May AlphaKIT: H and V

Welcome to AlphaKIT for May.

The rules are... none! Use the letters however you like to choose your reads for the month. Well, okay, there is one rule: Have Fun!

May AlphaKIT letters are : H and V.

and

Please remember to update the wiki and enter books alphabetically:
https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/2019_AlphaKIT#May:_-_Letters_H_and_V

I'm thinking of The Handmaid's Tale for this and one of the Very Short Introductions on my shelf.

I'm planning on Valor's Choice by Tanya Huff , The Snow Queen by Joan Vinge , and Neutronium Alchemist by Peter F. Hamilton.

Hoping to read Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut and The Nonexistent Knight & Cloven Viscount by Italo Calvino.

I am thinking of reading Lady of Quality by Georgette Heyer and Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut.

I'm planning to read Benediction by Kent Haruf and Think of a Number by John Verdon.

I have a bunch of Robert Heinlein books on my TBR pile, perhaps I can get a few done in May!

Shoot! I was thinking of Victoria Victorious by Jean Plaidy for CalendarCAT, but I just discovered that my library doesn't have it. Would have been great for this, too, as V is a tougher one!

ETA: I just requested it via ILL, but they never come in quickly. Will likely be a month or two before I see it.

Here are my possibilities:

✔Breaking the Mould: A Vintage Kitchen Mystery
✔Curio Killing by Mary Ellen Hughes
✔Hour of Death: A Sister Agatha and Father Selwyn Mystery
Lost Letter: A Victorian Romance
Michelangelo : the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel by Marcia B. Hall
✔Murder at Marble House
One Last Summer by Victoria Connelly
Pie Hard
Vanishing Man

In case I don't have any that will fit H that I'm reading, anyway, I've picked out a couple:
An Available Man / Hilma Wolitzer
Garbology / Edward Humes

For V, I have requested Victoria Victorious via ILL, but if that doesn't come in, I might pick up:
The Valley of Amazement / Amy Tan

I am hoping to get Tell Me How It Ends by Valeria Luiselli for this Kit.
Touchstone Tell Me How It Ends

>11 beebeereads: - Ooh, that was so good. Very eye opening.

Henry IV, Part 2 by William Shakespeare
(Most of the books listed here have been candidates
for a TBR List, and this one is virtually that; thogh tryong
it for the 3rs or 4th time, I can't really call it a "RE-read".

Victory by Joseph Conrad
A classic; one of the few listed here that I
really HAVe read, and perhaps becoming a rare
"re-read" prospect, too.

>11 beebeereads: >12 LittleTaiko: Tell Me How It Ends was very worthwhile, if distressing, reading.

Homeric Hymns, Homeric Apocrypha
Anonymous; attributed to Homer;
tr. by M.. West

Virgil and his Meaning to the World of Today
by J. W. Mackail

This month I plan to read The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo. I had already been thinking of reading it before the fire. It's an odd coincidence that V and H were already up for May.

Henry VIII by William Shakespeare

Virgil's Aeneid: Cosmos and Imperium
by Philip Hardie

I'll probably read Tell Me How It Ends by Valeria Luiselli for V and I'm leaning towards The Dry by Jane Harper for H.

Homer as History by Corey Walden

The Jack Vance Treasury by Jack Vance

The Vendor of Sweets by R. K. Narayan

I've got some choices, we'll see if I get them read (all ROOT books, gotta get them off the shelves!):

"H"
The Affairs of Harriet Walters, Spinster by CM Spencer- (ROOT)

Barry: the Story of a Wolf Dog by Thomas C Hinkle- (ROOT)

"V"
Amphibians and Reptiles of the Carolinas and Virginia by Bernard S. Martof- (ROOT)

Caravan to Vaccares by Alistair MacLean- (ROOT)

Vanity Fair by William M. Thackeray
(Perhaps the best book I read in the early 1960s;
this, if I get to it, would be a re-read.)

Henry V by William Shakespeare

I have completed Lady of Quality by Georgette Heyer. Unfortunately not one of her best, but still enjoyable.

Henry Vi, Part 3

Virgil and Spenser by Merrity Hughes

I read An Artless Demise by Anna Huber which was quite enjoyable.

I just discovered a wealth of V books: my unread Prince Valiant volumes!

HOW VOTERS Feel by Stephen Coleman

I'm starting How Like a God (by Rex Stout) this weekend. I originally got it off the Boothbay (Maine) Library porch a few years ago, so I probably paid a quarter for it at most! I admit that I was attracted to the cover which features a femme fatale (wearing red and holding a lit cigarette) as much as anything else! This is Rex Stout's first novel and is not a Nero Wolfe story but one featuring Billy Snyder as the protagonist... Still anticipating some mid-century noir :-)

HOW Capitalism Survived the Twentieth Century
by Martin Mayer

Finished The Bug Boys by Stewart Hoffman--full review written for those interested. This wasn't a great one, though.

Finished a V book over the weekend - The Nonexistent Knight and Cloven Viscount by Italo Calvino - loved these novellas.

I finished The View from Saturday by E.L. Kongisburg and What Was Pearl Harbor? by Patricia Demuth.

I have May we be forgiven by AM Homes planned for this.

COMPLETED: The Girl in the Red Coat by Kate Hamer

For "H," I just completed Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman, and I'm starting Last of Her Name by Jessica Khoury. Not sure what I'll do for "V," but it might be Verdict of Twelve by Raymond Postgate.

Who should Elect the President?
by League of Women VOTERS

HENRY Clay and the Art of American Politics
by Clement Eaton

One H book down - Run Away by Harlan Coben.

Starting Meetings With Remarkable Manuscripts by Christopher de Hamel.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
by J. K. Rowling

VOTING in Democracies by Enid Lakeman

Thomas HARDY and the Church by Jan Jedrzejewski

VOLPONE; or, The Fox by Ben Jonson

Finished reading How Like a God (by Rex Stout) - Well, this wasn't what I was expecting at all! What I thought I was going to read when I picked this up was a mid-century noir story but what I got was a study in psychological suspense! We watch Billy Sidney walk up the flights of stairs to an apartment he is very familiar with, and with a gun in his right hand coat pocket. We don't know who Billy plans on shooting (until the end); or even if he has the courage to do so. Each chapter is preceded by a lettered (e.g. "A," "B," "C," etc) section describing the action in the third-person omniscient; but the chapters themselves are written in POV2-- Billy addressing himself! Really interesting and unique style.

June alphaKIT is up: https://www.librarything.com/topic/307000

Hopscotch = Rayuela
by Julio Cortazar

Venetian Painting: a Concise History
by John Steer

COMPLETED Meetings With Remarkable Manuscripts by Christopher de Hamel

Finished one for H: William Henry Harrison.

Just finished Tell Me How It Ends by Valeria Luiselli which satisfies both letters. Definitely a worthy read--4*

I just finished the Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge.

Starting "Beyond the Blue Event Horizon" by Frederik Pohl

I've finished The World's Strongest Librarian by Josh Hanagarne.

I've started Hell Divers (Hell Divers #1 by Nicholas Sansbury Smith,) a SFF/PA novel about teams of jumpers who dive back onto a radioactive and mutant-infested Earth to salvage supplies for the airship communities...

Finished Death of a Valentine by M.C. Beaton.

According to my catalogue I've read this one before although I hardly remember it. This time I listened to an audiobook and I enjoyed it more because of narrator Graeme Malcolm whose Scottish accent is so entertaining.

I'm currently reading Shakespeare's play, Hamlet.

A few more books done:

The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra by Vaseem Khan
Billy Budd, Bartleby, and Other Stories by Herman Melville
The Horse Dancer by JoJo Moyes

I am reading The Line of Beauty by Alan Holinghurst which will work for H.

Finished Hamlet.

COMPLETED: The Three Evangelists by Fred Vargas

>55 jeanned: The Three Evangelists was the first Fred Vargas book I ever read and I have been a firm fan ever since

Read Venetian Blind, a 1959 British spy story by William Haggard. Entertaining, but the representation of women was cringe worthy, as was the idea that murdering someone might be character-building.

COMPLETED Beyond the Blue Event Horizon by Frederik Pohl

I have completed both my AlphaKit reads for May with Oushata Massacre by Robert Vaughan and Lady of Quality by Georgette Heyer.

Hitler and Stalln: parallel lives by Alan Bullock

Virgil as Orpheus; a study of the Georgics
by M. Owen Lee

Finished my H book:



The Left-Handed Fate by Kate Milford
Max is following in his father's footsteps, searching for the three parts of a machine that legend says will end all wars. He's engaged the help of a ship, the Left-Handed Fate, and her crew, including the captain's daughter, Lucy Bluecrowne. But there are others in search of the machine pieces - not to mention that they're in the middle of a war that puts a 12-year-old lieutenant of the U.S. Navy in their path (and on their ship) - and the race to solve the clues, find the pieces, and figure out how to put them together is on. Plenty of fun to be had here: the mysteries, the stories-within-stories, and the magical realism are great. It doesn't quite measure up to her Greenglass House books, though (this is a prequel, of sorts, to those), mostly because I found some of the explanations related to the machine itself to be a little hard to swallow/slightly confused. Still, a good, fun read.

COMPLETED the first 4 Ava Lee books by Ian Hamilton.

Starting "Hume: A Very Short Introduction" by A. J. Ayer

For this challenge I ended up reading Hannah Says Foul Play, by Dwight V. Babcock, which is a paperback digest original from 1946. It is a solid detective story with Hannah Van Doren as the blonde, blue-eyed, tiny, feminine magazine journalist who solves the murder. She also knows jujitsu and loves the thrill of danger. Fair play is the order of the day. The 1940s slang and setting are fun and the Palm Springs setting is vivid. The story's main faults are having too many characters and dragging out the story during the first half or so.

I've finished my selection for V - None of the words in the title or the author's name start with V, but there are three of them and the cover does highlight them in read, so it seems legit enough for me:



The Lover's Dictionary by David Levithan
A novel about a couple's relationship from beginning through the first two years or so, told through dictionary entry definitions. A really cool concept, but it fell a bit flat for me; I think it tried to be too clever (or needed to be better at the poetic bits and just couldn't manage it), and that, in addition to me not particularly liking either of the characters, made for a dissatisfying read.

I finished Honeycomb yesterday, so one more H for May.

COMPLETED Hume: A Very Short Introduction by A. J. Ayer

Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair With Trash / Edward Humes
4 stars

We have become a consumer culture, a society where disposable is all too common. This book looks at trash and all it entails: landfills, recycling, and what else can be done with it, and/or about it, and/or ideally things we can do to reduce it. Plastic is, of course, a big issue - including the “patch” of plastic floating around the Pacific Ocean (which is apparently more of a soup or chowder (smaller chunks all over the place), rather than a patch where it’s all together in the one spot).

I thought this was quite interesting. Some people have actually studied trash (garbologists). There was some history of how landfills got started, and how people traditionally got rid of their trash. Of course, the consumer culture – marketing to promote more and more buying (and also throwing away because we want the new stuff) – came to rise in the 50s, and hasn’t let up.

One idea that was new to me (at least in the detail described in this book) was the waste-to-energy idea, turning trash into energy. I have heard of it, but this book went into more detail than I ever knew about it. Denmark and Germany seem to be the forerunners for this, and it sounds like a great idea. Of course, alongside these kinds of ideas, humans really do need to figure out ways to cut down on the amount of stuff we acquire (and subsequently throw away). There was also some info on things some people are doing to cut down on their consumerism and disposables.

I've managed to finish up Think of a Number by John Verdon the first book in a new series for me. Could have been shorter but there were parts that I enjoyed.

Finished Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer--full review written for anyone interested!

Finished The Summer Children by Dot Hutchison, having started it yesterday--because I haven't been able to put down any of the books in this series. Review below, because I adore it so much that I want anyone interested to know about it...

Hutchison has, without question, become my favorite author--I devour her books within 36 or so hours of beginning them, virtually unable to put them down. Beyond being a talented writer, she creates works which revolve around such real and flawed characters, and marry such brilliant darkness to incredible moments, that the books create their own dark little world of too-believable wonder.

And yet, there's no doubt that these books are too dark, even too terrible, for many readers. They revolve around trauma and despair, focused in on characters who are struggling to help themselves or others to survive, and Hutchison doesn't flinch from exploring the darkest moments, the darkest thoughts. The fast pacing and the carrying of characters from one book to the next also make them distinctive reads--not for anyone who'd want to read them out of order or not be able to stomach the first and darkest of the series, The Butterfly Garden, and certainly not for anyone who'd prefer they be stand-alones. Together, these three first books in The Collector Series are far greater than they would be apart.

So, do I recommend them? Only if you dare. Just make sure you start with the first, The Butterfly Garden. And, if the blurb on back sounds too dark, you're probably better off not starting. Yet, I'll close by saying I absolutely adore these books, their characters, and everything about them, down to the darkest moments, the dirtiest of jokes, and the most dangerous thoughts.

The Valley of Amazement / Amy Tan
4 stars

It’s 1912. Violet is half-American, half-Chinese and growing up with only her American mother, Lulu, in Shainghai. Lulu runs a courtesan house, but is tricked when Violet is 14-years old; Violet is kidnapped while her mother heads to San Francisco to find her son.

I really liked this. A warning that there are some graphic scenes, though – sex, violence. The book certainly kept me wanting to read to find out what happened. It was a bit of an emotional roller-coaster with ups and downs. A small portion of the book told Lulu’s story; admittedly, at first, I didn’t think this was necessary, but it got more interesting as it went on, and it was nice to see the pieces come together as it continued.

Finished Finding My Voice by Valerie Jarrett. to add a double V to my list.