reminds me of The Sound of a
Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey. (My thoughts on that book are
here https://storymusing.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-sound-of-wild-snail-eating-by.html
)
Both books start with the onset of a difficult period
in the author’s life, illness and having to retreat from ordinary life in order
to heal. Both books also share a great deal more in terms of information and
ideas that were found through research and observation, not just their personal
experience.
Wintering takes
us from September through late March, from her husband’s appendicitis and her
own illness through a visit to Iceland, interviews with her friend Hanne who
grew up in Finland and another friend who had been in a coma as a young woman,
ruminations on the origins and celebration of Halloween, how a dormouse winters,
the Swedish veneration of Sankta Lucia, deciding to take her son Bert out of
school, how she decided to become a mother, a trip to see the Aurora Borealis,
walks on the seashore, a small survey of literature having to do with
wintering, seasonal affective disorder, the way bees winter, and so much more.
Each is a mini essay that relates to the larger theme.
Throughout it all there is a rich vein of humor and
wonder. I laughed out loud at her take on the fable of the ants and the grasshopper,
as her perception changes over time. She notes that grasshoppers don’t
overwinter so the ants are actually denying the final wish of a dying creature
when it asks for a bit of food.
“Whichever way you look
at it, the ants are mean and sanctimonious, as well as possibly also genocidal.
But if I take my tongue
back out of my cheek, it’s impossible not to taste the resonances of the ants’
stance.”
In the end, this is not really a self-help book,
though it is very helpful. It is a thoughtful and illuminating meditation on
the nature of winter and how we all go through difficult times where we need to
retreat and rest, hopefully coming out the other side. It is the cycle of our
lives. I would highly recommend this book.
by Tom Stoppard
I was perusing the shelves, looking for something to read
for this week’s book review, when I came across the play Arcadia by Tom
Stoppard. The title appealed to me. I’ve seen it referenced several times. (I’ve
actually read a totally different science fiction novel by the same name that
was very good.)
I took the volume and went to look up what it was really all
about. It sounded interesting, Written in the nineteen nineties, it covers two
different time periods. The main character seemed to be a young woman who was
very interested in math and physics. But the poet, Lord Byron, was integral to
the story as well. I was intrigued.
It begins with 13-year-old Thomasina being tutored by 22-year-old
Septimus when she asks him a rather improper question, “What is carnal embrace?”
He puts her off with a sideways explanation, “Carnal embrace is the practice of
throwing one’s arms around a side of beef.” I admit that made me chuckle.
Upon further questioning, it seems she has heard the
servants gossiping about seeing one of the ladies of the house engaged with
someone who is not her husband.
The play proceeds quickly with witty repartee and various
double entendres, not unlike some of Shakespeare’s comedy of errors.
One of the most interesting things about this play is how
the action goes back and forth between this earlier time and present time, but
in the same room and the props of both time periods remain throughout the play,
simply ignored by the characters in their own time period.
We jump forward in time and meet several characters, most
substantially Hannah who is writing a book about the Hermit of Sidley Park and
Bernard who arrives with his own ideas to research.
As with many period pieces, and from a different culture,
there’s rather a lot that goes right over my head, I’m afraid, but it’s a
fascinating combination of relationships, math, science, literature, history, and
philosophy. Things that happened in the past are echoed in the future and excavated.
I’m not sure it’s right to call it science fiction, but it
does play wonderfully with some of those themes. I would definitely like to see
this performed.
This review has two beginnings.
Sadako and the
Thousand Paper Cranes is about a girl who says she remembers the bombing of
Hiroshima, though her best friend points out that she was only a baby when it
happened. Even though Sadako was just a baby, the aftermath of the atomic bomb
still had its gnarled fingers of effects reaching through to the future.
At nine, Sadako is
the fastest runner in her class and wishes to be picked for the Jr. High
running team. Until she starts having dizzy spells. She keeps the dizzy spells
from her friends and family until she collapses one day on the school field.
She is immediately admitted to the hospital and diagnosed with Leukemia.
Sadako definitely
believes in good luck signs and charms, and as such, is in denial for even the
first few weeks of being in the hospital, because all she has is a few dizzy
spells. But the first time her best friend visits, she brings paper to show her
how to make origami paper cranes, as it is believed that if you make a thousand
paper cranes, it will help a sick person be granted their wish to be healthy
again.
So Sadako sets out to
fold one thousand paper cranes.
Though the book is
only about sixty-seventy pages, depending on which copy the reader has, to my
twelve year old self it seemed like a long book. (Perhaps because we were only
allowed to read it during our reading groups in class and not at home.)
I didn’t know much
about WWII then, and even now, what I do know comes from my eleven-year-old son
who is enamored with learning about WWII.
But something stuck
in me all these years about this story. Could I tell you exactly what it was?
No. The writing is definitely geared towards the grade school level. I read the
book in less than an hour and wondered how something so generic in the writing
could have been published. But it was published in 1977, and geared towards
elementary school kids.
Though I personally
feel the writing is dated (because it is) and there isn’t a lot of action, per
se, I think what has drawn me in all these years to remember it, is the
empathy. It’s geared towards children, because children, I think, understand
the concept of peace and empathy more than any adult. At the back of my copy,
there are letters to the author about how the book has changed children’s
lives. The letters mostly give thanks for writing the story because all the
kids ask is that we adults remember the atrocious act of the bombing and beg
for peace.
The story also brings
a powerful tale of perseverance and hope to the table.
Does Sadako ever
finish making her paper cranes? Well, I’m not going to ruin it for you, but,
again, I will say, even as Sadako does find herself getting weaker some days,
she still manages to make at least one paper crane every day, and on her good
days she makes more.
Sadako
is a fighter. She doesn’t want to leave her family. She is determined to make a
thousand paper cranes and get better.
Overall,
the writing is a bit generic, but who it is written for is spot on, so I’m
going to give this book 4.5 stars for its audience. The overall theme, I’m
giving 5 stars, because we could all stand to learn something from the kids in
our lives, even if it is just a child in the grocery story line.
And
perhaps that is what has drawn me into it all these years late — that children
understand peace, empathy, and grit better than I could any day of the week.
Third Person Rural: Further Essays of a Sometime Farmer
By Noel Perrin
Our book club is reading books with a number in the title
this month. What we read, beyond that, is completely up to us. I decided,
rather arbitrarily, to search our library catalog for a book with “third” in
the title. No reason at all. Out of the books that popped up, I chose this one,
published in 1983.
I knew absolutely nothing about the author, Noel Perrin. I don’t
know how much of a well-known author he was or how many books he sold. But one,
at least, made it into our library and has survived weeding rounds all this
time. He was a professor of English and wrote for the Washington Post, as well
as putting together many books of essays.
Third Person Rural, of course, centers on his time working a
hobby farm in Vermont. Living on part of the original land grant to my
ancestor, with the somewhat newer barn, a few fields, and lots of chickens, it
interested me.
The topics took me back to my time as a teen spent on my
grandmother’s farm in the eighties. Heavy snow, maple sugaring, spring thaws, and
floods – all the things that people have to think about when they live close to
the land.
The style of writing is also reminiscent of what I often
read back then. Stories set in the country, often having to do with horses. I
was quite enamored with farm life. But the style of writing was different. I
don’t know if people are still writing this way now, but it isn’t something I
tend to pick up anymore, I suppose. It’s quiet, ruminating, using the full breadth
of the language with a command of it often not seen anymore. Oh, I think there
are still people who understand the language as well, but we are taught to
simplify so much that the character can sometimes be lost. Don’t use this
word, or that word, too much. It can be good advice but often leans into
obliteration of voice.
The section titled A Country Calendar provides a deep
observation of the countryside and contemplation of how nature tends to work in
this place. “An evening flurry will come down in huge wet flakes, so thick and
fast that you think in an hour the village will be buried like Pompeii.”
The author is a master of pulling you in and taking you
right into any season he is talking about. At one point, reading about winter,
I looked up and was quite surprised to find it was late summer outside my
window.
This is a wonderful book for a contemplative read, a bit of
rumination to take you out of the rat race we live in day-to-day. I highly
recommend it.
Borrowed Water: A Book of American Haiku
by the Los Altos Writers Roundtable
I’ve enjoyed writing haiku myself. I’m no expert but I’ve received a compliment or two on them. My (very) basic understanding is that they should be three lines, with five syllables in the first and third line, and seven syllables in the middle. I find them fascinating to write, the way that you have to achieve a complete concept in just seventeen syllables.
My understanding is that the traditional haiku uses an observation about nature in the first two lines then takes a turn in the third line that connects it to humanity. Of course, there are now many haiku that play with the rules or have different rules.
The introduction explains that hokku and haiku are used
interchangeably in Japan. It further explains that sometimes there is a rhythm,
though not always, and no rhyme. The idea of observation and meditation to
produce good haiku is in keeping with a sort of meditation.
They also speak of “restrictions on content, its seasonal
implication, its balancing images, its naturalness of expression, its
dependence on ‘effect’ rather than intellectual ‘point’.”
I think that makes them, in a way, easier to read than other
poetry. You don’t have to sit there and ponder what the writer meant. You allow
the image to arise in your mind as you read. Contemplate it if you wish. Allow
associations to develop in your mind. Then you can move on.
Haiku is a Japanese poetic tradition but this book addresses the American landscape. Organized into the four seasons with a section of “Miscellaneous”
at the end, it’s a small volume on thick paper, a different color of paper for
each section.
This book was published in 1966, and it shows in some of the
content – in small dogs searching faces marching by and letters not received
that month.
Others capture timeless moments in gardens. The most
interesting section is the miscellaneous one, where the writers capture more
unique experiences and images, like “childhood returns / on crisp ginger-snap
wings.”
All in all, it is an interesting collection of varied
impressions, worth pondering.
Bury Your
Dead: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel – Book 6
by Louise
Penny
This is a
pivotal book in this series,. It begins with the fallout from a horrible
situation.
To be
honest, reading it on the Kindle, the formatting isn’t clear as to whether the
first few pages are meant to be a scene then we fast forward to present time,
or whether it’s a flashback to the event. There is no italics to indicate a
flashback, but neither is there a chapter heading or clear page break, just an
extra line, before the beginning of the present day narrative. I’d say Penny
intended for us to be totally present in that first scene, which took place
before the events of the book.
And the scene
is fairly simple – Chief Inspector Gamache, his second in command, Beauvoir,
and a team are geared up, armed, and trying to retrieve a hostage. That much is
clear, but who the hostage is, remains a mystery for a bit. As the details dripped
in, I worried for Beauvoir. Then Gamache is sitting with his mentor and former chief,
Emile Comeau, over breakfast in a Quebec City café.
This book is
a masterful work of men recovering from an operation gone wrong, both mentally
and physically. We get the information about what happened sprinkled throughout
the book in flashbacks, until the full picture has been developed. At the same
time, Gamache is caught up in a murder that has taken place in the library of
the historical society where he has been spending time.
An historian,
Renaud, who was obsessed with finding the body of Samuel de Champlain, has been
murdered and buried in the cellar of the library. Was he on to something in
finding Champlain? Why was he killed, and by whom?
Penny gives
us a portrait of the city, with fascinating details and beauty, and a picture
of political tension between French and English descendants that is equally
fascinating. She brings in just the right amount of history to explain things without
bogging down the narrative.
There are
tiny little mysteries too, like why one character never speaks above a nearly
inaudible whisper.
But there is
another mystery running concurrently, one we might have thought was finished in
the last book. Did Olivier really kill the hermit in Three Pines? Gamache had come
to believe so, had provided enough evidence to have him convicted. Had he made
a mistake? He asks Beauvoir to go to Three Pines and try to prove the opposite,
that Olivier did not kill the hermit. Beauvoir thinks it’s a waste of time but
he cannot refuse his Chief so he goes and throws his heart into it. At the same
time, he is working on his own healing because he was shot in the raid, and the
people of Three Pines help him in strange ways with both.
The
characters in this book are wonderfully unique. It’s like the Island of Misfit
Toys. One of my favorites is Ruth Zardo, an elderly poet who is more rude to
you, the more she likes you.
There is so
much going on in this book, but all the elements – the raid gone wrong, the
re-investigation of the Hermit’s murder, the historian’s murder in Quebec, the
historical and present day tensions between the descendants of English and
French, the mental and emotional healing of the two detectives - are braided
together masterfully. It is truly an impressive book.
If you like
mysteries at all, I highly recommend this series, and this book in particular.
Across That Bridge: Life Lessons and a Vision for Change
by John Lewis, United States Congressman
This book has been sitting on my shelf, waiting, for weeks.
I suppose because I expected it to be a heavy read, though the book itself is small. There are
simply seven chapters – Faith, Patience, Study, Truth, Peace, and Love. It is
well organized and flows easily from one section to another.
It is at once memoir, a bit of a legislative lesson, as well
as bringing history to life through what Lewis learned, observed, and
experienced. The section on patience uses the example of the slow progress in
creating a national archive honoring the contributions of African Americans to
the U.S., from 1915, through the various ups and downs, committees created and
setbacks, to its’ fruition in the National Museum of African American History
and Culture that opened in 2015, one hundred years later. Patience, and
persistence, indeed.
I found myself noting down many passages but it was hard to limit my quotes, because so much was quote worthy. It would have been simpler if it were my own copy and I could underline passages, but I'm afraid half the book would be underlined. I have a feeling I'll be re-reading it in the future.
Lewis begins with the intention that the book is to help
those dreamers from getting lost in despair, and for those “faithfully readying
themselves for the next push for change.”
I deeply appreciated that sentiment. It has been a hard year
for all who have watched sadly as the divisions in our country deepened.
“It is for all those willing to join in the human spirit’s
age-old struggle to break free from the bondage of concepts and structures that
have lost their use.”
There is a fascinating duality in this book as Lewis talks a
great deal about faith, which might seem like an old-fashioned notion, as well
as how to work patiently and consistently for change, but change is one of the
few constants in the world.
“The work of love, peace, and justice will always be
necessary, until their realism and their imperative takes hold of our
imagination, crowds out any dream of hatred or revenge, and fills up our
existence with their power.”
“Faith, to me, is knowing in the solid core of your soul
that the work is already done, even as an idea is being conceived in your mind
. . . Even if you do not live to see it come to pass, you know without one
doubt that it will be.”
I wish I had that belief. I have hope, but I fear there are
multiple ways we could go.
“Our faith rejected the notion that some people were inherently
better than others because of skin color, hair, height, build, education,
class, or religion, or any external attribute, and it embraced the equality and
divinity of all humanity.”
“We believed that if we stood together as one people,
gathered by our faith, determined to demonstrate the falsity of notions
coursing through the society around us, then we would have heavenly protection
against any evil that would befall us.”
It certainly seems to have sustained him in his work and
therefore served a purpose.
“Think about your greatest fear. Consider how you would feel
if your life required you to face what you fear the most every day. Ultimately,
if you survived the test, you would discover that what you feared actually had
no power over you, no power to harm you at all.”
At the same time, he acknowledges the very real danger they
were in – the possibility of a church being burned down around them, or never
coming out of a the Parchman maximum security prison in Mississippi alive.
“We emerged from Parchman believing we had the power to turn
even Mississippi around.”
“Informed activism requires reading the newspaper, tracking
bills through the Library of Congress’s THOMAS website, and watching
legislative debates on C-SPAN.”
When I read this, I thought, if that is true, then it would
seem only young, unmarried, and possibly unemployed people can engage. Who has
the time for that? I might have when I was in college, but then I was also
working 30 hours a week, going to school, and doing my homework. I would argue
we need people to distill the information, people we can trust. But he spoke to
that thought in the chapter on truth, saying that if people do not stay informed
and engaged then they are participating in being duped.
People have called him too naïve, but he responds to that
easily. “I see myself as a believer who has witnessed the evolution of what
others believed would never change.”
“We studied, we strategized, we organized, trained, and
prepared to take action. Most of what we accomplished grew out of years,
decades, and even centuries of groundwork….”
Lessons for us all, in every pursuit.
“It is so strange to me that we have learned to fly in the
air like birds, learned to swim in the ocean like fish, shoot a rocket to the
moon, but we have not yet learned how to live together in harmony with one
another.”
This book spoke very directly and personally to me, to my
thoughts and questions. It is a dense little book with a lot of information and
with a lot to contemplate. I got this book from my library but I’ve ordered a
copy for my own library so that I can have it on my book shelf – for further
contemplation of my own and for the ready opportunity for my daughter to read
it one day.
Talk Bookish
to Me
by Kate Bromley
This is a
lovely little Romantic Comedy that I found in our library’s Overdrive catalog
by searching for books with a “vacation” theme – our August theme for book
club.
I wasn’t
familiar with the author and I would not have guessed that this is the first
book she has written. On her web site, it says that she is an avid reader and
it sounds like she has written other stories but this is the first book
attributed to her. I’d say she has quite a career in front of her if she keeps
going with it.
The opening
lines drew me in and the laughs start on the very first page – from “His
eyebrows bob up as I adjust my grip on the Great-Dane-sized gift basket I’m carrying,”
to “Because if everyone isn’t uncomfortable for the entire ride, are you even
really in an elevator?”
The main
character is Kara, a writer of romance novels, both historical and
contemporary. She’s maid-of-honor for her best friend’s wedding and on the eve
of the rehearsal dinner she arrives to find her college boyfriend, Ryan, is one
of the groomsmen. Of course, things did not end well with them ten years ago.
There are both unresolved issues and serious chemistry.
“I’m
convinced that if Nat King Cole were here and knew my side of the story, he
would grab Ryan by the scruff of his shirt and hold him steady as I
roundhouse-kicked him in the throat.
It’s a tough
pill to swallow but Ryan looks good. Like, really good.”
Kara is also
struggling with writer’s block at the moment. Her next book is due to her publisher
any day now and she is supposed to be taking off on a six-month trip to Italy.
Of course,
things get a little wilder when Ryan gets thrown out of his hotel because his
dog trashed the room. The groom wants to have him stay with them, but Kara can’t
let her best friend’s marriage implode before it even begins, can she?
The language
is natural, the dialogue snappy, and the situations funny but believable. This
is everything you want in a romantic comedy and if Hallmark or someone doesn’t
snap it up to turn into a movie, I don’t know what the world is coming to.
Little Bookshop of Murder: A Beach Reads Mystery
by Maggie Blackburn
I’m honestly not sure how this book has a 4 star
average review on Amazon. I did read it on Kindle, as a free download from our
library digital catalog. Was the editing of the Kindle edition so different
from the editing on the hard copy? There are a good number of 1 to 3 star reviews
that echo my own thinking.
The premise is an intriguing idea. Summer’s mother,
Hildy, dies and Summer returns to her beach resort hometown to tie up the loose
ends and decide what to do with Hildy’s book store. Hildy is an interesting
character, though not even present, a free spirit and a town pillar, helping
many people in her too short life. Summer has an interesting problem beyond the
murder, her arachnophobia led to an unfortunate video taken of her which the
faculty at her college are using to pressure her to conform to their expectations.
(From what I’ve heard that can be a problem at some colleges, with or without
the arachnophobia.) Summer soon begins to suspect that Hildy was murdered but
she has history with the town police chief and he refuses to take her
seriously.
There are some lovely descriptions of the area - “The
moon lit the now deep purple-black water, sparkling silver where the light hit
the surface.”
I love the relationship that evolves between Summer
and the parrot, Darcy, as she learns to care for him.
There was some good interactions between characters,
but there are also incredibly awkward character interactions that just don’t
make sense to me. There are also a huge number of typos – missing words, poor
word choices, wrong words, wrong word form or tense, and just plain missing
words. Things like “She stopped when Summer’s eyes met eyes met hers.” Or, “had
taken the opposite tact in her life” instead of opposite tack, which derives
from the phrase about changing the position of the sail on a boat.
In the first couple chapters, we even have –
"There was the Aunt Hildy she knew and loved. Her
mom's only sister, Agatha garnered no foolishness. Never had. In fact, it was
one quality Sumer loved about her. She was quite the opposite from Hildy."
It's obvious she changed who was Hildy at some point and didn't catch all the
changes properly.
“I just wasn’t
thinking and signed the wrong papers,” Hildy said. She sat next to Summer. “The
autopsy results on Hildy aren’t back yet.” I believe this is Aunt Agatha
speaking.
There is a lot of repetition and things are said that
are later forgotten in some way. For example, Doris tells Summer that her
husband is ill and Summer says that she is story to hear about her husband.
Then, three chapters later, Glads mentions it, “Doris’s husband isn’t having a good
day,” and Summer asks, “Is he ill?”
I can rarely guess who the killer is in a mystery but
this one was completely obvious to me from about halfway through the book.
I think this book had a lot of potential, but it
needed some good beta readers to point out the plot and characterization flaws
then a good editor to catch all the mistakes.
Honestly, I’m really surprised it made it to
publication with all the mistakes. My husband suggested that perhaps they had
uploaded the wrong version to the Kindle, but that would be easily rectified
and certainly should have been done by now if they were paying any attention at
all. I downloaded this book around mid-June of 2021. If they have updated it
since, then it may have improved significantly. I really hope so. I see they have another one planned, but I don't see myself reading it.
I first experienced the mastery and world building of
Ursula K. Le Guin’s writing when I came across A Wizard of Earthsea in my
school library. I was appropriately impressed and it looms large in my memory
of the many wonderful fantasy and science fiction books I discovered there.
No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters was
published in 2017, Le Guin passed away in 2018. She was 89. These were blog
entries, but more like essays, that she wrote from about 2010 to 2016.
The title appealed to me as I feel I have decidedly
moved into the second half of my own life and wonder what I want to accomplish
with the time I have left, whatever that may be.
The exploration of ideas is widely varied, from pondering
a toddler’s perspective of the vastness of a house, that might even seem small
to a grown-up, to Le Guin’s experience staring, gazes locked, with a
rattlesnake.
Each essay covers a great deal of territory, evolving
from one thought into a much broader span, and covering that territory
gorgeously through the language she uses. In fact, one of the things I loved
about this book was Le Guin’s use of language. It is incredibly rich and
varied.
In comparing a food bank warehouse to Notre Dame, she
says, “As there should be, there are great doors to open into the sacred space.
And as a sacred space will do, the first sight took my breath away. I stood silent.
I remembered what the word awe means.”
Well, I am in awe of her language. My own writing
tends to be rather action oriented and doesn’t use the full breadth of the
English language to its fullest potential. Work like this book inspires me to
dig deeper.
The hard part about reviewing a library book, in its
hard copy form is that I cannot highlight and make notes the way I do on a
Kindle book. I have friends who highlight and write in the margins of books
that they purchase but I have never developed that habit because I have nearly
always gotten most of my books from a library. It has both saved my budget and
saved space wherever I lived.
I found a few of her pronouncements confounding, but
that is about perspective. She finds tree farms “one of the dreariest sights in
our farmlands, almost as soul-blighting as a clear-cut.” I find them lovely and
cheerful, often a family run business, providing for their family while working
at making Christmas merry or providing fruit trees for long term production for
a family. There’s nothing dreary or soul blighting about that to me.
There is a great deal to ponder here and I highly
recommend it to anyone. A book like this makes me feel as if I have been given
time and a great gift of perspective by another writer.
‘…how incredibly much we learn between our birthday and
last day – from where the horsies live to the origin of the stars. How rich we
are in knowledge, and in all that lies around us yet to learn. Billionaires,
all of us.”
Swamp Spook
by Jana DeLeon
This is another entry in the Miss Fortune series. The
first half didn’t hold my attention very well, though it was funny enough to
keep me reading.
They are somewhat formulaic, like so many series, but
things did get pretty complicated in the second half, making it more
interesting. The best thing about these books is the ridiculous situations that
Fortune, Gertie, and Ida Belle get into.
Fortune Redding is a former CIA assassin. She’s hiding
out in Sinful, Louisiana because an agency leak put a price on her head. At
this point in the series, the whole town knows who she is and she has decided
to start a P.I. agency, with help from her friends Ida Belle and Gertie, who
were military spies in Vietnam decades ago.
Fortune is also dating the local Deputy, Carter
LeBlanc.
The book starts with Fortune being cast as the
chainsaw murderer in the local Halloween hay maze. The only problem? While they
are on break, someone puts a real dead body in the maze, with its head cut off.
The corpse turns out to be a local prominent business
man. Was he murdered? Maybe, maybe not. So how did he end up in the maze, and
why? There’s a young wife, a financially burned business partner, and even a
butler.
With the town busybody, Celia Arceneaux, breathing down her neck, Fortune
doesn’t need this kind of trouble. Celia knows just who to complain to and soon
the state police are in town, making Carter’s life miserable and investigating
Fortune.
Whether Gertie is accidentally crawling through poison
ivy then swelling up or the threesome are setting a treadmill on fire, it’s the
absurdity that keeps this book moving along and the reader laughing.
I would definitely recommend these mysteries to anyone
who likes a comedic mystery.
