Saturday, December 31, 2016

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick (1962)

This was just on my list of classic audio books to listen to and it turned out to be a strange alternate history. Unintentionally keeping to my WWII theme this year, Dick looked into the possibility that Japan and Germany had won the war and America was split between the two countries. It was interesting to see white Americans as lower class. The politics was to too confusing as though I know some of the Nazi officials, I don't remember their roles, so much of that conversation was lost on me, but Goebbles and Goring are powerful men in this version of history.

The other main strangeness, was that an author in this alternate timeline has written a book about the U.S. and Britain winning - and his book seems to be very popular. At the end of the book there seems to be a major understanding what the book within the book is saying, but I did not get it and did not like to book enough to reread/re-listen to figure it out.

We follow a few characters: 
Frank Frank, a secret Jew that is a skilled metal worker gets fired and starts a small business with a friend making unique jewelry. I thought this was going to play out more but was unsure what the jewelry of the time was. 
The antiques dealer discovers that many of his antiques are not originals, but great reproductions. He ends up taking the jewelry on consignment and is trying to provide unique gifts to a Japanese official who wants to impress a Swedish businessman.
Then there are the two I just mentioned with another Japanese general coming in from Japan - there were SD guys who wanted to kill them and they were planning some sort of revolution.
Then finally there is Frank's ex-wife who is in Colorado and who hooks up with this Italian guy. Again, not clear what she was all about.

Now that I've read this, I found out there are at least two seasons of this as a series by Amazon. I might look into it.



The Last Mile by David Baldacci (2016)

I like Amos Decker and like watching him return to the world slowly. There is an ex-football player theme here as well as a racial one, going back to the 1950's and 60's in the South when cruel racial crimes were perpetrated. We get to think again about capital punishment.

Melvin Mars is supposed to get executed for murdering his parents, but Amos gets interested in the case when he finds a lot of similarities to his own life - both with promising careers cut short by tragedy. In both cases someone came forward years later confessing to the murders. Why? 

As always, Baldacci provides a suspenseful read.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (2014)

This is the Common Read book for our university this year. We created a display around the themes in the book at the library, so I thought it would be a good thing to read this dystopian novel.

In the beginning, I wasn't that impressed, but towards the end the book grabbed me. Actor Author dies on stage while playing King Lear, a young paramedic jumps up on stage to try to save him, an 8-year-old girl Kirsten watches all this happen. We follow Jeevan the paramedic through the early stages of the epidemic - he gets a call from a doctor friend who works in a hospital who tells him to get out, this flu is unprecedently fast and lethal. Jeevan purchases numerous shopping carts of water, groceries, and supplies from a corner store and lugs them up to his wheelchair-bound brother, and the two of them hole up. Then the story wanders between the past, present and 15 and 20 years after the end of civilization. Jeevan ends up being a doctor in a small community and Kirsten travels with a troupe of entertainers. They encounter a town taken over by someone calling himself the Prophet and end up in the Museum of Civilization.

Barkskins by Annie Proulx (2016)

Whew! I don't know the last time I read one of these multigenerational novels spanning over 300 years. There was one like this about the French and Americans in Viet Nam that I read many years ago, and James Michener was known for these sagas, but I don't think I ever read one.

This was the saga of two families, but even more the saga of the deforestation of North America. I was driving through the beautiful tree covered hills of the southern tier of New York State while listening to the final part of this book. Those forests look healthy from my car, but I realize I have seen very few old growth trees - maybe the redwoods in Muir Woods National Monument north of San Francisco. And of course, we don't live in sync with the forest any longer as the Native Americans or First People's did.

The book starts with two French orphan boys who are indentured to work for a nasty guy in Nova Scotia cutting trees in 1695. The deforestation starts with Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, along the St. Lawrence, Maine. Other loggers are working their way through New York and Pennsylvania. This story takes us to the white pines of Michigan - that seem endless at the beginning - and then out to the NW U.S., and even the ancient kauri trees of New Zealand.

We get alternate stories of Rene Sel and Charles Duke (Duque).

I learned so many interesting historical facts about Boston, Detroit and Chicago, besides the lives of Native Americans and the tree story. This was such a huge tome, that I will just pull out a few things that stood out:

  • Travel by ship was done by many of the characters - I think only one character went down in a shipwreck - and that was on Lake Erie.
  • Fascinating was the trip to China in the 1700's - it took months and then they would have to wait months for the right winds to come around for their return trip. China would no let them wander freely, but they had to live in a special compound for foreigners. China had already destroyed their forests, but the rich had special gardens with trees.
  • Life in logging camps was hard and dangerous.
  • How Chicago became such an important center.
  • Native Americans living off the forest vs. whites feeling that the forest needs to be tamed, chopped down and land used for agriculture - they considered the Indians lazy for "just" hunting and gathering.
  • The Europeans kept destroying land by destroying forests and then trying to grow crops on insufficient land - all the way West. They even used the Bible as an excuse for this - something about man over nature.
  • I do not have a clear sense of how the Forest Service evolved, though they get mentioned and what they have done to stop deforestation, restore things to their natural ways and how far we have gotten.
I am sure I had more to say, but I left off here and it will have to be enough. Great book!

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Chasing Sunsets by Karen Kingsbury (2015)

Sighhh. I cannot wrap my mind around this world view, and I know it is the world view of many of my fellow countrymen. I can more easily accept some strange world with different parameters created by a science fiction or fantasy writer, than one where everything is controlled by a specific flavor of god and angels with a mission. I should write down my own beliefs at some point, as there is a sense of a higher power, a connectedness, fate to some extent, and even guardian angels, but very different from the ones portrayed here.

I realized I had to give this book up after one CD. There is a baseball star Marcus, who is supposed to father an important future messenger, but only if Mary Catherine stays well enough (she has a genetic medical condition) to bear the child. Then there are gang members who are supposed to kill Marcus, the baseball coach and his family, and a youth center, that seemed to be created with a lot of good intentions, though the conversations at the opening did not convince me they had thought it all through. Though the story may be good, it is not for me.

Monday, October 24, 2016

Stars of Fortune by Nora Roberts (2015)

Been a while since I've read a Nora Roberts book (I have to be reading at least one a month to catch up will all she's written, but then I don't need to read them all - not something to aspire to on this author.) This is the first of the Guardians Trilogy and is high on the magic scale - magic again being the central focus that brings the three couples together. Three moon goddesses created three stars of fire, ice and water for a new queen. The evil goddess cast a spell on the stars so that they fell at some point, though well hidden. These six seekers - each most likely from a family of seekers - are to find them and restore them to the Glass Island, whatever that might be, and somehow have to stand up to the evil one. It is just the excuse to bring these six strangers together in beautiful settings doing interesting things.

Sasha starts off the story by dreaming of the other five and drawing from her dreams. She is an artist from NC and the seer that will guide them on their quest and that brings them together in Corfu, an island off Greece, for the first adventure. The rest know they are seeking the stars from family lore, but seeing themselves in Sasha's drawings convinces them all quickly that they belong to this team. Bran is a magician from Ireland and her love interest, her protector. Riley is an archaeologist who is world savvy and gets them the great villa to stay in through connections. I liked that they had to take time out of their adventures to take care of the place and figure out who cooks, who cleans, etc. Sawyer they pick up hitchhiking. He is handy with his hands and a drifter. Annika just appears on the beach one night and is not of this world, very innocent. I guessed who she was within minutes of meeting her. Doyle is another Irishman, the last to join the group and still mostly a mystery at the end of the story, but there are two more books to go. Heavy magic not my favorite in Roberts' books, but I do like this grouping of people, so want to read the rest of the trilogy sooner rather than later.

Monday, October 10, 2016

Journey to Munich by Jacqueline Winspear (2016)

And we continue the WWII theme of the year. I read two of the first Masie Dobbs books and I promised myself to pick up some more, as I liked her. This is many years later, she has lived through a lot, luckily enough of her back story is told throughout the book.

It is 1938. Maisie has returned to London after helping wounded soldiers in Spain. She is staying with a long time friend, looking for a place of her own as a widow. Her old friends at secret service contact her and ask her to bring an important British businessman out of Munich, out of Dachau prison. She is to pretend she is the man's daughter. Masie reluctantly takes on the task and, of course, things don't go as planned. The Germans toy with her, asking her to return to Nazi headquarters numerous times. Then the person they bring out of Dachau is not the right one. Plus she has been given another task by a rich Englishman to bring his daughter back home. The plot is complex with Germans, Brits, Canadians and an American. All set in pre-war Germany. During the story Germany annexes Austria and Maisie keeps feeling that something is very wrong in Munich though it is in beautiful Bavaria - e.g. she sees two little girls playing in a deserted alley, so their families would not see them. They are not allowed to play together, as one of them is Jewish. This unease is well justified as we know the future events. She does face real danger, but in her usual composed way, deals with it.

I really should read some of the other Maisie Dobbs books. It was seven years ago that I read the first two - http://mairasbooks.blogspot.com/2009_04_01_archive.html


Monday, September 19, 2016

Secret Chord by Geraldine Brooks (2015)

Another amazing book by Geraldine Brooks. This time she takes the old testament story of David, you know the one who killed  Goliath? and turns it into a rich book about Jewish history and those times. I don't think I ever got very far with reading the Old Testament, but I did read the Latvian translations of Stefan Andres' Bībeles stāsts (Story of the Bible, not sure of the original language.) I read it as a child, but I got through all the main stories of the Bible and I remember thinking there was an inordinate amount of bloodshed. I needed to know the stories that are so much a part of our culture, but I am sure it also turned me off to the Bible's interpretation of God and his judgements.

Anyway, this story is told by Nathan, the seer and adviser to David who is one of the few people David trusts throughout his life. Nathan is a shepherd, when David and his exiled troops come upon him. David's troops kill Nathan's father for not providing them with supplies, and Nathan goes into a trance and proclaims that David will be king and starts traveling with them - learning to fight but eventually also learning to read and write and thus becoming a wise man. I knew that King David was a major figure in the Bible, but here Geraldine Brooks created a whole novel around what may have been - all the family intrigues, all the wives, the fighting and bloodshed, betrayals, God's (always referred to as the Name in the book). From what I gather in the Wikipedia, she has taken all the people in the story from the Bible and just extrapolated. Some have suggested that David's relationship with Jonathan was more than platonic love, so Brooks makes it an intense physical attraction. All the wives are in the book, but of course the one that I knew about was Bathsheba, though I did not remember that wise Soloman was her son. So David sleeps with her and then has her husband killed, so she doesn't have to be stoned for adultery. Here Nathan prophesies, that David will have to pay fourfold for this sin - he loses the first son with Bathsheba, his daughter Tamar is raped by her half brother and his two oldest sons are eventually killed. David has indulged his older sons, but Soloman is taken under the wing of Nathan who teaches him wisely. At one point David is looking for a new place to be the center of his kingdom, and finds a well defendable town that becomes Jerusalem. Besides being a great warrior, strategist and fair king, he is also a great musician and composes many songs in his life. Yes, songs of David ring a bell - aha - many of the psalms. So this is just the story one can already find in the Bible (though historians are doubting the validity of the whole story) and Brooks makes us feel the times with a rich description of the climate, sounds, sights and smells, as well as an insight into many of the characters. Just wow!

I like Geraldine Brooks enough that I actually bought the book, but never seemed to pick it up to read, so I actually listened to it in audio. She chose different spellings and pronunciations of the names, but since I have misplaced the book, I used the common names and spellings. If I find my print copy, I will edit this.

Sunday, August 28, 2016

It Was a Dark and Silly Night... (2003)

Comics by Lemony Snicket, William Joyce, Neil Gaiman, and more! Ed. by Art Spiegelman & Francoise Mouly.

We were looking at comics and graphic novels for a display at the library and I picked this up randomly. What a delight! 14 authors/illustrators were asked to create something on the topic "It was a dark and silly night..." and the results were entertaining. The authors I was familiar with seemed familiar in their approach, e.g. Lemony Snicket and Neil Gaiman. Some told a story, some made a game out of it - order the panels in the right order, find the differences, fill in the story with your own random nouns, verbs, etc. or even finding items by Where's Waldo author.

Monday, August 22, 2016

Chestnut Street by Maeve Binchy (2014)

I hope I find where I started to review this feel good book about various people that live on Chestnut Street. But since I haven't so far, I will just say that Maeve Binchy just makes me feel good. She looks at young and old, people with secrets, problems, and just normal folks and intertwines them in a wonderful way. The one that I remember even months later was a taxi driver. He picks up a happy couple one night, but then some time later takes the guy to meet another woman and sees the first woman become lonely and sad over time. No one really paid attention to him as the driver, but he sees other people's lives, as his routes go through this neighborhood quite often.

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Woman with a Secret by Sophie Hannah (2014)

I should have stopped when I realized this book was compared to Gone Girl, which I stopped reading, and The Girl on the Train, which I finished, but felt very disconcerted being in this woman's mind. Once again, I did not want to be in Nicki Clements' mind, who had a hard childhood and became a constant liar. She gets pulled in as a suspect the murder of vicious columnist Damon Blundy because she avoids the road check by his house after the murder, though she has never met the man. She has her secrets - online affairs and more - but loves her family - husband and two kids. Very disconcerting to be in her mind. But much of the book is about the other characters surrounding the Blundy murder, so I did want to find out who finally killed him in that bizarre manner. I found myself agreeing with one colorful character's eccentric explanation of relationships. I liked the Detective Simon Waterhouse and his wife Officer Charlie Zeiler, so I may try something else in their series, but not for a while. 

In the olden days - 15-20 years ago or so - communication between people would have been depicted with letters and phone calls. In today's world, it is emails and Twitter comments. What didn't work in the audio book was hearing all the headers to these. If I was reading, I would jump over those, maybe note the date and time, and get to the message. In audio, they read it all and it was hard to focus on the conversation.

(The US version of this book came out in 2015). 

Sunday, July 24, 2016

Blood and Circuses by Kerry Greenwood (1994)

No. 6 in the delightful Phryne Fisher series. It starts with the murder of a circus performer - a hermaphrodite Mr. Christopher - Chris/Cross or Christine. (Christine Christopher? Really?). Phryne gets involved as her half gypsy friend Alan Ray and his carny friends come to her to figure out why Farrell's Circus is having a long spate of bad luck. To figure this out, she has to become part of the circus. Phryne challenges her self (as does the author of her character we find out in the post-book interview) to do without her elegant surroundings, servants, money and status. She is bored, so enjoys the excitement of learning a new skill - standing up on a moving horse, being kept up by the centrifugal force at a certain speed around the circus ring. Greenwood herself has learned this skill and used it deftly in her narrative.

It was fun learning about the circus - the hierarchies, the friendships, how this motley crew manage to live together for extended periods of time. A reminder that dwarfs and other "freaks" had few career alternatives. This book seemed relevant in the current transgender conversation. One of the policemen keeps saying that is was good that "it" was killed, and his boss keeps correcting him.

The plot is complex as usual, but brings together all the disparate pieces in the end. There are a couple of gangs in Melbourne, that the police hope won't get as bad as in Chicago. (Sometimes when I finish listening to a book and don't feel like going on to another immediately, I will start re-listening to the book from the beginning, picking up on clues that were there. On the second listen I realized the gang piece was much more important to the plot than I originally realized.) There's Lizard Elsie who curses up a storm, but takes care of constable Tommy Harris. Harris is fairly new to the fore, his boss is a good cop, but a bit rough around the edges, Jack Robinson continues to be an excellent detective inspector, not jumping to conclusions and accepting Phryne's help.

The circus has it's problems. Half of it as been bought out by this nasty guy Jones and it is struggling for survival. The clowns are a sad pair of brothers, one with a serious depression problem. Molly the horse trainer is in despair at the loss of her love - Mr. Christopher, the carnies or carnival folks have their own issues. They are considered below the circus folks and set up their own camp, but they need each other. The carnival provides entertainment for the circus audience after the main show, and the circus provides the audience for the carnival.

Phryne has to act submissive and even tolerate the groping of Mr. Jones, though she does manage to "accidentally" kick him in the shins. She strains her fit body to learn these new tricks on the back of a horse, wears garish second hand clothes, but finds herself lonely and missing the status and recognition she usually gets. She can't go to her carny friend Alan. The only ones friendly to her are Dulcie, a juggler and Bruno the bear. One of the clowns seems interested and she finds her way to him. In the end she solves the mystery, but lands in the hands of Jones, where things get very dicey, but of course her friends in the police and carnival come to her rescue.

(Longer review that this book would warrant, but I was on vacation and had time to jot things down. No guarantees on spellings of character names, but don't have time to hunt down a physical copy of the book. Just saw this on Facebook's Best Book Quotes: "Never make fun of someone if they mispronounce a word. It means they learned it by reading." I'm the opposite in this case, don't know how it is spelled, just writing what I heard.)

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah (2015)

I was not really ready to read another World War II book so soon after Follett's Winter of the World, but that is what came to me from Iskape Audio Books, so I went with it and was glad, as it just filled in more of my understanding of the war, this time set in France, which Follett did not touch.

I never thought about the fact that France was invaded by Germany at the very beginning, so when things get bad for the French people, I kept thinking - Oh no, there are years to go in this war, it will only get worse. I do not understand the mentality of invaders, especially in what I would call the modern age. How can you take food and supplies from the locals to the point of starving them - who supposedly will be your subjects eventually - don't you want them to be productive citizens of your empire? And the killing and imprisoning - beyond my comprehension.

The story focuses on two sisters - Isabelle and Vianne. Their father returns from WWI very changed, and when their mother dies, he sends them off to live with strangers. Vianne falls in love, marries Antoine, and lives in the family home out in the countryside. Isabelle is rebellious and ends up thrown out of various boarding schools. She is in Paris with her father when the Germans invade in 1940, but he sends her to stay with Vianne. She can't abide doing nothing, especially when a German officer moves in with them, so she starts working with the resistance and ends up helping British and American pilots to escape France over the Pyrenees into Spain. Follett mentions this too, one of his main characters gets saved this way. Thus Isabelle is known as the Nightingale.

We see a lot of characters around each of the women and how each of them copes with the war, including the concept that not all the Germans were all bad. Some did try to help the locals. Another term - French resistance - became clearer, and I can put it together with the resistance I read about in All the Light We Cannot See. It was a lot of people doing little things to resist the Germans. I am glad of this affirmation of spirit.

Hannah does not pull her punches in her books about the realities of war and other difficult situations. She really shows the deprivations felt by the French, the food rationing, the arrests, the demonization of Jews and their destruction. The scenes at the concentration camp were the hardest to get through, but I know that is the way things were. We just have to remember that the Russians were just as bad, both killing millions, and destroying the health and lives of many, many more. 

A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny (2006)

The second in the Three Pines mysteries with Inspector Armand Gamache was as good as the first. I love this small town with caring, loving people, but they each have their secrets too. This time it is CC de Poitiers who dies, electrocuted at the  town curling match on the lake. She had recently purchased the Hadley place, full of negative energy from the first mystery solved by Gamache. She is the author of a mixed spirituality book, appears well off, has a colorless husband Richard and an overweight daughter. We meet many of the people from the first book - Clara and Peter, a couple of artists, the gay couple that owns the bistro and rooming house, three elderly women who are good friends, and Ruth, the grumpy old lady, who writes amazing poetry about life and death. Plus there is the death of a seemingly unconnected homeless woman in Montreal.

Gamache is a caring inspector with an understanding of people, that helps him solve cases. His side-kick is less understanding, but is learning. There is a local detective that seems to be doing a good job, but the unsympathetic detective Nicole from the last book reappears, assigned by Gamache's superiors. She claims to have changed, but is somehow connected with the Arno case, for which some would like to see Gamache pay. We get a bit more insight into her life, but this storyline is to be continued.

Another interesting factor in this book is the deep winter cold and snow in this small Canadian town, someplace south of Montreal. I was trying to remember the coldest I have been - the cross-country ski/meditation retreat in Vermont one winter, where it got to be -20, and one winter down in Logan, Ohio, where I was out cutting down my Christmas tree in way below 0 temperatures. These people seemed well prepared for the deep winter.

Saturday, July 02, 2016

The Secret of Lost Things by Sheridan Hay (2006)

Picked this up because it had old books on the cover. Rosemary loses her mother back in Tasmania, and her aunt pays her way to New York to find a better life. I know New York is where my parents came to after the war, and of course there are lots of opportunities in a big city, but it seems strange to send an 18 year old girl to a big, scary place full of strangers without anyone to look after her. Though as we see in the story - there will be good and bad people everywhere.

Rosemary had worked in her aunt's bookstore, so she wandered into one of those big used bookstores in New York that are probably quite rare nowadays. (I am afraid it has been months now since I read the book, so this will be very cursory.) She befriends the strange cast of characters that works in the bookstore, and I kept wondering how it could support so many employees. This was not your bustling Barnes & Noble type store, but more like an antiquarian book store. There was a restorer of old books upstairs that I liked. Anyway, she makes a life, gets a small apartment, I think it was unheated, makes a few friends. A secret manuscript of Melville comes up in the mix that disrupts the balance in the store.  In the end, I didn't really enjoy the book that much, though I usually love anything set in the world of books.

Winter of the World by Ken Follett (2012)

It's been a while since I listened to the first part of this Century Trilogy - Fall of the Giants - about World War I. It gave me a greater sense of WWI than I ever had before, and now Follett does the same with World War II. Of course he can't cover it all, but through engaging characters in the US, Britain, Germany, Russia and Spain, I learned a lot. Follett not only puts his characters at various critical events, he spends plenty of time on their personal lives, loves, disappointments, and through this we also see various social issues of the day. The book covers the years 1933 to 1949 - so pre-war to post-war.

I don't remember the first book in enough detail, but I think all the main characters are descendants from the characters in the first book. The book starts out in Germany, where we see how Hitler came to power - through legal elections, where he promised jobs, but also through intimidation with his unofficial army of "brownshirts" who closed down the free press and the other parties. I know there is this thought that Germans should have resisted him more, but in listening to this story, I am not sure how they could. And the scary part is, there are so many parallel's to the current presidential run by Donald Trump. I was not aware that Nazism was also popular in Britain and the U.S., that businessmen and the upper class thought for a while that Hitler was good for Germany. (I'm probably going to misspell some of the names, as I listened to the book and am not going to look up the correct spellings.)

My favorite character was Carla Ulrich, the daughter of Maude, who was from England and her family disowned her when she married Walter, from Germany, who is a social democratic representative in the government when the story starts. Carla is bright, wants to be a doctor, but is only allowed to become a nurse, she helps a Jewish family, discovers that the Nazis are killing disabled citizens, and loves Verner Frank, the brother of her best friend Frieda.

Many of the other characters start out in Buffalo, NY, where they are enjoying parties and tennis, and yachting, though conversations start turning to Europe. Daisy Peshkov is the daughter of Olga (old money) and Lev, who was her chauffeur - and who escaped from Russia when he got into trouble. Lev has a mistress with whom he has another family - son Greg Peshkov, a handsome, charming guy that is gifted a black actress for a week by his father when he is 15, studies physics and gets to participate on the Manhattan Project.

Woody Dewar is the son of Gus Dewar, a senator, so he travels in high governmental circles. He falls in love at 15 with the 18 year old Joanne, and it takes a while before she takes him seriously. He has a brother Chuck who he visits at Pearl Harbor on that fateful day. When I re-listened to bits from the beginning of this long book, I kept seeing references to his enjoying photography, so his direction at the end is not so surprising.

Lev Peshkov left a brother in Russia - Gregori, who is now in the leadership of the Soviet army and his son Volodya is an important character to let us see the thinking and actions of the Soviets. He is with the intelligence, so we see how he sets up spies, some normal people who just realize that Nazism has to be defeated. The surprising thing that kept coming up was the Russian ineptitude, because of some absurd orders from Stalin himself, but also that he put people in high positions based on their loyalty, not skills. We saw this in Spain, in not listening to their own scientists who realized the Americans were making a weapon from the atomic research, and in various war tactics. Also their ruthlessness, which I've heard about from the Latvian experience, and books like The Women in Amber.

My other favorite character was Lloyd Williams, son of Ethel, who used to be a house maid, but was now a member of the parliament. Lloyd grows up in a labor party family (there was a lot about coal miner strikes in the first book), studies in Cambridge or Oxford, but goes off to fight Nazis in Spain, get disillusioned. In between he falls in love with Daisy, who goes and marries a pompous upper class guy.

Though Follett didn't dwell on the Holocaust, as that has been covered in plenty of other books, he does show the Jewish situation and has characters witness a mass shooting and incineration of innocents. I got a sense of the politics in each of the countries, when they realized they have to get involved in the war. I am interested in understanding the current Labor Party in England more. There were all sorts of other things from the war that I now understand better. Of course I had heard the term "Berlin air lift," but didn't have the slightest idea what that meant. As a child I wondered how there could be a free western Berlin in the middle of communist East Germany, but never thought through how that might have come about. The one question I did not get answered was which part of Berlin did Carla and her family live in, did they end up on East Berlin? Maybe I have to read the next book to find out, but it is a long read, and I need to read some shorter books first.

Monday, June 20, 2016

The Mating Season by P.D. Wodehouse (1949)

I chose this because it was described as a Jeeves novel, and I never did understand where the Ask Jeeves of early internet days came from. The reading of the book was very rapid and it took me a while to get into the style and language and it was difficult to keep track of all the characters in the beginning. Looks like this book is one of many Bertie Wooster and his man Jeeves stories. Bertie narrates this story of mistaken identities and star-crossed lovers, a theme much used in literature, and at time reminding me of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. Esmund loves actress Corky, but pretends to like Gertrude, while it seems Corky is falling for Gussie. Gussie loves Madeline but sends Bertie to replace him at a visit to a country home. Catsmeat who actually loves Gertrude comes as Bertie's supposed assistant. And Constable Cobbs loves the butler's daughter Queenie, who for a while seems to be engaged to Catsmeat.

Though Jeeves is asked to solve many a trivial problem, and his richness of knowledge seems to be more at a gossip level, I assume that over all the books he has shown the intelligence that led to attach his name to the Ask Jeeves website.

Though I can't say I am fond of this upper-class life-style, I did find the language of Wodehouse fascinating. Since I listened to the book, I didn't get a chance to jot anything down and we don't own this particular book in our library, but I remember getting a kick out of all the words Wodehouse transformed into verbs, e.g. "center aisleing" was his way of saying "getting married."

Saturday, June 18, 2016

Old Age: A Beginner's Guide by Michael Kinsley (2016)

This small book grabbed my eye in our Popular Reading section and since I have been feeling old recently, thought it help, and it did. Kinsley is a columnist and editor in publications like Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Economist and founded Slate and has been dealing with Parkinson's disease for 20 years, though he is only a bit older than me. He addresses us baby boomers as we are all aging. He has a lot of valuable observations, especially having lived with with some aging characteristics decades before the rest of us have to face them. "We are born thinking that we'll live forever. Then death becomes an intermittent reality, as grandparents and parents die, and tragedy of some kind removes one or two from our own age cohort. And then, at some point, death becomes a normal part of life - a faint dirge in the background that gradually gets louder." The main thought I came away with was that it is not that we want to live as long as possible, but to live as long as possible with all of our marbles. 

In his last chapter he looks at us baby boomers and compares us to the Greatest Generation. He refutes some of the common assumptions about both. I realize that my generation has done a lot of good, but has negative sides, like sowing mistrust of authority and government, often rightfully so, but it has gotten extreme on both sides of the political fence. Kinsley suggests that my generation leave some sort of positive legacy, large gesture, like helping America get out of debt, possibly by reinstating estate taxes. 

The whole book reads easily and actually had me laughing at times - a good approach to aging. All in all, might we worth buying this book to have on hand.

Tuesday, June 07, 2016

Hard Day's Knight by Katie MacCallister (2004)

It was fun to spend some time in the world of a Renaissance Fair and jousters in particular. I did learn something about the sport of jousting and their competitions. I think it is very brave of anyone to get up on a horse knowing that you will most likely get thrown off and in the beginning knowing positively that you would get thrown off. I hurt just thinking about it. I remember the jousts at our local Ren Fairs. There was a lot of fanfare around them, whipping up the audience, and these were just for show, though one year there was a higher caliber of jousters. Will have to see if I can find a Ren Fair nearby to see another joust again.

I have some colleagues and a friend that have devoted time to this, but I have never had the time to get involved in the Society of Creative Anachronism or similar medieval alternate worlds, but always enjoyed everybody getting dressed up, playing roles and speaking old English. I did buy a couple of simple clothing pieces once as Ren Fair garb. I would love to spend a week in this atmosphere, but don't think it is happening in this lifetime - or maybe when I retire, but is that too late? Well, at least I got to live in this world for a while through author MacAlister.

Now to the story. Pepper Marsh comes to not just a Ren Fair, but a world jousting championship in Canada with her cousin CJ, who is in love with a jouster from England. Pepper has never been to a Ren Fair plus she has an obnoxious cat Moth (short for Behemoth) who keeps getting her into trouble - but then again, it seems to be a great judge of character. Within minutes of being on her own, she almost gets killed by a galloping horse and gets saved by a knight in shining armor - Walker. He has a velvety low voice, when he is not yelling, and bright silver eyes, but why is he no longer jousting? And what is with Pepper herself? She started out in vet school, but gave up and is now an unemployed computer geek and seems to get annoyed by animals. Well, of course they get together, she learns to joust during the fair, lots of stuff happens including someone sabotaging Walker's team, another knight vying for Pepper's attentions, and there is some nice hot intimacy. I do have to say Pepper's inner and sometimes outer monologue grated on my nerves at times, but I realize that with all that I enjoyed this humorous book and may try some others by MacCallister.

Monday, May 30, 2016

The Last Honest Woman by Nora Roberts (1988)

This is the first of the O'Hurley series, as it starts with the birth of the triplets - Abby, Maddy and Chantel, and the last two are still single. This is Abby's story, who is a young widow of a race car driver who has left her with a couple of small boys to raise on her own. She has decided to finally authorize a biography of her dead husband and hard core journalist Dylan Crosby comes to live with her family for a few weeks to interview her. (Do journalists really do that?) He has a lot of misconceptions about her, she has a lot of mistrust of him and does not plan to share the more unpleasant parts of her past with her husband. Of course in the time together he falls for her and her rambunctious and sweet boys, and she grows to trust him. She raises horses and cleans houses to make ends meet. He ends up helping with the horses, which remind him of his childhood. The whole O'Hurley family shows up for a visit - the famous sisters and performing parents. I liked the sensitivity with the older boy, who was most affected by his not too present father. Not quite sure about the title, but otherwise vintage Nora Roberts, and I haven't indulged recently.

The Green Mill Murder by Kerry Greenwood (1992)

These Phryne Fisher mysteries continue to delight me and I always learn something new about the 1920's and Australia. In this book I learned about Australian Alps (had to look them up on a map - really the most substantial mountains on the continent just east of Melbourne), something about jazz history, marathon dances, gays in Australia in the 1920's, wombats, WWI horrors at Gallipoli (rang a bell with a book on Churchill I read), and more.

This murder happens in the first sentence of the book - a marathon dancer falls at Phryne Fisher's feet. Phyrne's dance partner Charles seems to get ill, but then disappears. So as usual, there are a bunch of intertwined stories besides the murder. Charles' mother asks Phryne to find Charles, and if possible, also her son Victor, who came back from the war shell shocked and moved away to the mountains, but hasn't been heard from in years. The winning couple of the dance marathon wants to win the car to fulfill their own drams and Phryne helps them achieve those. The jazz band is comprised of interesting characters and one, of course, catches Phryne's eye. There are various gay couples keeping under the radar, and then Phryne's interesting flight out into the bush and the mountains. I like that she is real enough to be able to fit in with all classes, find respect even among bush folks and can seduce a hermit.

When books are written as a series, I often like to space out reading them, but these I want to keep reading quickly, so I don't forget the various characters, as the books subtly build on each other. I can't say that all the previous books are referred to here, but she gets letters from two or three former lovers, the girls she has adopted and who are away at boarding school are mentioned, she gets to fly her plane that she learned to do in another book, and her maid/assistant Dot is progressing in her romance with policeman Hugh.

Lots packed into a fairly short book. I like the writing - interesting metaphors and phrases I keep meaning to write down, but don't with the audio format. This audio book also had a short interview about the real historic and geographic aspects reflected in the book.

Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Yes, My Accent is Real by Kunal Nayyar (2016)

Unnecessary subtitle: and Some Other Things I Haven't Told You.

I think this would be a great book to have people at the university read to help understand international students. Or at least a chapter or two. Yes it is the real story of an Indian student, but I think many aspects apply to most international students. Plus I think there would be a great appeal that this is told by Raj from the Big Bang Theory.

I am a fan of Big Bang Theory, and though I do not keep up with the recent season, I have watched many episodes. I like the whole ensemble and Raj is an important part of it. I am glad to hear that Kunal was able to bring his heritage into the TV show, as they had originally created the character without a specific ethnicity.

This book is a series of short essays, mostly about the author's life, but interspersed with mini-chapters on Indian holidays. He never had any ambitions to be an actor, but auditioned for a play his freshman year, just to be around some pretty girls. He started as a business major, and though he finished that degree too, he also took theatre classes and went on to get a masters in theatre. He is a comedian, so his life stories from badminton championships through relationships with roommates and women to finding love and getting married are humorously told. But he has insight too, and shares wisdom with the humor. I was deeply touched when he read from Gibran's The Prophet - "On Children." I read this years ago, and maybe it influenced how I raised my son. I will have to send it to him. Kunal's father gives him the book as he boards the plane to leave for America, and has him read this poem.

At the Edge of the Orchard by Tracy Chevalier (2016)

Another excellent book by Chevalier. Obviously she has moved away from her art history novels, and I was just recently reminded of her Lady and the Unicorn about tapestry making. I was recently at the Getty, where they had a special Louis XIV exhibit of tapestries where I watched some videos on how tapestries are made. All I learned from Chevalier was now supplemented by new and visual information.

Back to At the Edge of the Orchard. This is American history from pioneer days in Ohio - the Goodenough family landed in some swampy land east of Cleveland from what I could tell. Land could be claimed if one got 50 fruit trees growing and bearing fruit. The father James loved his apple trees almost over all else. His wife Sadie could not stand this life and drank heavily. John Chapman/Johnny Appleseed is part of the story, bringing the Goodenoughs apple seedlings and saplings. Though Sadie bore 10 children, at the start of the story only five have survived, Robert being the youngest, who learns to care for the trees from his father.

We later see Robert making his way across the country, participating in the gold rush fever, but then finding a man collecting seeds and saplings in California for the rich in England. This ties in with a couple of other books I have read - Gilbert's The Signature of All Things, where a son of a garner in England is sent all around the world to gather specimens for English gardens. Gregory's Earthly Joys, which was about one of these English gardens.

Robert was an interesting character and I am glad energetic Molly comes into his life at the end. I still have a hard time visualizing the beginnings of San Francisco, but this gave me more colorful threads to fill in my tapestry of understanding about the westward bound history of the U.S. in the mid 19th century.

Sunday, May 15, 2016

The Target by David Baldacci (2014)

Another Will Robie and Jessica Reel thriller. This one has quite a few story lines going. We have an imprisoned evil murderer plotting one last revenge on his deathbed. There are still negative repercussions from the last adventure, where Reel ended up killing some traitorous agents, and though she and Robie got medals, they aren't trusted by all, and are sent for "evaluation" at a strenuous training facility. Reel is forced to face her past and ends up in the hands of Neo-Nazis. In between these stories we get an uncomfortable glimpse into the concentration camps run by North Koreans and an amazing assassin on their side that ends up targeting - someone. Plus there is the evolving friendship between Robie and Reel - will it be more? And their growing relationship with 15 year old Julie, that was rescued on a previous mission and lives with a guardian. So no lack of hair raising adventures, or in my case, keeping me awake on a long night drive.

I do like that we get some background on why Reel is the way she is, and the whole story line in North Korea was fascinating. We don't have meany deadly enemies right now, but the North Koreans are up there, so they provided one set of villains for the story. I liked the fact that Yi played and incredible chess game - thinking many steps ahead - and was able to accomplish something quite amazing with young Min.

It is unfortunate that we still have Neo-Nazi's around and since I am also staring to listen to Ken Follet's Winter of the World - about WWII and Hitler's rise to power (scary when I start seeing parallels to our politics today), these books complement each other.

Sunday, May 08, 2016

Wedding Night by Sophie Kinsella (2013)

I like Sophie Kinsella's sense of humor, though I usually have a hard time in the beginning, as the inner conversation by the women drives me crazy, though I know it is the way many of us think, but this was often too much overthinking and misunderstanding.

Lottie is convinced her boyfriend Richard is going to propose to her when he hints at having a big question to ask her at a fancy restaurant. When he doesn't, she goes into a tailspin, and when Ben, a boyfriend from her youth shows up, they decide to get married. Lottie's sister Fliss feels this will be a big mistake and tries to stop the wedding, but they get married at the courthouse and take off for Greece, to go back to a place they spent a wonderful summer together. Fliss then tries her best to prevent them from consummating the marriage by connections with the hotel manager (she runs a magazine that reviews hotels) and other antics, so the marriage could be annuled. Fliss is also dealing with a divorce from her husband, and tries to coordinate her efforts with Ben's manager, who needs Ben to focus on the business.

One pearl of wisdom I got out of this, when the old resort owner laments about people coming back to a place where they had a good time as youth. He thinks people should not go back, leave it as a wonderful memory, as it is bound to disappoint. I think he is right in many instances, though I go back to favorite place and make new memories.

(I think I have this written up somewhere right after I read it, so I will leave it short.)

Angry Optimist: The Life and Times of Jon Stewart Book by Lisa Rogak (2014)

As a big fan of Jon Stewart, I thought I'd read a bit about him. We do have the New Jersey background in common. It was interesting to see what made him who he was. He was very athletic, but short, so keeping people laughing was a survival skill. I also learned a bit about how much work went into the production of one of those half hour shows I enjoyed so much. No wonder he stepped back from it. I actually didn't finish the book, as it started to get into the negative characteristics of Stewart, and though I am sure they are there, I do not care to learn about them.

Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende (2015)

I used to judge movies and books based on their ability to make me cry. Well this one succeeded - I actually had a hard time seeing the road between the tears at one point (as I listened to it).

Allende has once again woven a magical story intertwining the present and past as well as cultures, though still keeping to the West coast, San Francisco in particular.

We have Irina from Moldova working in Lark House, an ideal multi-level retirement facility in the Bay area, CA. (I need to find one like this for myself eventually.) She meets Alma Balasco, a rich elderly artist, who moves from her large family home to Lark House to simplify her life. Alma was sent to America from Poland to live with her aunt by her parents right before WWII. Her best friend becomes the son of the Japanese gardener.

I should say a lot more about this book, but it already has been a few months since I finished reading it, so I will just post this as is. Beautiful story - it looks at the cruelties and injustices of the Japanese internment during WWII, the unacceptability of interracial relations, and Irina too has a dark past that is dealt with, but in the end, a very life confirming book.

Death at Victoria Dock by Kelly Greenwood (1992)

Expecting and getting another light, fun mystery with Phryne Fisher, here she was solving another murder and finding a missing girl in Australia. But I was totally flabbergasted (I know not exactly the right word, but I want to use it here because a friend from Europe just said it was their favorite word in the English language) that the situation around the murder was Latvian anarchists in Australia in 1928! It didn't sound right, but what do I know and was going to look this up, when the author explained it all in an interview at the end of the audio reading. Her family came from dock workers or "wharfies" and she had researched the strike in 1928-29. She had learned to do primary research from a professor and focused on this to the detriment on all her other classes. Little did she know she was going to use what she learned in a novel later on.

Phryne is diving by the wharf at night when someone shoots out her windshield. She stops, sees a couple of guys running away, and finds a body of a young "toe-headed" man, who whispers "My mother is in Riga." Turns out, he is a Latvian named Jurka. He had done some boasting about an upcoming bank heist, which got him killed. So there is this group of Latvian anarchists in Melburne. I never did understand what they were doing there, as they seemed to still be planning a revolution, so I still have to do some research.

Phryne connects with Peter Smith (supposedly there was a historical Peter the Artist, who landed in Melburne), though a Latvian anarchist, he doesn't approve of the tactics of this new generation and helps Phryne. She does her usual daring and smart sleuthing. Dot, her maid, gets a boyfriend - one of the young detectives. Jane and I think Ruth are home from school and get to participate with some of their own tricks.

There is always a subplot, another detective task Phryne is asked to do, so in this book it is a missing girl. Of course it is family issues, but there is an interesting twist as the girl is very religious and wants to join a convent, but not a Catholic one, I think it was Anglican. This unusual convent and its building was based on historical facts too. Cool.

The Escape by David Baldacci (2014)

This is the third John Puller story and we already know about his general dad in a facility with Alzheimer's and his bright brother Robert in prison, supposedly for treason though he helped our his brother on one of the other cases.

There is a power outage in the Fort Leavenworth prison, the back-up fails, cell doors open instead of locking, and Robert escapes, but there is a dead body in his place. And off we go....

John Puller comes to check out the situation, but actually ends up being assigned to the case, as he knows his brother the best and may be most likely to find him. He gets assigned a side-kick - Veronica Knox - who is not military, but part of the intelligence network. With many twists and turns, so one is never sure who is on which side and with Robert Puller's brilliant mind, they get the bad guys, who have been detrimental to the stability in the world.

Pure Baldacci. I had one CD left to listen to before I left for a trip. I took it with me hoping the rental car would have a CD player. It did. I didn't have t wait 5 days to hear the ending.

Arsenic and Old Books by Miranda James (2015)

A Cat in the Stacks Mystery. Picked this up at an airport, when I left my reading book at home, finished it on another plane trip.

So, first of all, I love the fact that our amateur sleuth is a librarian and that at least this story deals with mysteries about two families in Athena, MS found in some old diaries. The diaries are donated to the college by the mayor, but two women seem hell-bent to get their hands on them. Marie Steverton is an obnoxious history professor who is desperate to get tenure. The other a journalist who want to help her fiance get elected. The diaries disappear, then reappear, then a fifth is found, then there is a suspicious death.

In the middle is Charles Harris, who works in the archives with his side-kick Diesel, a Maine Coon cat, who appears to understand everything Harris says. Though I am a cat person, I thought the narrative was too focused on the cat at times. But then after the novel there was a short story on how Diesel came into Harris' life, so OK, I'll give him the cat obsession - I know they can be persistent. The story is also full of other colorful supporting characters that must have evolved over the series. Definite possibility for future reading.

Saturday, April 09, 2016

The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel (2016)

From the author of Life of Pi another strange, but touching novel. This one tells three or actually four seemingly disjointed stories that somehow connect to the high mountains of Portugal and a chimpanzee appears in each one way or another.

The first story is from 1904, when Tomas, a Lisbon library/archive employee, finds a diary from a 16th century priest who ends up in Africa. (I consider this the fourth story.) The priest is disappointed and works on a religious artifact that Tomas thinks ended up in a village in northeastern Portugal, an area called High Mountains, though it turns out that they aren't really mountains, just boulders. To get there, since he only has 10 days off from work, his rich uncle gives him one of his cars, a Renault (remember, we are in 1904). I found the car to be one of the most colorful characters in the book - all the difficulties in driving an early car - having to oil it in numerous places, feed it water, gas - which of course wasn't available in many towns, he had to buy lice medicine that had the same ingredients. 

The second story is in 1938, where a coroner is working late, his wife comes in and goes into a long monologue on her take on the Bible (maybe the author's view) and then there's a really strange sequence with a old lady from the high mountains who wants him to autopsy her husband.

The last story is from 1980's about a man who was born in Portugal, but his family moved to Canada when he was a toddler. When his wife Clara dies, he feels lost, and when work sends him to Oklahoma, he visits a primate research center and feels a connection with one of the chimpanzees. The two of them end up in the high mountains of Portugal. Here was one more intense human - animal relationship like Pi Patel and his tiger. This man learns to live more simply and appreciate life from the chimp. And in a way, all the stories are brought together in the end.


The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness (Emma) Orczy (1905)

I read this as a child, as my parents subscribed to Reader's Digest Condensed books for me. I usually read a couple of the 4-5 books in each volume, which provided me with some exposure to classics and contemporary literature. This is one of the few I remember, though not in detail, so I thought it was time to reread the whole thing. I just remember that it was about the French Revolution and that the Scarlet Pimpernel was an exciting spy or something.

Actually, the Scarlet Pimpernel (named after a small flower in England) was an Englishmen, who in daring disguises helped French nobility escape the guillotine in 1792. (I now am curious about how many of the aristocracy were killed and what happened with the rest. Did they stay in England and other countries? Wikipedia gives the number of up to 40,000 civilians killed, but that was anyone who seemingly opposed the revolution.) We then get the story from the viewpoint of a French woman  Marguerite, who is married to slow witted Sir Percy Blakeney and who is forced to try to discover the identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel by threats against her brother. Once the characters started appearing on the scene, I remembered who was the audacious rescuer of French aristocrats. But it was still a fun story and gave a bit of an insight into the French revolution and how it was viewed from the English side. Marguerite was a bit much - supposedly sharp witted, but dim in ways, putting people around her in danger. But then I have to remember that the book was written over 100 years ago - and by those standards, she was quite an adventurous woman. I guess I liked the book back in childhood, because it was probably one of the first secret identity, thriller type books I read. The genre has evolved since then, but I was always able to recognize the Scarlet Pimpernel reference, though the book itself has not crossed my path for decades until now. I like these circles of life.  

Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Finding Winnie By Lindsay Mattick (2015)

Subtitle: The True Story of the World's Most Famous Bear
Illustrated by Sophie Blackall

I do try to read the current Caldecott books though I have been underwhelmed in recent years. This is the latest one on our shelves and I loved it. First of all, it is non-fiction, though I did not, at first, get who Winnie was, even after reading the subtitle. I may not have thought immediately of Winnie the Pooh as being the world's most famous bear, but it could be true as Winnie the Pooh books have been translated into so many languages.

The book starts with "Could you tell me a story?" and there's a mom with her little boy Cole, telling a family history. I've loved family history children's books before, but this is a family history, that affects all of us who have ever read a Winnie the Pooh book, but I am getting ahead of myself. So we have Cole's great-great grandpa working as a veterinarian in Winnipeg. He goes off to take care of Canadian troop horses in WWI. He sees a bear cub in a train station, buys the cub off of a trapper and names it Winnipeg, after his home town, or Winnie, for short. Winnie becomes the mascot of the regiment and even crosses the ocean to England with them. Once they have to leave for the front, he takes Winnie to the London Zoo. Who should discover Winnie in the zoo? Christopher Robin Milne, of course, who then names his toy bear Winnie the Pooh, and his father Alan Alexander Milne writes the Winnie the Pooh book series. Then we return to great-great-grandpa, who returns home, and we see a family tree that ends up with Cole.

The illustrations are gentle and lovely. After the story, there are images as if from the family album, with real photos of great-great grandpa and Winnie the bear - even one of a statue of the two in Winnipeg erected in 1992. The book just made me feel all warm and fuzzy, like hugging a childhood teddy bear.

Thursday, March 17, 2016

Still Life by Louise Penny (2005)

Maybe this was a suggestion from my audio book store owner, but this was a delightful mystery set in Three Pines, a small out of the way village in Quebec. Inspector Armand Gamache is called in when an elderly lady is found dead on a woodsy path near her home. We see a close knit community of interesting characters, including the deceased Jane Neal - never married retired schoolteacher, loved by all, especially by her neighbor Clara, an artist. Clara's husband is also an artist, Myrna runs the bookstore, Oliver and Gabri are a delightful gay couple, Yolanda the self-absorbed niece, etc.

Gamache's style is to listen and observe. He has a solid team around him, except for Nicole, a new detective that is brilliant, but who is too focused on succeeding, that she does not listen to Gamache or the people of the village, thus having too little insight into others to be a good detective. When she finds a note on a mirror in someone's home that says "Problem? You're looking at it", she doesn't get it.

Jane is killed by an arrow. Hunting accident? Maybe, maybe not. There are a lot of skilled bow hunters in the village. I liked the ritual they performed after Jane's death, tying things with a connection to Jane to a prayer stick. They hold a fair every year and Jane has painted the Fair Day, maybe leaving a clue to her death. Looking forward to more from this series.


Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith (2015)

I almost did not finish this one, was ready to return it to the library about halfway in as the level of evil was just so dreadful, not helping me live positively in this world. I let it sit for a few weeks, and then decided to finish it just because I wanted to find out if Robin was really going to marry Matthew and whether Cormoran Strike would let her know that he likes her.

Robin gets a severed leg in the mail and it looks like it is one of three big men from Cormoran's past that are trying to get back at him. There is a complex plot surrounding all three of these men. I always like to see Cormoran and Robin working together as detectives, but I lost track of some of the details, so the final explanation wasn't completely clear to me. Through the stories of these three awful men, we get more of Cormoran's back story. Since this crime seems to reflect on Cormoran, he loses clients, so one of the threads throughout this book is about their business going down the tubes. Then there is Robin and Matthew - they are planning a wedding, but then at some point she calls it off. Will she or won't she marry him?

Hopefully J.K. Rowling will take her time writing another one of these. I will probably be sucked in to read it, but she has gotten so dark - as we saw in Harry Potter. Is this what readers really want? I don't tend to psychoanalyze writers, but one would think that her life could be pretty positive with all the success she has had. Why does she feel she needs to delve into such darkness? Does she think she is bringing to light dysfunctional families, what happens to kids that are abused, women that are raped, children abandoned? I like that books shine a light on worlds I would not know about otherwise, but the evil thoughts and deeds of our criminal were so repulsive, that this overshadowed any wish I might have had for understanding the hard lives of those less fortunate than myself.


Sunday, March 06, 2016

Murder on the Ballarat Train by Kelly Greenwood (1991)

This is my third Phryne Fisher mystery and I could continue to gobble these up like tasty sweet morsels. Phryne is on a train with her assistant Dot, when she smells chloroform, manages to pull out her gun and shoot the window to get fresh air, opens all the windows, saves all her fellow passengers in the car, except an old lady that is missing, and of course later found dead, murdered. Phryne takes on the daughter of the missing woman, keeps her at her house until she is well, as she got burned by the chloroform on her face. Phryne also picks up a bright 12 year old girl, who doesn't remember who she is. So Phryne solves three mysteries in a span of a few days - the murder, who is the girl, and she finds another missing woman that was supposedly abducted by a decent looking gentlemen. Her sleuthing stops not just the murdered, but a few other criminals along the way. Of course she has to have a man or two to play with, and there are some young students that pique her curiosity. And her household grows with loyal folks. Wonder who she will take in/on next?