What are you reading the week of October 9, 2021?

I have about 40 pages remaining in 1919, the second volume in John Dos Passos' USA Trilogy. The writing is great, but there are no likable characters. Everyone is some variation on appalling, especially the men. The female characters are a tedious string of shallow cliches. The politics espoused by the characters are superficially radical and vague. Their moral outrage seems more faddish than heartfelt. I can see why the books were so highly praised when they came out. They are brilliantly innovative, engrossing books, but they have not aged well.

The Brutal Telling – Louise Penny
Digital audiobook read by Ralph Cosham.
3.5***

Book # 5 in Louise Penny’s popular mystery detective series featuring Chief Inspector Armand Gamache begins when a stranger is found murdered in the village bistro and antiques store. The detective finds a multi-layered mystery, starting with who the victim is, and taking him across Canada to British Columbia, the Queen Charlotte Islands and the totems carved by first nation peoples.

I love this series. I like the way Gamache ferrets out clues and pieces together the puzzle. I love the various inhabitants of the fictitious Three Pines, including Ruth and her duck. I particularly enjoyed the references to literature and art in this episode, especially the paintings of Emily Carr.

As frequently happens in real life, not every question is answered and the stranger’s identity and purpose in Three Pines remains something of a mystery, but the murder IS solved, giving this reader another satisfying read.

Ralph Cosham does a marvelous job of narrating the audiobook. I particularly like the voice he has given to Gamache.

Okay, so I knocked off The Seventh West Virginia Infantry, which, while informative, was kind of drab. Have started Such Splendid Prisons, and am already much more entertained. Expect to return to Hidden Nature, which I was finding less convincing the more I read it. Will then knock off Sea Change; which is closer to a novella than a novel.

I'm just about halfway through Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision by Barbara Ransby. Baker is a fascinating, essential figure in American history, and Ransby's writing is straightforward and clear, but also a bit dry. It's that last factor that's making this book slow going for me. Slow going's not so bad sometimes, though, and in a way it's good to have a book that restrains me from me general practice these days of rushing through the books I read. Nevertheless, I'm going to have to set the book aside temporarily to take up my re-read of Philip Roth's The Human Stain, which is not only the book for my reading group, which meets a week from tomorrow, but also my own pick for the group.

finished Empire of the Vampire by Jay Kristoff. liked it more than i thought i would.

added The Midnight Library by Matt Haig to my rotation.

still reading Constance and The Last Graduate.

I've started Locke & Key (by Joe Hill & Gabriel Rodriquez; narrated by a fill cast starring Haley Joe Osment, Tatiana Maslany and Kate Mulgrew) - This is an audio drama adapted from the comic books. It's a tale of paranormal horror featuring a haunted well, a freaky house and a lot of keys... Sometimes, it's challenging to figure out what exactly is going on; but the overall gist is that a ghost wants a key (possibly two keys?) and is going to rather long efforts to get it

I've also begun Firestarter (by Stephen King). Two college grads have agreed to be subjects in a science experiment on campus in exchange for cash. The experiment, however, involves hallucinogenics and has dark overtones with US government oversight and a rather suspect professor. Every year for the past couple of years and around this time, I try to read at least one King novel. I'm currently in the middle of the Bachman era, circa 1980.

Just finished reading the novel DOCTOR SLEEP by author STEPHEN KING

.

just strarting in Who Shall Live: A Jewish Fantasy by Carolyn Geduld. Recieved from a LT Early Review give-a-way

enjoying this OverDrive audio selection ~

A Better Man: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel (Chief Inspector Gamache, #15)
by Louise Penny
(I've decided to dip into a few of the latest books in this long series/
I am looking forward to hearing the new stand-alone book this author wrote with HRC)

I'm reading Convenience Store Woman which is very odd and pleasing. I love reading Japanese novels because their way of life is so very different from ours, and it fascinates and astonishes me. Where else could you find cream cheese and spicy cod roe sandwiches?

>10 ahef1963:

Convenience Store Woman was one of my favorite audiobooks the year it was released.

I'm reading Dune by Frank Herbert. I have less than 150 pages to go and I have loved it! It's really action packed. Looking forward to the movie at the end of the month.

>10 ahef1963: I listened to the audio (narrated by Nancy Wu) this past April and was unexpectedly charmed! :-)

(And I don't know about cream cheese and spicy cod roe sandwiches, but I was surprised to see cream cheese and roe sushi/shashimi being offered on the menu of the last Japanese restaurant we went to! I thought it was a Western variation but maybe not?)

A Cuban Girl’s Guide To Tea and Tomorrow– Laura Taylor Namey
3***

From the book jacket: For Lila Reyes, a summer in England was never part of the plan. The plan was 1) take over her abuela’s role as head baker at their panaderia, 2) move in with her best friend after graduation, and 3) live happily ever after with her boyfriend. But then The Trifecta happened, and everything – including Lila herself – fell apart. Worried about Lila’s mental health, her parents make a new plan for her: spend three months with family friends in Winchester, England, to relax and reset. But, … what would be a dream trip for some feels more like a nightmare to Lila … until she meets Orion Maxwell.

My reactions Okay, I totally picked this up because I needed a pink cover for a challenge. I noticed, too, that this was a pick for “Reese’s YA Book Club” and thought it might have some meat on the bones.

Some of this stretched credulity a bit far for me, but on the whole I enjoyed it. I liked that things were not all wrapped up nice and tidy in a pretty bow, albeit there is still a happy (or at least hopeful) ending. Lila is a complex character, with shifting emotions (typical teenager, and typical of the grief process). Orion has his own problems, with a mother suffering from early onset dementia, a little sis who is acting out, and more responsibilities than an 18-year-old should have to shoulder.

I liked that Namey showed how Lila’s attempt to forget her problems by focusing on food was a strategy that would take her only so far, and that she needed to face the issues that led to her breakdown before she could move forward. I really liked Orion. He’s a steady young man, with natural charm, but not at all pushy. All in all, this is a pretty good example of the YA romance genre.

And I loved all the references to food. I think I gained 10 pounds just reading about all the Cubano bread, and specialty pastries Lila concocted.

Dancing In The Street: A History of Collective Joy
Barbara Ehrenreich
3/5 stars
Ehrenreich explores the rich tradition of collective religious and nonreligious festivities through the years including bans on them and the way people reacted to the festivities. Were they sinful or just an out pouring of collective emotion that needed to be released? Interesting book but at times, for me, there was just too much information to process in certain sections.

Just began Restoration by Rose Tremain, a book I'd ordered last year but didn't feel like picking up until now. Historical fiction in the time of Charles II, successor to Cromwell's 'reign.' Have only read about three chapters so far, yet even now only one descriptive describes this novel and its main character, Robert Merivel, adequately -- exuberant!

Just finished A Million Aunties, by Alecia McKenzie, for my F2F group which meets tomorrow. It was a quick read, and really quite delightful, but I felt that the ending was too abrupt and left several of the characters without any resolution to their arcs.

Pride – Ibi Zoboi
Book on CD performed by Elizabeth Acevedo
4****

This YA romance is set in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn and features a Dominican/Haitian family. The Benitez sisters are F I N E and everyone in the neighborhood knows it. Then a new family moves in. The Darcys are wealthy and have totally renovated the dilapidated property across the street from the Benitez's apartment building into their own bougie mansion. Their two sons - Darius and Ainsley - are not only rich, but handsome and immediately attract the attention of all the girls in the hood.

It's a pretty good retelling of Austen's classic Pride and Prejudice. No, these girls are not going to immediately wed the Darcy boys, but they do have the all-important sparks of interest. I could easily identify some of the situations and characters from the original.

I really liked Zuri (Elizabeth). She’s feisty, intelligent, true to herself, loyal to her family, and not about to take shade off Darius’s nose-in-the-air grandmother (think Lady Catherine de Bourgh). Ainsley (Bingley) and Janae (Jane) will start off like gangbusters, only to break off contact. The Charlotte/Mrs Collins relationship is here (though there is no hasty marriage), as is the Wickham/Lydia debacle (again no hasty marriage). One of my favorite scenes has no clear relationship to the original, and that is when Zuri performs one of her original poems.

All told, a totally satisfying retelling of a beloved classic.

Elizabeth Acevedo is quickly becoming a favorite narrator for me. She does a great job of the audio.

I finished the LTER book, Distant Fathers. The author was born in Riga, Latvia but lived most of her life in Italy beginning in the late 1930's so through fascism, and WWII. . It is a very self involved memoir, which churned over the author's relationship with her mother while stepping away from all the other traumas of her life. Given the singular repetitive obsession, the book wore thin with time and it was difficult to develop an empathy with the author.

I’m enjoying the follow-up to The Thursday Murder Club, The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman.

Out Of Africa – Isak Dinesen / Karen Blixen
5*****

I had a farm in Africa. One of the best opening lines.

What glorious writing. I first read this in 1998 and re-read it for my book club in 2013. I revisited it again in 2017 and now, here I am again. If you're expecting the movie, you'll be greatly disappointed - Denys Finch-Hatton is barely mentioned. No, the great love of her life was Africa itself.

While I still love Dineson’s writing and love the way she puts me right into early 20th century Africa, I am more attuned to social justice these days, and have to cringe a bit at some of the references to the indigenous tribes. The colonialists had such a superior attitude. But this a product of the era and of the social status of the writer, and we must give her her due. She worked long and hard to try to succeed in this doomed effort to grow coffee at too high an altitude, and with a husband who basically abandoned her as soon as she arrived.

Here are a couple of passages:
Night on the farm: It rained a little, but there was a moon; from time to time she put out her dim white face high up in the sky, behind layers and layers of thin clouds, and was then dimly mirrored in the white-flowering coffee-field.

The view from a plane: You have tremendous views as you get up above the African highlands, surprising combinations and changes of light and colouring, the rainbow on the green sunlit land, the gigantic upright clouds and big wild black storms, all swing round you in a race and a dance. … You may at other times fly low enough to see the animals on the plains and to feel towards them as God did when he had just created them, and before he commissioned Adam to give them names.

The view from the perfect spot: “To the South, far away, below the changing clouds lay the broken, dark blue foothills of Kilimanjaro. As we turned to the North the light increased, pale rays for a moment slanted in the sky and a streak of shining silver drew up the shoulder of Mount Kenya. Suddenly, much closer, to the East below us, was a little red spot in the grey and green, the only red there was, the tiled roof of my house on its cleared place in the forest. We did not have to go any further, we were in the right place.”

For this, my fourth re-read of this work, I choose to listen to the audible audio, performed by the marvelously talented Julie Harris. Unfortunately, this is an abridged version of Dinesen’s memoir. While I really enjoyed Harris’s performance, it’s worth the time to read the entire book.

Just started The Last Canyon, by John Vernon. Not sure whether I will finish it.

It's about the exploration of the Grand Canyon by a group led by John Wesley Powell, intertwined with the story of a Native American family moving through the same area. I was about to give up on it -- the first section is about Powell's party -- when the story switched to the Native American plotline, which is much more approachable.

We shall see how it plays out over the next couple of days.

>16 Limelite: Rose Tremain is one of my favorite writers, I hope you enjoy.

My latest is The Clergyman's Wife by Molly Greeley.

The book I was planning to read hadn't come in yet so I found a copy of Trejo: My Life Of Crime, Redemption, and Hollywood by the actor Danny Trejo. I am really enjoying it.

>23 aussieh:

I am enjoying. Didn't know of this writer, but any author who can create such a dynamic character -- opinionated, eccentric, sardonic, and full of riotous life -- has made a fan of me.

>25 Limelite:
If you are able to find there is a sequel Merivel A Man Of His Time

Another of Rose's is Music and Silence another great historical novel.

I have just (following your post) discovered that her latest written in 2020
Islands Of Mercy this I have reserved from my local library.
I have read all of her books!!

Trejo: My Life of Crime, Redemption, and Hollywood
Danny Trejo
5/5 stars
This is the amazing autobiography of Danny Trejo, actor who starred in numerous films and became quite successful. However, his life growing up was not easy. Involved with drugs and gangs, he ended up in jail but he was able to turn his life around. I read this in a few days because I could not put this down. Highly recommended.

Finished listening to the powerful debut novella, At Night All Blood Is Black. Returning to listening to Mortal Fear.

The new thread is up over here.