A Musing Round-up of Stories

 

What I’ve been reading….

Because I read and adored The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, by Gabrielle Zevin, I was wildly excited to see that they had made a movie of it last year. (Bonus, it stars Kunal Nayyar, best known for his role as Rajesh Koothrappali on The Big Bang Theory.) I haven’t watched it yet, but I decided to see what else the author had written in the meantime. I found All These Things I’ve Done, a YA novel about a young woman in the future who is the daughter of a Russian American chocolate manufacturer, the Balanchine family. It’s sort of a mob situation as chocolate and coffee are illegal in the U.S.. Her parents are long gone and her older brother suffered a traumatic brain injury sometime ago, while her younger sister is a genius, and her grandmother is dying. Anya is trying to take care of everyone and keep it altogether. It’s intriguing as the situation progresses, if a little melodramatic. Sadly, the performance of the book was a little one note on the audio recording. I might have enjoyed it a lot more if I’d been reading a physical copy. I gave it just 3 stars.

The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware - This one is worth a solid 4 stars. Fascinating, engaging, kept me guessing a good bit, and very well read by the actors. A thriller and the first book I’ve read by this author, it did not disappoint. Hal is a tarot reader on the Pier. She took over the booth to make ends meet after her mother was killed in a hit and run, but it hasn’t been quite enough and she borrowed money from a loan shark. Things are looking quite dark when a letter arrives about an inheritance. Hal figures it’s a mistake, but the details fit enough that she might be able to claim enough money to get her out of the dangerous hole she’s in. It’s worth a shot, but she doesn’t take into account the emotional toll of suddenly having a long lost family, or what some other people may be willing to do to keep things the way they were.

Paper Cuts: A Secret, Book, and Scone Society Book by Ellery Adams. It’s always a pleasure to pick up the latest in this series. I had pre-ordered it and devoured it in just a few days. I’m a bit sad it’s over. Nora runs a thriving bookstore in Sulphur Springs, a resort town in North Carolina. Her friends are three local women who have had heartaches of their own but come together to support each other and all are thriving. Then a ghost, or two, arrive from Nora’s past. One is the woman who her husband left Nora for years ago. The woman, Kelly, has come to make amends and ask a favor. Nora pushes her away but then regrets. She knows Kelly is sick and dying. She decides to go talk to Kelly but it’s too late. Kelly has been murdered, putting Nora and her boyfriend, Sheriff Grant McCabe, on opposite sides of a line as Nora is the main suspect at first. It’s a great story with wonderful characters and details. I highly recommend this book and the series. 4.5 stars.

I’m still processing Drama Free: A Guide to Managing Unhealthy Family Relationships by Nedra Tawwab, and reading The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D.. The latter is a dense book and I have underlined a LOT. (Don’t worry, this is a personal copy, it doesn’t belong to the library.)

I’ve been enjoying leafing through Honey, Baby, Mine: A Mother and Daughter Talk Life, Death, Love (and Banana Pudding) by Diane Ladd and Laura Dern, and reading some of their conversations. Though I often don’t care for books about celebrities, I find the ones in their own words can be illuminating and this has a central theme that I was interested in.

For light-hearted fair, I’ve picked up Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers, a favorite mystery author of mine. It’s an old book and I may have read it before but if I did, I don’t recall, so it’s a good time to pick up a Lord Peter Wimsey mystery and this is the first in the series.

I’ve also just gotten The London Séance Society by Sarah Penner in audio for my drives. So far, it’s quite intriguing. She wrote the very enjoyable upmarket Lost Apothecary. I’m sure this one will be no less diverting.

Anyone reading anything good? Let us know in the comments.

Book Musing: Drama Free: A Guide to Managing Unhealthy Family Relationships by Nedra Glover Tawwab

 

Drama Free: A Guide to Managing Unhealthy Family Relationships

By Nedra Glover Tawwab

I’ve been following Nedra Glover Tawwab on Instagram for well over a year now, on the recommendation of a friend. She has been very enlightening and a wonderfully sane voice.

Tawwab is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with a Masters in Social Work. Her first book, Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself, was a New York Times bestseller. I’ve just picked up a copy and I’m looking forward to it. Honestly, I think most of us could use work on setting and maintaining boundaries in our professional and private lives.

Drama Free is remarkably well laid out and clear. Tawwab clearly defines the terms she is working with, illustrates them with examples, and then gives just a few prompts for exploring how they apply to your own relationships.

Part One is Unlearning Dysfunction, while Part Two moves into Healing, and Part Three moves on to Growing.

Tawwab shares some hallmarks of dysfunctional families, including “forgiving and forgetting with no change in behavior, moving on as if nothing happened, covering up problems for others, denying that a problem exists, keeping secrets that need to be share, pretending to be fine, not expressing your emotions, be around harmful people, and using aggression to get what you want.”

If anything there sounds familiar, this book is for you. Honestly, I don’t know many people who couldn’t benefit from this book. I was glad to see our library has a copy and I’d like to see a copy in our digital catalog as well.

Tawwab assures us that, “It’s often said that we are a product of our environment, but we can also be a product of exposure to healthy relationships outside the home.”

I’ve heard people who grow and achieve in life to say that they had great role models or even that they found a vision of a different way of life on television or in books.

Sometimes it’s hard to know where our reactions come from, the traumas that may have shaped us, but when we’re unaware that leaves us subject to reacting without thinking. It’s therefore important to explore why we do what we do.

 “Awareness is what saves us from repeating patterns. Understanding your story is a process that unfolds over time, and your story is constantly evolving.”

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand themselves a little better and particularly to anyone who wants to make peace with difficult familial relationships in their lives. I’ve heard of so many people cutting others out of their lives these days, but I think it’s worth exploring a different way of understanding and setting boundaries first.

Happy Reading! (And Healing.)

Storymusing: Upon a Once Time

 

The theme for our book club in February was “A Retelling.” They seem to be everywhere, particularly in Young Adult literature. I was able to pull a short collection of stories from my bookshelf at home called Upon a Once Time. Unfortunately, it isn’t one that would be widely available because it came from a Kickstarter by Todd Sanders of the Air and Nothingness Press. http://aanpress.com/ Though this book was a limited run and is sold out, they have quite a catalog of other books.

If you’ve never heard of such a thing, Kickstarters for books and games have become quite common. There’s a Kickstarter page devoted to “Publishing” which says “Explore how writers and publishers are using Kickstarter to bring new literature, periodicals, podcasts, and more to life.” The proposed projects run a fascinating gamut of fiction and non-fiction, including comics, art books, zines, and so much more. You can check it out at https://www.kickstarter.com/publishing. I’ve seen both new authors, anthologies of new and established authors, and even well-established authors creating projects through Kickstarter.

I thought the cover art for this book, by Serena Malyon, was incredibly lovely, giving the feel of a fantastical yesteryear very appropriate for fairy tale retellings. Malyon is a Canadian freelance illustrator and artist. Her site calls this piece “Tokens” and says it was worked in watercolour and gouache. Its colors are muted but the picture is detailed. You can view more of her artwork on her web site at https://www.serenamalyon.com/

It’s also nice that it was an anthology, showcasing 21 different authors. I love this way of getting to experience what different authors have to offer. I might like a couple stories, really not care for one at all, then find one that I absolutely loved! It’s a great way to find new authors to follow.

There was a Tom Thumb retelling set in space, Little Tom’s Reality by Rebecca E. Treasure, that caught my attention and the twist of it was particularly poignant to me. Tom is a small child never allowed to leave his living quarters because the winds would whisk him away. His home life is not pleasant though and one night he becomes desperate to see the outside so he sneaks into his mother’s spacesuit. When he opens the airlock, it is nothing like he imagined.

Diamonds, Toads, And… Pumpkins? by Melissa Mead was delightfully humorous and yet wretchedly realistic in how women have to sometimes put up with others deciding what their existence means and what they need. It reminded me a bit of a Sir Terry Pratchett story, whose long running Discworld series borrowed heavily from fairy tales and other fantastical stories. Excellent company to be in.

I always love a good golem story. I don’t know what it is about the idea that appeals to me so much, perhaps the alien-ness of experiencing the world as a clay person, not quite human, and often fumbling. The Rabbi’s Daughter And The Golem by Alex Langer did not disappoint as a retelling of Beauty and the Beast.

If you can get your hands on a copy of this book, I highly recommend it. I still have the companion volume to read.

The theme for our book club in March is “Self-improvement” and I’ve been reading ahead. I quickly finished the audio recording of The Life-Changing Magic of NOT GIVING A F*CK: how to stop spending time you don’t have with people you don’t like doing things you don’t want to do by Sarah Knight. It’s a truly practical parody.  I’ve picked up another, more serious, self-improvement book and I’ll have lots to recommend in this area next month.

Book Review: Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution by R.F. Kuang

 

Guest review by Tarren Young

Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence:

An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution

by R.F. Kuang

 

Whose job is it to determine who is and who isn’t civilized?

It started with a bestie raving about the reviews. From that alone, I was amped up not with just a monstrous desire, but an unyielding need to read Babel by author R.F. Kuang. This fascinating book delves deep into the underpinnings of academia using an underlying magic, crackling like an unseen electrical current, to discuss colonialism in great detail.

Robin Swift is “saved” by Professor Lovell after his mother dies of cholera in Canton, China. In England, he is raised by Lovell and tutored until he is old enough to attend Oxford, where Lovell works. There, Robin meets his first real friends – Remy, Victoire, and Letty. As they learn the mysterious silver work that underpins the modern conveniences of the world they live in, the gross inequities that their work rests on are revealed and the four must make some hard decisions.

Babel, starting in the mid 1800’s, is at its core a fictional social commentary of the mindsets different classes of people held during that period. A sharp, but often jagged, line that cuts right into humanity itself. One class of people believe this, another believes that. Yet everyone benefits in some form from the academic brains and silver work, the magic that sits at the heart of Oxford, the Tower of Babel.

Even though everyone benefits, what happens at the Tower is like the old Vegas saying, “What happens at Babel, stays at Babel.” What exactly goes on at Babel? Who runs Babel? And as such, who truly benefits from Babel? What social class of people are reaping the benefits from the work at Babel?

Though some of the characters seemed to be a bit one dimensional, I feel they were portrayed that way to attest to the hierarchy hive mind of how specific social classes were viewed. Several characters seem to be more human, and that’s what this book really tries to address. Who is considered human, and who is below that status—in the mindsets of those different social classes.

Another facet of what this novel does — it seeks to understand, and deconstruct our understanding. It is an exploration to challenge preconceived notions of what the reader thinks they already know.

I willingly admit that this has been the most academic novel I have read since the early 2000’s when I was in college. And, if I’m being honest, it felt daunting at times. Some parts of the novel were fascinating, but it did not stop me from wanting to DNF (did not finish) the book at times. The one-dimensional characters fell into that consideration.

I did love learning more about a time and situation I only knew a hairs breadth about. And the later characters showed growth. There was witty and sarcastic banter! (Sarcasm may not be the high class of social acceptance for academia, but I do enjoy good sarcasm.) Despite the spots of tedium, it also seemed accessible. There were some thought-provoking twists one could not see coming that were appreciated as well.

However, in all of this, there is still something I can’t quite put my finger on about the book that made me not rate it a full four stars. (My overall rating on the book was 3.5/5 stars.) I have been wracked with it for a week, and I still have yet to come to a solid conclusion on why.

Even with this still niggling in the back of my brain, I am glad to have read it, to have learned, to challenge myself — to still think on it long into the early depths of the morning.

             

Review: Sweet Tea Witch Mysteries by Amy Boyles

 

Sweet Tea Witch Mysteries

by Amy Boyles

Well, shrimp and grits! This is a total fluff but it was just the right kind of fluff I needed to relax while driving during the holiday season. I didn’t have to focus too hard on it, just let the words wash over me.

Apparently there are 26 books in this series but Hoopla only has the first 5 on audio. Those 5 are pretty fun and a good enough series run for me. There isn’t enough depth to warrant reading more than that for me, at least not right now. I do wonder how the series has developed though, and might pick up some further along in the series at some point. I figure no writer is static in their skills and if this was good enough to enjoy now, it could get a lot better later on.

Sweet Tea Witch Mysteries are everything you expect in a paranormal cozy mystery. There’s witches and wizards, and as the series progresses there are werewolves, dragons, vampires, etc. Characters are larger than life, laugh out loud funny, and the reading gives them the perfect spin.

Pepper Dun doesn’t even know she’s a witch when the series starts but the author keeps you reading and laughing as the worst day of Pepper’s life unfolds. She loses her job, her apartment, and her boyfriend. (Sounds like a country song but it seems to me she isn’t losing much in any of those situations.) Strangely enough, she doesn’t seem too happy to find out that she’s a witch. I would be!

Then, after a wizard threatens her and a talking cat helps her escape, she sets out on the road to Magnolia Cove, Alabama. In Magnolia Cove she finds her long lost granny and a ready-made family of cousins, plus she finds out she has inherited a pet store.

One thing that confused me was how she was allergic to animals, and particularly cats, with all the big symptoms, trouble breathing, and itching, etc., but she just kind of gets over it. The writer could have at least had her grandmother create Pepper some kind of magical antihistamine. If she did, I missed it.

In book 1, she is accused of murdering the man who wanted to buy her pet store, which is pretty strange seeing as she wanted to sell it to him. She meets a handsome man named Axle and they have an instant attraction, standard stuff.

The series is a bit repetitive. There isn’t a lot of depth here, but it’s silly and fun. In book 2, her grandmother is accused of murder and in book 3 she receives a baby dragon but a magician tries to buy him and she ends up under scrutiny, again, for murder.

There are things that are trite and absolutely overdone in the type of book. It’s almost a reverse Scooby Doo where the main character IS supernatural.

However, I the southern setting and the idea of the witch owning a pet store for familiars. Her ability to read the limited thoughts of animals was a nice touch and useful in the stories.

The author did pick some unusual phrases to repeat for certain characters, like Pepper sort of sliding a shoulder down the wall in book 5. It gave me pause every time she said it. I think the author was trying to give her a character tag to repeat every time she was in a scene, but that one, along with some others at different times over the five books I read, just didn’t quite work.

Some people suggested that she must not be southern but I wouldn’t know it. She clearly loves all things southern as all her books are set there.

It’s a fun series and I’d give what I’ve read a solid 3 stars, maybe 3.5.

Some other cozy mysteries I’ve enjoyed and reviewed - 

Arsenic and Adobo by Mia P. Manansala https://storymusing.blogspot.com/2022/11/storymusing-chillers-and-thrillers.html

The Vanishing Type by Ellery Adams https://storymusing.blogspot.com/2022/05/a-merry-month-of-may-multitude-of-book.html

Little Bookshop of Murder by Maggie Blackburn https://storymusing.blogspot.com/2021/07/book-review-little-bookshop-of-murder.html

Swamp Spook: A Miss Fortune Mystery by Jana DeLeon https://storymusing.blogspot.com/2021/07/book-review-swamp-spook-miss-fortune.html

The Nina Quinn Mysteries by Heather Webber https://storymusing.blogspot.com/2021/04/book-review-nine-quinn-mysteries-by.html

Death in Avignon by Serena Kent https://storymusing.blogspot.com/2021/07/book-review-death-in-avignon-by-serena.html

The Witchcraft Mysteries by Juliet Blackwell https://storymusing.blogspot.com/2021/05/book-review-witchcraft-mysteries-by.html

Death By Dumpling: A Noodle Shop Mystery by Vivien Chien https://storymusing.blogspot.com/2021/03/book-review-death-by-dumpling-noodle.html

Say Cheese and Murder: A Lemington Cheese Company Mystery by Michelle Pointis Burns https://storymusing.blogspot.com/2020/12/book-review-say-cheese-and-murder.html

Disappearing Nightly: An Esther Diamond Novel by Laura Resnick https://storymusing.blogspot.com/2020/08/book-review-disappearing-nightly-esther.html

 

Motherducking Magic by Michelle Fox https://storymusing.blogspot.com/2020/08/book-review-motherducking-magic-by.html

Book Musing: The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill

 

Our Thematic Book Club chose “Inked” as the theme for November. Nowadays that generally has something to do with tattoos but, after thinking about what type of book I wanted to read this month and looking at the offerings, I used “Inked” to mean written and this one is tied to the Boston Public Library.

I listened to The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill, narrated by Katherine Littrell, through our Hoopla app.

The book opens with a letter to a novelist from an adoring fan, named Leo, as a prologue of sorts. It suggests that this fan has been corresponding with her for years. The relationship sounds erudite and friendly. “As for your enquiries about how my own book is coming: Well, I spent Friday at the library. I wrote a thousand words and deleted fifteen hundred.”  A piece of humor any writer could relate to.

Chapter one opens from the perspective of Freddie, a young novelist from Australia living in Boston. She is trying to write in the Boston Public Library and is finding it difficult to focus. She looks around at the people sitting at the same table she is.

One young woman “has divested her jacket to reveal full-sleeve tattoos on both arms. I’ve never been inked myself but I’m fascinated.” (I’d forgotten this character had tattoos, or “ink.”) She’s also reading a psychology text book. Is this a student or a patient? She is dubbed “Freud Girl.”

Across from her is “Heroic Chin” in a Harvard Law sweatshirt. (His name is Whit, she will soon learn.) “Handsome Man” (Cain) is also sitting at the table and she thinks he might just be a writer too.

“And then there is a scream. Ragged and terrified.”

People start murmuring, packing up to leave, but the security guards enter and demand everyone stay where they are until the situation is sorted out. (Very stagey, for my money. Reminds me of the plays I was involved in high school drama club.)

But it is effective as they sit down while a law student starts spouting off about illegal detention. There is some witty banter and the four introduce themselves. Finally the guards release them without having found the source of the scream. The four decide to get coffee together and the narrator reveals that one of the others is a killer, though she did not know it at the time.

This is, we learn, the book being written by Australian author Hannah Tigone, a mystery writer. We find this connection through another letter from Leo Johnson, the beta reader and fan. It turns out Hannah cannot travel to Boston to research her latest novel, because of Covid restrictions. Leo offers lingo at first and fact checking. Hannah also writes him into the story

Each chapter of Hannah’s book is followed by the latest correspondence from Leo, who becomes more and more invested in her novel, as Freddie’s story progresses. Eventually the reader realizes that Leo is, perhaps, a little too invested.

There are TWO mysteries-one for Hannah and one for Freddie. BOTH were engaging and kept this reader guessing. I had two suspects particularly in mind but found myself waffling between all four of the people who met in the reading room. (Yes, even the narrator at times. An unreliable narrator is an interesting story device, after all.) And also the next door neighbor character Hannah names for her pen pal, Leo.

The revelations just kept coming about all the characters. They were well spaced out and well placed in the plot to keep the story moving forward. The details of the Boston setting were highly entertaining.

I thoroughly enjoyed the layers to this story and look forward to more from this author.

Bonus, it turns out this is one of the books chosen by our Friends of the Library group for their Books Sandwiched In talks during the winter. I’m one book ahead already!

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.