Book Reviews April 2019

How To Live With Kids: A Room-By-Room Guide by Gabrielle Stanley Blair.  This book had been on my nightstand for a while.  It’s the kind of book that is fun to dip into now and then and get inspiration.  However, I was tired of it taking up space in my “to read” pile, so finished it to move it along.  It is basically a book about home décor, the best part of it being the pictures of various options.  What she does well is a sort of “Marie Kondo” approach of making sure that you consider how each space in your home can best work for you with the least amount of clutter.

The Nix by Nathan Hill.  This was the longest-residing book on my kindle, and as I was in an orderly mode, its time was up.  It is a very long read, and while reading the first half of it I was a little grumpy; however, the second half won me over.  The first half was primarily the narrator’s childhood reminiscences, and I find I’m a little resistant to so much of that.  I think the book would have been better had those parts been edited out.  But I do see why the book made it to so many top ten lists of 2017.  The narrator is Samuel Andresen-Anderson, an English professor who is not very motivated by his job or life.  He spends most of his off hours playing a video game, until one day when his mother, who left Sam and his father when he was 11-ish, is in the news for throwing a rock at a Trump-like politician.  Samuel has a publisher – for a novel that has long been in the works – and this guy gets him to go visit his mother to try to write a book about her actions.  As mentioned above, the book goes into too much detail about Samuel’s childhood; it also goes into his mother’s considerably more interesting past, and why she abandoned Samuel.  There’s also a very funny and well-written storyline that involves the star player of the video game he plays, who goes by the moniker Pwnage, and is addicted to gaming.  The writing is often very funny, and when everything starts coming together in the second half, I really liked it.  

99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret by Craig Brown.  Ugh.  I HATED this.  It is a biography, more or less, about Princess Margaret, but it becomes more about how impossible a biography is, especially a biography of a royal figure, who is so much façade to begin with.  I could easily get on board with such a metanarrative – and with 99 sections both very short and long; however, I just found Brown tiresome and annoying.  He does gimmicks where he pretends Margaret married Picasso, and there is a section or two where this topic is treated as fact.  Sometimes he did do interesting studies, such as presenting all the different viewpoints/opinions of an event.  But I found the majority of his ideas puerile and it was all I could do to make myself finish reading the book.  Don’t so torture yourselves.

Savage News by Jessica Yellin.  I follow Jessica Yellin on Instagram, and really like her stories, in which she presents the news of the day.  Her thing is to do “news not noise,” filtering out all the stories of the day in Washington that are really just noise.  I recommend her.  Anyway, Savage News is her first fiction, and it is a fun, light read.  She wanted to write a news novel that was a comedy and I’d say her book is a success.  The narrator, Natalie Savage, is a broadcaster trying to make it as a serious journalist in the world of television news.  She wants to report the facts, and her bosses want her to get her hair straightened, and report on the gossip and rumors rather than what might really be going on behind all the bluster.  She tries to please her bosses enough to not get fired, while following a real story about a disappearance of the first lady and all its political implications.  It’s a quick and fun read.

Hold Sway by Sally Ball.  I read one of my best – and oldest! -- friend’s new book of poetry this month and it was a treat.  Hold Sway is Sally’s third poetry book and it is a rich collection.  There’s so much in it to stop and think about, and when I finished it I found myself immediately returning to the first poem to start all over again.  It did not come as a surprise to me that Sally’s poetry is smart and reflective, but there was so much humor, both wry and otherwise in the book!  There are a pair of dog poems, both called “Can You Hear My Dog?” which – having a new young reader in my household, reminded me of the do you like my hat sequences from Go Dog Go.  There’s also a line about a hiking trip, in which the food carried is “lentils, lentils, lentils, quinoa!, lentils” which cracked me up.  And a poem about a Shakespeare sonnet we had to memorize in 10^th grade that ends with the BeeGees!  It is all done, too, in a thought-provoking, original, and lyrical manner.  I think my favorite is a poem called “Breaker,” in which the narrator shuts down, emotionally, like a circuit breaker powering off, switch by clicking switch.  Her topics range from being in Paris during a terrorist attack, to seeing a heron fly up and away, and listening to her daughter sing jubilantly in the car.  There’s also the wonderful poem, “Hold”, about the disturbing state of our planet and its changes in climate.  Hold Sway is an impressive book of poems that will stay with you long past your initial reading of them.

The Hollow of the Hand by PJ Harvey and Seamus Murphy.  PJ Harvey is my favorite musician of all time, and I was pleased to receive her first book of poetry as a gift.  The book is half poems, half pictures taken by the photographer, Seamus Murphy, when they were traveling in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Washington DC.  Each location has its own section in the book of poetry followed by photography.  Her poetry reads a lot like her song lyrics, which is not to denigrate either.  As I read though, I could hear her singing the words (and some of the phrases from the Washington DC section in particular appear in her album, The Hope Six Demolition Project.)  As you can imagine from the locales to which they travel, the subject matter is bleak.  Harvey is good at painting a scene in few words and closing with an image that is poignant and food for thought. 

Good Riddance by Elinor Lipman.  I adore Elinor Lipman’s books and this one does not disappoint.  Her books tend to stay on the surface, in a what-you-see-is-what-you-get manner, but she is really funny and she has a knack for setting up humorous situations.  Here, Daphne is a young woman whose marriage has ended and mother recently died.  She found out that her husband had only married her to get his trust fund money, so she is bitter about that.  Then when her mother dies, she bequeaths to Daphne a yearbook filled with notes about what all the graduates went on to be and do.  Daphne decides she doesn’t want this and puts it in the recycling bin in her Manhattan apartment building.  However, a woman down the hall finds it and decides to make a podcast out of the information.  In trying to stop her from doing so, Daphne discovers a secret her mother had been keeping.  Meanwhile too, her widowed father has moved from NH to Manhattan and is enjoying his retired life as a professional dog walker.  Daphne also starts dating an actor who lives next door.  She frequently travels to NH regarding the information from the yearbook, and it is all an amusing farce. 

Book Reviews March 2019

The Clockmaker’s Daughter by Kate Morton.  I really enjoyed reading this.  It is very much a Kate Morton novel, in that there are multiple parallel storylines going on that all take place in different times but share a connection.  In this novel the connection is a house out in the countryside in England that was first an artist’s retreat in the late 1800’s, and then a school for girls in the early 1900’s, and then a refuge for a family whose home was bombed in London in WWII.  The daughter of the title, who is one of the main narrators, is a ghost (which you learn right away so I’m not being a spoiler in revealing it).  She, known as Lily, was the muse of the painter who lived in the house in the 1860’s, and was trapped there after an incident which had reverberations for years to come.  It’s hard to explain without giving too much away, so I won’t.  But all of the characters are interesting and well written and it is easy to get invested in their stories and fun to piece all the parts together.  I recommend.

My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite. I kept hearing good things about this book and was not disappointed.  It’s a light, quick read – more a novella – and simply done.  Korede is the narrator, and she is a hard-working nurse at a hospital in Nigeria.  She is the opposite in looks and temperament from her sister, Ayoola, who is a beautiful serial killer.  When the book begins, Korede has been called to clean up after Ayoola’s third murder.  As her sister’s caretaker, she does, but when Ayoola shifts her attentions to a doctor at the hospital at which Korede works – and a doctor who Korede has feelings for – Korede is torn between helping her sister stay out of trouble and helping the doctor.  It is fast-paced and stripped down.

My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman. This is the third Fredrik Backman novel I’ve read and I am quite fond of them.  His books are sweettarts – sugary treats with a sour narrator and generally happy endings.  This book follows the tradition of A Man Called Ove, and Britt-Marie was Here, in that they have a slightly on the spectrum narrator who likes things just so.  In this case, however, the narrator is a 7 year old, Elsa, who is teased at school for her oddness and rigidity, and who has a wild granny she adores.  Her granny is fighting cancer, and leaves Elsa a series of letters to deliver to various people in her neighborhood, who then tell Elsa their story.  Britt-Marie lives in Elsa’s building (her novel comes after this one in sequence), and is as OCD as ever, making sure people don’t put signs up or let their dogs bark, etc.  I thought it would be a good novel to read after reading about a serial killer, and I was right.  It’s fun, and although Backman definitely has a formula, his books are quirky and enjoyable.  I will continue to read them.

Stranger Diaries by Elly Griffiths.  This was a fun ghost story/thriller read.  It's a "stand alone" book and not part of any of Griffiths' series.  Clare is a high school teacher and is also working on a book about an author of a famous ghost story.  A fellow teacher and friend of Clare's is murdered, and the whole community is thrown for a loop.  When a second teacher is next to die, things get serious!  The point of view rotates between Clare, her teenage daughter, Georgie, and Harbinder Kaur, the detective in charge of the case.  Interspersed throughout is also the full text of the ghost story, which begins to run parallel to the events Clare is living through.  I did figure out who the murderer was pretty early on -- and if I did, then all of you will figure it out much faster -- but that did not inhibit my enjoyment of the book.

Book Reviews February 2019

Lethal White by Robert Galbraith.  This is the fourth Cormoran Strike/Robin Ellacott mystery novel by J.K. Rowling, and I found it as delightful as the first three.  It is thick and meaty and slow-going in a good way – I was very excited to read a few chapters each night, and was sorry when it was over.  It begins more or less a year after where the third novel left off – Robin has married Michael, and is recovering from her serial killer attack.  She is back at work with Cormoran, and they get a new case figuring out who is blackmailing Jasper Chiswell, a member of parliament.  Robin goes undercover and works in Chiswell’s parliament office, while Strike chases down other leads.  Chiswell has many adult children and a wife and ex-wives, and all seem to be working at cross purposes.  Plus the Olympics are underway in London, and Michael is as displeased as ever with Robin’s job.  Like all in this series, it’s a very detailed, slow-paced and satisfying read.

Everything Under by Daisy Johnson.  I had heard good things about this book, which was nominated for a Booker, but it wasn’t the book for me.  I should begin with my pet peeve, which is when people write a novel with the events all out of sequence for no reason whatsoever.  Now when this is done well, I love it, but I feel it is too often used as a crutch to disguise a weak narrative.  This novel is basically a re-writing of the Oedipus story in present day time, and the narration is mostly that of Gretel, a woman who has just found her mother after a 16-year disappearance.  Her mother now is senile and doesn’t understand who she is or that Gretel is her adult daughter.  We get flashbacks to their life together on a houseboat, and Gretel tries to work out why her mother disappeared suddenly from her life ten years previously.  Then we also get chapters from the point of view of Margot, who transitions to Martin, and who ran away from home because a neighbor predicted he’d kill his father and sleep with his mother.  All of this could, possibly, have worked, but I didn’t like any of the characters, fitting together the back and forth timeline was annoying, and although most of it takes place on the river Avon in England, the locale of it all was strangely generic.  Plus Gretel steals a dog and then later on loses him, and is not at all bothered by this.  Sigh.

Watching You by Lisa Jewell. This was a really good read.  It takes place in a small town outside of London, and the chapters switch back and forth between Joey, a young woman newly married and recently returned from living abroad, and who is trying to get her life together and be a more responsible adult; Jenna, a high schooler who is living with a mother with mental illness that manifests itself in paranoia; and Freddie, a high schooler on the spectrum, and the son of the head superintendent of the local school.  When the novel begins, someone has been murdered, and it is someone connected to Tom, Freddie’s father, a charismatic and successful man.  Everyone is watching everyone else:  Freddie takes pictures of people in the town from his window, Tom seems to be watching two high school girls in particular, Jenna’s mom thinks the whole world is in on some spying conspiracy involving her, etc. etc.  There are layers and layers of watching, all skillfully done, and it is fun trying to figure out when the watching is nefarious and who is guilty of what.  It’s well written and very enjoyable.

Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch.  I didn’t like this one.  Apparently, it is the first of a series, but I won’t be reading the rest.  It’s about a young London policeman, who one day out on patrol sees a ghost hanging around the scene of a crime.  Because of this ability, he becomes an apprentice in a kind of hidden police version of the ministry of magic, and is taught about the magic underworld existing in tandem.  They also then are working to figure out why there are so many murders committed by non-criminals.  There’s this whole plot about all the murders acting out old Punch & Judy puppet shows, and then the young policeman is also meeting all the gods of London’s rivers, etc. etc.  It was clever, and the writing wasn’t bad, per se, it just came across to me as an exercise.  I was glad when I finished the book.

The Lost Man by Jane Harper.  I loved this book and highly recommend it.  She is such a good writer.  This is her third book, and whereas the first two had characters in common, this one is “stand alone.”  It’s about a ranching family in the way outback in Australia, where the sun is so hot that you can’t be outside without a water supply nearby.  It begins with Nathan learning that his younger brother Cameron has died from such a fate.  Cameron was an experienced rancher, though, and shouldn’t have been defeated by the elements.  Things get even stranger when they discover that his car, stocked with food and water and working air conditioner, was nearby.  The police expect it was a suicide, but something doesn’t add up.  Nathan has a farm nearby, but he goes to stay at the main homestead with his extended family, and they all try to piece together what happened.  Nathan is working through his own difficult path, so that often the title refers to him as much as to Cameron.  The writing is so wonderful!  Harper is so good at creating interesting characters and then shaping them subtly.  It’s well-paced and fascinating and I loved it from beginning to end.  Read this book!

Book Reviews January 2019

Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver.  I really enjoyed this novel.  It flips back and forth from a family in the present day living in a ramshackle house in Vineland, NJ, to a family living perhaps in the same house 100 years earlier.  In the present day, Willa is a middle-aged woman whose family is having financial difficulties.  Her husband is a professor whose job keeps getting downsized, her son is a widower with a newborn, and her daughter is a hipster with leftwing beliefs that tend toward the extreme.  Willa is not where she thought she’d be at this point in life, and the house they inherited is falling apart around her.  She starts doing research to see if they can declare it of historical value, and discovers that a famous scientist who corresponded with Darwin, Mary Treat, might have lived there.  Meanwhile the reader knows Mary Treat lived next door, since we are also privy to the situation of Thatcher, a young teacher and Darwinist who is trying to support his wife and her mother and sister, in the manner to which they would like to be accustomed.  He is trying to teach a more modern science in the high school there, but comes up against the founder of Vineland, a bit of a tyrant.  It has a welcoming, leisurely pace and Kingsolver of course does a great job of creating a world both factual and fiction and connecting it to what is going on today (there are many interesting connections between Trump and the tyrants of yore).  I recommend. 

At The Water’s Edge by Sara Gruen.  This was a pleasant, light read – nothing spectacular but it is fun in a tense way.  When the book begins, it is WWII and the young Maddie and her husband and best friend are living a rich alcoholic kind of life in Philadelphia,  Ellis and Hank tried to enlist in the army, but couldn’t, and the three of them are dealing with scorn from those who think they are cowards.  Ellis’s father was involved years ago in a discredited search for the Loch Ness monster, so on a drunken whim, the three end up crossing the ocean during wartime (and getting shot at), and end up in Scotland looking for the beast.  Maddie soon realizes that she didn’t know her husband as well as she had thought, and that he has all sorts of nefarious plans he is trying to bring to fruition.  Meanwhile, she becomes close to the owners and workers in the small guesthouse in which they are staying.  It’s a fun, fluffy, yet also tense romp.

This Close To Happy: A Reckoning With Depression by Daphne Merkin.  This was a more “enjoyable” read than I had guessed it would be, since the subject is Merkin’s life-long depression, which has had her in and out of institutions since childhood.  She is an excellent writer, though, and begins with her fascinatingly odd childhood as one of six kids born to wealthy Park Avenue parents who don’t seem at all interested in having or caring for children.  She and her siblings have thus struggled emotionally all their lives.  Merkin examines the beginnings of her depression as a young child, and explores honestly, it seems to me, how it was only when she was depressed that her mother would care for her.  It’s an honest and interesting exploration of her condition and how it has affected her personal and professional life.

Behind Closed Doors by B. A. Paris.  This was a really fun thriller to read!  I recommend.  One has to suspend disbelief a bit, but if willing to do so it won’t disappoint.  Jack and Grace seem to have the perfect marriage.  Jack is a wealthy lawyer, and a doting husband, who seems like he’d do anything for Grace and her disabled sister, Millie.  About a third into the book, however, you discover that all is not what it seems.  And all is pretty horrific!  I can’t say more without giving it away, but it is well-done and tense and very fun, subject-matter notwithstanding.

Since We Fell by Dennis Lehane.  This is the first Dennis Lehane book I’ve read and it has made me curious about the rest.  The first half of the book is about Rachel, a young woman who is trying to learn the secret of who her father might be, since her mother will not tell her.  She becomes a journalist, and investigates many leads.  She then becomes a successful television journalist, until her stint in Haiti causes her to have a breakdown live on TV.  So the first half of the book is establishing who Rachel is, and I found her compelling and the novel interesting.  But then!  Then all of a sudden she gets an inkling that her husband is not who he says he is.  She starts investigating what he has told her and then the rest of the book is this amazing fast-paced thriller, in which she discovers secret after secret, many of which are dangerous.  It is an exciting read, although I am still trying to piece together some of what happened.  I couldn’t put it down.

Astrophysics for People In A Hurry by Neil DeGrasse Tyson.  I know nothing about physics, sadly, and not much about astrophysics either.  I’m not sure I’m “in a hurry”, but I definitely needed to start with the basics, and Tyson does a good job doing that.  He’s a good conversational writer, and also good at putting things in layman’s terms. I think I’d fail a test on the material, but I happily read a chapter each night, and enjoyed trying to wrap my mind around what he was explaining.

Inheritance by Dani Shapiro.  I really enjoyed Dani Shapiro’s writing, and would like to read some of her other memoirs.  This one centers around two years ago when she does the Ancestry DNA test and discovers from the results that her half sister is not related to her.  She begins investigating why her father is not her biological father – her parents are both dead so she has to figure it all out for herself.  She remembers a conversation she had in her twenties with her mother, who mentioned a fertility institute in Philadelphia, so Shapiro pieces it together – and somewhat amazingly figures out who her real father is in the course of two hours.  The rest of the book is her contacting her biological father, a man much different from the orthodox Jewish father who raised her.  Shapiro is smart and calm and explores all aspects of her new information, how it answers questions she always had about herself growing up (the only blonde in the family), and how it affects her sense of self and family.  It’s a very good read.

Book Reviews December 2018

Becoming by Michelle Obama.  I was looking forward to reading this and enjoyed it even more than I thought I would:  Michelle Obama is a very good story-teller.  She starts from the beginning, writing a lot about her childhood growing up on Chicago’s South Side, in a family that gave her and her brother a lot of support.  I wasn’t surprised that she is who she is, after seeing how she grew up.  She writes poignantly about the death of her father, and hilariously about the meeting of young Barack.  It was really interesting to see things from an insider’s point of view, even if occasionally some of her descriptions of her FLOTUS initiatives could be a little longwinded toward the end.  It was an inspiring read and I highly recommend it.

Sabrina by Nick Drnaso.  This is a graphic novel that (I think) was on the short list for the Booker prize — or nearly so.  It was hard to get ahold of, and I read tons of high praise for it before beginning it myself.  So perhaps that is why I remained a bit indifferent to it.  It’s a good story and an interesting read, and I did see the advantages that a graphic novel can have over a “regular” novel, in the scenes that it can show without committing to words.  I guess what left me slightly underwhelmed was how things were wrapped up at the end.  I wanted a bit more umph, somehow.  The novel begins with a woman, Sabrina, petsitting for her parents.  In the next chapter, we learn that Sabrina has disappeared in what seems like a kidnapping type crime.  Her boyfriend has had a nervous breakdown and shows up at an old childhood friend’s house.  The friend,  Calvin Wrobel, is really the main character of the book.  He is in the military, and is dealing with having been left by his wife and child, who now live many states away in Florida.  Anyway, Calvin is nice to the boyfriend, who lies in bed and listens to conspiracy theories on right-wing radio, getting more and more radicalized.  The theories start co-opting the disappearance of Sabrina, and Calvin has to try to talk his friend off a ledge.  It was good and I would read more from Drnaso; I just had built it up too much before reading.

Cockfosters by Helen Simpson.  Short stories are not my favorite genre, but Helen Simpson is my favorite short story writer by far (I guess second would be Lorrie Moore and Alice Munro).  I really like her style of writing, and more so, I like her topics.  She is my age, so her characters are now similarly aged women dealing with the trials and tribulations and realizations that come with one’s late forties and early fifties.  Many of these stories are two women talking — on a train, or in a restaurant — and they are witty and insightful and moving.  Her story collections are always on my must-read list.

Grief Is The Thing With Feathers by Max Porter.  This is an odd little book, and I wasn’t sure while I was reading whether or not it was fiction or nonfiction.  I still am not.  It is about a man with two young sons whose wife dies unexpectedly.  The characters are four — the man, his two sons, and Ted Hughes’s crow, who is there to torment and help the family.  The prose is often poetic, and Porter marks each section with who is speaking, Father, Sons, Crow.  Crow puts up with the grief for awhile, but then he is having none of it.  There is even an appearance or two by Ted Hughes.  It’s interesting, and a very quick read, although I’m not 100 percent convinced of its success.

Book Reviews November 2018

The Witch Elm by Tana French.  Tana French’s novels are always wonderful and this one is no exception.  It is different from the rest in that it is not from a detective’s point of view.  It takes place in Ireland, though, and involves crimes.  The narrator is Toby, a guy who for the first 30 or so years of his life has lead a charmed one.  He has a good job in Dublin and a good girlfriend and all is well.  But then one night he wakes up and finds burglars in his living room and is viciously beaten by them.  He finds himself a changed man, and the head injuries don’t help.  While in recovery, he goes to live with a beloved uncle.  He and his two cousins spent their summers living with this uncle, and when the uncle is diagnosed with brain cancer, Toby – with his life on hold anyway – is designated as the one to help.  While there, however, a body is discovered in a hole in the witch elm in the back yard.  The Dublin Murder Squad comes and Toby ends up a prime suspect.  Toby and his cousins work to discover what really happened, and it’s a fascinating mix of chance and secrets and circumstance.  All throughout, too, Toby muses on the notion of luck and fortune.  It’s a great read.

Sometimes I Lie by Alice Feeney.  This was a really fun read with a powerful twist in the middle.  The novel begins with the narrator giving the reader three facts, but the third one is “Sometimes I lie.”  So of course as you read you have to keep in mind her unreliability.  Also when the novel begins, the narrator, Amber, is in a coma and narrating what happens as she drifts in and out of consciousness.  These moments are interspersed with a childhood diary.  It’s a well-done premise, especially when halfway through the book something is revealed that changes everything.  I recommend.

Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty.  I love Liane Moriarty’s novels!  She’s a good writer and a good story-teller, and her characters are always so likeable in interesting ways.  I’d say this is one of her best novels yet.  It begins with Frances, a delightful fifty year old woman who is on her way to a ten-day spa stay at Tranquillum House in the country in Australia.  Frances is a romance novelist and is recovering from a romantic scam perpetrated on her by someone she met on the internet.  She is humiliated, but jolly and wry.  The other eight strangers are all clients who are at Tranquillum House for this retreat.  We meet them all – from an ex football player, to a family in grief over the death of their son, to the somewhat crazed director of the resort, who has her own agenda.  It is a funny and poignant read and I enjoyed it immensely throughout.

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker.  At the risk of having too many good reviews in a row, I loved Pat Barker’s new book as well.  She is one of my favorite authors, and this novel reminded me of her WWI trilogy, which first got me hooked.  Unexpectedly, it takes place during the Trojan war and the narrator is Briseis, a young queen of a Trojan city who becomes a slave when Achilles and company ransack the town.  The novel is about the women who are the spoils of war, and what exactly it is like to go from luxury to slavery.  Briseis “belongs” to Achilles after he won the city, but Agamemnon claims Briseis when he is forced to return his own female slave to her father.  Because of this, Achilles and his Myrmidons stop fighting and the Trojans gain ground over the Greeks.  Briseis is smart, and an observer, and she is trying her hardest to figure out how to make this terrible situation work for her.  She wants to have agency over her own story and fate.  It was a really wonderful book; now I need to go re-read the Iliad.

The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend by Katarina Bivald.  At first this book made me a little grumpy with its cuteness and obviousness of plot.  But by the end my cold heart grew a size or two and I’m willing to admit that it has its moments:  in general, however, it is just not my kind of book.  Sara is a woman from Sweden, who when the book begins has landed in Broken Wheel, Iowa, a depressed town in the middle of nowhere with not much going for it, to visit a penpal named Amy.  She discovers that Amy has died, but stays on in the town for a while, and gets to know the inhabitants she has heard so much about already via letter.  Sara is a booklover who used to work in a bookstore, so she decides she will set up a store of sorts in the downtown and give away Amy’s books.  She believes there is a book for everyone, and nothing a book can’t fix.  There are Romances and Realizations and several meet cutes.

Book Reviews October 2018

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik.  I loved this book!  It was even better than herUprooted, and that was a book so good I was jealous not to have written it myself.  This one has some similarities, in that it is very fairy tale-esque.  Novik takes from Rumpelstiltskin the bit about the girl having to turn straw into gold and runs with it.  What she ends up with is this wonderful story of strong women who save their town, country, people, selves using their own smarts and bravery.  Miryem is the daughter of a poor money-lender in a small village.  Her father is too nice to be a good money lender, and when her mother gets sick, Miryem decides she will collect the debt owed to her father.  She becomes so successful at it, that she catches the eye of the king of the Staryk, a winter people who live in a parallel universe to Miryem.  The king sees Miryem making money and wants her to change his silver into gold.  There’s also Wanda, a servant who Miryem helps, and who helps her and her parents in return, and Irina, a princess who has to defeat a demon and save her kingdom.  It’s wonderful! It was such a fun and compelling read – I plan to give it to my nieces with November birthdays. J

Calypso by David Sedaris.  I had been warned that this book was a bit more melancholy than some of his previous work, but I liked it the better for that.  Sedaris is always funny – and he continues to be so in Calypso – but he is also an excellent writer, and I think his writing skills were highlighted in this book where his topics tend more to the bittersweet.  As always, he is a master at the turn of phrase, and weeks later I am still laughing to myself at his wording.  I recommend. 

Holy Ghost by John Sandford.  I’m a big fan of John Sandford’s Virgil Flowers mysteries, although I can’t quite articulate what it is I like about them.  They are ordinary, yet entertaining, and it is fun to watch the smart, Virgil Flowers, who is a secret thinker who doesn’t take himself too seriously, piece together another Minnesota mystery.  This one takes place in Wheatfield, MN, a town that has recently had two Virgin Mary sightings in their church.  The sightings have revitalized a dying town, and so when a sniper starts shooting people, the town both wants to apprehend the murderer and keep their new tourist business intact.  Virgil sets to figuring it out. 

Transcription by Kate Atkinson.  Kate Atkinson and Pat Barker are two of my top-five favorite authors, and both have new novels out.  The whole time I was reading this one, I kept thinking I was reading the new Pat Barker – it is very Pat Barker in theme and tone!  It was a really interesting read and, like I often do with Atkinson’s novels, I plan to read it again very soon.  Her writing is so good and has zero clutter, so I think it is often easy to miss details I’d like to note.  Transcription is a spy novel that takes place during WWII and in the decade after.  Juliet Armstrong is a wonderful main character!  She’s smart, and brave, with a really wry sense of humor.  She works for MI5 as a transcriber during the war.  She types conversations that occur in an adjacent apartment between another spy and British supporters of Hitler.  She’s also occasionally sent into the field, as it were, as a young third Reich supporter, Iris Carter-Jenkins.  This is half of the book.  The other half, interspersed with the war scenes, are in the 1950’s when Juliet is working for the BBC putting together educational radio programs.  She had her own share of trauma during the war, and is finding that it is hard to completely leave the MI5 – there is always one more favor she can do for them.  It was a fascinating read and, as always with Atkinson (and Barker!), well done.