An interesting premise. At every decision point in our lives we split off into parallel universes, to that there are hundreds, even thousands of universes with us in them living out our lives differently. Do I believe in parallel universes? Not really, though I understand that there are some physics principles and astronomical phenomena that claim this is possible and plenty of science fiction stories play off on this.
We have Jason Dessen, a brilliant quantum physicist, who got married to Daniella, an artist, had a son Charley, and now teaches physics at a Chicago college. He gets kidnapped one night and wakes up in a lab where everyone is thrilled to see him, but he doesn't recognize anyone. He escapes, goes to his house, but it is completely different and then finds that he is not married to Daniella, who lives elsewhere as a successful artist. If he is a bright physicist, I'm not sure why it takes him so long to figure out he is in a parallel universe, but...
With the help of a technician at the lab, Jason goes hopping through universes - some incredible horrible, to find HIS Daniella and Charley.
I do like the idea that our lives are made up of thousands of decesions - some small, but some making a huge impact on our lives. What if I had chosen to go to a different university, or not walked into Stache & Little Brothers where I met Bobby that started my Logan, OH phase of life. Or lost my nerve and not gone to visit Paul, who opened the world of TORI to me. Or not see that article in Laiks that had me calling Valdis and led to moving to Kalamazoo, becoming a librarian and so much more. So yes, I could have led a lot of different lives.
But when we get lots of Jasons appearing in the same world, it just got very weird. Kept wondering if we are following the "real" Jason, but it all worked out - sorta. They did leave quite a mess for someone to sort out.
I was looking for a "comfort food" type book to balance the thrillers and heavy historical novels I have been reading. This was OK.
Gus Simpson has a show Cooking with Gusto on a New York food network. She lives in Rye and tapes her shows in her own kitchen. She has two grown daughters that she hovers over too much. She lost her husband when the girls were little and has worked hard. Ratings have been slipping, so the network owner insists she do a live show with a young Spanish cook - Carmen Vega. They do not get along, but the tension between them makes for a good show.
There is a cast of characters that I actually did like. Hannah the recluse neighbor that comes over every morning to be fed and befriended by Gus. Troy, the man who has started a company to put fresh fruit vending machines in schools, airports and elsewhere, who still pines for one of Gus' daughters. Oliver, a former successful investment banker, who gave it up to cook and has been assigned to Gus' team. Or Pryia, a fan of Gus' show, who gets to meet her. I enjoyed the retreat they were all forced to attend for team building. I guess I found plenty to like. Not great, but OK.
Kostova is one of the authors I always pick up when I see a new book and she didn't disappoint. I do have to say there was a bit of a pall over my lovely weekend up north, as I kept listening to this once again heavy story. You would think I am done with World War II and the Soviet aftermath, but now I got a new perspective - from Bulgaria.
Turns out Kostova herself went to Bulgaria and fell in love, so she has always wanted to write a book wholly located in the country. I would like to think that given a map of Europe with country outlines, I could identify Bulgaria, but without country lines - nope - until now. Between Greece and Romania with a coastline along the Black Sea.
Alexandra Boyd has done nothing special after graduating from college, so after a few years of shelving books in a library (couldn't she move up to more interesting jobs in the library?) she decides to spend a year teaching English in Bulgaria and arrives a bit early to explore the country before she starts working. The taxi from the airport leaves her off at a hotel instead of her hostel. She helps an older couple and a younger man get all their things into a taxi, but then realizes that one of their bags has stayed with her. She spends the rest of the book returning the bag that contains a box of ashes of Stoyan Lazarov.
The taxi driver Bobby (Asparuh) helps her out, brings her to the police as she requests, then follows clues criss-crossing Bulgaria to find the family of Stoyan Lazarov. The adventure takes her to Velin Monastery(couldn't find it, maybe meant to be Rila), Bovech (maybe be Lovech), major city Plovdiv, Gorno in the mountains, Burgas on the sea. She meets Bobby's aunt Pavlina, Lazarov's wife's sister Irina, Lazarov's wife Vera, their son Nevan, friend Milen Radev, his daughter and various other characters.
As we meet these people, slowly the story of Stoyan Lazarov is revealed - a brilliant violinist, who studied in Vienna, but came back as the war was starting, met Vera, courted her, married her, but was taken away to a labor camp. These are the stories I have heard before, but this one just wrenches the heart even more than usual. How does one stay sane to endure the incredible hardships? Lazarov had his music and stayed sane by playing through all the pieces he knew. I have thought about how well I could endure something like this - I think I would lose it. What would I think about? Books? I've forgotten more than I remember. Songs? I've stopped singing them.
Subtitle: Stories From a South African Childhood.
I like Trevor Noah. Though he is not Jon Stewart, he has held his own on The Daily Show and his outsider's perspective on our politics feels fresh. So it was with pleasure that I listened to Noah read his autobiographical book. His childhood growing up in Soweto was hard. The fact that he had a white father made his birth a crime, and though he did meet with occasionally with his father, he wasn't around. Later his mother married Abel, who was abusive. We get to see a post apartheid world, where things are not easy. I somehow had missed that there are so many languages spoken in South Africa, that it becomes another barrier. Poverty, racism, classism, the various neighborhoods. I did not know South Africans were given real names and then European names. Trevor uses mostly the European names, and it does not look like he had a South African name himself. One of the strangest stories he told was about a great street dancer named Hitler, which did not go over very well in a Jewish school. It was interesting to see from their perspective, that Hitler was just a name, with no inferences. Trevor was lucky his mother provided him with books and good schooling to get him out of the poverty cycle, though he spent some time after high school dealing in pilfered music. His mother was very religious and trusted God and Jesus. There is a story of a miracle at the end of the book that I like to think was the result of her strong belief. We know it all ends well and though he mentions his career as a comedian, he doesn't tell us how he got there. I am sure that will be material for another book. His sense of humor got me through the hard parts of his book.
Subtitle: The story of young artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Got to keep up with those Caldecott books. This is the story of an artist in New York (OK, so he grew up in Brooklyn with a Puerto Rican mother and father from Haiti. I've definitely seen his work, but knew nothing about this artist who drew as a child, moved into graffiti and then became a successful, well know artist with a message against capitalism, colonialism and those with power in the late 1970's and 1980's.
Steptoe, the author/illustrator of this book has created interesting pieces of art on every page. The illustrations are painted on boards, which give them a rugged authentic look. He has recreated Basquiat's work through his own interpretation. He even recreated Picasso's Guernica, which must have been fun. Steptoe tells a story for children, but then in the back there is some more biographical information. Since I love historical fiction, especially art history fiction, I enjoyed this book.
This is the same Stephenie Meyer of Twilight fame. The cover caught my eye and I liked the idea of the hero of a thriller being a woman, not just a side-kick. Alex or whatever her name is on her fake ID is on the run. She was a brilliant med student and chemist, who had been working in a top secret federal lab on compounds that affect the nervous system. She called herself the Chemist, one character later called her Poison Lady and Oleander/Ollie for a poisonous plant. (I thought it was a flower of sorts from memories of the book White Oleander, but turns out it is a shrub.)
Her mentor/lab partner gets killed and she barely avoids the same fate, so is on the run. She sets up elaborate chemical protections before going to sleep with a gas mask in a bathtub every night. She moves around a lot and tries to leave no trace. She goes to libraries to read up on how to stay safe - from non-fiction, but also thriller novels. I did feel a twinge when she cut out the tattle-tape from a few library books.
She gets an email from her old boss apologizing for trying to kill her on a number of occasions, but that they really need her skills. Some deadly virus is about to be let loose and only she will be able to get the information out of the perpetrator. She knows this could be a trap, which it is.
Her target is Michael, a seemingly mild-mannered teacher who coaches volleyball and works with Habitat for Humanity in Mexico, but that there he has hooked up with evil doers. Strangely he falls for Alex as soon as he set eyes on her - before stuff gets weird.
Michael's brother Kevin swoops in like Batman and has stashes of weapons and disguises which Alex likes to call his bat caves. The unusual trio run, hide and fight around the country, trying to figure out who has it in for them. They are joined by Val, a sometime girlfriend of Kevin's, who has parleyed her beauty into a lucrative business. She comes in handy with her make-up skills. Then there are the dogs. Kevin raises and trains amazing protective dogs - Einstein , Lola, and others. They are great companions, fiercely loyal, intelligent, and save the human lives more than once.
I have stated before that I don't like torture and there were two scenes I could have done without, but the rest was good. My only quibble with the book is in the happily ever after ending. Would Alex be happy in the fairly mundane role we see her in the epilogue? She is a brilliant scientist. Does she still get to use her talents?
Another heart-warming book by Backman. I no longer know the diagnoses of his characters, and I have to be patient in the beginning as his main characters' personalities and stories emerge. We see Britt-Marie in the unemployment office looking for a job, though she has not worked outside the home for decades. Rubbing the finger where a ring once sat explains why. Surprisingly she gets sent to Borg to take care of their rec center, which the town has forgotten to close. The town is dying with only a pizza joint/corner store/post office still operating. Britt-Marie's one skill and obsession is cleaning and organizing, so she sets off doing just that. In the process she encounters a band of kids who like to play football (soccer), a couple of older women who drink too much, the local policeman who has taken every crafts course available and more town folk. Of course she ends up helping out the kids, the town and finding herself - in the most unusual ways. Though this is set in Denmark, it could be any town that has run into hard times. There are so many wonderful details, like the unemployment worker, who at times is driven crazy by Britt-Marie's calls, but who also find hope in these encounters. I always feel so good about humanity after Backman's books.
Seems like everyone is rereading this classic in this current baffling political climate. Fake news and alternative facts fit in perfectly into Orwell's world. Winston Smith works in the Ministry of Truth, altering facts in past publication when those in power declare white is black, or when someone is arrested and killed, every mention of them is erased.
I couldn't help but try to think this through logically - so if they had to rewrite an article in a newspaper and it gets reprinted in some central location, what happens to all the other copies that were distributed elsewhere throughout the land. The other thought I had was that Orwell couldn't even imagine how easy it would be to dumb down the general public. Back in 1984 we still had newspapers, but now they are dying out and how many people read them anyway. People get their information from media (like the telescreen in the book) selectively - what they want to hear and we see now how easy it is to plant fake news.
Big Brother is Watching You! This definitely reminds me of all the surveillance done by the Soviets. One whole floor of a multi-story hotel in Riga was devoted to it. I always wondered how much staffing was needed to watch/listen to guests in all the rooms. Or to open all the mail, especially that coming or going outside fo the USSR. So again, I am wondering how they wired the whole world with surveillance - even out in the woods, and who did all the watching. I still think there are remote parts of the world they could not watch. But then again, think of now, we are all being followed through our electronic devices and online presence and surveillance cams are all over.
I liked the appendix exploring newsspeak, the minimized language. Another phenomenon we are seeing today. I hope cool heads and intellect and reason prevail, but we have seen the destruction of intellectuals in authoritarian regimes before, and it could happen again.
I dislike reading about torture. I was freaked out in childhood when I read how Soviets tortured school kids in Latvia. I know it really happened then and happens now, but I am deeply opposed to it and hate it in books and movies. In 1984 it was awful to see Winston broken. Just like I never saw the Soviet purpose of deporting people, especially the young and old, and not providing citizens - the working class - with the basic necessities. This is coming up in Follet's Edge of Eternity. I've just started it, but one character already said: "How can we solve the problems (under Communism) if we can't even discuss them."
(Since I was listening to audio and did not have a cover image, I had to choose from the many that have been created for this book. This one looked familiar. I think this is what the book looked like when I first read it in the 1970's.)
It seems that Marissa Meyer had left too many quetsions unanswered, so here we have six stories from the Lunar Chronicles about the origins of the main characters and the happily ever after ending. How did Scarlett come to live with her grandmother and how did grandma Michele get involved in taking care of Cinder while she grew up in a suspension module? We see Cinder's fate before she moved to New Beijing, how Iko came to be Cinder's good friend, the scene at the market where Prince Kai brings his android to be fixed by Lynn Cinder - but this time from his point of view. I don't know how much it would make sense for someone who hasn't read the other full novels. For instance, you know that Cinder is standing on one foot the whole time, as she is talking to the prince. He notices something, but doesn't realize what. Then there is the story of how Wolf was transformed into the part wolf being. And how Winter and Jason go back to early childhood, as their fathers were guards together, and Jason always protected Winter. What a rogue young Thorne was, and how Cress got commandeered to spy on Earth from space. Of course, the lovely ending with them all gathering for Scarlett and Wolf's wedding, but we get to hear how they have all fared in the couple of years since the end of the last book. Enjoyed it.
Translated from French by Barbara Bray (1985)
Read this as it was one of the books on a list recommended by Roxanne Gay - a keynote speaker at a library conference in Baltimore this spring.
It's been a long time since I've read something like this. I would call it stream of consciousness. Why do I have a need for chapters, places where I can draw my breath? This whole book consisted of vignette's (not the right word), usually a paragraph, no more than a page and a half in length in a small format book. The girl is 15 and a half, lives in Saigon with her mother and brother in a boarding school, goes to a French high school, dreams of being a writer. On the ferry she meets a Chinese man in a big black limousine. They become lovers, but his family would not hear of him marrying her. She eventually moves to Paris and has a life. With plenty of jumps into the past and future. Turns out this is autobiographical.
I don't regret reading it, but can't say I got a lot out of it. Maybe I am just too used to the typical plot driven book, though this too had a story too, and beautiful writing.
