Storymusing: Chillers and Thrillers

 

Our Sticky Notes Thematic Book Club read “Chillers and Thrillers” for October. I read two. One, long and involved, the other short and sweet.

Ghostwritten : A Novel by David Mitchell

I absolutely adore David Mitchell’s writing. He weaves stories that cross times and distances with a virtuosity that I can only aspire to. And yet he does this by focusing on one scene at a time, picking out minute details to emphasize certain aspects of the image he wants the reader to focus on. With this book, he crosses the globe, hopping from one character to the next, with an imperceptible connection at first. It’s only as the story goes on that the connections become clear. There’s definite science fiction, and some supernatural elements, involved, but not at first. His writing reminds me a little of Haruki Murakami – lyric prose and tenuous connections.

Okinawa – 32 pages: A young male terrorist who has taken the name “Quasar” becomes embroiled with cult that orders him to plant a bomb on a subway train. He’s very denigrating of the “unclean” people around him as he describes his work. He escapes to an island and though he hears news about how his group has been discovered and how they are being broken up, he never once doubts the leader.

Tokyo – 30 pages: This section is a tad less depressing and more about love, both young and long term. 18-year-old Satoru works in a jazz album store, he’s the son of a prostitute who has been deported and an unknown, assumed to be wealthy, 18-year-old man. A young woman comes in with her annoying friends but she seems different. She comes back a week later and they connect. A businessman named Mr. Fujimoto frequents the shop and says “Since the gas attacks on the subway…I’ve been trying to understand . . . . Why do things happen at all?” He posits the only answer might be love. Sakuro says, “I’d rather be too young to have that kind of wisdom.”

Hong Kong – 44 pages: Neal is a foreigner working in Hong Kong who thinks he has a ghost in his apartment, and who takes up with the aggressive cleaning lady after his wife goes home to London. He has also given in to a scheme to make a lot of money which is very, very illegal.

“Unless you’ve lived with a ghost, you can’t know the truth of it. … It’s more like living with a very particular cat… For the last few months I’ve been living with three women. One was a ghost, who is now a woman. One was a woman, who is now a ghost. One is a ghost, and always will be.” Soon he may be joining the latter.

Holy Mountain – 40 pages: A young girl who works in a tea shack on the side of Holy Mountain with her father is raped by a warlord’s son. She bears a child which is sent to live with family in order to spare them the shame. She believes a tree talks to her as the years unfold, revolutions coming and going. It’s a hard life and riveting though sad.

Mongolia – 50 pages: Here we are introduced to a hitch-hiking presence in the body of a young man backpacking through Mongolia. “So many times in a lifetime do my hosts feel the beginnings of friendship. All I can do is watch.” The spirit transmigrates from person to person, seeking a story that marks the beginning of their memory. The presence transmigrates into a Mongolian named Gunga who realizes it is there and goes to a Shaman. They strike a pact.

Petersburg – 58 pages: In Petersburg, we hear a sordid tale from the perspective of a woman who has survived by debasing herself to men – or is she taking advantage of them? She has a man she loves named Rudi and they have been squirreling away money by stealing famous paintings and replacing them then selling the originals on the black market. They only have so much access to the museum because she is screwing the head curator. Then it all goes wrong when a Mongolian criminal comes into the picture.

London – 56 pages: Marco is boozing it up and sleeping around as he deals with the news that Poppy is pregnant. He reflexively saves an Irish woman from getting run over by a cab. Marco goes on to his job, as a ghost writer, then ends up on a wild ride of a night.

Clear Island – 62 pages: An Irish scientist who was saved from getting run down by a cab goes home to her family, as she waits for the American government to find her and insist she join them with the AI algorithms she has created. She could run, but she would have to keep running because they will stop at nothing to get her black book.

Night Train – 48 pages: My favorite chapter. Bat Segundo on Night Train FM has an odd caller, (though they’re all odd,) called “Zookeeper.”

Underground – Back to Quasar and his escape from the train he left the device on. Or did he?

 

Arsenic and Adobo: A Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mystery by Mia P. Manansala

Lila Macapagal, a young Filipino-American woman, moves back to her hometown from Chicago in order to help her aunt and grandmother with the family restaurant. She gets caught up in the middle of a murder when her ex-boyfriend Derek, who had become a rather mean-spirited food critic, dies right in their restaurant. Complications? He was poisoned, a bag of arsenic laced rice is found in their kitchen, and a bag of money and drugs is found in Lila’s locker. Plus, the local cop seems intent on Lila as his main suspect. This was a delightful story, and the audio was a joy to listen to, allowing me to hear the correct pronunciation of names and words that I wouldn’t have otherwise known. Truly, the perfect cozy mystery, complete with recipes.

Story Musing: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet: A Novel by David Mitchell

 

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet: A Novel by David Mitchell

Our thematic book club’s topic for September was “Welcome Fall.” Sometimes I choose something that I’ve been wanting to read and sometimes I just browse through our digital catalogs for things that are available based on the theme. I do that particularly to find audio books I can listen to on my commute. This month it just so happened I found The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet: A Novel by David Mitchell. I had previously read and loved Bone Clocks by this author.

Bone Clocks definitely had a more horrific feel for me than this story, but both had a fantastical epic story. As I started to listen to Jacob de Zoet, I realized I had picked up this book on audio once before and had a really hard time getting into it. This time, I thoroughly enjoyed it but I have to say, the title makes no sense. It’s a linear third person historical novel of a person who does not prolong his life in any way. Why a thousand autumns? I still don’t know.

 “Nagasaki itself, wood gray and mud brown, looks oozed from between the verdant mountains’ splayed toes. The smells of seaweed, effluence, and smoke from countless flues are carried over the water. The mountains are terraced by rice paddies nearly up to their serrated summits.”

Dejima holds a fascinating place in history just outside Nagasaki, as I learned both from this book and a little research after reading it. It was created by digging a canal across a small peninsula then building a long bridge, so it was linked but easily cut off and controlled. It was used as the only trading port for the Portuguese then the Dutch during the 200 years when Japan was largely isolated. It was designed to keep the foreigners from mixing too much with the people of Japan. Only Japanese citizens of a very few professions were allowed to go into Dejima, and the foreigners were not allowed onto Japanese land at all for about 200 years. It is now a national historic site.  (https://nagasakidejima.jp/english/history/ and https://www.japanistry.com/dejima/)

There’s a lot to recommend about this book. The history portrayed seems, from my limited reading, fairly accurate. There’s a fantastical and horrific element to it that becomes clear as the story goes on, but it is not described graphically at any point. The real life details, particularly surrounding the slaves lives, are more horrific at times. The detail of the time period, the humor of interactions, descriptions, the characters, the romance, the reality, the diplomacy — there’s so much going on here.

The story opens in 1799, near Nagasaki, at the House of Kawasemi the concubine, who is in labor, and it is not going well. Aibagawa is a mid-wife studying under the local Dutch surgeon, Dr. Marinus. Through the application of modern medicine, such as it is at that time, she pulls off what seems like a minor miracle, leaving the local magistrate in her debt.

After the delivery, we fast forward several months to the entrance of Jacob De Zoet as he transcribes the proceedings of the trial of one Daniel Snitker, Chief Clerk of the Dutch East Indies Company on the manmade island of Dejima, near Nagasaki.

Described as a pastor’s nephew, de Zoet is appointed the clerk in Dejima to check the books for inaccuracies and many men are implicated is shady dealings. Of course, honesty is not always welcome. Jacob is reviled by the men who served under Snitker — Arie Grote, with his wild tales and ready deals, Piet Baert, Ivo Oost, and Gerritszoon. They ably torment Jacob, who is not steeled against their tactics, but each has a tale to tell of how he came to be there, which is revealed in due course.

“Jacob considers telling Vorstenbosch about the scene at breakfast but sees nothing to be gained. Respect, he thinks, cannot be commanded from on high.”

There is also the matter of the De Zoet Psalter, a book of hymns, hidden in his room. It was supposed to be sealed up with all the other Christian artifacts in a barrel and surrendered to the Japanese government until they left again. If it is discovered, there will be hell to pay.

Jacob is pretty much just tolerated by the local people but he makes himself useful to the interpreters to whom he teaches a more full understanding of the Dutch language. Ogawa Uzaemon is one of these interpreters who plays an important role in the story.

Orito Aibagawa returns to the story, chasing a monkey absconding with and amputated leg. Jacob is besotted on first meeting her. He tries to befriend Dr. Marinus in hopes of making contact with her but is repulsed, at first.

Jacob is further rewarded for his honesty by being placed in a position of servitude to those who hate him. He is, generally speaking, a good guy, and he does manage to make friends over time, both with other Europeans and local people. How he does this is part of the curiously wonderful story.

After her father dies somewhat unexpectedly, her stepmother sells Orito off to temple that holds a terrible secret which only begins with drugging the women who go there as sisters. This is an incredibly simplistic explanation of this small part of the plot that has huge ramifications and tendrils branching throughout the story.

Each of the characters in the huge cast are well drawn and introduced at the appropriate time, so that the reader is not overwhelmed. The intricacies of the situation are well portrayed and as the plot unfolds, it blooms outward into a story of epic proportions told through well detailed scenes from several different perspectives.

The story progresses through various twists and turns until Jacob becomes proves why he deserves to be the title character.

This book easily encompasses a trilogy but is presented in one volume for continuity. I appreciate that as it provides a transportive experience.

The reading on the audio version bothered me a little bit as the characters often sounded from Great Britain rather than the people of Nagasaki. A larger cast would have helped the listener more fully envision the story. Or, perhaps, if the female actor had been Japanese, that would have been sufficient. Still, listening to it on audio in the car was vastly entertaining and took me on a long journey as the novel is huge, around 900 pages. The pronunciation of Dutch names was very helpful to this reader.

I really enjoyed this story and turned around to pick up another immersive tale by Mitchell for next month. I highly recommend his writing.

Book Review: The House on the Lake by Holly Hill Mangin

 

The House on the Lake

by Holly Hill Mangin

 

I had the pleasure of welcoming Holly Hill Mangin to our library recently on a visit from her home in France. She had grown up in the area and went to college regionally but then life took her to France where she now lives with her family and works.

Prior to her reading and author talk at our library, I had the chance to read her book. I was very impressed at the level of writing and editing from a fairly new author. It seems like even with books from long time authors in big publishing houses, there are a number of mistakes in every book, but I did not find that here. Her language was very fluid and natural too, a good balance of sentence structure which you might not notice but is very pleasing to the reader.

The story itself reminded me of Lois Duncan books of my teens, the young characters confronted with a spooky situation they must puzzle out. I can honestly say that out of all the possible outcomes I imagined for the book, the end was different and very satisfactory.

The story beings when Eve Beckett wakes up in a house on an island. How this could have happened is a mystery as she is terrified of water. The two caretakers cannot, or will not, shed any light on how she got there. As she talks with them, her mirror twin arrives in the kitchen, uncertain how she got there either. As Eve begins to explore the manor house, the mystery deepens.

At first the book reminded me a bit of The Haunting of Hill House as the house itself starts to take on a life of its own with rooms moving. There’s also the added mystery of the young man who represents the owners of the house and his brother who is there too. The young man seems okay but there is something sinister about his brother and yet Eve is drawn to him.

What unfolds is a mix of psychological thriller, young romance, and house mystery. I thoroughly enjoyed it and am looking forward to the sequel, which we are assured is coming. In fact, the author told us that the idea for The House on the Lake came out of a dream she had about exploring an old house and what she found in the rooms. As she wrote, she found she had two books in one and when she separated them out, that was when this book really came to life. The next book she plans to write will be from the viewpoint of the twin sister. I look forward to reading it!

We purchased one copy of the book for the teen section of our library and I gratefully accepted a second copy from the author for the adult fiction section. I hope some people will find it and enjoy it.

As every author knows, book talks are uncertain for any author. This was the first time Holly had done one so we corresponded a little about how to set it up and decided to do a fire side chat in our Reading Room at the library, where people might overhear and wander in.

This has its advantages and disadvantages. As she was reading, the conversations from the Circulation Desk were a bit intrusive but she did very well in maintaining her focus on reading. I can only hope it wasn’t too much of a distraction for the people who attended.

It seemed to me that a couple people who attended were old school friends of hers, and several were family members, as is not unusual. Serendipitously, two board members from another library had stopped in to see our library after giving blood nearby and decided to join the book talk, buying a copy of the newest book for each of them and one for their library. They contributed many questions to keep the discussion lively.

I also had a list of questions for the author about her writing experience and the book. One of the things I asked was about how she started writing. Many of us have the interest in writing but need some trigger to get us started and something to help us follow through. For Holly it was an author she had followed on Facebook. He had posted that he was looking for someone to co-write a book with and she responded. After some correspondence, he decided they would work well together and she co-wrote a book with him.

Holly has several other books available on Amazon and I look forward to reading them. I wish her well in her writing and publishing journey!

Book Musing: Akata Woman by Nnedi Okorafor

 

Akata Woman

by Nnedi Okorafor

I have been thoroughly fascinated by this series since the beginning, with Akata Witch and Akata Warrior. I have enjoyed reading them myself, but this time I listened to part of the book on audio. Listening was even better so I could hear the pronunciation of the words by a wonderful reader, Nene Nwoko. Nwoko is an actress born and raised in Nigeria who now lives in America.

Sunny Nwazue is the main character, growing from a girl in the first book to a young woman by the third book. She was born with albinism, so she has always felt like an outsider but when she finds out she has magic in her, things begin to get better. She ends up being doubled, which makes her unusual even among Leopard People, the magic folk, and an outsider again. Being doubled means her spirit face, Anyanwu, is separated from her and can go out on its’ own, which it often does. This frustrates Sunny to no end.

Luckily Sunny has some good friends – Chichi, Sasha, and Orlu. They are also Leopard people, each on their own journey of learning. Luckily, Chichi is there to fill in gaps in Sunny’s knowledge because she was raised knowing she was a Leopard person, which Sunny was unaware. Her parents are still clueless about it, though Sunny’s mother has some inkling that she is more like her grandmother than any of the would be comfortable with.

Sunny also has two brothers who always come into the stories as do her parents. I like this aspect of the stories, as so often, main characters don’t seem to have parents or siblings for one reason or another. They operate in isolation which isn’t reality for many of us. I like seeing how family’s interact in fantastical books.

One of my favorite minor characters in the book is a wasp creature that lives in Sunny’s room and makes beautiful sculptures for her every day. A wasp is not something you would see as a benevolent creature in too many books. I like the unusual choice.

One thing I love about these books is how they are influenced by the folklore of Nigeria. In the folklore, Anansi is a God who sometimes takes the form of a spider. Anansi has a lot to do with knowledge and stories. I first read of Anansi in a picture book then later in Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys. Here, the spider is called Udide and never takes a human form.

Udide tasks Sunny and her friend Chichi with bringing back a ghazal that Udide wrote a millennia ago and was stolen by the Nim women, who Sunny and Chichi are descended from. Udide threatens to rain down horrible destruction on the human world if Sunny and Chichi don’t retrieve it for Udide.

In this adventure, we learn the sad and harsh background of Chichi’s mother. An interesting story in its’ own right. Then the four friends have to go on a magical journey together on The Road. It takes them to a fantastical land, with creatures both friendly and antagonistic.

The book also touches on the political unrest in Nigeria and at the end, the Covid pandemic. This is important to grounding the story in the real world, something that can’t be ignored, and yet not heavy handed or the central focus of the story.

It seems clear that Okorafor is leaving the door open for another book in this series. I will be watching for it. In the meantime, she has many other books to explore. 

Reading LGBTQ+ Books

 

Reading LGBTQ+ Books

As most people are aware, June is Pride Month so our thematic book club chose LGBTQ+ as our theme.

Why read LGBTQ books if you don’t identify as someone who is? You may find you arrive at a greater understanding of people you love or just know through reading. Personally, I’ve tended to shy away from LGBTQ fiction books, particularly with romances, because I like to be able to imagine myself in the main character’s place. What I have found in my reading, is that 1 – good writing is good writing, and 2 – emotions are universal.

I’ll start with Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan, my book club selection.

Boy Meets Boy is a 2005 YA book, one of his first, but has always been highly recommended and I liked the idea of a YA book. In my opinion, YA writers are some of the best and create the most accessible reading.

I started out reading this on my e-reader but moved to the full cast recording available in our Hoopla catalog because time was running out and I could listen in the car.

This was a delightful read, not because it doesn’t deal with difficult issues, but because of the relentlessly optimistic tone of one high school sophomore, Paul.

Paul talks about his school in shining terms, his community sounds idyllic. The star quarterback of the football team is Infinite Darlene, formerly Darryl, who is also the homecoming queen. It just seems like the whole school, and town, is perfectly fine with everyone being exactly who they are. (Would that it were so in real life!)

But really, it’s how Paul thinks about it. You see, he talks about the first time he was jumped for being gay as if it were no big deal. He was out to a movie with the fencing team and they soon routed the bullies who attacked him.

No, all is not perfect in this utopia. His best friend, Joni, gets involved with a boy of questionable intentions, Chuck. Paul meets a wonderful boy, Noah, who is leery because he has been burned in a past relationship. Then Paul’s ex-boyfriend, Kyle, pushes his way back into his life.

One of Paul’s closest friends, Tony, has to hide that he even has gay friends from his parents. Tony’s homophobic aunt sees Tony and Paul in an innocent hug of friendship and support. She goes running back to Tony’s mother and Tony is grounded. Paul is very worried for what might be happening to Tony.

It all seems to have gotten very complicated, very fast. Paul is daunted, but not defeated, and it’s how he deals with these challenges that make the book so lovely. I highly recommend.

A Spindle Splintered is another YA but this is a novella. I have not been disappointed by anything Harrow has written and I think I’ve read it all at this point. Harrow is a wonderful writer who offers literary quality prose with good action and solid plotting. She is in my top 5 current writers.

This is a retelling of the Sleeping Beauty story with a distinctive story line. Zinnia Gray has always been fascinated by Sleeping Beauty because she has a mystery illness. No one who has it has survived past their 21^st birthday. Her best friend creates a Sleeping Beauty themed party for her on her 21^st birthday. Of course, her story doesn’t end there, and Zinnia finds herself in a fight, not only for her life, but other sleeping beauties as well. I can’t recommend this one enough. It’s short and sweet, and beautiful and courageous.

Finally, I listened to the audio of Samantha Irby reading her collection of essays – Wow, No Thank You, based on the recommendation of a fellow author. I laughed so much, and commiserated a whole lot. I’ve read a lot of negative reviews but it seemed like they were from people who simply couldn’t relate. I could thoroughly relate to her problems with chronic digestive disease. Some people seemed to think those were potty humor, but I think they just don’t get it because they don’t live with this type of chronic illness and couldn’t put themselves in her shoes. It was very honest.

The essays on writing for Hollywood were funny and interesting. She also struggles with depression and I think people who can’t relate simply didn’t understand what they were reading/hearing. Even the things that I couldn’t relate to, going out clubbing until the wee hours of the morning, were interesting.

There was one essay that seemed to mostly be a music play list of artists I mostly didn’t recognize, but that was the low point of the collection for me. Honestly, if you’ve struggled with something similar to what Irby has, or can at least bring some empathy to bear, and enjoy honesty, you’re going to love this book.

We’ve also been talking about banned books in preparation for Banned Books Week at my library. In looking at the current list of the most banned books, I was struck at how many deal with being LGBTQ+. A good reason to read. Here is a list from Esquire magazine. https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/g39908103/banned-books/

Finally, some suggestions from other sites for great reading —

40 Fantastic LGBTQ+ Books to Read for Pride Month (and Beyond) by Lizz Schumer Jun 7, 2022 These inspiring picks are from a variety of genres, including romance, YA and non-fiction. https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/entertainment/g27814264/best-gay-lgbt-books/

Curated site of LGBTQ reading by Dahlia Adler https://lgbtqreads.com

Goodreads LGBT lists https://www.goodreads.com/genres/lgbt

GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Educational Network) National Student Council book list https://www.glsen.org/sites/default/files/2021-07/GLSEN_NSC_Booklist_High_School_2021.pdf

ALA Rainbow Book List https://glbtrt.ala.org/rainbowbooks/

 

Book Musing: The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon

 

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union

by Michael Chabon

I came across an article a little over a week ago that suggested 10 books that anyone who loves science fiction ought to read as they had won both the Nebula and the Hugo awards. I immediately added them to my Goodreads list.

I honestly can’t remember where I saw it, but here is one such list - https://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/sci-fi-fantasy/the-novels-that-won-both-the-hugo-and-nebula-awards-ranked/

Connie Willis and Joe Haldeman are both familiar names from their short stories in Nebula award collections, but I’d never read a Michael Chabon before.

The Yiddish Policeman’s Union immediately appealed to me, perhaps because I spent so much time watching Seinfeld as a teen and perhaps because I have always had a fascination with Jewish culture as someone who was raised in upstate New York.

I’ve also enjoyed hard-boiled detective fiction since my late teens, which led me to take a course in Detective Fiction in college. This is right up there with them. Detective Landsman is both incorrigible and self-destructive, single-minded, and fumbling his way in the dark. It’s a characterization of fascinating contrasts.

This is an alternate history but not much of a “science” fiction otherwise. The setting is Sitka, Alaska, where a sixty year temporary haven for Jewish people was set up after World War II. It opens as the area is about to undergo “Reversion” when the government takes back the land. The residents have to either apply for permission to stay or find somewhere else to go.

Detective Meyer Landsman, the main character, is living in a long term stay hotel, drinking his life away. The manager comes and gets him when another tenant is found dead. Landsman quickly deduces that this was not an accidental death.

Landsman is a divorced police detective and the police department is about to be taken out of Jewish control as well. His ex-wife, Bina Gelbfish, is placed in charge of his department. He and his half Tlingit, half Jewish partner, Berko Shemets, are ordered to make a good faith attempt to clear up any outstanding cases, then a bad faith attempt, and finally to simply mark them as cold cases.

Landsman is not about to go gently into the good night though. The connections that get made along the way are great action-adventure writing, there’s a little schmaltz and plenty of heart, and the prose that caries you along is first rate.

The omniscient narrator is not all that common in a lot of what I read, but allows for a depth of description that you don’t find in much genre fiction. It gets into the perceptions and thoughts of a multitude of characters. The descriptions are lengthy and literary in their parallels, but also very often amusing, which is fairly common with noir detective fiction.

The prose is beautiful – so many times I was struck by the incongruity and yet correctness of the metaphors he used to describe things. Some might eschew it as too flowery but I loved it. I went and put several more of his books on my Goodreads list. It’s a book that takes a long time to get where it’s going but I loved every minute of the drive. (Yes, I also prefer to drive on secondary roads instead of highways.)

Are the characters sometimes a little too ridiculous? Yes, sure. The two main Tlingit characters we run into are both police officers with one being tall and extremely heavy set while the other is a mere four foot nothing. As the only characters we hear much of who are Tlingit, it’s a little too absurd.

I’ve seen a lot of positive reviews for this book, some lukewarm ones, and some downright negative, but that just recommends a book to me. When you get a good spread of opinions about a book, it generally means there’s going to be a lot to engage with, and this is no different. There’s a particular style here that people may or may not like. I loved it.

Chabon is one of those authors who both makes me feel small and insignificant as an author and also inspires me to want to write more and better. His first novel came out to some acclaim when he was twenty-four and it seems he has been writing hard and fast, but mostly steadily, ever since.  

It’s a first rate, rollicking, fascinating, gorgeously written book. I highly recommend.

Oh, and the reader who brings the audio to life is wonderful, allowing me to get the intonation in my head that I never would have gotten just by reading it.

A Merry Month of May Multitude of Book Musings (Too much?)

 

This month I’m taking a page from some friends and sharing what I’ve been reading, what I liked and didn’t like about the books, and any musings about them. I guess I’ve hit a few genres this past month.

What I’ve been reading - 

The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow – This book brings together a wide variety of elements in a single masterful alternate timeline historical novel. The three Eastwood sisters represent ancient archetypes of mother, maiden, and crone. Agnes Amaranth is a single mother to be, working in a sweatshop, who falls in love with a man who has used his own limited witchcraft to advocate for worker’s rights. Beatrice Belladonna is a librarian who, far from a spinster yet, finds romance with a female journalist, if she can trust herself. James Juniper is a young maiden with a deadly secret. The three find each other again and themselves embroiled in the fight for the woman’s right to vote and to practice witchcraft, after fleeing their father’s farm. I’ve read everything else written by this author to date and just love her style and depth. I highly recommend this book, without reservation.

The Vanishing Type by Ellery Adams – I love this series for so many reasons, not the least of which is because I love books in general. As a librarian, reading a mystery series where the main character is a former librarian turned bookseller who adores books and recommending them to patrons in her store, is just my idea of heaven. She mentions so many books that I recognize, and so many I don’t, that even the non-mystery portion of the story is fascinating. I also adore how she often finds books to help people with troubles in their life, something called bibliotherapy. With this story, Adams builds layer upon layer of mystery into the story. Nora is the owner of Miracle books, while her friends from the Secret, Book, and Scone Society include Hester, Estella, and June. They’ve come to trust and rely on each other. They do so again as Hester’s secret about the baby she gave up for adoption comes out into the open just as her boyfriend proposes. It’s a bumpy ride but Adams keeps us on the rails.

The Nobel Lecture in Literature 1993 by Toni Morrison – This lecture begins with Morrison relating a folk tale that she has heard in numerous cultures, about young people challenging an old blind person and that wise person putting them in their place. But then she extends the tale, asking, what if the wise person and the young entered a dialog to better understand each other – how much more could come of it? I had the sense that I would need to read it again and again to find the meaning within it. The second part was a simple acceptance speech of the award and thoroughly inspiring to me because it spoke about the writers of the future. Perfect for any aspiring writers.

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler – I picked this book up thinking that the title indicated a comforting read. For some reason, the description didn’t disabuse me of the notion. I started reading and it was intriguing, if a bit lackluster. After a while, something reminded me of another book I’d read and I realized I’d read one other book by this author and didn’t care for it. I hate to put a book down and kept reading, soon finding that this book was really about one of the most dysfunctional families I’ve ever read about. The writing is interesting, it draws you on, your mouth drops open on a regular basis at the things people do. It’s not my cup of tea but the book is well written. If you like a slice of life about dysfunctional families, then this book is for you. I found it . . . unsatisfying.

The Taming of the Few: Guardians of the PHAE Book 1 by Rowan Dillon – Though this is a first urban fantasy for this author, it is not her first book. I admit that she is a member of my writer’s group and I have enjoyed her historical fantasy stories for years. The characters in this tale are thoroughly entertaining, from irascible Max with his Vietnam era PTSD and ability to talk to the wind, to swim coach Anna’s growing ability to convince the water to do her bidding, as iridescent scales slowly cover her arms. It seems a shift in the magnetic poles has caused magic to come to the surface in many people. These latent abilities have stirred fear in some and there is brewing resentment as factions move toward unrest and armed conflicts. I’m thoroughly enjoying the tale, though I’m only 30% of the way in.