tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29937523419808439072024-03-13T21:08:57.032-07:00Omni Book ClubLaura Nemethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18049198850321076490noreply@blogger.comBlogger92125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2993752341980843907.post-11081409262079937522021-01-22T08:42:00.001-08:002021-01-22T08:42:37.288-08:00December 2020<p> Ending the year with hope and optimism! Here's what we discussed:</p><div style="text-align: left;">The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek - Kim Michele Richardson</div><div style="text-align: left;">Fruit of the Drunken Tree - Ingrid Rojas Contreras</div><div style="text-align: left;">A Honeybee Heart has Five Openings - Helen Jukes</div><div style="text-align: left;">An American Sickness - Elisabeth Rosenthal</div><div style="text-align: left;">Let the People Pick the President - Jesse Wegman</div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/n-scott-momaday-biography/12210/" target="_blank">N. Scott Momaday</a></div><div style="text-align: left;">Stormy Weather - Paulette Jiles</div><div style="text-align: left;">Enemy Women</div><div style="text-align: left;">Anxious People - Fredrik Backman</div><div style="text-align: left;">Shuggie Bain - Douglas Stuart </div><div style="text-align: left;">Travels with Myself and Another - Martha Gelhorn</div><div style="text-align: left;">An Elegant Woman - Martha McPhee</div><div style="text-align: left;">Where'd You Go, Bernadette - Maria Semple</div><div style="text-align: left;">Always Cedar Point - H. John Hildebrandt</div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://evanovich.com/" target="_blank">Janet Evanovich</a></div><div style="text-align: left;">White Fragility - Robin DiAngelo</div><div style="text-align: left;">Is this Anything? - Jerry Seinfeld</div><div style="text-align: left;">The Pull of the Stars - Emma Donoghue</div><div style="text-align: left;">The Glass Castle - Jeannette Walls</div><div style="text-align: left;">Hillbilly Elegy - J. D. Vance</div><div style="text-align: left;">How the Penguins Saved Veronica - Hazel Prior</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">From Mary Lou in Maryland (November and December):</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin, An American Life (2003). This biography runs to nearly 500 pages, but it doesn’t seem lengthy because Franklin’s life is so entertaining, and because he was involved in so much of the early cultural and political development of the country. It is clear from this in-depth study of Franklin’s entire life that he was not the shallow individual of Poor Richard’s Almanac. He also was not the old “jovial lecher dabbling in statecraft in such plays as 1776.” He was firmly a man of the Enlightenment. He was of a practical rather than philosophical turn of mind, interested in the use that could be made of his scientific discoveries. The lightening rod is one example. He also was firmly anti-elitist with a staunch faith in the common sense of the “leather apron” artisan and merchant segment of the populace. He was more “democratic” than Jefferson or the other Founders. He was not a Puritan or a Calvinist but believed rather in “doing well by doing good.” He invented the self-help genre. He promoted religious tolerance and opposed autocratic authority. He was a fertile creator of civic organizations such as the volunteer fire brigade. He promoted education and founded the University of Pennsylvania. He was appointed one of two postal commissioner of the colonies and used his position to travel among settlements and promote unity. He saw a nation forming, well ahead of most of his contemporaries. The elderly Franklin was a cypher to many of his fellow-representatives at the Constitutional Convention, but their deliberations never would have succeeded without his astute contributions. Isaacson finds him “the most accomplished American of his age and the most influential in developing the type of society America would become.” If you read only one biography of a Founder, choose this one. <br /><br />Ann Rinaldi, The Secret of Sarah Revere (1995). Yes, that Revere. The secret is the identity of the first person to fire a shot at Lexington in 1775 and start the American Revolution. Sarah is Paul’s daughter. Paul probably knows, by he won’t say. People keep asking 13-year-old Sarah, but she doesn’t know. They also ask her where her father is, or if he has been riding again. She is evasive. She won’t let them speak to her step-mother Rachel, who has recently given birth to Joshua. Perhaps Sarah learns the answer in the course of this novel, but the author leaves the question open. This is an interesting account of the Revere family in 1775 from the point of view of an adolescent girl. It’s very easy reading. <br /><br />Michelle Obama, Becoming (2018). The fact that Michelle Obama is somewhat familiar to us from her time as First Lady in no way detracts from the interest of this memoir. She is a strong, intelligent, and introspective woman who did an excellent job of hiding her dislike of politics from the public in order to support her husband’s chosen career. She begins with her childhood and the family and experiences that shaped her identity. She tells us of her first impressions of Barack Obama and the adjustments each of them made over the years to accommodate their differences in personality and professional goals. She includes the funniest description of a marriage proposal you will ever read. Of course she describes the years in the White House and how she established her role and identity as First Lady. The descriptions of family life in the White House and the parenting of their two daughters is especially interesting. Aside from all these topics, the best aspect of this autobiography is the description of the process of forging one’s identity through the decisions and actions of daily life – becoming. <br /><br />Paulette Jiles, Stormy Weather (2007). This novel is set in the East Texas oil fields in the 1930s. In the fall of 1937, gambler and oil roughneck Jack Stoddard dies in prison. His wife Elizabeth and their three daughters move to the deserted family farm and try to figure out how to survive in the Dustbowl depression. The older daughter gets a job that pays very little. The 18-year-old tomboy middle daughter Jeanine works hard to make the farmhouse livable and the garden productive. The youngster Bea is too young and dreamy to be very helpful. Then another series of calamities hits. Each of them responds differently. The novel’s suspense is based on the question of whether they will somehow survive. Jeanine is the most spirited and sensible one. The over-arching theme of the novel is the development of her courage and maturity. This novel is rich in time, place and character, including the character of a racehorse named Smokey Joe. <div><br /></div><br /><br />Tana French, The Witch Elm (2018). I have enjoyed other novels by Tana French, but not this one. The main character is unappealing and the others are not much better. The plot is tortured and there are at least four endings to the murder mystery, each one less satisfactory than its predecessor. I never say this, but this book is not worth reading. <br /><br />Brooks Mencher, Wailing Wood: A Yarn Woman Mystery (2015). This is a full-length novel with several plot lines, set in a northern California logging town. One plot involves a timber company seeking to harvest Northern California’s last virgin redwood forest. Another involves a hundred-year-old murder and a haunted wood. The third and dominant plot line is Yarn Woman Ruth M’s analysis of fabric, soil, and other factors to solve the old murder and her efforts to prevent a new one. Newspaperman Nat Fisher is the narrator and his friend San Francisco police detective William Chu also is involved in the investigation. The colorful Russian Mr. Kasparov, Ms. M’s guardian and chauffeur, also figures in the story, along with his vintage Rolls Royce. The county sheriff and the young woman who owns the local newspaper ae additional interesting characters. Ms. M’s para-normal sensitivities once gain assist her in solving the mysteries. <br /><br />Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy (2014). In 1983 the author was a Harvard Law School student who took an internship with the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee, working with death row inmates. There he met Walter McMiIlian, a young black man who insisted he was innocent. Stevenson worked on this case for years, following a tangled trail of judicial incompetence, lies, racism, and conspiracies. The book follows Walter’s case as well as the trajectory of Stevenson’s career as they evolved over the years. He went on to found the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama. There he headed a variety of efforts to end such unjust sentencing practices as Life Without Parole for juvenile offenders. Many of the cases he won were the result of years of grueling investigative and legal efforts, weaving through the state and federal courts in many jurisdictions and sometimes reaching the Supreme Court. The pervasiveness of injustices perpetrated by these systems on poor and minority individuals is beyond appalling. The book demonstrates that ultimately the judicial system cannot attain the fundamental reforms that are needed until the public at large accepts responsibility for this effort. <br /><br />Ann Patchett, The Dutch House (2019). The central relationship in this novel is between Danny Conroy and his older sister Maeve. Danny is the narrator. The story begins when Danny is about 8 and his sister is a teenager, living in the Dutch House with their father and two housekeepers. The story does not unfold chronologically. Instead it shifts between Danny’s experiences in the course of his life and his later reflections back on those experiences. It also follows his search for an explanation of their mother’s abandonment of them when Danny was 3. The Dutch House (“Dutch” because the original owners were Dutch of unpronounceable surname) figures prominently in the plot and the characters are revealed and developed in terms of their relationships to it. At the beginning of the novel, a woman named Andrea comes to visit Danny’s father Cyril and admire the house. Soon she marries Cyril and uses her two daughters to displace Danny and Maeve from favor in the home. The situation for Danny and Maeve deteriorates from this time forward. The complexities of the novel come from misunderstandings and miscommunications between the characters. Danny and many of the other characters suffer under expectations imposed by family members who fail to understand them. The major characters develop as they struggle to fulfill their true natures. <br /><br />Lars Kepler, The Hypnotist (2009). This is the pen name for the Ahndoril husband and wife team who each have published independently as well. This is the first book in their series featuring Swedish police detective Joona Linna. Joona is a misfit -- Finnish, stubborn, unconventional, egotistical, and, as he insists to his doubting superiors, always right. Other main characters, including the hypnotist of the title, are similarly unusual, haunted by some secret in their pasts. The crimes are somewhat excessively gory. The plot is intricate and the main source of suspense is psychological. The novel is occasionally unpleasant to read and consistently hard to put down. <br />Lars Kepler, The Nightmare (2010). In this second novel of the series, Linna is battling his susceptibility to migraines as well as an international conspiracy of vicious criminals. Evil is a real force in the world of these novels. Violins and music figure heavily in this plot and in the lives of two brothers who are prominent characters. Once again, Joona Linna is determined to pursue investigation of a series of crimes that his superiors don’t believe occurred. He pursues a clue that everyone else believes is useless. As always, he is right, but he is also in great peril. <div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-N9ruCezy0tM/YAsAR8g3J-I/AAAAAAAAAUs/HKgcVcdJfTgSA3PbYLrqn9RAx92SD8_dACLcBGAsYHQ/s349/9D370D74-BB6F-4001-B949-F9371B7F255C.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="349" data-original-width="280" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-N9ruCezy0tM/YAsAR8g3J-I/AAAAAAAAAUs/HKgcVcdJfTgSA3PbYLrqn9RAx92SD8_dACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/9D370D74-BB6F-4001-B949-F9371B7F255C.jpeg" /></a></div><br /> <br /><br /><div><br /></div></div>Laura Nemethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18049198850321076490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2993752341980843907.post-82808007544587575952021-01-22T08:11:00.001-08:002021-01-22T08:11:47.056-08:00October 2020<div style="text-align: left;">Let's start with a little humor! Here's what we discussed:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Lamb - Christopher Moore</div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.davidsedarisbooks.com/" target="_blank">David Sedaris</a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://johndiesattheend.com/" target="_blank">Jason "David Wong" Pargin</a></div><div style="text-align: left;">Mill Town - Kerri Arsenault</div><div style="text-align: left;">Watership Down - Richard Adams</div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sergey-Prokofiev" target="_blank">Sergey Prokofiev</a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Dmitri-Shostakovich" target="_blank">Dmitri Shostakovich</a></div><div style="text-align: left;">The Yarn Woman - Brooks Mencher</div><div style="text-align: left;">How the Penguins Saved Veronica - Hazel Prior</div><div style="text-align: left;">Rage - Bob Woodward</div><div style="text-align: left;">Born to Heal - Ruth Montgomery</div><div style="text-align: left;">Travels with Myself and Another - Martha Gelhorn</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">From Mary Lou in Maryland:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing (2018). Owens is a wildlife scientist and has won awards for her publications about African wildlife. This is her first novel. It is set in the sparsely inhabited North Carolina coastal marsh and filled with eloquent descriptions of the wild marsh, rivers, inlets, and seashore. The main character is Kya Clark, known in the local town of Barkley Cove as “Marsh Girl.” The novel has two alternating narrative lines. In 1952, when Kya is only 6 years old, her mother flees her abusive alcoholic husband, leaving her children and in their shack in the marsh. Soon Kya’s siblings leave also. Kya must learn how to dodge her father when he is drunk and how to survive alone in the marsh without money. We follow her story as she grows up, becoming ever more cleverly self-sufficient. We share her observations of the life-forms of the marsh. A parallel narrative begins in 1969 when the body of Chase Andrews, town football star, is found near the fire tower north of town in the marsh. The sheriff can’t decide whether it is an accident or murder, but Barkley Cove residents believe the “Marsh Girl” killed him. This narrative follows the investigation of the death. The alternating story lines provide plenty of suspense as they begin to merge. Kya is an enchanting character and we are solidly on her side throughout. This is a wonderful novel, exploring complex social and psychological patterns as well as the intricacies of the natural world of the marsh, in the depths of which the crawdads sing. <br /><br />Kate Atkinson, Started Early, Took My Dog (2011). Life is what happens when you are on your way to something else. This is the world of hapless, reluctant detective Jackson Brodie. In this novel he somehow agreed to search for the biological parents of a woman in New Zealand who was adopted as a small child in the north of England. While he is wandering around Leeds, he rescues a dog from an abusive man. At about that same time in Leeds Tracy Waterhouse, a retired police officer now heading security at a shopping mall, witnesses a known prostitute and thief being abusive to a 3- or 4-year-old screaming girl. Tracy has just taken a lot of cash from her bank and somehow without thinking about it, she offers the woman a large sum for the child. Jackson doesn’t what to do with the dog and Tracy doesn’t know what to do with the little girl. And we’re off and running with another delightful detective novel of the absurd. <br /><br />Brooks Mencher, The Yarn Woman (2013). The narrator Nat Fisher is a San Francisco journalist and close friend of SF Police Detective William Chu. The Yarn Woman of the title is a woman apparently in her 60s or older who lives in the upstairs of a former movie theatre in a rough part of town. A mysterious Russian, Mr. Kasparov, serves as her butler, cook and general factotum and chauffeurs her around in a Rolls Royce Silver Cloud. She is an expert in fabrics and yarns and Detective Chu has sought her assistance in solving several crimes. This volume consists of three novellas: Ghosts of the Albert Townsend, The Fisherman’s Wife, and The Boy in the Mist. The plot if each novella turns on fiber identifications made by the Yarn Woman, with more than a whisper of the paranormal. <br /><br />Jack N. Rakove, James Madison and the Creation of the American Republic (2nd edition, 2002). Besides being the husband of America’s most famous First Lady, James Madison was the most consistent and insightful recorder of the development of the United States of America. The delegates to the Constitutional Convention agreed to keep their deliberations secret, but Madison kept detailed notes and he retained them for historical purposes. He maintained and preserved the records and writings of his four decades of political life, from the state of Virginia to the Continental Congress, to the White House, infamously burned during his presidency. It would be no exaggeration to deem him the Father of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and Author of The Federalist. He was a gifted political thinker, able to be both theoretical and pragmatic. Rakove especially admires him for recognizing the need – and the difficulty – of balancing majority power and minority rights. In addition to his contributions to American history and government, this slim biography details his family background, personal life, and relationships with other more famous founders. He was not an imposing figure or a flashy personality like some of his contemporaries, but his lasting influence on the structure and functioning of our national government is exceeded by none. <br /><br />Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone (2009). The setting is a missionary hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The culture blends African, Mediterranean and Indian; Christian and Muslim and Hindu. In September 1954 twin boys are delivered by caesarian in Missing Hospital. The novel begins with this traumatic event. It then traces the lives of the boys, Marion and Shiva, for 50 years. In alternating chapters, it recounts the lives of their birth parents: from Madras, India, Sister Mary Joseph Praise and from Scotland and the Indian Medical Service, Dr. Thomas Stone. A third plot line tells the story of the parents who raised the twins, internal medicine specialist Dr. Abhi Ghosh and obstetrician Dr. Kalpana Hemlatha (“Hema”), both from Madras. Missing Hospital, its doctors, nurses, staff, and patients, and the social and political features of Addis Aba and Ethiopia are described in detail. The perspective is largely that of the twins as they mature. There is more detail about the practice of medicine than is comfortable to read, but both boys show an early capability for medicine and grow up to become surgeons. From beginning to end, the plot turns on things medical, but the compelling focus remains Marion and Shiva and the other vivid characters who inhabit this novel. <div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9Kc1H4rJjEs/YAr5HuyWSgI/AAAAAAAAAUg/CCLt2nzljnM1XpP1QqFxpMnomz3qjwmfgCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/BE3741F9-2855-473C-9181-F912E6A6D3C4.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9Kc1H4rJjEs/YAr5HuyWSgI/AAAAAAAAAUg/CCLt2nzljnM1XpP1QqFxpMnomz3qjwmfgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/BE3741F9-2855-473C-9181-F912E6A6D3C4.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /> <br /><br /></div>Laura Nemethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18049198850321076490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2993752341980843907.post-50550161871653936932021-01-22T07:50:00.004-08:002021-01-22T07:50:26.727-08:00September 2020<p> I'm always amazed at the diversity we bring to the table. Here's what we discussed:</p><div style="text-align: left;">1984 - George Orwell</div><div style="text-align: left;">You Play the Girl - Carina Chocano</div><div style="text-align: left;">The Healer's Museum - J.M. Barrows</div><div style="text-align: left;">Lamb - Christopher Moore</div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.anncleeves.com/" target="_blank">Ann Cleeves</a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.panmacmillan.com/blogs/crime-thriller/ann-cleeves-vera-stanhope-book-series-crime" target="_blank">Ann Cleeves' Vera Stanhope series</a></div><div style="text-align: left;">Murder by the Book - Lauren Elliott</div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.panmacmillan.com/blogs/crime-thriller/shetland-series" target="_blank">Ann Cleeves' Shetland series</a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.sarahmoss.org/about/" target="_blank">Sarah Moss</a></div><div style="text-align: left;">Redhead by the Side of the Road - Anne Tyler</div><div style="text-align: left;">The Great Believers - Rebecca Makkai</div><div style="text-align: left;">Rage - Bob Woodward</div><div style="text-align: left;">Embracing Coincidence - Carol Lynn Pearson</div><div style="text-align: left;">Piranesi - Susanna Clarke</div><div style="text-align: left;">Johnathan Strange & Mr. Norrell - Susanna Clarke</div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/09/14/susanna-clarkes-fantasy-world-of-interiors" target="_blank">Susanna Clarke's Fantasy World of Interiors</a></div><div style="text-align: left;">The Daughters of Erietown - Connie Schultz</div><div style="text-align: left;">Life and Fate - Vasily Grossman</div><div style="text-align: left;">A Writer at War - Vasily Grossman</div><div style="text-align: left;">Holy Island - LJ Ross</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">From Mary Lou in Maryland:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div>Cokie Roberts, Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation (2004). This history is written in the conversational voice familiar to us from PBS and NPR. It is a delight to read as well as being well researched. We know that Martha Washing held the troops together during that terrible winter at Valley Forge. We are familiar with admonition Abigail Adams gave John when the Constitution was being drafted: “Remember the Ladies.” Of course they didn’t as often as they should have. In the author’s words, “These are the mothers, wives, sisters, daughters and friends of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence, fought in the Revolutionary War, attended the Constitutional Convention, and served in the new government.” She protests the necessity of listing them in her Cast of Characters according to the roles of the famous men in their lives: <br /><br />Signers of the Declaration of Independence: John Adams, husband of Abigail Smith Adams; George Ross, uncle-in-law of Betsy Ross; <br /><br />Soldiers and Statesmen of the Revolutionary Period: Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, son of Eliza Lucas Pinckney, brother of Harriett Pinckney Horry, husband of Sarah Middleton Pinckney and then Mary Stead Pinckney; George Washington, husband of Martha Dandridge Custis Washington. <br /><br />Signers of the Constitution: Alexander Hamilton, husband of Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, son-in-law of Catherine Van Rensselaer Schuyler, brother-in-law of Angelica Schuyler Church; James Madison, husband of Dolly Payne Madison <br /><br />This example illustrates how the women wove the social fabric of the times. All of the successes of the nation’s formative years show their influence. Their courage, accomplishments, and good sense will astound the reader. This book is a delightful, insightful presentation of our nation’s early history. <br /><br />Richard Hack, Duchess of Death: The Unauthorized Biography of Agatha Christie (2009). The famous author was very protective of her privacy, did not authorize any biographies, and resisted publicity and interviews. She wrote a couple incomplete and inaccurate autobiographies and Hack relied upon those as well as letters, correspondence with her publishers, and other materials that became available once her daughter Rosalind Hicks founded The Agatha Christie Society and donated her Greenway House residence and gardens to Britain’s National Trust. The book begins with an account of the famous author’s mysterious 11-Day disappearance in 1926. It remains a mystery to this day, as appears to have been her intention. Hack presents a plausible theory of how this episode may have played out. Whatever happened, her first marriage dissolved not long thereafter. Some years later she met and married archeologist Max Mallowan and the couple spent many happy winters on digs in the Middle East. At that time, Rosalind gradually took over most of her mother’s business with her publishers while Agatha concentrated on her writing. As Hack outlines Christie’s entire writing career, from novels to theatre, an understanding of here complex personality also emerges. <br /><br />Agatha Christie as Mary Westmacott, Unfinished Portrait (1944). According to Richard Hack, this is the most autobiographical of Christie’s novels. The childhood upbringing of the heroine is very similar to Christie’s own in both setting and experiences. As such, the novel is interesting reading. It also seems to be a fictionalized version of the sort of psychological trauma that may have been the basis for Christie’s 1926 disappearance. It is a disturbing and unhappy book. <br /><br />Alexander McCall Smith, Emma: A Modern Retelling (2014). The setting is the village of Highbury in Norfolk in the 21st century. Emma Woodhouse returns home after completing her university education in interior design at Bath University. Smith brings us up to date on the events of Emma’s childhood, including the hiring of the Scottish governess Miss Taylor. Mr. Woodhouse is as anxiety-ridden and Emma is as proud and meddlesome as Austin’s characters. The conflicts and plot remain the same. The cultural updating is hilarious. Smith is easily Austin’s equal in presenting the twists and ironies of internal monologues. Wherever you place Emma in the Austin canon, you will enjoy this book. <br /><br />Paulette Jiles, Enemy Women (2002). The author was born and raised in the Missouri Ozarks. She now has dual citizenship in Canada, where she has won several national poetry awards. This is her first novel, growing out of 7 years of research into her family’s history during the Civil War. Innumerable stunning prose poems grace the narrative. The heroine is 18-year-old Adair Colley, one of three daughters of a local Justice of the Peace who tries to remain neutral during the war. In November 1864 he is taken by the lawless Missouri Union Militia, who also plunder, trash, and set fire to their home. Adair takes her sisters and joins the stream of refugees walking north to escape the violence from both sides. She is searching for their father, but instead ends up in a women’s prison, a horrific place of corruption, abuse and violence. Her interrogator, a Union Major, falls in love with her. Adair’s efforts to regain her freedom and return home form the basic plot of the story. Each chapter begins with brief quotes from military dispatches, newspapers, and private correspondence about the Civil War in Missouri. The novel is an intimate and powerful exposition of the degradation and violence of war applied to an individual life. Adair is a very spunky heroine and despite the dark subject, the novel is a joy to read. <div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCXW63534595 BCX4" style="-webkit-user-drag: none; caret-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.847); clear: both; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.847); cursor: text; direction: ltr; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web", Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; margin: 0px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px; position: relative; text-size-adjust: auto; user-select: text;"><p class="Paragraph SCXW63534595 BCX4" paraeid="{05692636-fcd3-4b04-8395-9b06a3a5addd}{111}" paraid="195995103" style="-webkit-user-drag: none; color: windowtext; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; user-select: text; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="EOP SCXW63534595 BCX4" data-ccp-props="{"201341983":0,"335559739":200,"335559740":240}" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; -webkit-user-drag: none; -webkit-user-select: text; font-family: "Times New Roman", "Times New Roman_EmbeddedFont", "Times New Roman_MSFontService", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br /></span></p><p class="Paragraph SCXW63534595 BCX4" paraeid="{05692636-fcd3-4b04-8395-9b06a3a5addd}{111}" paraid="195995103" style="-webkit-user-drag: none; color: windowtext; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; user-select: text; vertical-align: baseline;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-u1HB7AinLAY/YArzqIVSi_I/AAAAAAAAAUU/aTxTd1tNHxcVykzg4ufdbIUBkj-ZQOBFQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/B9CED4D2-B8F3-48DD-BD79-779D95382AFF_1_201_a.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1535" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-u1HB7AinLAY/YArzqIVSi_I/AAAAAAAAAUU/aTxTd1tNHxcVykzg4ufdbIUBkj-ZQOBFQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/B9CED4D2-B8F3-48DD-BD79-779D95382AFF_1_201_a.jpeg" /></a></div><br /><span class="EOP SCXW63534595 BCX4" data-ccp-props="{"201341983":0,"335559739":200,"335559740":240}" style="-webkit-nbsp-mode: normal !important; -webkit-user-drag: none; -webkit-user-select: text; font-family: "Times New Roman", "Times New Roman_EmbeddedFont", "Times New Roman_MSFontService", serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br /></span><p></p></div></div>Laura Nemethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18049198850321076490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2993752341980843907.post-10335717260111932882020-09-07T11:19:00.001-07:002020-09-07T11:19:30.917-07:00<p> August 2020</p><p>A variety of consuming culture is around us this summer: books, films, newsletters.</p><p>Here's what we discussed:</p><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/series/us-morning-briefing" target="_blank">The Morning Newsletter from The New York Times</a></div><div style="text-align: left;">If It Bleeds - Stephen King</div><div style="text-align: left;">Salem's Lot - Stephen King</div><div style="text-align: left;">Big Magic - Elizabeth Gilbert</div><div style="text-align: left;">A Minute to Midnight - David Baldacci</div><div style="text-align: left;">Nothing Ventured - Jeffrey Archer</div><div style="text-align: left;">Beyond a Reasonable Stout - Ellie Alexander</div><div style="text-align: left;">Big Little Lies - Liane Moriarty</div><div style="text-align: left;">My Own Country - Abraham Verghese</div><div style="text-align: left;">All the Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr</div><div style="text-align: left;">Circe - Madeline Miller</div><div style="text-align: left;">The Woman in Cabin 10 - Ruth Ware</div><div style="text-align: left;">Knockemstiff - Donald Ray Pollock</div><div style="text-align: left;">The Devil All the Time - Donald Ray Pollock</div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7395114/" target="_blank">The Devil All the Time movie</a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://GoOhio.com">GoOhio.com</a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">From Mary Lou in Maryland:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><br /><br />Kim Michele Richardson, The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek (2019). There is a rare recessive gene that, when carried by both parents, produces offspring with blue skin. The condition is called methemoglobinemia and was first found in the USA in a family in Troublesome Creek, Kentucky. In the 1930s President Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) established the Pack Horse Library Project to create jobs for women and distribute reading materials in remote parts of Appalachia. These historical events form the background for Richardson’s novel. The Book Woman of the title is Cussy Mary Carter, named for the native French town of her grandfather who unwittingly brought the blue skin gene to Troublesome Creek. Her family is harassed and reviled for their blue skin in a culture where there is little tolerance for differences. Her mother has recently died. Her father is a coal miner, exploited by the bosses based on his unusual color. Over his objections, she gets a job as a WPA horse librarian. She rides her mule Junia (named for the sole female apostle) deep into the hills and coves, distributing worn books, magazines, and pamphlets to her patrons, many of whom are semi-literate. The poverty in the hills is extreme and her service goes far beyond the distribution of printed materials. Her life is endangered many times and happiness seems unattainable. Her kindness, strength, and resilience win our respect and eventually that of some of her neighbors as well. We are very much on her side throughout this engrossing novel. <br /><br />Kathy Lynn Emerson, Making Headlines: A Biography of Nellie Bly (1989). This slim illustrated book tells the story of the pioneering female investigative journalist in the 1880s and 1890s. She began her career in Pittsburg, then went to New York, where she talked her way into a job with Joseph Pulitzer’s World newspaper. She had already made a name for herself when she persuaded the World to send her on a round-the-world trip in an attempt to beat the fictional record of Phileas Fogg in Jules Verne’s novel, Around the World in 80 Days. The World’s coverage of this trip and the contest they run to guess the exact time of her journey made her famous far beyond New York. (Nellie Bly is one of the authors covered in my 8 Authors zoom class this summer, the only one I’d never heard of.) <br /><br />Matthew Goodman, Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland’s History-Making Race Around the World (2013). When Nellie Bly left New York on November 14, 1889, neither she nor The World knew that the New York magazine Cosmopolitan had launched their female journalist, Elizabeth Bisland, on a competing trip later the same day. Bly sailed by steamer east across the Atlantic, while Bisland traveled west by train. Bisland seemed to have an advantage in weather and geography and The Cosmopolitan challenged The World to a race. Bly remained unaware of her competition until near the end of her race. The two women were very different in background, personality, and preparation. Bly grew up poor in the coal country of Pennsylvania, while Bisland was from a Southern plantation family who moved north during reconstruction. Bly lived in a poor NYC neighborhood while Bisland and her sister lived on the fashionable side of 5th Avenue, where they ran a popular salon. Bly traveled with one dress, one coat, a deerstalker hat, and a hand grip. Bisland traveled with an extensive wardrobe in a steamer trunk and a Gladstone valise. Despite these differences, each woman was committed to beating the fictional record of Jules Verne’s novel. The book is full of historical and cultural background, both of the post-Civil War US and British imperialism. It didn’t matter that Nellie and Elizabeth spoke only English, as all the ports and cities where they changed forms of transportation were outposts of the British Empire. This history-based account reads like a novel. <br /><br />Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See (2014). This is the best World War II novel I have read n a very long time. It relates the stories of two flawed but exceptional children as they grew up struggling to survive while war ravages Europe. In 1934 Marie-Laure LeBlanc is going blind at the age of six. She goes daily with her father to the Museum d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, where he is the locksmith and keeper of all the keys. There she hears the story of a cursed jewel deep in the vault called the Sea of Flames. She also learns about the collections in the museum and becomes especially interested in seashells. Her father builds a model of their neighborhood to assist her in learning to navigate the city with her white cane. She learns to read braille and is enamored with Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. In 1940, they flee Paris for St. Malo. Also in 1934, snowy-haired eight-year-old Werner Pfennig is living with his sister in an orphanage in a coal mining town near Essen, Germany. He is undersized and timid and he asks unanswerable questions. He scavenges bits of machinery and soon he figures how to make a radio receiver. In 1940 his unusual aptitude is discovered and he is taken to a special Nazi school, Schulpforta, and trained to track the radios of the Resistance. The experiences of Marie-Laure and Werner from 1934 to 1944 reveal the hardships and brutality of the war in personal terms. The novel is rich with imagery and the structure is complex. <br /><a href="https://www.blogger.com/#"><br /></a><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VMs9FwnlitI/X1Z5pirq8_I/AAAAAAAAATI/vrQSoLIjzz0Y4q-KWfOTw8ICKjGmFwjpACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/EF44DEFC-E46D-4E14-AB7A-A3AA5E5B04C2_1_201_a.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VMs9FwnlitI/X1Z5pirq8_I/AAAAAAAAATI/vrQSoLIjzz0Y4q-KWfOTw8ICKjGmFwjpACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/EF44DEFC-E46D-4E14-AB7A-A3AA5E5B04C2_1_201_a.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br />Laura Nemethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18049198850321076490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2993752341980843907.post-91124564584879406212020-09-07T10:58:00.000-07:002020-09-07T10:58:04.663-07:00July 2020<p> We're reading a variety these days. From humor to historical fiction, and everything in between.</p><p>Here's what we discussed:</p><div style="text-align: left;">American Dirt - Jeanine Cummins</div><div style="text-align: left;">What in God's Name - Simon Rich</div><div style="text-align: left;">Horrorstor - Grady Hendrix</div><div style="text-align: left;">These Women - Ivy Pochoda</div><div style="text-align: left;">Visitation Street - Ivy Pochoda</div><div style="text-align: left;">A Gentleman in Moscow - Amor Towles</div><div style="text-align: left;">Just Mercy - Bryan Stevenson</div><div style="text-align: left;">My Italian Bulldozer - Alexander McCall Smith</div><div style="text-align: left;">The Second-Worst Restaurant in France - Alexander McCall Smith</div><div style="text-align: left;">Lamb - Christopher Moore</div><div style="text-align: left;">The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane - Kate DiCamillo</div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Wong_(writer)" target="_blank">Works by David Wong</a></div><div style="text-align: left;">Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese</div><div style="text-align: left;">Apeirogon - Colum McCann</div><div style="text-align: left;">Juneteenth - Ralph Ellison</div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://www.thehugoawards.org/" target="_blank">The Hugo Awards</a></div><div style="text-align: left;">Middlegame - Seanan McGuire</div><div style="text-align: left;">The Ten Thousand Doors of January - Alix Harrow</div><div style="text-align: left;">Gedeon the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir</div><div style="text-align: left;">The Lady from the Black Lagoon - Mallory O'Meara</div><div style="text-align: left;">The Babbling Brook Naked Poker Club - Ann Warner</div><div style="text-align: left;">The Pioneers - David McCullough</div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_McCullough" target="_blank">Works by David McCullough</a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">From Mary Lou in Maryland:</div><br />Ralph Ellison, Juneteenth (1999). This novel was extracted and edited by John F, Callahan from manuscripts left unfinished by Ellison at his death in 1994. Ellison had worked on an ambitious work of fiction, probably 3 volumes, over the 40 years following the publication of Invisible Man in1952. Ellison’s wife assisted Callahan, the literary executor, in developing the book that emerges as Juneteenth. In the Afterward Callahan provides a brief but informative discussion of the decisions he made in selecting and structuring materials from Ellison’s manuscripts and notes into a single-volume novel. Set in the 1950s, it tells the interrelated life-stories of two men, the race-baiting New England Senator Adam Sunraider and the old Black Baptist traveling minister Reverend Hickman, who adopted the young white boy “Bliss” and raised him to be a member of the Black evangelical movement. Bliss deserts the Reverend as an adolescent and forges a new identity, renouncing his upbringing. Still, his Senate speeches echo the Black Southern Baptist rhetoric and style. This is a very American novel, focusing on the essentially American historical and cultural issues of slavery and racial injustice, with a style that reads in part like Whitman and in part like Faulkner. The structure is a series of rambling narratives and flashbacks that gradually reveal the often-shocking stories of the two men. This complex novel is more than worth the energy and attention it takes to read it. <br /><br />Tom Willard, Buffalo Soldiers (1996). In July 1866, the U. S. Congress passed a law creating 6 regiments of Negro troops (4 infantry, 2 calvary) to absorb Negro soldiers from the Union army, many of them formerly enslaved persons. President U. S. Grant sent them, under white officers and along with white regiments, to pacify the western frontier, where Indians, Mexican revolutionaries, and outlaws were creating havoc. The Indians called the Negro troops “Buffalo Soldiers” because their hair was similar to buffalo fur. This is the background for Willard’s novel. He creates a number of characters to inhabit the known military history of the forts, battles, and cultural groups of the western frontier from 1866 to 1885. Some historical figures also are portrayed, including Colonel Benjamin H. Grierson (of Vicksburg fame), who led the 10th Cavalry Regiment (Colored). The primary fictional character is Augustus Sharps, a former slave and champion marksman who took his last name from his rifle. He is unusually literate for a former slave and these skills bring him acknowledgement, in addition to his military skills. Still, he encounters a great deal of racial prejudice, despite some supportive while officers. The major female characters are the women of Laundry Row, who live in or near the quarters of the colored soldiers and do laundry for the troop. Several romances develop and figure prominently in the lot, along with campaigns and battles. An appendix lists the names of some of the Buffalo Soldiers who won Medals of Honor for their service in the 9th Cavalry (Colored) and the 10th Cavalry (Colored).<br /><br />Kate Atkinson, When Will There Be Good News? (2008). I think this is the best Jackson Brodie novel so far. Police detective Louise Monroe is still a major character in the plot, but the most fascinating character is the resourceful 16-year-old orphan Reggie Chase, the only one besides the reader who believes something criminally terrible is going on. Like Atkinson’s earlier novels, this one begins with a horrific crime in a chapter entitled “In the Past.” Then it shifts to the present, with Jackson in Yorkshire, conducting surveillance at a playground. Jackson is always making mistakes and this time he boards the wrong train and is almost killed as a result. The plot unfolds thereafter with scant participation from him. Reggie is the link between the varied characters whose lives are somehow involved in the unfolding crimes. Jackson and Louise never would have solved the mysteries without her. Once again, Atkinson skillfully brings the many apparently unrelated characters and plot lines to a surprising and unconventional resolution. Through no skill of his own, hapless Jackson Brodie once again lands on his feet. <br /><br />Connie Schultz, The Daughters of Erietown (2020). While this book is an interesting enough journalistic portrayal of small-town culture in the 1950s and 1960s, I found it lacking as a novel. This may be in part because I had more than enough of the racism, sexism, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness of those decades while I was living through them. The major cultural and political events of the times are a backdrop to the lives of the characters, but they seem to exert little influence. It is near the end of the book, in the late 1970s, before the characters exhibit any meaningful (and not always convincing) development. The central character, Ellie, is the only one who manages to surprise us. There are lots of secrets and some suspense, but no intricacy of plot. Despite what appears to have been intended as a positive ending, the novel is basically a sad story. Schultz is probably a better journalist than she is a novelist.<div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-suFsBJdunao/X1Z0m9ay4YI/AAAAAAAAAS0/hcnQgneNG_MpuqiOzqkPTADcF7OaGM7BQCLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/B7CC4B1C-720A-4E23-B572-1C54843BFF32.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-suFsBJdunao/X1Z0m9ay4YI/AAAAAAAAAS0/hcnQgneNG_MpuqiOzqkPTADcF7OaGM7BQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/B7CC4B1C-720A-4E23-B572-1C54843BFF32.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div><br /> <p><br /></p></div>Laura Nemethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18049198850321076490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2993752341980843907.post-47810514114145813672020-06-28T08:59:00.001-07:002020-06-28T08:59:52.751-07:00June 2020It's the start of summer, and our reads have become a little lighter, a little cozier.<br />
<br />
Here's what we discussed:<br />
<br />
The Summer House - Hannah McKinnon<br />
The Liars' Club - Mary Karr<br />
Everything I Never Told You - Celeste Ng<br />
Little Fires Everywhere - Celeste Ng<br />
These Women - Ivy Pochoda<br />
Slightly South of Simple - Kristy Woodson Harvey<br />
The Expats - Chris Pavone<br />
The Strange Journey of Alice Pendelbury - Marc Levy<br />
The Daughters of Erietown: A Novel - Connie Schultz<br />
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption - Bryan Stevenson<br />
What the Hell Did I Just Read - David Wong<br />
<a href="http://www.wodehouse.co.uk/" target="_blank">P. G. Wodehouse</a><br />
<br />
From Mary Lou in Maryland:<br />
<br />
Helen Simonson, The Summer Before the War (2016). This novel is as quirky and delightful as her first one, Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand. In the summer of 1914, Beatrice Nash arrives in Rye, an East Sussex coastal town, to become a Latin teacher. Her father has died recently and she has to support herself. Her relatives do all they can to thwart her independence. The members of the school board and the town leaders aren’t at all sure that they want a female Latin teacher. She has the support of a couple of the leading women of the town, but even they have very narrow concepts of female propriety. Before school starts, she tutors a group of disadvantaged boys and strives to win them over. A couple eligible young men add a potentially romantic thread to the story. Beatrice’s situation is very precarious and stressful. And then along comes the war and upsets all the social dynamics. Simonson is justly compared to Austin. <br /><br />Ian Ferguson, Village of the Small Houses: A Memoir of Sorts (2003). In 1959, before the author’s birth, his parents left Edmonton and went 500+ miles north to the former fur trapping town of Fort Vermillion. His father was a charming con man with his heart in the right place who generally lived on step ahead of the law. He got a job as a school teacher and Ian was raised in a community of eccentric, independent characters, many of them First Nations people. It gave Ian quite a broad perspective on cultural norms. I think I have read this book before, but I got so engrossed I had to keep reading anyway. The story of Ian’s birth is one of the funniest I have read. His mother had a lot to put up with. <br /><br />Kristy Woodson Harvey, Slightly South of Simple (2017). This may be the best summer novel you will find this year. It is set on the island of Peachtree Bluff, Georgia. When Ansley’s husband is killed in the twin towers on 9/11, she has no alternative but to move with her three daughters to the waterfront cottage she inherited from her grandmother. Her eldest daughter Caroline was particularly upset by the move at the beginning of her senior year in high school and she soon escapes back to college in NYC. The events that unfold 17 years later are alternately narrated by Ansley and Caroline. Ansley has established a successful interior design business. She is quite satisfied with her single life and proud that each of her daughters has established an independent life of her own. Then Caroline, 6 months pregnant, leaves her philandering husband in NYC and comes back to Peachtree Bluff with her 11-year-old daughter. Middle daughter Sloane and her two rambunctious sons decide to join the house party. Finally, youngest daughter Emerson, a Hollywood actress, comes to do a film in Atlanta. Ansley’s peaceful home and her orderly life are uproariously invaded by her daughters and grandchildren. Furthermore, she has a secret she doesn’t want them to discover. In fact, each of the women has a secret or two. Despite the interpersonal tensions, some of the scenes are hilarious. It seems impossible that there can be a happy ending, but this is a summer novel. <div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zHGPaHc-XsY/Xvi-Zo7cv3I/AAAAAAAAASA/HJOB_Jmxvd0O8qL91Jy8NHgNxN1XPLIdQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/DABA6635-0C2E-4D18-9884-042517778570.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zHGPaHc-XsY/Xvi-Zo7cv3I/AAAAAAAAASA/HJOB_Jmxvd0O8qL91Jy8NHgNxN1XPLIdQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/DABA6635-0C2E-4D18-9884-042517778570.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Laura Nemethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18049198850321076490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2993752341980843907.post-23414535783974564072020-06-23T16:26:00.001-07:002020-06-23T16:26:25.542-07:00May 2020Although the virtual book discussions are short and sweet, I'm grateful we can still get together to share stories.<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Here's what we discussed:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Eight Hundred Grapes - Laura Dave</div>
<div>
At the Edge of the Orchard - Tracy Chevalier</div>
<div>
Girl with a Pearl Earring - Tracy Chevalier</div>
<div>
The Botany of Desire - Michael Pollan</div>
<div>
A Baker's Daughter - Marcy Brenner and Kristin Donnan</div>
<div>
Broken for Your - Stephanie Kallos</div>
<div>
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff - Christopher Moore</div>
<div>
The Plague - Albert Camus</div>
<div>
Bossypants - Tina Fey</div>
<div>
Jaguar in the Kitchen: My Life with Jungle Larry - Nancy Teztlaff</div>
<div>
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption - Bryan Stevenson</div>
<div>
Noir at the Bar: Authors and book discussion sponsored by <a href="https://www.litcleveland.org/" target="_blank">Literary Cleveland</a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
From Mary Lou:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall (2009). This novel presents British history in the time of King Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey through the life of Thomas Cromwell. Thomas begins life as the abused son of an abusive blacksmith. He escapes to the continent and doesn’t return to England until he is a grown man. He joins the household of Cardinal Wolsey, trains as a lawyer, and proceeds to make his fortune and his reputation. The novel provides a brilliant account of the upheavals in power politics and power religion before Elizabeth I came to the throne. It draws heavily on George Cavendish’s contemporaneous biography of Cardinal Wolsey. Thomas Cromwell makes an honorable and clever protagonist in this chronicle of intrigue and ambition. <br /><br />Kate Atkinson, Case Histories (2004). This is an unusually structured mystery novel with three apparently unrelated case histories in 1970, 1994, and 1979, presented in that order. Each is horrifying in its own way. Enter our somewhat bumbling ne’er-do-well private detective, Jackson Brodie, in 2000. He is hired to investigate aspects of these cold cases and peculiar connections begin to appear. It does not seem possible that the cases can be interrelated, but they are. The suspense in the novel is based on Jackson’s discoveries of these improbable connections. In the end, after several life-threatening events, his efforts are rewarded in a most surprising manner. <br /><br />Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn (2006). Jackson Brodie, retired police office and retired private investigator, is now independently wealthy. He has returned from his villa in France to Edinburgh where his actress-girlfriend has a part in a fringe play during the summer arts festival. He witnesses a road rage incident where a man is beaten badly in the street by an incredible hulk. Jackson slips off before giving a statement to police. He goes to Cramond Island where he discovers a murdered woman with a pink card in her bra: “FAVORS - We do what you want us to do.” The body disappears in the Forth and the police to whom he reports it think he is delusional. Later the incredible hulk encounters Jackson and assaults him but when the police come, Jackson is the one who ends up in jail. He meets Louise, a female police detective who finds his explanations of events incredible, but somehow intriguing. Jackson does not believe in coincidences and he keeps looking for FAVORS. Other peculiar characters also have a connection to the road rage assault, including scoundrels, human traffickers, prostitutes and criminals. As in the previous novel, everything is interconnected. In spite of himself, Jackson manages to stay alive and figure it all out. There may even be a new romance in his future with Louise. <br /><div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WbyixbHYWBo/XvKPkxZctQI/AAAAAAAAARw/xRIeVOU7sUsURXVJmhxqgbjKUWSIznOaQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/9C1EAE2D-6C9C-44D7-AC51-926F82D0B8C4.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WbyixbHYWBo/XvKPkxZctQI/AAAAAAAAARw/xRIeVOU7sUsURXVJmhxqgbjKUWSIznOaQCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/9C1EAE2D-6C9C-44D7-AC51-926F82D0B8C4.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Laura Nemethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18049198850321076490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2993752341980843907.post-537490034799342392020-04-13T07:47:00.002-07:002020-06-23T16:28:29.644-07:00April 2020Our virtual meeting was a lot of fun and just what I needed. Thanks to everyone who attended!<br />
<br />
Here's what we discussed:<br />
<br />
Look Alive Twenty-Five - Jane Evanovich<br />
Olive, Again - Elizabeth Strout<br />
The One-in-a-Million Boy - Monica Wood<br />
Overground Railroad - Lesa Cline-Ransome<br />
Big Sky - Kate Atkinson<br />
The Durrells in Corfu - Lawrence Durrell<br />
The Black Book - Lawrence Durrell<br />
Drive Your Bones over the Bones of the Dead - Olga Tokarczuk<br />
The Secrets We Kept - Lara Prescott<br />
The Two Towers - J.R.R. Tolkien<br />
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood<br />
The Testaments - Margaret Atwood<br />
Luna:New Moon - Ian McDonald<br />
Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel<br />
The Pioneers - David McCullough<br />
Alexander Hamilton - Ron Chernow<br />
Washington: A Life - Ron Chernow<br />
The Mask of Sanity - Jacob Appel<br />
<a href="http://www.jonstahl.com/films" target="_blank">Jacob, A film by John Stahl </a><br />
Cemetery Road - Greg Iles<br />
<br />
From Mary Lou:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;">
Albert Camus, the plague (1947; trans. Stuart Gilbert, 1948). The COVID-19 isolation period is the perfect time to re-read this classic philosophical novel. It is set in the ugly French port of Oran, Algeria, in 194-. The plot is unremarkable. Rats begin to appear in the houses and streets, dying dramatically. People begin to fall ill and die. The story is in the response of the general populace and specific individuals to the epidemic and quarantine. The populace progresses from fear to suspicion to anger to lawless assaults on the closed gates of the town. The individuals reveal their distinct characters in the responses they choose to make to the crisis. (This is an existentialist novel; choice defines the self.) <br />Dr. Bernard Rieux is the main character. He is first to discover and diagnose the plague. His choice is automatic: he will do his duty as a doctor and fight the plague. <br />With elderly Dr. Castel, he pushes the authorities to take appropriate action. (They deny and resist all the way – “Officialdom can never cope with something really catastrophic.”) Dr. Castel choses to devote his energies to developing a serum. <br />Raymond Rambert, a Paris newspaper reporter, chooses to work with criminals to escape the quarantined town, but ultimately chooses to stay and fight the evil. <br />Jean Tarrou, a wealthy visitor and detached observer who keeps a chronicle of the plague, eventually chooses to form a “sanitation league” of volunteers to collect and bury the bodies.<br />Joseph Grand (an insignificant civil servant who is anything but) chooses to keep the daily plague statistics and the records for the sanitation league. <br />M. Cottard, a paranoid recluse, attempts suicide at the beginning of the novel. Once the town is quarantined and everyone is trapped and threatened, he becomes sociable and chooses life. <br />Father Paneloux, a Jesuit priest whose two lengthy sermons provide the most philosophical discussions of the novel, chooses to view the plague as the manifestation of God’s Will. First it is the justly deserved Wrath of God for the sins of the townsfolk. Later, after he witnesses the particularly horrible death of a child, he sermonizes that evil and suffering display the Mystery of God’s Will that the Christian must choose to embrace blindly and support vigorously, no matter how horrible. He decides that his Christian vocation requires him to refuse doctoring and he sickens and dies. Dr. Rieux wryly rules it a “doubtful case.” <br /><br /> It becomes clear that the atheism of Dr. Rieux and others is a matter of active philosophical choice, the opposite of the choice made by Father Paneloux. This analysis may suggest that the novel is formulaic. That is not how the reader experiences it. Rather, it is the meaning that evolves as the story progresses. John Milton wrote Paradise Lost to “justify the ways of God to man.” Camus finds them unjustifiable and as a result chooses atheism. <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZfO6GUdO5mE/XpR7ipCX6rI/AAAAAAAAAQ0/POTbxiCTzMg9sHQ1r1rEkIPHRVFpZp_PwCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/BE458C1B-2F80-424B-9DB7-0FF638AD6320_1_201_a.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZfO6GUdO5mE/XpR7ipCX6rI/AAAAAAAAAQ0/POTbxiCTzMg9sHQ1r1rEkIPHRVFpZp_PwCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/BE458C1B-2F80-424B-9DB7-0FF638AD6320_1_201_a.jpeg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />Laura Nemethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18049198850321076490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2993752341980843907.post-89013744863608623972019-03-28T07:54:00.002-07:002019-03-28T07:56:45.768-07:00March 2019“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.” <br />
<br />
― Charles Dickens, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2612809">Great Expectations</a><br />
<br />
<br />
We gathered on such a day, and here's what we discussed:<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blog.inkyfool.com/" target="_blank">Mark Forsyth</a><br />
Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson<br />
<a href="https://www.louisepenny.com/" target="_blank">Louise Penny</a><br />
Becoming - Michelle Obama<br />
The Butchering Art - Lindsey Fitzharris<br />
Twilight of the Gods - Steven Hyden<br />
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy<br />
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy<br />
Natural Law in the Spiritual World - Henry Drummond<br />
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxfordian_theory_of_Shakespeare_authorship" target="_blank">Oxfordian Theory of Shakespeare Authorship</a><br />
<a href="http://lfs.org/awards.shtml" target="_blank">The Prometheus Award</a><br />
Kingdom of the Wicked Book I and Book II - Helen Dale<br />
All Systems Red (The Muderbot Mysteries) - Martha Wells<br />
Good Poems for Hard Times - Garrison Keillor<br />
Bittersweet - Colleen McCoullough<br />
<a href="https://groveatlantic.com/author/donna-leon/" target="_blank">Donna Leon</a><br />
Maid - Stephanie Land<br />
The Choice: Embrace the Possible - Dr. Edith Eva Eger<br />
The Alice Network - Kate Quinn<br />
Lilac Girls - Martha Hall Kelly<br />
<a href="https://serialpodcast.org/" target="_blank">Serial podcast</a><br />
The Tattooist of Auschwitz - Heather Morris<br />
Arbitrary Stupid Goal - Tamara Shopsin<br />
<a href="http://shopsins.com/" target="_blank">Shopsins</a><br />
The Marriage of Opposites - Alice Hoffman<br />
<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/lawrence-ferlinghetti-is-still-revolutionary-at-age-100/" target="_blank">Lawrence Ferlinghetti at 100</a><br />
<br />
From our sister club in OK:<br />
<br />
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Lawton Any-Book Book Bunch<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Thursday, March 14, 2019<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
<b>Books<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></b></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Burke, James Lee. Robicheaux.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Carter, Andrea. Death at Whitewater Church.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Child, Lee. 61 Hours.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Horwitz, Tony. Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Flores, Mia and Olivia Flores. Cartel Wives: A True Story of Deadly Decisions, Steadfast Love, and Bringing Down El Chapo.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Glass, Julia. A House Among the Trees.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Grisham, John. The Reckoning.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Kondo, Marie. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of De-Cluttering and Organizing.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Larson, Edward J. To the Edges of the Earth: 1909, the Race for the Three Poles, and the Climax of the Age of Exploration.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Larson, Erik. Dead Wake.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
McEwan, Ian. The Comfort of Strangers. On Chesil Beach; The Children Act.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Murakami, Haruki. The Wind-up Bird Chronicle.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Penny, Louise. A Fatal Grace.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Perry, Anne. The Face of a Stranger.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet; The Taming of the Shrew.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Sijie, Dai. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Turtledove , Harry. Ruled Britannia.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Zusak, Markus. The Book Thief.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
<span class="Apple-converted-space"><br /></span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
</div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
<b>Films and TV: </b>(All of these films are available on Amazon Prime to rent)<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
The Book Thief.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
On Chesil Beach.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
The Children Act.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
The Comfort of Strangers.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
On Chesil Beach.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
A Man Called Ove.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
<span class="Apple-converted-space"><br /></span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
<b>TV:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></b></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Upstart Crow. (Amazon Prime to rent)</div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
<br /></div>
Why Upstart Crow? It’s satirical, somewhat Blackadder-ish, and requires close listening and a quick wit to catch the puns and sly allusions. The ABBB is the perfect audience. Take no more than two per night, though – it’ll wear you out, trying to keep up with the cleverness. From Wikipedia: “Upstart Crow is a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_sitcom">British sitcom</a> which premiered [in 2016] … as part of the commemorations of the 400th anniversary of the death of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shakespeare">William Shakespeare</a>. Its title quotes "an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers", a critique of Shakespeare by his rival <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Greene_(dramatist)">Robert Greene</a>in the latter's <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greene%27s_Groats-Worth_of_Wit">Groats-Worth of Wit</a>.”<br /><br /><br />Laura Nemethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18049198850321076490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2993752341980843907.post-45851856045781301162019-02-28T07:10:00.001-08:002019-03-05T06:34:10.060-08:00February 2019In winter, all the singing is in the tops of the trees.<br />
- Mary Oliver<br />
<br />
Here's what we discussed during a fine winter evening:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.jonathankellerman.com/books/" target="_blank">Jonathan Kellerman</a><br />
The Hidden Life of Trees - Peter Wohlleben and Tim Flannery<br />
<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7775394/" target="_blank">Judi Dench: My Passion for Trees</a><br />
Kindred - Octavia Butler<br />
The Butchering Art - Lindsey Fitzharris<br />
Voices from the Rust Belt - Anne Trubek<br />
Anne Frank: The Biography - Melissa Muller<br />
<a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/dawn_wacek_a_librarian_s_case_against_overdue_book_fines/transcript?language=en" target="_blank">Libraries Discontinuing Book Fines</a><br />
Something in the Water - Catherine Steadman<br />
The Inflamed Mind - Edward Bullmore<br />
All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten - Robert Fulghum<br />
The Temptation of Forgiveness - Donna Leon<br />
Islands - Anne Rivers Siddons<br />
White Oleander - Janet Fitch<br />
About My Mother - Mike Rowe and Peggy Rowe<br />
A Wedding in December - Anita Shrive<br />
Calypso - David Sedaris<br />
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/shortcuts/2014/jul/31/david-sedaris-litter-picker-rubbish-waste-vehicle-pig-pen-west-sussex" target="_blank">Pig Pen Sedaris</a><br />
<br />
From our sister group in Oklahoma:<br />
<br />
<b>Lawton Any-Book Book Bunch </b><br />
Thursday, February 15, 2019<br />
<br />
<b>Books </b><br />
Clinton, Bill, and James Patterson. The President Is Missing.<br />
Coben, Harlan. No Second Chance.<br />
Dickson, H. Leighton. Dragon of Ash & Stars.<br />
Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer. At the End of the Century: The Stories of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala; An Experience in India.<br />
<br />
<br />
Johnson, Steven. The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic—And How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World.<br />
<br />
<br />
Keller, Julia. Bitter River.<br />
Keys, Jeff. Seventy-Five Homemade Salad Dressings.<br />
McConnell, Caimh. A Man with One of Those Faces.<br />
Obama, Michelle. Becoming.<br />
Penny, Louise. The Nature of the Beast; Kingdom of the Blind.<br />
Perry, Anne. A Breach of Promise.<br />
Sakamoto, Pamela Rotner. Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds.<br />
Springer, Nancy. The Case of the Left-Handed Lady: An Enola Holmes Mystery.<br />
Turtledove, Harry. Ruled Brittania.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Films & TV </b><br />
Heat and Dust; The Householder.(Ruth Prawer Jhabvala)<br />
Still Life: A Three Pines Mystery. (Acorn TV; Amazon streaming)<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>From Mary Lou in Maryland:</b><br />
<br />
Booknotes Laura February 2019<br />
<br />
Karen White, The Beach Trees (2011). When Julie was 12, her younger sister disappeared and she has been searching for her ever since. Now her best friend Monica has died, naming her guardian of her 5-year-old son Beau and bequeathing her a portrait painted by Julie’s grandfather. Julie leaves her job at a Manhattan auction house and sets out with Beau and the painting for New Orleans. She wants to introduce Beau to his mother’s family and also if possible to find out why Monica broke all contact with them 5 years before. Julie also has inherited a half-interest in the Guidry family beach house on the Katrina-ravaged gulf coast in Biloxi. The narrative is divided between Julie and Beau’s grandmother Aimee Guidry. The atmosphere is sultry and mysterious. Together Julie, Aimee, and Monica’s brother Trey gradually uncover the passions and secrets of the past, including the reason Monica left and how the portrait fits into the puzzle.<br />
<br />
Jean H. Baker, Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography (1987, 2008). This is a well researched and engrossing biography of America’s most maligned and misunderstood of First Ladies. It covers her entire life, beginning with her childhood as a daughter of one of the first families of Lexington, Kentucky, and ending with her widowhood. She had a life-long interest in politics, for which her stepmother denigrated her as unladylike and arranged for her to live with her older sister in Springfield, Illinois. When she was First Lady, members of her husband’s cabinet and the press criticized her for extravagance in dress and in refurbishment of the White House in wartime. Some critics spread rumors that she was a spy for the South, based on the fact that some of her relatives were aligned with that side of the conflict. After she was widowed and before she was allowed access to her husband’s meager estate, scandal erupted again when she attempted to sell her wardrobe. Some years later, she was notoriously committed to a private insane asylum, based on the testimony and maneuvering of her son Robert. Eventually she cleverly devised a way to find the assistance that secured her release. This biography follows all the events of her life, many of them tragic. It refutes many of the slanders and provides context and documentation for the actions that brought her notoriety. It examines the evidence regarding her medical problems and her likely over-medication for them. This is anything but a dry and dusty biography.<br />
<br />
Jennifer Chiaverini, Fates and Traitors: A Novel of John Wilkes Booth and the Women who Loved Him (2016). We all are familiar with the appalling story of the end of the life of John Wilkes Booth. The stories of the women who loved him, presented here in fictional form, are much more sympathetic. The women are his mother Mary Ann Booth, his sister Asia Booth, New Hampshire Senator’s daughter Lucy Hale, and landlady Mary Surratt. Lengthy sections tell the stories of each of these women. The most interesting section is the first, focusing on May Ann and describing this famous family of Shakespearean actors, beginning with father Junius Booth and including John’s brother, the handsome and idolized Edwin Booth. It provides details of Mary Ann’s 1821 elopement with Junius from London to Baltimore, the founding of the family homestead north of the city, the birth and raising of their many children, and the challenges of maintaining a large household with erratic supported from a traveling actor. The novel provides detailed descriptions of the lives of women in Maryland in the mid-1800s.Laura Nemethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18049198850321076490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2993752341980843907.post-55796982168601227772019-01-29T10:14:00.003-08:002019-01-30T05:16:25.111-08:00January 2019"Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading."<br />
- Rainer Maria Rilke<br />
<br />
And that's how I felt when starting off the new year. So good to see everyone after the holidays!<br />
Here are the books we discussed:<br />
<br />
To Sell is Human - Daniel H. Pink<br />
An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good - Helene Tursten<br />
The Golden Merra - Kevin Moore<br />
Arbitrary Stupid Goal - Tamara Shopsin<br />
A Gentleman in Moscow - Amor Towles<br />
Rules of Civility - Amor Towles<br />
Fantasyland How America Went Haywire - Kurt Andersen<br />
Unmentionable: The Victorian Lady's Guide to Sex, Marriage and Manners - Therese Oneill<br />
Astounding: Campbell, Asimov, Heinlein, Hubbard - Alec Nevala-Lee<br />
Kingdom of the Wicked - Helen Dale<br />
<a href="https://www.fantasticfiction.com/l/donna-leon/" target="_blank">Donna Leon</a><br />
Educated: A Memoir - Tara Westover<br />
Good Poems for Hard Times - Garrison Keillor<br />
The Biggest Lie in the History of Christianity - Matthew Kelly<br />
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret - Judy Blume<br />
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judy_Blume" target="_blank">Judy Blume</a><br />
<a href="http://booksandbookskw.com/" target="_blank">Books and Books Key West</a><br />
The Library Book - Susan Orlean<br />
A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton<br />
Wasted Calories and Ruined Nights - Jay Rayner<br />
<br />
From Mary Lou in Maryland:<br />
<br />
Booknotes Laura January 2019<br />
<br />
Patricia Wentworth, She Came Back (1945); The Ivory Dagger (1950); The Silent Pool (1953); The Benevent Treasure (1953); Poison in the Pen (1953). These cozy British mysteries feature retired school teacher turned private detective, Miss Maude Silver. She lives modestly, dresses conservatively, knits, quotes Tennyson, and has a talent for evoking confidences from strangers. She is an object of reverence to her former pupils, especially Detective Inspector Frank Abbott of Scotland Yard. Her comfortable parlor is decorated with many photos of grateful clients and their children. The fact that she is reminiscent of Miss Marple on no way detracts from the charm of these novels.<br />
Lynda Jones, Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker (2009). This delightfully illustrated National Geographic publication is subtitled “The Unlikely Friendship of Elizabeth Keckley and Mary Todd Lincoln.” The text is very simply written, but it outlines the life of the former slave who became Mrs. Lincoln’s friend and confidante, as well as dressmaker. It is based on Keckley’s autobiography, Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House. Illustrations include photographs and portraits of the Lincolns and etchings from contemporary publications. The author describes Elizabeth Keckley as “self-taught, self-made, and utterly self-reliant.”<br />
<br />
From the <span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard;">Lawton Any-Book Book Bunch </span>in Oklahoma:<br />
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Books<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
<span class="Apple-converted-space"><br /></span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Ambrose, Stephen E. Nothing Like It In the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad (1863-1869).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Atkinson, Kate. Case Histories.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Backman, Fredrik. Beartown: A Novel.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Ball, Edward. The Inventor and the Tycoon: A Gilded Age Murder and the Birth of Moving Pictures.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Bernstein, Jamie. Famous Father Girl: A Memoir of Growing Up Bernstein.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Byatt, A.S. Unruly Times: Wordsworth and Coleridge in Their Time.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Bryson, Bill. A Short History of Nearly Everything.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Christie, Agatha. And Then There Were None.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Coelho, Paul. The Alchemist.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Conley, Garrard. Boy Erased: A Memoir of Identity, Faith, and Family.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Hogancamp, Mark and Chris Shelley. Welcome to Marwencol.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Ishiguro, Kazuo. When We Were Orphans.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Keller, Julia. A Killing in the Hills; Bitter River.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Kirk, Shannon. Method 15/33.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Koontz, Dean. The Forbidden Door.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Lagerkrantz, David. The Girl in the Spider’s Web.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Marsh, Henry. Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
McEwan, Ian. Amsterdam; Black Dogs.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Mundy, Liza. Code Girls.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Paris, B.A. Behind Closed Doors.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Robb, J. D. (Nora Roberts). Innocent in Death. #24<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Tey, Josephine. The Franchise Affair.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Westover, Tara. Educated: A Memoir.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
<span class="Apple-converted-space"><br /></span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Films and TV:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
<span class="Apple-converted-space"><br /></span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Roma (available from Netflix/streaming).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
<span class="Apple-converted-space"><br /></span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
TV:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
<span class="Apple-converted-space"><br /></span></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
Case Histories (available from Netflix/DVD and Amazon Prime/streaming for rent; also YouTube).</div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vh6nsuNMs9M/XFCX4HLm3ZI/AAAAAAAAAOg/2zzF2cfzSdQVpUM4alhS12FtMWWhzk8JwCLcBGAs/s1600/IMG_0127.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vh6nsuNMs9M/XFCX4HLm3ZI/AAAAAAAAAOg/2zzF2cfzSdQVpUM4alhS12FtMWWhzk8JwCLcBGAs/s320/IMG_0127.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<div style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; text-size-adjust: auto;">
<br /></div>
Laura Nemethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18049198850321076490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2993752341980843907.post-86526534704111160262019-01-29T07:54:00.000-08:002019-01-29T08:10:33.074-08:00Nov/Dec 2018Would like to thank everyone for festive holiday party at the Sandusky Yacht Club! Here are the books that we discussed:<br />
<br />
Maverick - Cary Ashby<br />
The Good Pilot Peter Woodhouse - Alexander McCall Smith<br />
Fear - Bob Woodward<br />
<a href="https://www.davidbaldacci.com/" target="_blank">David Baldacci</a><br />
Circling the Sun - Paula McLain<br />
The President is Missing - James Patterson and Bill Clinton<br />
The Great Bridge - David McCullough<br />
Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean - Edward Kritzler<br />
Answer to Job - Carl Jung<br />
<a href="https://jacquelinewinspear.com/books/maisie-dobbs/" target="_blank">Maisie Dobbs series</a><br />
<a href="https://writingcooperative.com/how-to-write-a-sonnet-44c3612a7e3" target="_blank">How to Write a Sonnet</a><br />
Nomadland - Jessica Bruder<br />
Lincoln in the Bardo - George Saunders<br />
Somewhere in Time - Richard Matheson<br />
<a href="http://www.pbs.org/food/shows/great-british-baking-show/" target="_blank">The Great British Baking Show</a><br />
Death by Dumpling - Vivien Chien<br />
Dopesick - Beth Macy<br />
Always Cedar Point - H. John Hildebrandt<br />
<br />
From Mary Lou in Maryland:<br />
<br />
Booknotes Laura November – December 2018<br />
<br />
<br />
Alexandra Fuller, Quiet Until the Thaw (2017). The author was born in England, spent most of her first 25 years in South Africa, and then moved to Wyoming. This novel is set in South Dakota in the Lakota Oglala Sioux Nation. Rick Overlooking Horse and You Choose Watson are cousins, raised by their grandmother, Mina Overlooking Horse. She teaches her grandsons Lakota culture and history and wisdom. The title is taken from a Cree poem explaining the name of a woman who never speaks in winter. Rick Overlooking Horse doesn’t talk much even as a boy. As a disabled Vietnam veteran he renounces all use of the White Man’s currency, establishes his home in a secluded corner of the reservation, and trades by barter. He steeps himself in Oglala culture, studies the animals and plants around him, breeds horses, trades in herbal medicines, and gains a reputation as a Medicine Man and Elder. In contrast, You Choose Watson evades the draft, goes north to Canada, drifts east, becomes a drug dealer, and eventually returns to the Rez. He turns politician and serves briefly as Tribal Chairman before being ousted for incompetence and corruption. The social and political upheavals of the 1960s and early 1970s are a glaring background for the Lakota concepts of the timelessness of history and the continuity of all things. Mina and the two cousins are fully characterized. The prose style is lean and poetic. This is a fascinating and philosophical novel.<br />
<br />
Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton (2004). This 750-page historical biography was the inspiration for Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical that opened on Broadway in 2015. Chernow’s detailed presentation of the life, character, accomplishments, and failures of this formerly under-appreciated Founding Father provides a whole different perspective on the leaders and events of the nation’s formative years. The biography reveals how much of the US economic system and governmental structure were the product of the fruitful intellect of General Washington’s chief aide de camp, the main author of the Federalist Papers, and the first Secretary of the Treasury. None of this is dull stuff. In Chernow’s narrative, Hamilton’s personality and private life are as much a part of his story as his public writings and accomplishments. This biography essentially refutes our common understanding of the nation’s early history and the men who shaped it.<br />
<br />
Susan Holloway Scott, I, Eliza Hamilton (2017). This is a fictionalized autobiography of the wife of Alexander Hamilton. It begins in 1777 when she is 20 years old and meets her future husband when he was a dashing Lieutenant Colonel working as General Washington’s Aide de Camp. Eliza describes their courtship, their married life together during the Revolution, and their many separations and relocations while Alexander was deeply involved in the formation of the nation, the development of the constitution, and the establishment of its financial systems. They had 8 children and Alexander was a devoted father. After his death, his political enemies (Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Monroe) did all they could to wipe out all signs of his accomplishments. After she recovered from the initial shock, Eliza sent the remaining 50 year of her life documenting her husband’s legacy. The novel is essentially a love story, but its strength is its portrayal of the society and culture of the time.<br />
<br />
Bill Clinton and James Patterson, The President is Missing (2018). This is a fast-paced and suspenseful thriller, as good as any Patterson has written. The White House and political detail is as accurate as only President Clinton could make it. The two authors obviously had fun with this project. The central issue of the novel is the security and vulnerability of our electronic<br />
infrastructure, essential to our national security, our economy, and our individual safety and wellbeing. It is a very scary novel.<br />
<br />
Bob Woodward, Fear: Trump in the White House (2018). Truth is scarier than fiction. Investigative reporter Woodward describes the chaos and disfunction in the White House in scrupulous detail. The title is from Trump quotations that real power is fear. With this as a fundamental motivating concept, his penchant for creating chaos is an inevitable result. White House staff are frustrated with his short attention span, his refusal to accept briefings on complex issues, and his insistence on following his own notions, despite contrary expert advice from all quarters. He has fixed ideas that are impervious to fact or persuasion. The staff live in fear, or at least severe anxiety, over what he may do or say next. The country and the world have a great deal to fear from this manner of “leadership.”<br />
<br />
Barbara Hambly, The Emancipator’s Wife (2005). This is a historical novel of the life of Mary Todd Lincoln. Using the established facts about Mary Lincoln’s actions, temperament and health issues, Hambly’s research into medical practices of the mid-19th century leads her to hypothesize that Mary’s condition was worsened by addiction to medications containing alcohol and opium. To present this theory of Mary’s condition, Hamble creates the character of John Wilamet, a former slave who first meets Mary in Washington in 1862 and later encounters her as a patient in a mental institution where he worked. The novel begins with an account of Mary’s 1875 trial for insanity, brought by her only surviving son. Partly through Mary’s recollections while committed to an Illinois asylum, the novel backtracks to events of her childhood and early life as a Southern Belle, with an unusual and “unwomanly” interest in her father’s political discussions, especially the moral, political and social issues related to slavery and plantation economy. Hambly also chronicles Lincoln’s courtship, the couple’s impoverished early marriage years, Mary’s support for his political career, and Mary’s growing isolation as Lincoln becomes totally emersed in the trials of the Civil War, and finally the assassination. The historical events are presented in terms of Mary’s experiences. Mary suffered severe trauma from the deaths of her sons and painful injuries in a carriage accident in 1863. Her health and mental stability declined as a result. Cultural and medical beliefs and practices of the era about the inferior and unstable female constitution merely worsened her conditions. She had an extremely difficult life.<br />
<br />
From the Any-Book Book Bunch in Oklahoma:<br />
<br />
Books<br />
<br />
Coben, Harlan. The Woods. Connelly, Michael. Dark Sacred Night (A Ballard and Bosch Novel) Gabaldon, Diana. Outlander (Book One) Grunes, Barbara, and Virginia van Vykt. Cookie Advent Calendar Cookbook. Ishiguro, Kazuo. When We Were Orphans. Kerrison, Catherine. Jefferson’s Daughters – Three Sisters, White and Black, in a Young America.<br />
Koontz, Dean. The Crooked Staircase: A Jane Hawk Novel.<br />
Lagercrantz, David. The Girl in the Spider's Web; The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye.<br />
Lethem, Jonathan. Motherless Brooklyn.<br />
Paris, B.A. Behind Closed Doors.<br />
Van Heugten, Antoinette. The Tulip Eaters.<br />
Warner, Ana and Curt and Dave Boling. The Warner Boys: Our Family’s Story of Autism and Hope.<br />
Westover, Tara. Educated: A Memoir.<br />
<br />
Other Books:<br />
<br />
Stoppard, Tom. The Coast of Utopia.<br />
<br />
Television:<br />
<br />
Luther; The Wire. (Idris Elba)<br />
Maigret. (Rowan Atkinson)Laura Nemethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18049198850321076490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2993752341980843907.post-18099277473636222022017-09-23T12:37:00.002-07:002017-09-23T12:37:18.643-07:00Summer 2017We were very fortunate to have some special events this summer. We had an enjoyable evening with poet Dave Lucas, and Karen was very kind to offer her house for a lovely evening on the Cedar Point chausee. Looking forward to seeing what fall has to offer.<br />
<br />
We discussed:<br />
<br />
Girls on Fire - Robin Wasserman<br />
Startup: A Novel - Doree Shafrir<br />
Pancakes in Paris - Craig Carlson<br />
Movie: <a href="http://californiatypewritermovie.com/" target="_blank">California Typewriter</a><br />
The Buddha in the Attic - Julie Otsuka<br />
Gwendy's Button Box - Stephen King<br />
What You Break - Reed Farrel Coleman<br />
Elements of Style - Strunk & White<br />
Some Writer! - Melissa Sweet<br />
Charlotte's Web - E.B. White<br />
Camino Island - John Grisham<br />
Watch Me Disappear - Janelle Brown<br />
The Orphan's Tale - Pam Jenoff<br />
The Little Book of Hygge - Meik Wiking<br />
The Best They Could Be (Cleveland Indians) - Scott Longert<br />
No Money No Beer No Pennants - Scott Longert<br />
Spoonbenders - Daryl Gregory<br />
On Turpentine Lane - Eliot Lipman<br />
The Hours Count - Jillian Cantor<br />
The Muralist - B. A. Shapiro<br />
Dangerous Minds - Janel Evanovich<br />
Late Show - Michael Connelly<br />
Nothing's Sacred - Lewis Black<br />
Carrying Albert Home - Homer Hickam<br />
A Closed and Common Orbit - Becky Chambers<br />
Foundation - Peter Ackroyd<br />
Mrs. Fletcher - Tom Perrotta<br />
<a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/living/liv-columns-blogs/dave-barry/" target="_blank">Dave Barry's columns</a><br />
Rum Run - R. C. Durkee<br />
A Body in the Bathhouse - Lindsey Davis<br />
Suddenly - Barbara Delinsky<br />
Mary's Journals - Mary Warren<br />
Why Buddhism is True - Robert Wright<br />
<br />
From our sister club in OK:<br />
<br />
Books<br />
Asher, Jay. Thirteen Reasons Why.<br />
Boylan, Clare. Emma Brown, a Novel from the Unfinished Manuscript by Charlotte Bronte.<br />
Brown, Margaret Wise. The Color Kittens.<br />
Enger, Leif. So Brave, Young, and Handsome.<br />
Gary, Amy. In the Great green Room: The Brilliant and Bold Life of Margaret Wise Brown.<br />
** Mann, Charles C. 1493: Discovering the New World Columbus Created<br />
Milburn, George. Catalogue: A Novel.<br />
O’Donnell, Edward T. Ship Ablaze: The Tragedy of the Steamboat General Slocum.<br />
* Skloot, Rebecca. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.<br />
Walker, Martin. The Dark Vineyard<br />
Worthen, John. Robert Schumann: Life and Death of a Musician.<br />
Yuknavitch, Lidia. The Book of Joan.<br />
<br />
Films/TV/Internet<br />
* More about Henrietta Lacks: https://shadowandact.com/while-you-wait-for-the-hbo-film-premiering-in-april-watch-the-way-of-all-flesh-a-bbc-documentary-on-henrietta-lacks/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0lMrp_ySg8 (1998 BBC documentary) http://www.radiolab.org/2010/may/17/henriettas-tumor/<br />
Cameron University Festival X: American Identities in the 21st Century<br />
** Charles C. Mann, author of 1491 and 1493; Thursday, 28 September, 7:30 pm, Cameron University Theatre; http://www.cameron.edu/festivalx . Free, but must request tickets at http://www.cameron.edu/festivalticketrequestform<br />
Let’s Talk About It, Oklahoma *** Theme: The Oklahoma Experience: From Wilderness to Metropolis. Readings illuminate the development of community in Oklahoma, from Washington Irving’s description of the empty prairie in the 1830s to the changing metropolis of Oklahoma City in the 1970s. Books: A Tour on the Prairies by Washington Irving; Sand in My Eyes by Seigniora Russell Laune; Catalogue by George Milburn; Briarpatch by Ross Thomas. Third Thursday of the month, 6:00 pm, Cameron University Library.<br />
<br />
Books<br />
Boylan, Clare. Emma Brown.<br />
Brook, Rhidian. The Aftermath.<br />
Brown, Sandra. Deadline.<br />
Enger, Leif. Peace Like a River.<br />
Gautreau, Norman. Elodie.<br />
Harden, Blane. Escape from Camp 14.<br />
Harris, Robert. Archangel.<br />
Irving, Washington. A Tour on the Prairies.<br />
Koontz, Dean. The “Odd Thomas” series<br />
Laune, Seigniora Russell. Sand in My Eyes.<br />
Lin, Grace. Where the Mountain Meets the Moon.<br />
Remnick, David. Life Stories: Profiles from the New Yorker.<br />
Thurber, James. The Thurber Carnival.<br />
Walker, Martin. Bruno, Chief of Police.<br />
<br />
Videos<br />
The Best of Ernie Kovacs (collection on VHS)<br />
<br />
From Mary Lou in MD:<br />
<br />
Bret Baier, Three Days in January: Dwight Eisenhower’s Final Mission (2017). On January 17, 1961, three days before the inauguration of John F. Kennedy, President Eisenhower delivered his farewell speech to the nation. Of his accomplishments as presidents, the general cites only peace. He looks to the future and warns against placing partisanship above the national interest, excessive government budgets (especially deficit spending), expansion of the military-industrial complex, and the increasing political power of special interests. This fascinating book presents in vivid detail the biographical and historical experiences that led Eisenhower to the wisdom expressed in his speech. Ike began work on this speech at the beginning of his second term. Chapter by chapter, Baier tells the story of Ike’s life, especially the experiences that informed specific passages and concepts of the speech. Eisenhower is revealed as one of our greatest and most thoughtful presidents.<br />
<br />
Donna Ball, A Year on Ladybug Farm (2009). Cici, Lindsay and Bridget are 50-something women who have been the best of friends for more than 20 years in their comfortable suburban neighborhood. Cici and Lindsay are divorced and Bridget’s husband has just died. The children are grown and moved away and their careers are flagging. The women are ready for new challenges and adventures and decide to move in together and pursue their life dreams. After internet browsing and a few trips, they fall in love with a hundred-year-old farmhouse in the Shenandoah valley. They sell their homes, pool their resources, and enter into a joint venture agreement for the period of one year. The property is in worse shape than they realized but their resilience and good humor carry them through the many challenges and adventures in their year on Ladybug Farm. This is a delightful novel.<br />
<br />
Julian Barnes, The Noise of Time (2016). Through a series of soul-searching internal monologues, this novel presents the struggles of Dmitri Shostakovich to maintain some degree of personal and artistic integrity under intense totalitarian pressures. We first meet him in 1936, huddled near the elevator outside his apartment, awaiting arrest and exile or execution because Stalin has denounced his latest opera. In 1948, he is sent to a cultural conference in New York and coerced by “Power” to deliver a speech praising the Soviet Union. In 1960, “Power” bullies him into joining the Party. In all of these crises, he tries to wriggle out of “Power’s” plans to exploit him and his art and chastises himself because it is impossible to resist and live to continue composing. Ultimately, he can only hold to the faith that the truth of his music will survive into the future. This is a painful account of one artist’s struggle against oppression.<br />
<br />
Timothy Findley, Famous Last Words (1981). Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (of the Ezra Pound poem) is a wealthy Canadian journalist and author who spends the 1930s and 1940s in the nomadic and artistic expatriate set in Europe. His encounters include Hemingway, Pound, Lindberg, and British aristocrats including the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. He gradually becomes drawn into a secret (and doomed) right wing political plot. At the end of the war he takes refuge in a decaying grand hotel in the Austrian Alps, where he writes his memoirs on the walls. The chronology of the novel alternates between the last days of the war (and Mauberley’s life) and his experiences of the preceding decade. The form of the novel is frame and tale, with the U.S. Army “liberators” of the hotel discovering his body and gradually deciphering his writings, thereby revealing the horrible political intrigue in which he became entangled.<br />
<br />
Booknotes Laura June 2017<br />
Nathaniel Philbrick, Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution (2016). This in-depth history of the military and political events of 1776 to 1780 presents the thoughts, personalities and motivations of these famous generals in novelistic detail. There are maps and pictures and battle diagrams, 50 pages of notes on the chapters, and a 25-page bibliography. There is no doubt that the research was meticulous, but it doesn’t intrude on the flow of the narrative. It is clear that structural flaws of the Confederation, including the personalities of the political leaders and the lack of a national funding mechanism, are greater threats to military success than the British army. Excerpts from journals and letters of political and military leaders and ordinary soldiers provide a sense of immediacy to the narrative. General Washington is did not always lead wisely and General Arnold was not always a traitor. Valiance and ambition evolve differently in the lives of these two men. Philbrick increases our understanding and respect of both men. We think we know the story but we come to realize we did not know these famous men.<br />
<br />
John Sanford, Escape Clause (2016). Someone stole a pair of Amur tigers from the Minnesota Zoo. Virgil Flowers is skinny-dipping with his girlfriend Frankie in the spring-fed pool on her farm when he gets the call. The press and the citizenry are outraged and State Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is feeling the pressure. The case is starting to get complicated when Frankie is beaten up, introducing the subplot. Virgil’s attention is diverted temporarily from the tiger case, which just keeps getting more bizarre. Dismembered bodies begin to appear. As usual with a Sanford novel, we know who (and how nasty) the bad guys are from the beginning and we’re rooting for Virgil to figure it out. Of course he does, and of course he narrowly escapes death the process. The resolution is extremely satisfying. I think this is the best Virgil Flowers novel yet.<br />
<br />
Timothy Findley, The Wars (1977). The structure is frame and tale. The narrator is researching the life of Robert Ross, a Canadian World War I veteran. We get glimpses of Robert’s boyhood and family and the tragedy in Spring 1915 that sent him to Kingston, Ontario, to enlist. The narrator pieces together Robert’s war experiences from his letters home. His training takes him west and assigns him to work with horses. He is trained as an artillery officer, takes a troop transport to Europe, and arrives in England just after Christmas 1915. Shipboard conditions are deplorable, but life in the trenches is horrific. Robert strives to remain honorable and do his duty. He endures several deployments to the front and finally suffers a sort of crisis of conscience. We are left to make our own evaluations of his actions. This is a moving novel that challenges our assumptions about honor, heroism, patriotism, and warfare.<br />
<br />
Linda Greenlaw, The Hungry Ocean (1999). This is captain Linda Greenlaw’s account of the day-to-day details of one of her month-long sword-fishing trip to the Grand Banks of Newfoundland in the Hannah Boden. She also recounts her many learning experiences on other swordboats, first as crew member and then as captain. There are challenges of navigation, seamanship, fishing strategies, marketing, provisioning, leadership, competition and cooperation with other swordboats in the Gloucester, MA fleet, and the exhausting round-the-clock routine of long-line fishing. Even if you have no interest in fishing or the ocean, this account will hold your attention.<br />
<br />
Booknotes Laura May 2017<br />
Karen White, A Long Time Gone (2014). This novel is set in the delta cotton farmland of Indian Mound, Mississippi. It opens with Vivian Walker Moise returning home in 2013 after an absence of some years and a devastating divorce. The narrative shifts intermittently to the stories of Vivian’s mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, all of whom couldn’t wait to leave Indian Mound. Vivian is following the tradition of Walker women abandoning their children, whether by suicide or flight, and only returning home when they have nowhere else to go. The body discovered under the cypress tree in the back yard is only one of the mysteries that Vivian and the reader must solve. The jumping of the narrative from one generation to another drove me to make a list of the Walker women and their birthdates: Adelaide 1907, Bootsie 1922, Carol Lynne 1945, and Vivian 1986. Additional well developed and sympathetic characters include Tripp the local coroner, Vivian’s farmer brother Tommy, and her goth step-daughter Chloe. I will look for other novels by this author.<br />
<br />
Fredrik Backman, Bear Town (2016; trans 2017). I liked this novel better than other things of Backman’s I have read. The characters are credible, largely sympathetic, and portrayed in depth. Still, it is a difficult read. It treats themes of social responsibility, loyalty, courage, truth, parenting, mob psychology, and honor. Chapter 1 establishes the central tension of the book:<br />
Late one evening toward the end of March, a teenager picked up a double-barreled shotgun, walked into the forest, put the gun to someone else’s forehead, and pulled the trigger.<br />
This is the story of how we got there.<br />
As the plot and the characters emerge, Backman skillfully suggests many plausible answers to this riddle.<br />
<br />
Alan Bradley, Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew’d (2016). The title comes from the chant of the “weird sisters” in Macbeth and the novel maintains a steady stream of literary allusions. The narrator and amateur detective-heroine is 12-year-old Flavia de Luce, of the small fictitious English town of Bishop’s Lacey. She is a very capable chemist and pursues her inquiries on her bicycle, Gladys. She has a great deal more in common with Amelia Peabody than with Nancy Drew. This entertaining novel is the eighth in this frivolous series set in the 1950s.<br />
<br />
Tara Conklin, The House Girl (2013). The novel begins with the 17-year-old house slave Josephine in 1852 in Lynnhurst, VA, determined to flee from an abusive household. Her mistress Lu Anne Belle is an aspiring artist, but she doesn’t have half the talent Josephine displays on scraps of canvas and paper. The second chronology of the novel begins in 2004 New York, where young attorney Lina Sparrow is working on a class action lawsuit seeking reparations for descendants of American slaves. Newly discovered works attributed to Lu Anne Belle have come to the attention of the art world. We realize they are likely Josephine’s work, but Lina is challenged to figure that out and to seek out Josephine’s descendants. The portrayal of slave life on a Virginia plantation is wrenching and the account of Lina’s search is suspenseful.<br />
<br />
Booknotes Laura April 2017<br />
Marie Benedict, The Other Einstein (2016). This is an exasperating novel. If the famous man was half as nasty to his first wife as Benedict suggests, he was a truly terrible individual. Mileva Maric met her future husband when she was the only woman studying physics at the Zurich Polytechnic Institute. She was a brilliant mathematician and some historians have suggested that she made substantial contributions to the theories and publications that made her husband famous. In addition to a fictionalized version of Mileva’s life, the novel presents a version of the historical development of modern physics beyond Newton. It also presents a bleak picture of the suppression and exploitation of 19th and early 20th century women who dared to aspire beyond the conventional roles of housewife and mother.<br />
<br />
Charles Frazier, Nightwoods (2011). This is another captivating novel by the author of Cold Mountain and Thirteen Moons. The setting is Appalachian North Carolina in the early1960s. Luce has chosen to move out of her small town to the abandoned somewhat decrepit guest lodge where she serves as caretaker. She is peacefully enjoying her solitary life until suddenly she inherits her sister’s orphaned children. They are mute, undisciplined and destructive. Luce is totally unskilled in childcare, but forges a relationship of sorts with them as if they were a peculiar species of wildlife. She is convinced her sister was murdered by her husband and she is afraid of what the children may have seen. Frazier creates an atmosphere of great natural beauty and chilling human menace.<br />
<br />
Louise Penny, The Beautiful Mystery (2012). This events of this novel occur about midway through the series featuring Quebec Surete Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and Detective Jean-Guy Beauvoir. It is set in the remote monastery of St-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups, home to two dozen cloistered monks. The monastery remained in seclusion for 200 years, until a recording of their ancient pre-Gregorian chants brought them unexpected and unwanted fame. Now one of the brothers has been murdered in the monastery and Gamache is sent to investigate. He and Jean-Guy are the first outsiders permitted entry since the monastery was founded. Solving the murder requires the detectives to learn a great deal about the history of the religious community.<br />
<br />
Wallace Stegner, Marking the Sparrow’s Fall: The Making of the American West (1948-1992; collection edited by Page Stegner, 1998). Following Wallace Stegner’s death, his son selected 15 essays not previously published in book form and the most powerful essays from some of his father’s books. The three parts of the book are titled “Home Ground,” “Testimony (defense of the earth)”and “Inheritance.” The fourth section is a novella, “Genesis.” Page’s short prefaces lead into each section. Many of the essays were published in periodicals such as Horizon, Atlantic Monthly, and The New Yorker. The most famous, and perhaps the most important essay is the “Wilderness Letter” (1960) from The Sound of Mountain Music. This extolls the idea of wilderness as an integral aspect of the American national character. His eloquently written essays, with their personal observations and autobiographical threads, portray the many aspects of “The West” – shortgrass plains, alpine mountains, rocky plateaus and canyons, sagebrush or alkali deserts – all sharing the common qualities of aridity and public lands. He provides a detailed history of the development of the federal policy and legislation that fostered the national parks, national monuments, and wilderness areas. Despite complicated subject matter, Stegner’s descriptive powers, language, sensitivity and humor make for very enjoyable reading. It was the perfect book to accompany me to Arizona.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_NMllAxmdnM/Wca3VwJjpUI/AAAAAAAAAMw/nRdSszFzyL49yDmEGjim_JTn_42g2IwugCLcBGAs/s1600/IMG_4074.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_NMllAxmdnM/Wca3VwJjpUI/AAAAAAAAAMw/nRdSszFzyL49yDmEGjim_JTn_42g2IwugCLcBGAs/s320/IMG_4074.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />Laura Nemethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18049198850321076490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2993752341980843907.post-72752581298455273792017-04-30T11:10:00.002-07:002017-05-04T15:11:26.366-07:00April 2017We're a group that appreciates interesting vocabulary, and we learned a few new words in our last meeting:<br />
eraunophilia, an attraction to thunder and lightning<br />
cymophilia, a fascination with waves and waviness<br />
sapiophilia, an erotic enchantment with intelligence<br />
<br />
We also discussed:<br />
<br />
A Man Called Uve - Fredrick Backman<br />
God Bless John Wayne - Kinky Friedman<br />
Lincoln in the Bardo - George Saunders<br />
House of the Spirits - Isabelle Allende<br />
Hillbilly Elegy - JD Vance<br />
When Breath Becomes Air - Paul Kalanithi<br />
Road to Little Dribbling - Bill Bryson<br />
Code of Silence - Tim Shoemaker<br />
Landmarks - Robert Macfarlane<br />
Warmth of Other Suns - Isabel Wilkerson<br />
Muslim Girl - Amani Al-Khatahtbeh<br />
In the Country We Love - Diane Guerrero<br />
Small Great Things - Jodi Picoult<br />
Glass Castle - Jeannette Walls<br />
Commonwealth - Ann Patchett<br />
Bettyville - George Hodgman<br />
And Every Morning..Longer - Fredrick Backman<br />
Dvorak in America - Joseph Horowitz<br />
Blue Nowhere - Jeffery Deaver<br />
Ladies No. 1 Detective Agency - Alexander McCall Smith<br />
Seinfeldia - Jennifer Armstrong<br />
Sissinghurst - Vita Sackville-West<br />
Art of Racing the Rain - Garth Stein<br />
<br />
The Corporation Wars: Dissidence - Ken MacLeod<br />
Blade of p'Na - L. Neil Smith<br />
Email to the Universe and Other Alterations of Consciousness - Robert Anton Wilson.<br />
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell - Susanna Clarke<br />
Too Like the Lightning - Ads Palmer.<br />
Angeleyes - Michael Z. Williamson.<br />
The Corporation Wars: Insurgence - Ken MacLeod<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
From Mary Lou in MD:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<br />
<br />
Booknotes Laura March 2017 <br />
<br />
James MacManus, Midnight in Berlin (2016). This historical novel is set in Berlin in 1939 and the major characters are actual historical figures. Colonel Noel Macrae is the military attaché to the British Embassy in Berlin. His responsibility is to assess and report on German rearmament and military capabilities. He clearly sees that Hitler is pushing toward war, but the ambassador is committed to Chamberlain‘s policy of appeasement. Macrae’s reports to the ambassador and to London are disregarded, much to his frustration (and ours). Meanwhile, his wife is increasingly interested in Berlin social life, including a German officer. Macrae is intrigued by a Jewish woman blackmailed into becoming a Nazi courtesan. Our knowledge that Macrae is correct in his assessment of Hitler’s intentions does not lessen the suspense of the novel. <br />
<br />
Fredrik Backman, Britt-Marie Was Here (2014; trans. 2015). Backman is a Swedish novelist and this is his third novel. Britt-Marie is obsessively tidy, socially awkward, and committed to the cleansing power of baking soda. A cold January morning finds her at the unemployment office. The social worker doesn’t regard 40 years of keeping house for her husband and his children as marketable job experience. Nevertheless, after a few days she refers Britt-Marie to a temporary job as caretaker of the condemned recreation center in the withering town of Borg. The Borg center of activity is a dilapidated Pizzeria, which also functions as corner store, post office, and general gathering place. Britt-Marie has no understanding of how to function in the world outside her home and the Borg residents have little understanding of Britt-Marie. Their conversations with Britt-Marie are mind-boggling and hilarious. Somehow, with this depressed setting and inept cast of characters, Backman presents a tale of hope and kindness. Britt-Marie is revealed as a force of nature and we cheer her all the way. <br />
<br />
Louise Penny, A Great Reckoning (2016). It is a joy to return to the village of Three Pines, Quebec, and the investigations of retired homicide Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, assisted by his wife Reine-Marie and the colorful villagers. Gamache has come out of retirement to become head of the Surete’s training academy. This seems an odd choice until we learn that he is still pursuing corruption within the Surete. His attempts to change the culture of the academy meet with considerable resentment, especially from the third-year cadets. He gives four of the cadets the assignment to discover the meaning of a peculiar old map that was discovered within the walls of the Three Pines bistro. A professor is murdered and the map and the cadets are somehow relevant. Gamache himself comes under suspicion. The plot of this novel is as delightfully intricate as any in the series. Descriptions of meals are as tantalizing as always. <br />
<br />
Barry Maitland, Chelsea Mansions (2011). This is one in a series of London police novels featuring Detective Chief Inspector David Brock and Detective Inspector Kathy Kolla. The action begins with two grey-haired American tourists at the Chelsea Flower Show. One of them, Nancy Haynes, is thrown under a bus and killed. DI Kolla begins her investigation in Cunningham Place, at the Chelsea Mansions Hotel. This somewhat decrepit lodging seems a peculiar choice for two elderly tourists. It adjoins the posh residence of a wealthy Russian oligarch who is murdered in the garden a few nights later. Kathy is convinced that the deaths are related, but no one in Scotland Yard, MI5 or MI6 want her to pursue that line of inquiry. The question that must be answered is why Nancy Haynes chose the Chelsea Mansions Hotel.<br />
<br />
<br /><br />Booknotes Laura April 2017<br /><br />Marie Benedict, The Other Einstein (2016). This is an exasperating novel. If the famous man was half as nasty to his first wife as Benedict suggests, he was a truly terrible individual. Mileva Maric met her future husband when she was the only woman studying physics at the Zurich Polytechnic Institute. She was a brilliant mathematician and some historians have suggested that she made substantial contributions to the theories and publications that made her husband famous. In addition to a fictionalized version of Mileva’s life, the novel presents a version of the historical development of modern physics beyond Newton. It also presents a bleak picture of the suppression and exploitation of 19th and early 20th century women who dared to aspire beyond the conventional roles of housewife and mother.<br /><br />Charles Frazier, Nightwoods (2011). This is another captivating novel by the author of Cold Mountain and Thirteen Moons. The setting is Appalachian North Carolina in the early1960s. Luce has chosen to move out of her small town to the abandoned somewhat decrepit guest lodge where she serves as caretaker. She is peacefully enjoying her solitary life until suddenly she inherits her sister’s orphaned children. They are mute, undisciplined and destructive. Luce is totally unskilled in childcare, but forges a relationship of sorts with them as if they were a peculiar species of wildlife. She is convinced her sister was murdered by her husband and she is afraid of what the children may have seen. Frazier creates an atmosphere of great natural beauty and chilling human menace. <br /><br />Louise Penny, The Beautiful Mystery (2012). The events of this novel occur about midway through the series featuring Quebec Surete Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and Detective Jean-Guy Beauvoir. It is set in the remote monastery of St-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups, home to two dozen cloistered monks. The monastery remained in seclusion for 200 years, until a recording of their ancient pre-Gregorian chants brought them unexpected and unwanted fame. Now one of the brothers has been murdered in the monastery and Gamache is sent to investigate. He and Jean-Guy are the first outsiders permitted entry since the monastery was founded. Solving the murder requires the detectives to learn a great deal about the history of the religious community. <br /><br /> <br /><br />Wallace Stegner, Marking the Sparrow’s Fall: The Making of the American West (1948-1992; collection edited by Page Stegner, 1998). Following Wallace Stegner’s death, his son selected 15 essays not previously published in book form and the most powerful essays from some of his father’s books. The three parts of the book are titled “Home Ground,” “Testimony (defense of the earth)”and “Inheritance.” The fourth section is a novella, “Genesis.” Page’s short prefaces lead into each section. Many of the essays were published in periodicals such as Horizon, Atlantic Monthly, and The New Yorker. The most famous, and perhaps the most important essay is the “Wilderness Letter” (1960) from The Sound of Mountain Music. This extolls the idea of wilderness as an integral aspect of the American national character. His eloquently written essays, with their personal observations and autobiographical threads, portray the many aspects of “The West” – shortgrass plains, alpine mountains, rocky plateaus and canyons, sagebrush or alkali deserts – all sharing the common qualities of aridity and public lands. He provides a detailed history of the development of the federal policy and legislation that fostered the national parks, national monuments, and wilderness areas. Despite complicated subject matter, Stegner’s descriptive powers, language, sensitivity and humor make for very enjoyable reading. It was the perfect book to accompany me to Arizona. <br /><br /><br /><div>
From our sister group in OK:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<br />
<br />
Books <br />
<br />
Cather, Willa. My Antonia. <br />
<br />
Chernow, Ron. Hamilton. <br />
<br />
Florey, Kitty Burns. Sister Bernadette’s Barking Dog. <br />
<br />
Greenburg, Michael M. Peaches and Daddy: A Story of the Roaring 20s, the Birth of Tabloid Media, and the Courtship that Captured the Hearts and Imaginations of the American Public <br />
<br />
Henry, Marguerite. Misty of Chincoteague. <br />
<br />
Kolbert, Elizabeth. The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. <br />
<br />
Koontz, Dean. Odd Thomas. <br />
<br />
Millard, Candice. Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill <br />
<br />
Miller, Sylvia. The Northern Lights. <br />
<br />
Penny, Louise. A Rule Against Murder; The Cruelest Month. <br />
<br />
Schumacher, Michael. Mighty Fitz: The Sinking of the Edmund Fizgerald. <br />
<br />
Smith, Tom Rob. The Secret Speech. <br />
<br />
Troost, J. Maarten. Getting Stoned With Savages: A Trip Through the Islands of Fiji and Vanuatu.Laura Nemethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18049198850321076490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2993752341980843907.post-64457739964986268702016-06-26T14:47:00.002-07:002016-06-26T14:47:32.420-07:00June 2016"No two persons ever read the same book." - Edmund Wilson<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Here's what we've been reading lately:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The Girl on the Train - Paula Hawkins</div>
<div>
<a href="http://www.npr.org/2015/12/26/461022621/a-tale-of-two-titles-a-girl-a-train-and-thousands-of-confused-readers" target="_blank">A Tale of Two Titles: A Girl, A Train and Thousands of Confused Readers</a></div>
<div>
<a href="http://kalamazooladieslibrary.org/" target="_blank">Ladies' Library Association (Kalamazoo)</a></div>
<div>
When We Were Sisters - Emilie Richards</div>
<div>
Future Crimes - Marc Goodman</div>
<div>
Five Little Peppers and How They Grew - Margaret Sidney</div>
<div>
The Gathering Storm - Winston Churchill</div>
<div>
The Quartet - Joseph Ellis</div>
<div>
Almost French - Sarah Turnbull</div>
<div>
<a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/au-revoir-paris-20130509-2j8mu.html" target="_blank">Update on Sarah Turnbull</a></div>
<div>
God is Not Great - Christopher Hitchens</div>
<div>
The Queen of the Night - Alexander Chee</div>
<div>
Bad Dog: A Love Story - Martin Kihn</div>
<div>
Beach Town - Mary Kay Andrews</div>
<div>
The Weekenders - Mary Kay Andrews</div>
<div>
Speakers of the Dead - J. Aaron Sanders</div>
<div>
Mystery of the Lost Cezanne - M. L. Longworth</div>
<div>
Winemaker Detective series by Jean-Pierre Alaux</div>
<div>
Wine and War - Donald Kladstrup and Petie Kladstrup</div>
<div>
God Bless John Wayne - Kinky Friedman</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
From our sister group in OK:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<br /><br />Books <br /><br /><br /><br />Baldacci, David. The Guilty; Memory Man <br /><br />Barclay, Linwood. No Time for Goodbye <br /><br />Bell-Scott, Patricia. The Firebrand and the First Lady <br /><br />Coben, Harlan. The Stranger <br /><br />Cole, Henry. Brambleheart <br /><br />Cooper, Anderson and Gloria Vanderbilt. The Rainbow Comes and Goes <br /><br />Doerr, Anthony. All the Light We Cannot See <br /><br />Edgarian, Carol. Rise the Euphrates <br /><br />Erdrich, Louise. The Round House <br /><br />Goldsworthy, Andy and David Craig. Arch <br /><br />Hot Dudes Reading Blog. Hot Dudes Reading <br /><br />Lackberg, Camilla. Hidden Child; Lost Boy; The Stonecutter <br /><br />L’Amour, Louis. Sackett’s Land; To the Far Blue Mountains <br /><br />Le Carre, John. Night Manager <br /><br />Lee, Hermione. Willa Cather: A Life Saved Up <br /><br />Little Thunder, Julie Pearson. Doris Littrell: A Life Made with Artists <br /><br />Michener, James. The World Is My Home <br /><br />Penman, Sharon Kay. Falls the Shadow <br /><br />Penny, Louise. Cruelest Month; A Rule Against Murder <br /><br />Poling-Kempes, Leslie. Ladies of the Canyon: A League of Extraordinary Women and Adventures in the American Southwest <br /><br />Richardson, Wyman. The House on Nauset Marsh <br /><br />Roosevelt, Eleanor. The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt <br /><br />Sides, Hampton. In the Kingdom of Ice <br /><br />Skiff, Jennifer. Divinity of Dogs <br /><br />Simpson, Helen. The London Ritz Book of Afternoon Tea <br /><br />Smith, Tom Robb. Secret Speech (Child 44 Trilogy) <br /><br />Walls, Jeannette. Silver Star <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Periodicals <br /><br /><br /><br />McAdams, Dan P. “The Mind of Donald Trump.” The Atlantic, June 2016, pg. 76+<br /><div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
From Mary Lou in MD:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<br /><br />Rosemary Sullivan, Stalin’s Daughter: The Extraordinary and Tumultuous Life of Svetlana Alliluyeva (2015). This is a carefully researched and well written biography of a very complex personage who definitely captivates the reader. The title, though inevitable, is rather ironic, since Svetlana struggled her entire live to be viewed as herself, not her father’s daughter. Svetlana was born in 1926 and spent her childhood in the Kremlin. Her mother died when she was 10 and she didn’t realize the extent of her father’s cruelties until he died when she was in her 20s. She had a very difficult life, marrying four time and having three children. When she was 40 years old, she defected to the USA but long term happiness proved elusive. Unfortunately she inherited a bit of her father’s volatile temper and her outbursts alienated a number of friends over the years. The notion of her paranoia probably was exaggerated. After all, she was hounded by the press, both the KGB and the CIA exploited her as much as they could, and once in the West her publishers and lawyers did not do particularly well by her. At age 85 she died penniless as Mrs. Lana Peters in rural Wisconsin. This is a thoroughly fascinating book, for both the character and the history. <br /><br />J. Courtney Sullivan, Maine (2011). The Kellehers are a Boston Irish Catholic family with an unusual talent for saying vicious things to one another. The matriarch is Alice, and when we meet her in chapter one she is well into her 80s. When she and her husband Daniel were young and childless, he won a 3-acre costal property in Maine in a poker game. They built a cottage there and over the years their children and grandchildren spent many boisterous summers there. Their son Patrick is a prosperous businessman married to Ann Marie, a perfectionist who dedicates herself to the needs of her family, whether they want her to or not. She and Patrick built a modern house for his parents on the property and Ann Marie has worked out a schedule for her siblings and their families to spend a summer month in the cottage. Alice’s oldest child Kathleen is assigned to June, Ann Marie and Pat have July, and Alice’s other daughter Clare and her family are assigned to August. In chapter two we meet Kathleen’s daughter Maggie, a New York freelance writer who is planning to spend the first two weeks on June in Maine. In chapter three we meet Kathleen, divorced and living as far away from her hard drinking family as she can get. She left her husband when her children were small, joined AA, and eventually met aging hippie Arlo and moved to Sonoma Valley with him to run a worm farm. The chapters of this novel alternate among the four women, slinging acrimony at one another and revealing a great deal of family history as they consider the conflicts and challenges of the present. Yes, this is a beach book and thoroughly entertaining. <br /><br />Christopher Isherwood, The Last of Mr. Norris (1935); Goodbye to Berlin (1939). Isherwood is a gay British novelist who spent much of the early 1930s in sexually liberal Berlin, at the time when Hitler was on the rise and Nazis and Communists were in competition. After returning to England he wrote and published these two novels, later collected as The Berlin Stories (New Directions, 1963). In The Last of Mr. Norris, the narrator William Bradshaw meets the title character, a very nervous older man, on the train returning to Berlin. For the rest of the novel, covering a period of many months, Mr. Norris flatters and manipulates the younger man into assisting him in various matters while dodging all of Bradshaw’s inquiries as to the nature of his difficulties. While the conversations and situations imply at a minimum, sexual attractions among the male characters, nothing is explicit. Rather, this motif is consistent with the general murkiness of the atmosphere of Berlin at this time. Eventually Bradshaw pieces the puzzle together. Bradshaw’s landlady Frl. Schroeder is a colorful comic character who appears also in Berlin Stories. Here the author narrates in his own name and she calls him, fondly, Herr Issyvoo. Again the <br /><br />period is the early thirties, the Nazi’s are on the rise, and Berlin is particularly decadent among European cities. There is a notable lack of plot in these stories, each of which is titled after one of the author’s acquaintances. One of these, Sally Bowles, a thoroughly amoral American girl who markets her sexual favors while indulging in the city’s night life, is later portrayed by Liza Minelli in the musical Cabaret. With the war threat engulfing Europe, Isherwood traveled with his friend W.H. Auden to the United States in 1939. Isherwood became a U.S. Citizen in 1946 and lived in California where he died in 1986 at the age of 81. <br /><br />Gail MacColl and Carol McD. Wallace, To Marry an English Lord: Tales of Wealth and Marriage, Sex and Snobbery (1989, 2012). This volume of short, well-illustrated chapters traces the successes of beautiful American heiresses in captivating the society of Queen Victoria’s England, including even her son “Bertie,” Prince of Wales. It is said to have influenced Julian Fellowes in the creation of Downton Abbey’s Lady Grantham. There are many entertaining stories about famous American millionaires, their socially ambitious wives, and beautiful, fashionable daughters. <br /><br />Colleen McCullough, Bittersweet (2013). This is another large family saga by the author of The Thorn Birds. It is set in the Shire and City of Corunda, New South Wales, Australia in the 1920s and 1930s. Church of England Reverend Thomas Latimer has two sets of twin daughters. The mother of Edda and Grace died soon after their birth. A little over two years later, their stepmother Maude gave birth to Tufts and Kitty. All the girls are attractive, but Maude sees beauty only in Kitty. The girls are united in protecting Kitty from the damages wrought by Maude’s doting. As the novel opens, the sisters are about to escape home and Maude by embarking on nurses training at Corunda Base Hospital. Challenges and conflicts involve practices of medical institutions of the period, Tory vs. Labor politics, and the economic depression following the economic crash of 1929. The personalities of the four girls are quite different and they each are molded by their experiences as the novel progresses. In general, their suitors are unworthy of them. <br /><br />Helen Simonson, The Summer Before the War (2016). In June 1914 Beatrice Nash finds it necessary to support herself after her father’s death and she finds a position as a Latin teacher in the town of Rye, East Sussex. Although the town worthies are reluctant to engage a woman Latin teacher, Beatrice’s candidacy is supported by Mrs. Agatha Kent, whose husband John has a position of some importance in the Foreign Office. They have two nephews, surgeon-in-training Hugh aspiring poet Daniel, for whom Rye is a second home. When the first Belgian refugees arrive in Rye, the town worthies exhibit great self-importance in their efforts to house and assist the refugees without lowering or inconveniencing themselves. Town fetes and parades cause great excitement, but for the Kents, Beatrice, and the cousins the war becomes a terrible reality. The strong-minded Beatrice is a particularly engaging character as she struggles against the prejudices and restrictions facing a single woman without male protection.Laura Nemethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18049198850321076490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2993752341980843907.post-68717960905859807532016-06-26T13:53:00.000-07:002016-06-26T13:53:14.334-07:00May 2016With the help of modern technology, we were able to chat with author Eve Sandstrom (JoAnna Carl) and enjoy her lovely company. We hope one day to be able to visit with her live and in person. Thank you, Eve!<br />
<br />
We also talked about the books we've ready lately:<br />
<br />
The Aviator's Wife - Melanie Benjamin<br />
What You Really Need to Know for the Second Half of Life - Julieanne Steinbacher<br />
The Chocolate Moose Motive - JoAnna Carl<br />
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - Mark Haddon<br />
The Prodigy's Cousin - Joanne Ruthsatz<br />
The Secret Keeper - Kate Morton<br />
All the Stars in Heaven - Adriana Trigiani<br />
The Japanese Lover - Isabel Allende<br />
Fat Girl Walking - Brittany Gibbons<br />
Harry Bosch series by Michael Connelly<br />
The Sword of Damascus - Richard Blake<br />The Core of the Sun - Johanna Sinisalo<br />I'll Give You the Sun - Jandy Nelson<br />Morning Star - Pierce Brown<br />To Live Forever - Jack Vance<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
From our sister group in OK:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<br /><br />Books <br /><br /><br /><br />Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. Purple Hibiscus <br /><br />Chevalier, Tracy. At the Edge of the Orchard <br /><br />Doerr, Anthony. All the Light We Cannot See <br /><br />Le Carre, John. Night Manager <br /><br />Michener. James A. The World Is My Home <br /><br />Montgomery, Sy. The Soul of an Octopus <br /><br />Morton, Frederic. Thunder at Twilight: Vienna 1913/1914 <br /><br />Murray, Pauli. Song in a Weary Throat <br /><br />Poling-Kempes, Leslie. Ladies of the Canyon: A League of Extraordinary Women and Adventures in the American Southwest <br /><br />Roosevelt, Eleanor. The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt <br /><br />Scott, Paul. Staying On <br /><br />Smith, Lane. It’s a Book <br /><br />Smith, Tom Robb. Secret Speech (Child 44 Trilogy) <br /><br />Social Register Association. Social Register of Philadelphia 1947 <br /><br />Urquhart, Brian. Ralph Bunch: An American Life <br /><br />Walker, Alexander. Audrey: Her Real Story <br /><br /><br /><br />Periodicals <br /><br /><br /><br />Miller, Jennifer. “Men Have Book Clubs, Too.” New York Times. May4, 2016. <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Television & Videos <br /><br /><br /><br />Le Carre, John. Night Manager <br /><br />Masterpiece: Mr. Selfridge <br /><br />Scott, Paul. Raj Quartet <br /><br />Wallander<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
From Mary Lou in MD:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<br /><br />Laurie Fabiano, Elizabeth Street: A Novel Based on True Events (2006, 2010). The central characters in this novel are based on the author’s grandmother and great grandmother. The novel or fictionalized biography begins in the small island fishing town of Scilla, Calabria, Italy, 1890 – 1901. Despite austere living conditions, Giovanna Costa enjoys a happy childhood and marries her childhood sweetheart Nunzio. The declining economy leads Nunzio to seek a new life with his cousin in New York, leaving his wife behind. Things do not go well. Eventually Giovanna also journeys to New York. Life there is also difficult but Giovanna finds work assisting a midwife. Elizabeth Street is the location where she raises her family. The description of immigrant life begins with the Ellis Island experience and progress through language and cultural difficulties and labor exploitation. Familiar historical events also influence the lives of the characters. The family history is traced through the 1970s and 1980s, but the majority of the story occurs during the first two decades of the 20th century. The story is engrossing and the characters are especially vivid. <br /><br />Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre (1847, 1848, Norton Critical Edition 1971). The novel was originally published under the pseudonym Currier Bell. It was quite successful, going through three editions in Charlotte’s lifetime. Contemporary reviews were favorable, although some found the melodrama and plot coincidences excessive. Yes, it is melodramatic and yes, the coincidences are excessive. The characters are roundly drawn, however, and Jane’s first person narrative sustains the suspense over her situational difficulties and ethical crises. I re-read the novel for a class on the Brontes and found it every bit as good as I remembered. <br /><br />Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights (1847, 1850, Norton Critical Edition 1963). The novel was originally published under the pseudonym Acton Bell and the 1850 edition was edited by Charlotte, since Emily had died by that time. Contemporary reviewers found Jane Eyre melodramatic? Her sister’s novel is decidedly gothic. I found it a faster read than Jane Eyre, which may be an indication of my inferior taste in novels. Where Jane firmly governs her emotions with reason and ethical principles, Catherine Earnshaw has no such restraint. As for Heathcliff, he is beyond Byronic and positively demonic. The love between the two is intense, but they bring out the worst in each other. The dual levels of narration, first the Thrushcross Grange tenant Lockwood and then the housekeeper Nelly Dean, take us from the opening chapter in 1801 back some 30 years into the histories of the Linton family (The Grange) and the Earnshaws (Wuthering Heights) before the final resolution of the family conflicts. Both narrators have their misconceptions and Bronte is very skillful at revealing the distortions to us. I am hard pressed to declare which Bronte sister has written the better novel. <br /><br />Margaret Coel, Eye of the Wolf (2005). In 1874 in the area that later became the Wind River Reservation, a group of Shoshone led Captain Bates’s US cavalry unit onto Arapaho tribal grounds and almost everyone there was massacred. Now Father John O’Malley receives a threatening anonymous message about revenge against old enemies and telling him to go to the Bates battlefield. There he discovers three dead Shoshone positioned to mimic warriors fallen in the battle. His friend Vickie Holden, Arapaho attorney, is representing the main suspect in the deaths. Someone is attempting to disrupt the peace that has endured for decades between the Arapaho and Shoshone on the Reservation. Father John and Vickie must solve the murder mystery to restore harmony. Coel has produced another master blend of history and suspense.Laura Nemethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18049198850321076490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2993752341980843907.post-28652122399692462062016-06-26T13:14:00.001-07:002016-06-26T13:18:49.674-07:00April 2016In honor of National Poetry Month, special guest Dave Lucas joined us for an evening of poetry and laughter. We thank him for sharing his writing and insights!<br />
<br />
We also talked about the latest books we've read:<br />
<br />
After the First Death - Lawrence Block<br />
Disasters of Ohio's Lake Erie Islands - Wendy Koile<br />
Deep Shaker - Les Roberts<br />
The Chocolate Falcon Fraud - JoAnna Carl<br />
Ancillary Mercy - Ann Leckie<br />
Cockpit Confidential - Patrick Smith<br />
When You are Engulfed in Flames - David Sedaris<br />
Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls - David Sedaris<br />
The Martian - Andy Weir<br />
The Finest Hours - Michael Tougias<br />
The Nightmare - Lars Kepler<br />
The Great Bridge - David McCullough<br />
The Girl in the Ice - Robert Bryndza<br />
The 6:41 to Paris - Jean-Phillippe Blondel<br />
Dark Corners - Ruth Rendell<br />
Doc: A Novel - Mary Doria Russell<br />
Miller's Valley - Anna Quindlen<br />
Go Tell it on the Mountain - James Baldwin<br />
A Spool of Blue Thread - Anne Tyler<br />
The Beat Goes On - Ian Rankin<br />
The Steal Kiss - Jeffery Deaver<br />
Confucius and the World He Created - Michael Schuman<br />
Apple Turnover Murder - Joanne Fluke<br />
<a href="http://www.anniedillard.com/" target="_blank">Annie Dillard</a><br />
<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/01/easter-rising-century-ireland-1916" target="_blank">1916 Easter Rising</a><br />
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny%27s_Blues" target="_blank">Sonny's Blues</a><br />
The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden - Jonas Jonasson<br />
The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared - Jonas Jonasson<br />
My Life in France - Julia Child<br />
Ruhlman's Twenty - Michael Ruhlman<br />
<a href="http://www.brewsandprose.com/" target="_blank">Market Garden Brewery's Brews and Prose</a><br />
<br />
From our sister group in OK:<br />
<br />
Books<br />
<br />
Baldacci, David. The Sixth Man<br />
Chabon, Michael. Yiddish Policemen’s Union<br />
Goldsworthy, Andy. Arch<br />
Hyland, William. George Gershwin<br />
Indridason, Arnaldur. Outrage<br />
Kaufman, Sarah. The Art of Grace<br />
Macmillan, Gilley. What She Knew<br />
Nimura, Janice P. Daughters of the Samuri<br />
Penny, Louise. Discussion of books and of Inspector Gamache<br />
Roosevelt, Eleanor. The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt<br />
Scakzi, John. Lock In: A Novel of the Near Future<br />
See, Lisa. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan<br />
Sime, Ruth Lewis. Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics<br />
Simenon, Georges. Books in general and Inspector Maigret<br />
Smith, Tom Bob. The Secret Speech (Child 44 Trilogy)<br />
<br />
<br />
C-Spann<br />
<br />
Eleanor Roosevelt<br />
<br />
Movies<br />
<br />
At our February meeting, I mentioned the kitchen scene from Bandits with Cate Blanchett in relation to the book The Art of Grace: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC6rilb9RN0<br />
<br />
<br />
Acorn/PBS<br />
<br />
Call the Midwife<br />
Father Brown<br />
Grantchester<br />
<br />
Official Name of our Book Group<br />
<br />
Any Book Book Bunch<br />
<br />
<br />
From Mary Lou in MD:<br />
<br />
<br /><br />Jane Austen, Emma (1816; Lionel Trilling, editor, Riverside 1957). Austen said Emma was “a heroine whom no one but myself will much like.” I agree more with the author than the critics who rave about this novel. Emma is snobbish, insensitive, deluded, and egotistical and most of the time I wanted to smack her. Her character only shows favorably in contrast to the even more snobbish, insensitive, deluded and egotistical Mrs. Elton. Where Emma manipulates young and beautiful Harriet Smith into refusing a loving match in hopes of one with more social standing, Mrs. Elton positively bullies the refined but penniless Jane Fairfax into accepting a governess position she does not want. Austen’s irony and narrative skill flourishes in her use of dialogue to reveal the misconceptions of Emma, Mrs. Elton, and other characters. Many of the characters speak at cross-purposes to highly comic and sometimes disastrous effect. Eventually, Emma recognizes and acknowledges her mistakes and the harm she has done to others. Alas, unlike more sympathetic readers, I remain unconvinced that Emma is a reformed character by the end of the novel. I am confident that continuation of her story would have made me want to smack her again. <br /><br />Anne Tyler, If Morning Ever Comes (1964). At the age of 25, Ben Joe Hawkes left his home in Sandhill, North Carolina, to start law school at Columbia. Three months later, dissatisfied with the scanty news from home contained in his sister Jennifer’s letters and worried by the discovery that his older sister Joanne has left her husband in Kansas and come home with her baby, he takes the overnight train home. His family is a collection of improbable characters including five sisters, his grandmother, and his widowed mother. No one knows what he is doing home, not even Ben Joe. Nobody understands anything about anybody else and yet they all love one another. There us a great deal of comedy, some of it resulting from the characters’ blindness to their own motivations and much of it provided by the outlandish statements and actions of Gram. In the course of Ben Joe’s visit, we learn the bizarre family history and the things he has done in largely futile attempts to shield his relatives from pain. Already in this early novel Tyler is skillful in portraying family dynamics. <br /><br />Regina O’Melveny, The Book of Madness and Cures (2012). Gabriella Mondini is the daughter of a prominent Venice doctor in the 16th century and a medical practitioner in her own right. Her father disappears and she is no longer permitted to treat patients. Taking his letters and her own medical manuscript and supplies, she sets off with her maid Olmina and Olmina’s husband Lorenzo in search of her father. They journey through northern Italy, Switzerland, Germany, France and Scotland, staying in places her father had mentioned in his letters. Olmina and Lorenzo remain reluctant but faithful companions. The news of Dr. Mondini is increasingly discouraging. Hardships increase and resources diminish, but Gabriella continues her quest. Illustrative maps are provided of this journey through Renaissance Europe.Laura Nemethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18049198850321076490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2993752341980843907.post-19697013404887842292016-03-26T09:03:00.000-07:002016-06-26T13:16:55.654-07:00March 2016“It's spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you've got it, you want—oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!” <br />
― Mark Twain<br />
<br />
And we've got it!<br />
Here are our books:<br />
<br />
Road to Character - David Brooks<br />
Red Rising - Pierce Brown<br />
Joe Steeler - Harry Turtledove<br />
The Just City - Jo Walton<br />
Golden Son - Pierce Brown<br />
The Annihilation Score - Charles Stross<br />
Apex - Ramez Naam<br />
Luna: New Moon - Ian McDonaldA Carlin Home Companion - Kelly Carlin<br />
The Arrangement - Ashley Warlick<br />
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._F._K._Fisher" target="_blank">M.F.K. Fisher</a><br />
The Man on the Washing Machine - Susan Cox<br />
Death by Water - Kenzaburo Oe<br />
The Hours Count - Jillian Cantor<br />
The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared - Jonas Jonasson<br />
The Royal We - Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan<br />
Black Widow - Randy Wayne White<br />
The Muralist - B.A. Shapiro<br />
The Nightmare - Lars Kepler<br />
The Boys in the Boat - Daniel James Brown<br />
The Language of God - Francis Collins<br />
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children<br />
The Sandcastle Girls - Chris Bohjalian<br />
The Swans of Fifth Avenue - Melanie Benjamin<br />
Ladder of Years - Anne Tyler<br />
The Warmth of Other Suns - Isabel Wilkerson<br />
A Walk in the Woods - Bill Bryson<br />
I Am My Own Wife - Doug Wright<br />
Wildlife Wars: The Life and Times of a Fish and Game Warden - Terry Grosz<br />
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/Bangor-Maine-Police-Department-227432866078/?fref=ts" target="_blank">The Bangor Maine Police Department on Facebook</a><br />
The Burn Palace - Stephen Dobyns<br />
<br />
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<b>GETTING FREE DIGITAL ENTERTAINMENT</b></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
CONTENT</div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">
MOVIES — <b>Hoopla Digital</b>, <b>Overdrive,</b> Crackle, Open Culture.</div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">
TV SHOWS — <b>Hoopla Digital</b>, Google for show websites. </div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">
MUSIC — <b>Hoopla Digital, Freegal,</b> Spotify, Pandora.</div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">
EBOOKS — <b>Hoopla Digital, Overdrive,</b> Project Gutenberg.</div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">
AUDIOBOOKS — <b>Hoopla Digital, Overdrive,</b> Librivox.</div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">
COMICS — <b>Hoopla Digital.</b></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<b></b><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">
NEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES — <b>Overdrive </b>(for magazines),<b> </b>Sanduskyregister.com, cleveland.com (app available), Washingtonpost.com (free with Register subscription, app available), USA Today. </div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
PROVIDERS (Google for website)</div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">
<b>Hoopla Digital</b> — The most important library digital service. Movies, TV shows, comic books, lots of music, ebooks, audiobooks. Easy to use app. Hoopladigital.com, register with your library card (all local libraries). </div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">
<b>Freegal </b>— Has the music that isn't licensed to Hoopla. Available from Cuyahoga County Public Library and others. </div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">
<b>Overdrive</b> — Ebooks, audiobooks and magazines. Available at all local libraries. </div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">
Spotify — Music source, free with ads. Now has the Beatles. </div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">
Crackle — Free TV shows and movies, aimed at male audience.</div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">
Open Culture — Old movies in the public domain, college lectures, free art books. </div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">
Pandora — Internet radio, free with ads.</div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">
Project Gutenberg — Free public domain ebooks (Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens etc.)</div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">
LibriVox — Free public domain audiobooks. </div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal;">
<div style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
NOTE: All of these services have apps for your smartphone or tablet. <b>Services from libraries are in boldface.</b> </div>
<div style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
From Mary Lou in MD:</div>
<div style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
<br /></div>
<br /><br />Austen, Mansfield Park (1814; Oxford Illustrated Jane Austen reprint nd). About 30 years before this story begins, one of the three Ward sisters made a fortuitous match with Sir Thomas Bertram of Mansfield Park. Another married the Reverend Mr. Norris and Sir Thomas gave him the local living. Miss Frances married Lieutenant Price of the royal Marines, who had no fortune and no social standing. Her sisters rejected her as a result. Twelve years and nine children later, Mrs. Price receives the assistance of her more prosperous sisters in the form of an offer to take in the eldest daughter and raise her at Mansfield Park. Thus Fanny Price begins her Cinderella role at Mansfield Park. She is most exasperatingly humble with all the insults she suffers from her aunts and uncle and the mistreatment she receives from her four cousins. Lady Bertram is weak and lazy and Mrs. Norris is mean-spirited and nasty and both of them are focused on their status within Mansfield society. Austen’s satire is at its best in describing the sisters and other local notables. Only Sir Thomas and his younger son Edmund note and appreciate Fanny’s talents. What is to become of our poor heroine? <br /><br />Nevada Barr, The Rope (2011). This is the story of Anna Pigeon’s first assignment as a National Park Service employee. She is 35 years old and starting a new identity after her New York City life collapses. She is a summer seasonal worker, and much older than the other seasonal and permanent NPS employees at Glen Canyon National Recreational Area. Anna is naturally standoffish and reluctant to involve herself in the various hostile and dysfunctional relationships of her co-workers. On her first day off, she goes hiking in the park and does not return. Her coworkers think she has moved on without notice because her things are gone from her room. Actually, she is in a life-threatening situations. Although she has lost her memory, she gradually comes to believe that someone is trying to kill her. She manages to save herself, return to camp, and begin to investigate. No one can be trusted. This is just the first in a series of almost-murders that she manages to survive before she and we finally identify the bad guy. Of course she has to survive because it’s the beginning of a career we have been following for years. It gets a bit tedious. <br /><br />Nevada Barr, Winter Study (2008). A U.S. Forest Service bush pilot flies veteran NPS Ranger Anna Pigeon to Isle Royale National Park in the middle of Lake Superior. (She was nearly killed here once before – see A Superior Death.) She is participating in the famous Winter Wolf Study, begun over 50 years ago. Wolves established themselves on Isle Royale one winter by traveling over Lake Superior on an ice bridge from Ontario. Isle Royale National Park is open to visitors only in the summer months. From October to May, wildlife biologists come to study the wolves. This year’s study group includes an unwelcome representative from Homeland Security, looking to close down the study, open the island to visitors year-round, and establish border security on the island. Other unnatural creatures include the mythical windigo, a dying bull moose with deformed antlers, and an elusive wolf or wolf-dog that leaves giant paw prints. All of Anna’s co-workers seem to have something to hide and tensions are running high. As usual, it falls to Anna to quietly take the mature, rational role. The setting is chillingly magnificent and the suspense is intense.<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yK7MWKWTIe8/VvaypaoowpI/AAAAAAAAAL4/hc99gQPR0WcRcuikP6-jo1trzLyj0qy7w/s1600/IMG_2617.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yK7MWKWTIe8/VvaypaoowpI/AAAAAAAAAL4/hc99gQPR0WcRcuikP6-jo1trzLyj0qy7w/s320/IMG_2617.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />Laura Nemethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18049198850321076490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2993752341980843907.post-16360930037123718702016-02-29T13:30:00.003-08:002016-02-29T13:30:39.595-08:00February 2016We welcomed the newest member Emily to the group, and caught up with some members we haven't seen in a while.<br />
<br />
Here are the books we discussed:<br />
<br />
Lock and Key series - Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez<br />
The Boys in the Boat - Daniel James Brown<br />
<a href="http://www.rowsanduskybay.org/" target="_blank">Sandusky Bay Rowing Association</a><br />
Mozart in the Jungle - Blair Tindall<br />
Scandalous Behavior - Stuart Woods<br />
Locked In - Marcia Muller<br />
Encounters - George Braziller<br />
The Nine - Jeffrey Toobin<br />
The Traitor's Wife - Allison Pataki<br />
My Beloved World - Sonia Sotomayor<br />
The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett<br />
World Without End (miniseries) - Ken Follett<br />
Spooky Action at a Distance - George Musser<br />
Ashtabula Hat Trick - Les Roberts<br />
The Blue Between Sky and Water - Susan Abulhawa<br />
Is Fat Bob Dead Yet? - Stephen Dobyns<br />
The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton<br />
The Road to Character - David Brooks<br />
My Turn - Doug Henwood<br />Belisarius: The Last Roman General - Ian Hughes<br />The Turing Exception - William Hertling<br />A Borrowed Man - Gene Wolfe<br />Red Rising - Pierce Brown<br />Joe Steele - Harry Turtledove<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
From our sister group in OK:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Books<br />
<br />
Allee, Jennifer. Vinnie’s Diner<br />
Artists of Cotiut. (Exhibit catalog.)*<br />
Brown, Sandra. Alibi<br />
Carl, Joanna. The Chocolate Falcon Fraud<br />
Chabon, Michael. Yiddish Policemen’s Union<br />
Galbraith, Robert (J.K.Rowling). Career of Evil; Cuckoo’s Calling; The Silkworm<br />
Hamilton, Edith. The Greek Way<br />
Heller, Joseph. Picture This<br />
Hoag, Tami. Cold Cold Heart<br />
Holland, Julie. Moody Bitches<br />
Indridason, Arnaldar. Outrage<br />
Kaufman, Sarah. The Art of Grace<br />
Kiyosaki, Robert. Rich Dad Poor Dad<br />
Macmillan, Gilly. What She Knew<br />
Mistry, Rohinton. A Fine Balanace<br />
Mouillot, Miranda Richmond. A Fifty Year Silence<br />
Robinson, Marilyn. Lila<br />
Wilder, L. Douglas. Son of Virginia<br />
Zamperini, Louis. Unbroken<br />
<br />
<br />
Movies<br />
<br />
Bandits (2002 with Cate Blanchett)**<br />
Love the Coopers<br />
Suffragette<br />
<br />
* http://www.barnstablepatriot.com/article/20130530/ENTERTAINMENT/305309998<br />
** Bandits is a fun little movie. It is worth it for Blanchett’s kitchen scene. (Relate to discussion on The Art of Grace.)<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Iceland Writer’s Retreat http://www.icelandwritersretreat.com/<br />
(Book Bunch member, K.W. Hillis will attend in April 2016)<br />
<br />
From Mary Lou in MD:<br />
<br />
Booknotes Laura February 2016<br />
<br />
P. D. James, Devices and Desires (1989). Scotland Yard Commander Adam Dalgliesh comes to take his 2-week holiday in the windmill/cottage in Norfolk he inherited from an eccentric aunt. He soon discovers a fierce local controversy involving a nearby atomic power station. He also meets the scraggly, motherless and self-sufficient children of a curmudgeonly local painter. The characters all are fascinating. Dalgliesh does his best to escape involvement in the Norfolk CID’s hunt for a serial killer. And then there is an apparent suicide that’s not fully convincing. So much for the Commander’s vacation.<br />
<br />
James McBride, The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother (1996, 2006). As the author tells the story of his impoverished childhood as one of 12 children in Brooklyn in the 1960s, his understanding of his mother’s life develops gradually. Interspersed with this narration is the story of his mother’s life as an Orthodox Jew. She came to America at age 2, grew up in a very repressive household in Suffolk, VA, escaped to Harlem, and married a Black man. To the confusion of her son, she would never acknowledge that she was white. Instead, she thoroughly embraced the Black culture and it’s version of Christianity. When her son asks what color is God, she says God is the color of water. She is resilient through many hardships and totally dedicated to the education of her children, managing to enroll them in the best of New York’s public schools. Despite its probing exploration of issues of race, religion, family, and identity, this is a very funny book.<br />
<br />
Rick Bass, Where the Sea Used to Be (1998). This is a novel of character as molded by the physical environment. The setting is a remote valley in northwest Montana, cut off from the rest of the world for most of the year. This is where Mel has lived for most of her 40 years, studying the habits of wolves from a respectful distance. In her youth she fell in love with the valley’s golden boy, Matthew, who knew every inch of the woods and streams, talked to and hunted the animals, and built a stone wall along the trail for the love of the labor. He also was pulled into the Texas oil prospecting business by Mel’s father, Old Dudley, a character who becomes more diabolical as the novel progresses. As he pulls Matthew into the quest for oil, he drains his life force. Old Dudley has drilled many dry wells in the secluded valley and now he has sent a young geologist, Wallis, to locate a new drilling site. Wallis has been sent at the beginning of winter, the least appropriate time to study the topography for a new drilling site, since everything is covered with snow. Wallis takes up residence with Mel in Old Dudley’s cabin and gradually adapts to wintering in pioneer conditions, described in vivid detail. As his character develops, so does his relationship with Mel. She leaves the cabin each day to map the travels of the wolves; he stays indoors and draws speculative maps of the surrounding, invisible geology. Eventually he discovers a cellar under the cabin and a trunk with Old Dudley’s journals. These contain reverent and epic descriptions of the earth’s geologic history, delving beneath the surface and into the distant past, when oil was formed. The journals reinforce Old Dudley’s association with the underworld. As Old Dudley, Matthew, Wallis, and eventually the townsmen are drawn into the quest for oil, we resist this threat to the beauty of the wilderness landscape. Ultimately, the tensions and conflicts of this beautifully written novel are between the characters and the valley.<br />
<br />
Rose Melikan, The Mistaken Wife (2010). In 1792, Britain and France are at war and American ambassadors are in Paris, perhaps to forge an alliance. Mary Finch is minding her own business as an independent heiress in Suffolk, observing the social norms of Austen’s England. She is<br />
recruited by her former spy-master (apparently her prior mission was chronicled in The Blackstone Key) to travel secretly to Paris and masquerade as the “wife” of another agent, a painter. She can tell none of her friends and associates of her mission, not even her “special friend” Captain Holland. Through intricacies of the clever plot, he travels to Paris on a separate equally risky mission. Traveling in France is dangerous and Paris is even more so. The historical background is drawn in convincing detail and maps are provided to aid the reader. The two plots are carefully woven to a meeting point where the lives or hero and heroine are at risk. Suspense is sustained throughout this novel and Mary’s point of view is spirited and entertaining.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vHryA6aNIww/VtS33CmaPaI/AAAAAAAAALk/_HuuUl2bQoo/s1600/IMG_2582.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vHryA6aNIww/VtS33CmaPaI/AAAAAAAAALk/_HuuUl2bQoo/s320/IMG_2582.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
Laura Nemethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18049198850321076490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2993752341980843907.post-87498167361256583862016-01-31T10:44:00.001-08:002016-02-03T03:44:22.238-08:00January 2016We started off the new year with a <a href="http://www.macleans.ca/culture/books/why-beatrix-potters-long-lost-kitty-in-boots-will-be-catnip-to-readers/" target="_blank">new Beatrix Potter book</a> to look forward to, as well as <a href="http://www.themillions.com/2016/01/most-anticipated-the-great-2016-book-preview.html" target="_blank">others</a> (hello Annie Proulx fans!), and are still reading traditional paperbound books but will read an ebook if necessary.<br />
<br />
Here's what else we discussed:<br />
<br />
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant - Anne Tyler<br />
My Sweetest Libbie - Jean Gora<br />
Z A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald - Therese Anne Fowler<br />
Outlander - Diana Gabaldon<br />
Nature of the Beast - Louise Penny<br />
Corrupted - Lisa Scottoline<br />
Rogue Lawyer - John Grisham<br />
The Lincoln Lawyer - Michael Connelly<br />
The Guilty - David Baldacci<br />
Margaret Fuller - Megan Marshall<br />
The Paris Wife - Paula McLain<br />
That Camden Summer - LaVyrle Spencer<br />
The Courtesan - Alexandra Curry<br />
The Making of the African Queen - Katharine Hepburn<br />
Burning Down George Orwell's House - Andrew Ervin<br />
The Circle - Bernard Minier<br />
The Alienist - Caleb Carr<br />
Humans of New York: Stories - Brandon Stanton<br />
The Stupid Crook Book - Leland Gregory<br />
The Bazaar of Bad Dreams - Stephen King<br />
The Selected Stories of Patricia Highsmith - Graham Greene<br />
<a href="http://chooseyourhighsmith.com/" target="_blank">Choose Your Patricia Highsmith Recommendation Engine</a><br />
Unbroken - Laura Hillenbrand<br />
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up - Marie Kondo<br />
<br />
<br />
From our sister group in OK:<br />
<br />
<b><u>Books</u></b><br />
<br />
Alexievich, Svetlana. Voices from Chernobyl; Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War; War’s Unwomanly Face<br />
Brown, Alton. Feasting on Asphalt<br />
Carl, Joanna. The Chocolate Falcon Fraud<br />
Coulter, Catherine. Final Cut<br />
Goodman, Ruth. How to be a Victorian<br />
King, Stephen. The Wolves of Calla<br />
Lam, Vincent. The Headmaster’s Wager<br />
Lewis, Michael. The Big Short<br />
Lipton, James. Inside Inside<br />
Patton, Benjamin. Growing Up Patton<br />
Philbrook, Nathaniel. In the Heart of the Sea<br />
Sacks, Oliver. An Anthropologist on Mars; On the Move: A Life<br />
See, Lisa. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan<br />
Sides, Hampton. Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette<br />
Smith, Tom Rob. Child 44<br />
Vonnegut, Mark. Just Like Someone with Mental Illness Only More So<br />
Wilder, L. Douglas. Son of Virginia<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><u>Movies</u></b><br />
<br />
Carol<br />
Danish Girl<br />
Hateful Eight<br />
In the Heart of the Sea<br />
Revenant<br />
<br />
Iceland Writer’s Retreat http://www.icelandwritersretreat.com/<br />
(Book Bunch member, K.W. Hillis will attend in April 2016)<br />
<br />
From Mary Lou in MD:<br />
<br />
Anton Chekov, Selected Plays (Norton Critical Edition, 2005). I read the plays and selected critical essays for a Russian Lit class at my Senior Center. We studied Ivanov (first played 1887), The Seagull (1896), Uncle Vanya (1899), The Three Sisters (1901), and The Cherry Orchard (1904). Except for Ivanov, I had seen them all at least once, in very good productions. This is fortunate, as they don’t read all that well. I agree that they are masterpieces, but they are much better enjoyed in the theatre, where the director has done much of the interpretive work for you. Some playwrights are a joy to read (Shakespeare, Shaw), but in my opinion, not Chekov.<br />
<br />
Jane Austen, Persuasion (1818, posthumous). I read this in conjunction with a Senior Center class on The England of Jane Austen. I think this is the equal of her other, more famous novels. Anne Elliot is as admirable a heroine as Elizabeth Bennett and the novel offers several other admirable (though flawed) women characters, including her godmother Lady Russell and Mrs. Croft. At age 27, Anne seems fated for spinsterhood, having declined the proposal of a dashing but poor naval officer, Frederick Wentworth. Her father’s vanity has squandered the family fortune and they are obliged to rent out Kellynch Hall and take up lodgings in Bath. The Hall is let to Admiral and Mrs. Croft, who just happen to be the now-wealthy Captain Wentworth’s brother-in-law and sister. A series of social and domestic crises and numerous misunder-standings conspire against a reunion of Anne and Wentworth and while this is being worked out, Austen gives us a vivid portrait of the constraints social norms placed on women of the time.<br />
<br />
Jo Baker, The Undertow (2011). The novel presents the story of four generations of the Hastings family from World War I to the present. In August 1914 William Hastings, a London factory worker, is about to leave for the Navy. He gives his sweetheart Amelia a lovely album for postcards and promises to send her one from every place he goes. In April 1915, Amelia gives birth to a son and names him Billy. As a teenager, Billy gets a job delivering groceries by bicycle and eventually grows up to be a champion cyclist. In World War II he is placed in a company of cyclists who ride into the D-day landings on military bicycles. Billy’s son Will manages to make himself into an athlete, despite a crippled leg. He also studies hard and gets to Oxford where he becomes a professor in the 1960s. His daughter Billie becomes an artist in London. She attempts to discover her family history. The postcard album makes scattered appearances throughout the novel. Reading this novel can be a slightly disorienting experience, as the focus shifts to the next generation before the story of the older generation reaches full resolution.<br />
<br />
Charlotte MacLeod, The Withdrawing Room (1980). This is the second novel in the series of mysteries featuring Sarah Kelling and her eccentric relatives of a prominent Boston family. In The Family Vault (1979) young Sarah’s husband is killed and now the widow finds herself facing destitution. Over the vociferous objections of her family (Cousin Dolph, Uncle Jeremy), she turns her large Beacon Hill brownstone into a boarding house so she can continue to pay the mortgage. She carefully recruits her tenants and serves as their gracious dinner hostess, while disguising the fact that she is also the cook. She is ably, if unconventionally assisted by her maid and butler, Mariposa and Charles. In fact, no one in this household is quite what they appear to be. Things get really strange when her most obnoxious boarder is murdered. The replacement tenant proves hardly more satisfactory. Sarah is a resourceful and imaginative sleuth.<br />
<br />
Martha Grimes, Vertigo 42 (2014). Wealthy Tom Williamson asks Scotland Yard Superintendent Richard Jury to meet him at a bar named Vertigo 42 atop a London skyscraper. (Remember, the titles of all of Grimes’s Richard Jury novels are the names of pubs.) Williamson wants Jury to reinvestigate the death of his wife in Devon 17 years previously. The Devon-Cornwall investigating officer deemed the death accidental, ascribed to the wife’s known vertigo; the coroner issued an open verdict. The junior officer involved in the investigation was Brian Macalvie (a friend and colleague of Jury’s familiar in other Grimes novels). Macalvie found the death suspicious. Jury agrees to go to Devon to see where the “accident” occurred. On the way he stops to see his friend Melrose Plant and they go to the local pub, the Jack and Hammer. There they hear of the mysterious death of a young woman in a fall from a tower. Did she fall, or was she pushed? Now Jury has two mysteries to ponder. Without the astute comments of his fashion-conscious young neighbor Carol-anne and the actions of a stray dog, he never would have figured things out. This is a very witty novel with ample literary allusions. Grimes does not disappoint her readers.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qh7LCtcOZxs/Vq5VQqDdYwI/AAAAAAAAALQ/tPaztAdg8WQ/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2016-01-31%2Bat%2B1.40.11%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qh7LCtcOZxs/Vq5VQqDdYwI/AAAAAAAAALQ/tPaztAdg8WQ/s320/Screen%2BShot%2B2016-01-31%2Bat%2B1.40.11%2BPM.png" width="313" /></a></div>
<br />Laura Nemethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18049198850321076490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2993752341980843907.post-25026188701630132782016-01-02T08:19:00.001-08:002016-01-02T08:50:42.883-08:00October, November and December 2015<b>“If you are too busy to read, you are too busy.”</b><br />
<b>― Richard J. Foster, Freedom of Simplicity: Finding Harmony in a Complex World</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Late fall and the holidays can be hectic. I'm thankful that we can make time for the important things.</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Here's what we discussed:</b><br />
<br />
On Secret Service - John Jakes<br />
The Last Summer at Chelsea Beach - Pam Jenoff<br />
Finding Fish - Antwone Quentin Fisher<br />
The Murderer's Daughter - Jonathan Kellerman<br />
Make Me - Lee Child<br />
X - Sue Grafton<br />
Shadow Play - Iris Johansen<br />
Buddhism - Richard Gard<br />
Salt, the Fifth Element - Garnett Laidlaw Eskew<br />
Orphan Train - Christina Baker Kline<br />
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - Ransom Riggs<br />
Revival - Stephen King<br />
An Open Book, Coming of Age in the Heartland - Michael Dirda<br />
The Traitor's Wife - Allison Pataki<br />
Room - Emma Donoghue<br />
The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro<br />
Locke & Key series - Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez<br />
Skullcrack City - Jeremy Johnson<br />
A Moveable Feast - Ernest Hemingway<br />
Voices from Chernobyl - Svetlana Alexievich<br />
Shelter Dogs - documentary film by Cynthia Wade<br />
Havana Storm - Clive Cussler<br />
Paul Simon: A Life - Marc Eliot<br />
<a href="http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews" target="_blank">The Paris Review Interviews</a><br />
The Lottery - Shirley Jackson<br />
The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson<br />
The Asylum - John Harwood<br />
Books by Dorothea Benton Frank<br />
Celia Garth: A Story of Charleston in the Revolution - Gwen Bristow<br />
Broadway musical <i>Hamilton</i><br />
<a href="http://www.humansofnewyork.com/" target="_blank">Humans of New York</a><br />
<a href="http://felinesofnewyork.com/" target="_blank">Felines of New York</a><br />
David Rosenfelt and his character Andy Carpenter<br />
We Are Called to Rise - Laura McBride<br />
The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell<br />
<br />
Tom's list:<br />
<br />
The Dead Mountaineer's Inn - Arkady and Boris Strugatsky<br />
Browsing - Michael Dirda<br />
The Day of Wrath - Sever Gansovsky<br />
The Wright Brothers - David McCullough<br />
Hosts - F. Paul Wilson<br />
The Lonely Shadows, Tales of Horror and the Cthulhu Mythos - John Glasby<br />
The Billion Dollar Spy - David E. Hoffman<br />
Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink - Elvis Costello<br />
The Mirror Man - James P. Hogan<br />
Dick Kinzel, Roller Coaster King of Cedar Point - Tim O'Brien<br />
The Girl Who Owned a City - O.T. Nelson<br />
On Russian Music - Richard Taruskin<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Ryan's list:</div>
<div>
<span style="color: #454545; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 15px;"><br /></span></div>
The New Gold Standard by Joseph Michelli<br />
Skullcrack City by Jeremy Robert Johnson<br />
The Blue Aspic by Edward Gorey<br />
The Recently Deflowered Girl by Edward Gorey and Hyacinthe Phypps<br />
Locke and Key Volume 4 by Joe Hill and Gabriel RodriguezThe Tailored Interior by Greg Natale<br />
Faith vs. Fact by Jerry A. Coyne<br />
Positioning by Al Ries and Jack Trout<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Mary Lou's list:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Kris Radish, The Elegant Gathering of White Snows (2002). A group of women in a small Wisconsin town have been meeting every Thursday evening and they have developed strong friendships. They are career women, housewives, mothers, divorcees, and one ex-Prom queen. One Thursday evening one of them is in crisis and after midnight they all take off walking down their rural highway. They just keep walking for days and miles, attracting press attention and energizing women across the country. They are not much interested in the effect of their odyssey on others, but we hear some stories about that. Because his wife tells him to, the local sheriff assigns a deputy to shadow them and keep the press, gawkers, and hecklers at a distance. One by one, they tell their friends the tragedies and dark secrets that have shaped their lives. Gradually each woman gains the individual insight and strength she needs to move her life in a more positive direction. This is an intriguing book.<br />
<br />
Mary Higgins Clark, The Lost Years (2012). Retired NYU professor and archeologist Jonathan Lyons is found shot in his study just weeks after discovering a valuable ancient parchment. His wife Kathleen, suffering from Alzheimer’s, is suspected of murdering him in jealousy about his mistress. His daughter Mariah is convinced her mother is innocent. She soon realizes that the likely murderer is to be found among her father’s friends who accompanied him on his archeological expeditions to the Holy Land. Police detective Simon Benet is convinced that Mrs. Lyons is guilty, but his partner Rita Rodriguez is not so sure. Predictably, Mariah is nearly murdered in the course of her investigation. She is assisted by long-time family friends, including her mother’s lawyer and a colorfully inquisitive retired couple. Although the plot is rather predictable, the quirky characters and the setting in Manhattan and northern New Jersey keep the novel entertaining.<br />
<br />
Carol Higgins Clark, Decked (1992). This is a traditional light murder mystery I the style of the author’s mother Mary. The action takes place between Oxford, England and the Queen Guinevere cruise ship. Private investigator Regan Reilly returns to Oxford to attend her 10-year class reunion at St. Polycarp’s. She and her former roommate attend a cocktail party at octogenarian Lacy Veronica Exner’s Llewellyn Hall. The body of their classmate Athena, who disappeared 10 years before, has just been discovered near the Hall. Superintendent Livingston comes to the Hall to question the residents and Athena’s classmates, since the disappearance now appears to be murder, not elopement. Lady Veronica’s companion is taken ill and Regan is persuaded to take her place and accompany Lady Veronica on the trans-Atlantic crossing. Soon Regan discovers that Lady Veronica’s safety is threatened by more than her impetuosity and lack of judgment and Regan’s suspicion of her fellow cruisers increases. The Superintendent continues to investigate St. Polycarp while Regan suspects a link between Athena’s murder and the threats to Lady Veronica. There are many comic episodes, verging on farce. Several plot threads arte skillfully braided toward a satisfying cheerful resolution.<br />
<br />
From our sister group in OK:<br />
<br />
Books<br />
<br />
<br />
Chandra, Vikram. Sacred Games<br />
Davis, Katharine. Slender Thread<br />
Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel<br />
Ellison, Harlan. “Croatoan” and “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” (short stories)<br />
French, Tana. Secret Place<br />
Hill, Roxann. Death of the Blue Flower<br />
Howe, James. Bunnicula: A Rabbit-Tale of Mystery<br />
James, Miranda. Arsenic and Old Books<br />
Kyle, Aryn. The God of Animals<br />
Mankell, Henning. d. Oct. 5, 2015. General discussion.<br />
Penny, Louise. Still Life<br />
Ryan, Hank Phillippi. Truth Be Told<br />
Smith, Tom Rob. Child 44<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Television<br />
<br />
E.O. Wilson: Of Ants and Men (PBS)<br />
Newsroom (HBO)<br />
<br />
Books<br />
<br />
<br />
Bowler, Jerry. The World Encyclopedia of Christmas<br />
Brett, Jan, Illustrator. The Night Before Christmas: A Poem by Clement Moore. 10th Anniversary Edition<br />
Brown, Dan. Digital Fortress<br />
Canellos, Peter S. The Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy.<br />
Fang, Jade. Twelve Days of Christmas<br />
Joyce, Davis D. Alternative Oklahoma: Contrarian Views of the Sooner State<br />
McCormick, George. Island Empire<br />
Matthews, John. The Winter Solstice: The Sacred Traditions of Christmas. (394.261 Matt). “Winter Solstice” p.45,<br />
Monahan, Brent. Jekyl Island Club<br />
Moore, Clement C. The Night Before Christmas. Illustrated by Niroot Puttapipat<br />
Morris, Edmund. Theodore Rex<br />
Pearlman, Edith. Binocular Vision<br />
<br />
<br />
Movies<br />
<br />
“Babadook.”<br />
“Bridge of Spies.” (Tom Hanks – James Donovan, Mark Rylance – Rudolf Abel)<br />
<br />
<br />
Television & DVDS<br />
<br />
“A Christmas Carol: The Concert” (As seen on PBS) Composed & arranged by Bob Christianson. Lyrics and Book adaptation by Alisa Hauser. Adapted from the Novella by Charles Dickens.<br />
“Great British Baking Show.” BBC on PBS.<br />
<br />
Books<br />
<br />
Beattie, Ann. Mrs. Nixon: A Novelist Imagines a Life<br />
Boo, Katherine. Behind the Beautiful Forevers<br />
Buck, Pearl. The Good Earth<br />
Ishiguro, Kazuo. Never Let Me Go<br />
Marquis De Custine. Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia<br />
Patton, Benjamin. Growing Up Patton: Reflections on Heroes, History, and Family Wisdom<br />
Penny, Louise. Still Life<br />
Sheff, David. Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction<br />
Stevens, Chevy. Never knowing<br />
<br />
Movies<br />
<br />
The Good Earth. (1937 with Paul Muni, Luis Rainer, Walter Connolly. Also on DVD)<br />
<br />
<br />
Television: Einstein’s Centennial<br />
<br />
Inside Einstein’s Mind. Craig Sechler. PBS-Nova. (Aired 11-29-15).<br />
The Universe Beyond the Big Bang. Erik Thompson. History Channel H2. (Aired 11-30-15)<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3MBcEoSInkg/Vof4mYbQfXI/AAAAAAAAAK8/UVRJDLvUprM/s1600/Heronpier.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3MBcEoSInkg/Vof4mYbQfXI/AAAAAAAAAK8/UVRJDLvUprM/s320/Heronpier.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
Laura Nemethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18049198850321076490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2993752341980843907.post-86472277620268162402015-10-17T08:07:00.001-07:002015-10-17T08:07:43.442-07:00September 2015If summer is for beach reads, fall is for cozy cushions.<br />
<br />
Here's what we discussed:<br />
<br />
Elon Musk - Ashlee Vance.<br />Pause, Play: A Higher Consciousness Handbook - K.P. van der Tempel<br />Goodbye to All That - Robert Graves<br />Information Doesn't Want to Be Free - Cory Doctorow<br />Aurora - Kim Stanley Robinson<br />We Believe the Children - Richard Beck<br />Stone mouth - Iain Banks<br />The Dark Forest - Cixin Liu<br />Armada - Ernest Cline<br />The Island Worlds - Eric Kotani and John Maddox Roberts<br />Now Wait For Last Year - Philip K. Dick<br />The Girl in the Spider's Web - David Lagercrantz<br />Burning Down George Orwell's House - Andrew Ervin<div>
The Naked Eye - Iris Johansen</div>
<div>
Friction - Sandra Brown</div>
<div>
The Festival of Insignificance - Milan Kundera</div>
<div>
West of Sunset - Stewart O'Nan</div>
<div>
The Vacationers - Emma Straub</div>
<div>
Books by Thomas Disch</div>
<div>
Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro</div>
<div>
The Tortilla Curtain - T.C. Boyle</div>
<div>
San Miguel - T.C. Boyle</div>
<div>
The Nightingale - Kristen Hannah</div>
<div>
The Casual Vacancy - J.K. Rowling</div>
<div>
Top Secret Twenty-One - Janet Evanovich</div>
<div>
Fire in the Hole - Elmore Leonard</div>
<div>
X - Sue Grafton</div>
<div>
Murder with Fried Chicken and Waffles - A.L. Herbert</div>
<div>
The Cavendon Women - Barbara Taylor Bradford</div>
<div>
Words Onscreen - Naomi S. Baron</div>
<div>
Butterflies in November - Auour Ava Olafsdottir</div>
<div>
Second Street Station - Lawrence Levy</div>
<div>
<a href="https://libraryofbabel.info/" target="_blank">Library of Babel</a> (a project of a universal library)</div>
<div>
One Righteous Man - Arthur Browne</div>
<div>
Doc - Mary Doria Russell</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h3>
From our sister club in OK:</h3>
<div>
<br /></div>
Lawton Book Bunch <br />Thursday, Sept. 10, 2015 <br /><br />Books <br /><br />Foreman, Amanda. A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War <br />Gillon, Steven M. American Paradox: A History of the United States Since 1945 <br />Hughes, Terry. I Am Pilgrim <br />Kyle, Aryn. The God of Animals <br />Rappaport, Helen. The Romanov Sisters <br />Pearlman, Edith. Binocular Vision <br />Pietila, Antero. Not in My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City <br />Sedaris, David. Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls <br />Smith, Tom Rob. Child 44 <br />Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States <br /><br />Movies <br /><br />Baraka <br />The Gift <br />Iris (Iris Apfel) <br />Leviathan (Russian. 2014) <br />The Painting (French: La Tableau. 2011) <br />Straight Outta Compton <br />A Walk in the Woods <br />Witches of Eastwick <br /><br /><br />PBS <br /><br />Great Performances: Twilight (Anna Devere Smith) <br /><br />Television <br /><br />Luther (BBC with Idris Elba) <br />The Wire <br /><br />Discussion <br /><br /><div>
James Bond actors. Idris Elba as the next James Bond. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<h3>
From Mary Lou in MD:</h3>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
September 2015</div>
<br /><br />Len Deighton, Faith (1994), Hope (1995), Charity (1996). Here is another dark, convoluted, espionage trilogy by the master. Bernard Samson’s special instincts about the Cold War stem from his boyhood in Berlin, where his father was Resident for Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), (MI-6). The first three books of the series, Game, Set and Match, are set in 1982 -1984. The second trilogy, Hook, Line, and Sinker, are set in 1987. This most recent trilogy is set in 1988 – 1989. All the novels are narrated by Bernie, except Sinker, a third-person narrative focusing on Bernie’s wife Fiona and revealing things Bernard does not know (yet). The lack of understanding between Bernard and Fiona are a secondary source of tension in these novels. All of Bernard’s colleagues and superiors are untrustworthy and he knows it. His immediate supervisor Dicky Cruyer is a vain, fantasy-spinning, power-craving London bureaucrat with bountiful, unjustified confidence in his spy-craft. Frank Harrington, Berlin Resident for many hears, is crafty and competent, but committed first and foremost to maintaining his position as he approaches retirement. Bret Rensselaer, an Anglophile American, eventually rises to Deputy Director General in the course of this trilogy. He understands and respects Bernard more than the others, but still objects to the agent’s tendencies to follow his instincts more than his orders and to withhold as much information as possible as a matter of principle. The chief delights of these novels are Bernard’s narrow and often brutal and bloody escapes from the Bad Guys (Stasi, KGB, etc.), his insights into his superior’s thoughts and motivations, and his evasions of the traps set by the SIS bureaucracy. Even his best friend since childhood, Werner Volkman, keeps secrets from Bernard when London Central orders him to do so. In this culminating trilogy of the series, Bernard works against orders and with great determination to solve mysteries relating to his wife and fellow-spy Fiona, his sister-in-law Tessa, and his brother-in-law George Kosinski. Only the instincts developed in a lifetime in and around Berlin and 20-some years of spying for SIS enable Bernard to survive his missions (official and free-lance) into East Germany and Poland. His superiors neither understand nor approve the violent, often deadly acts by which he survives. The enemy agents and agencies don’t much like them either, and would happily take advantage of any opportunity for revenge. Bernard’s life is equally threatened by Stasi/KGB agents and London Central’s ignorance and incompetence. The suspense is intense. <br /><br />Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables (1851; 2010). The Salem house of the title and the family that inhabits it was cursed a century ago by a man tried and hanged for witchcraft. Hawthorne, in his preface, deems the work a romance rather than a novel because it is given more to fantasy than to realism. The narrator is discursive, judgmental, and intrusive and all of the characters are bizarre. The Pyncheons believe themselves to be gentry and proper owners of a vast tract of land outside Salem, but the papers documenting their claim was lost long ago. Now the house has become decrepit and it is inhabited only by an elderly, reclusive spinster, Hepzibah Pyncheon. She has decided she has no alternative but to open a Cent Shop in the house, but she dreads contact with the public. Her young, cheerful cousin Phoebe arrives unexpectedly from the country and proves a very helpful housemate and storekeeper. Hepzibah’s cousin the Judge is wealthy and well regarded by the town, but Hepzibah believes him to be thoroughly evil. One of the gables of the house is rented to a mysterious young photographer who believes his photo has captured the Judge’s true evil nature. Eventually the overlapping mysteries are solved and right prevails in a most unconvincing manner. As Hawthorne told us, this is a romance. <div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lQTDpq1sBwE/ViJkLSNRv_I/AAAAAAAAAKo/d1LguPG9-jM/s1600/IMG_1712.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lQTDpq1sBwE/ViJkLSNRv_I/AAAAAAAAAKo/d1LguPG9-jM/s320/IMG_1712.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Laura Nemethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18049198850321076490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2993752341980843907.post-35490646570977451762015-09-07T08:37:00.000-07:002015-09-07T08:37:00.139-07:00August 2015<div class="rrquote" style="font-family: Verdana, 'Trebuchet MS', 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; margin-bottom: 1em;">
"So please, oh PLEASE, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away. And in its place you can install, a lovely bookshelf on the wall." — Roald Dahl </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
As you can see, not much time has been spent in front of the TV:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Emma - Alexander McCall Smith</div>
<div>
Political Order and Political Decay - Francis Fukuyama</div>
<div>
The End of History and The Last Man - Francis Fukuyama</div>
<div>
The Interestings - Meg Wolitzer</div>
<div>
Islands - Anne Rivers Siddons</div>
<div>
Books by Wallace Stegner</div>
<div>
The Memory House - Bette Lee Crosby</div>
<div>
Monkeys on the Interstate - Jack Hanna</div>
<div>
The Ridleys - Matt Haig</div>
<div>
The Tragic Story of the Empress of Ireland - Logan Marshall</div>
<div>
The Forgotten Sister - Jennifer Paynter</div>
<div>
Blueprints - Barbara Delinsky (not recommended)</div>
<div>
When the Night Comes - Favel Parrett</div>
<div>
The Boys in the Boat - Daniel James Brown</div>
<div>
Solitude Creek - Jeffery Deaver</div>
<div>
The Long Way Home - Louise Penny</div>
<div>
Mr. Peanut - Adam Ross</div>
<div>
Make Something Up: Stories You Can't Unread - Chuck Palahniuk</div>
<div>
It Comes in Waves - Erika Marks</div>
<div>
Ten Thousand Saints - Eleanor Henderson</div>
<div>
Skink - Carl Hiaasen</div>
<div>
Bad Monkey - Carl Hiassen</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
From our sister group in OK:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Lawton Book Bunch<br />
Thursday, August 13, 2015<br />
The next meeting will be: Sept. 10, 2015<br />
<br />
<br />
Books<br />
<br />
Carr, Caleb. Alienist; Angel of Darkness<br />
Ferber, Edna. Cimarron; Giant<br />
George, Elizabeth. All of her books.<br />
Godsave, Bayard. Torture Tree<br />
Harrer, Karl Maria. Miracles Through Our Lady<br />
Hawkins, Paula. The Girl on a Train<br />
Jones, Hardy. People of the Good God<br />
Martin, Wednesday. The Primates of Park Avenue: A Memoir<br />
Powell, Julie. Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously *<br />
Roensch, Rob. The Wild Flowers of Baltimore<br />
Rutherford, Edward. Paris<br />
Siegal, Nina. The Anatomy Lesson<br />
Smith, J.E. Edna Ferber’s Hollywood<br />
Wachter, Robert. The Digital Doctor: Hope, Hipe, and Harm at the Dawn of Medicine’s Computer Age<br />
<br />
<br />
Movies<br />
<br />
Big Sleep<br />
I’ll See You In My Dreams<br />
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl<br />
Mr. Holmes<br />
Testament of Youth<br />
<br />
<br />
PBS<br />
<br />
Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn: Suzannah Lipscomb Dispels Myths about the Lovers Who Changed History.<br />
<br />
* June now owns every sized slow cooker and has determined to cook dishes from around the world.<br />
<br />
From Mary Lou in MD:<br />
<br />
Booknotes August 2015<br />
<br />
Mia King, Good Things (2006). Deidre McIntosh is the famous star of Seattle’s “Live Simple” TV show about cooking and life style. Then, with no warning, a bitch named Marla launches a competing show, heralded with a vicious ad campaign attacking Deidre as well as her show. Deidre’s show is cancelled and her best friend and roommate decides to move in with his boyfriend. She has a spectacular wardrobe and a flashy car, but no savings, no income, no place to live and no idea how she is going to survive. An attractive stranger offers her his country home as a retreat until she gets her life on track and she finds herself in a remote cabin a few miles from the tiny town of Jacob’s Point, near Lake Wish in Eastern Washington. The Wishbone Café and its owner Lindsey become central to Deidre’s life and recovery. Lake Wish has unexpected magical powers and the handsome stranger provides the novel’s love interest as well as its main mystery.<br />
<br />
Tracy Chevalier, The Last Runaway (2013). In 1850-something Honor Bright leaves her Quaker community in Dorset to immigrate to America with her sister Grace, who is going there to marry a shopkeeper in a Quaker community near Oberlin, Ohio. When Honor arrives in Ohio after a dreadful voyage she learns that some of the local women are assisting fugitive slaves, while a rakish man on an impressive horse employs himself as a slavecatcher. The slavery controversy is very heated. Honor does not understand why her new family is hostile to her and forbids her to do anything to assist runaway slaves. She struggles to fit into her new life while remaining true to her Quaker conscience. This novel presents a vivid account of the personal, social and political struggles surrounding the slavery issue.<br />
<br />
Jean Zimmerman, The Orphan Master (2012). This novel is set in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam (Manhattan) in the 1660s. Edward Drummond, posing as a grain merchant, has traveled there as a spy in the service of King Charles II to seek out regicides who have taken refuge in the New England colonies and to evaluate the Dutch fortifications in the event of British attack. He soon meets Blandine van Couvering, a vibrant and independent young woman who is a savvy trader in furs and other goods. She also is an orphan, long befriended by the local orphan master, one Aet Visser. Several young orphans have been brutally murdered and others have disappeared. Witchcraft is suspected. At one time or another, Edward, Blandine, and Aet fall under suspicion even as they attempt to identify the murderer. There are many other colorful characters, the historical setting is fascinating, and the plot is engaging.<br />
<br />
Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers (1857; B&N Classics 2005). This is volume 2 of Trollope’s 6-volume Barchester series. It is a comic novel of character set in and around the fictitious Victorian town of Barchester. The characters are variously flawed by naiveté, pride, jealousy, greed, ambition and hypocrisy. The author/narrator is intrusive and judgmental. Dr. Proudie, an outsider, is appointed Bishop of Barchester, his wife and his curate (Mr. Slope) are vying for control of the diocese, and the local Anglican worthies are outraged by the low-church dogma the newcomers attempt to impose. Almost all of the characters are selfish, ambitious, and scheming and the few without such motives are a mystery to the others. The plot, such as it is, turns on the resulting miscommunications.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Biq9fznReLQ/Ve2un8YPN8I/AAAAAAAAAKI/4okKKniNOlM/s1600/FullSizeRender-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="299" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Biq9fznReLQ/Ve2un8YPN8I/AAAAAAAAAKI/4okKKniNOlM/s320/FullSizeRender-2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
Laura Nemethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18049198850321076490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2993752341980843907.post-51364661751842374822015-08-02T07:05:00.001-07:002015-08-02T07:05:18.633-07:00July 2015A little surprised at the diverse list we have for our summer reading:<br />
<br />
Ready Player One - Ernest Cline<br />Seveneves - Neal Stephenson<br />By the People - Charles Murray<br />Leviathan - Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson<br />Lost Sandusky - M. Kristina Smith<br />The Sword of the Lictor - Gene Wolfe<br />Words Without Music - Philip Glass<div>
Sand County Almanac - Aldo Leopold</div>
<div>
Top Secret Twenty-One - Janet Evanovich</div>
<div>
Retire Smart Retire Happy - Nancy Schlossberg</div>
<div>
Revitalizing Retirement - Nancy Schlossberg</div>
<div>
Everybody Sees the Ants - A.S. King</div>
<div>
Handsome Man's Deluxe Cafe - Alexander McCall Smith</div>
<div>
Funny Girl - Nick Hornby</div>
<div>
Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry - Rachel Joyce</div>
<div>
Everything I Never Told You - Celeste Ng</div>
<div>
Go Set A Watchman - Harper Lee</div>
<div>
Silent Night - Stanley Weintraub</div>
<div>
Ghost Map - Steven Johnson</div>
<div>
All the Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr</div>
<div>
A Good American - Alex George</div>
<div>
The Rosie Project - Graeme Simsion</div>
<div>
Deep Down Dark - Hector Tobar</div>
<div>
Light Between Oceans - M.L. Stedman</div>
<div>
Flight Behavior - Barbara Kingsolver</div>
<div>
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan - Lisa See</div>
<div>
Same Sky - Amanda Eyre Ward</div>
<div>
Rhino with Glue-on Shoes - Lucy Spelman</div>
<div>
Monkeys on the Interstate - Jack Hanna</div>
<div>
Range of Motion - Elizabeth Berg</div>
<div>
Why isn't My Brain Working - Datis Kharrazian</div>
<div>
West of Sunset - Stuart O'Nan</div>
<div>
Dreams of Joy - Lisa See</div>
<div>
Shanghai Girls - Lisa See</div>
<div>
The Nightingale - Kristin Hannah</div>
<div>
Sarah's Key - Tatiana de Rosnay</div>
<div>
My Life in the Cleveland Zoo - Adam Smith</div>
<div>
Lobster Chronicles - Linda Greenlaw</div>
<div>
Lost Sandusky - M. Kristina Smith</div>
<div>
At Home with Madame Chic - Jennifer Scott</div>
<div>
<a href="http://www.magpictures.com/thewolfpack/" target="_blank">The Wolfpack</a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
From Mary Lou in MD:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<br /><br />Booknotes Laura August 2015 <br /><br />Mia King, Good Things (2006). Deidre McIntosh is the famous star of Seattle’s “Live Simple” TV show about cooking and life style. Then, with no warning, a bitch named Marla launches a competing show, heralded with a vicious ad campaign attacking Deidre as well as her show. Deidre’s show is cancelled and her best friend and roommate decides to move in with his boyfriend. She has a spectacular wardrobe and a flashy car, but no savings, no income, no place to live and no idea how she is going to survive. An attractive stranger offers her his country home as a retreat until she gets her life on track and she finds herself in a remote cabin a few miles from the tiny town of Jacob’s Point, near Lake Wish in Eastern Washington. The Wishbone Café and its owner Lindsey become central to Deidre’s life and recovery. Lake Wish has unexpected magical powers and the handsome stranger provides the novel’s love interest as well as its main mystery. <br /><br />Tracy Chevalier, The Last Runaway (2013). In 1850-something Honor Bright leaves her Quaker community in Dorset to immigrate to America with her sister Grace, who is going there to marry a shopkeeper in a Quaker community near Oberlin, Ohio. When Honor arrives in Ohio after a dreadful voyage she learns that some of the local women are assisting fugitive slaves, while a rakish man on an impressive horse employs himself as a slavecatcher. The slavery controversy is very heated. Honor does not understand why her new family is hostile to her and forbids her to do anything to assist runaway slaves. She struggles to fit into her new life while remaining true to her Quaker conscience. This novel presents a vivid account of the personal, social and political struggles surrounding the slavery issue. <br /><br />Jean Zimmerman, The Orphan Master (2012). This novel is set in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam (Manhattan) in the 1660s. Edward Drummond, posing as a grain merchant, has traveled there as a spy in the service of King Charles II to seek out regicides who have taken refuge in the New England colonies and to evaluate the Dutch fortifications in the event of British attack. He soon meets Blandine van Couvering, a vibrant and independent young woman who is a savvy trader in furs and other goods. She also is an orphan, long befriended by the local orphan master, one Aet Visser. Several young orphans have been brutally murdered and others have disappeared. Witchcraft is suspected. At one time or another, Edward, Blandine, and Aet fall under suspicion even as they attempt to identify the murderer. There are many other colorful characters, the historical setting is fascinating, and the plot is engaging.<br /><div>
<br /><br /><br /></div>
Laura Nemethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18049198850321076490noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2993752341980843907.post-58716792005997282892015-06-28T08:57:00.001-07:002015-06-28T08:57:29.290-07:00June 2015So glad Judy could join us!<br />
<br />
Here are the books we discussed:<br />
<br />
Walk Among the Tombstones - Lawrence Block (book vs. movie)<br />
Fire in the Hole - Elmore Leonard<br />
Friends of Eddie Coyle - George Higgins<br />
Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese<br />
Death Comes to the Archbishop - Willa Cather<br />
Scandal in the Secret City - Diane Fanning<br />
Postcards from the Past - Marcia Willett<br />
Broadchurch - Erin Kelly<br />
Finding Nouf - Zoe Ferraris<br />
The Tin Drum - Gunter Grass<br />
Nora Webster - Colm Toibin<br />
This is the Life - Alex Shearer<br />
We Are Not Ourselves - Matthew Thomas<br />
Ruth's Journey - Donald McCaig<br />
China Dolls - Lisa See<br />
Shanghai Girls - Lisa See<br />
Behind the Smile - Bobbi Phelps Wolverton<br />
Raising Steam - Terry Pratchett<br />
Wheels Within Wheels - F. Paul Wilson<br />
A Better World - Marcus Sakey<br />
Girl in a Band - Kim Gordon<br />
Trailer Park Fae - Lillith Saintcrow<br />
Ancillary Sword - Ann Leckie<br />
Days of Rage - Bryan Burrough<br />
The Dead Key - D.M. Pulley<br />
<div>
David and Goliath - Malcom Gladwell</div>
<div>
The Four Agreements - Don Miguel Ruiz</div>
<div>
Central Park - Sara Cedar Miller</div>
<div>
Storied Life of A.J. Fiery - Gabrielle Zevin</div>
<div>
The Houseguest - Agnes Rossi</div>
<div>
Benediction - Kent Haruf</div>
<div>
Our Souls at Night - Kent Haruf</div>
<div>
Orange is the New Black - Piper Kerman</div>
<div>
The Boys in the Boat - Daniel James Brown</div>
<div>
Night in Shanghai - Nicole Mones</div>
<div>
The Chinese Chef - Nicole Mones</div>
<div>
West of Sunset - Stewart O'Nan</div>
<div>
Solitude Creek - Jeffery Deaver</div>
<div>
Your Next Breath - Iris Johansen</div>
<div>
Memory Man - David Baldacci</div>
<div>
Gathering Prey - John Sanford<br />
<br />
<br />
From Mary Lou in MD:<br />
<br />
<br /><br />Booknotes June 2015 <br /><br />Sarah Addison Allen, The Sugar Queen (2008). The late Marco Cirrini developed the ski resort business in the small town of Bald Slope, North Carolina. The life of his 27-year-old daughter Josey is totally subsumed in chaffering her mother to appointments and social functions. The widow Margaret Cirrini is bitter and self-centered and never misses an opportunity to tell Josey she is fat and ugly. Despite her mother’s rigid control of her life, Josey befriends one Chloe Finley, a young woman of no pretentions who makes delicious sandwiches in a tiny shop at the local courthouse. Josey has two secrets: she is in love with Adam the mailman, and a mysterious woman, Della Lee, has taken up residence in her closet. Chloe’s secret is that books simply appear in her life and demand to be read. If she throws them away, they rescue themselves and follow her. Then one presently stalking her is Finding Forgiveness, but she is not ready to forgive her boyfriend Jake. Della Lee has a secret too, but we don’t discover it until the very end of the novel. The bits of magic are woven unobtrusively into the plot as the three women work toward their destinies. <br /><br /><br />Sarah Addison Allen, The Girl Who Chased the Moon (2010). Sixteen year old Emily Benedict goes to live with her grandfather in the small town of Mullaby, North Carolina when her mother dies. Her mother has told her nothing about her grandfather or the town. Her grandfather turns out to be a gentle arthritic 8-foot giant and the gothic revival house where her mother grew up has succumbed to dust and disrepair. Emily moves into the room that was her mother’s, where the wallpaper changes according to mood and where the view from the balcony reveals strange lights moving about the garden in the moonlight. As if the house isn’t mysterious enough, Emily finds the townspeople strangely hostile to her because of something her mother did. Emily is befriended by her 30-something neighbor Julia, who runs a local barbeque café she inherited from her father and bakes fabulous cakes. Julia doesn’t want to be the one to tell Emily why the town is still outraged about her mother. Julia has her own mystery to solve. Eventually romance triumphs. <br /><br /><br />Sandra Brown, Rainwater (2009). This novel is not one of Brown’s Texas crime thrillers but it is a book that’s hard to put down. It is 1934 and Texas is suffering from the economic depression and the drought that produced the dustbowl. A shanty town of the homeless has developed on the edge of town. Ella Baron supports herself and her autistic son Solly by running a gentile boarding house. The town doctor brings her a new boarder to fill her recent vacancy – Mr. Rainwater. As the new tenant settles in, Ella feels her independence threatened by his gentlemanly courtesy and his interest in Solly. Eventually, when trouble comes to the rural community, they become allies for justice. Read this novel and you will see why Brown felt compelled to write it. <br /><br /><br />Yasmin Crowther, The Saffron Kitchen (2006). The story emerges from the remote mud hut village of Mazareh in northeastern Iran, near Afghanistan. Here Maryam Mazar grew up as a daughter of a wealthy official for the Shah. Through a series of traumatic events, she becomes an exile married to Edward and living in Richmond Hill, a suburb of London. They have a daughter, Sarah, who is 29 when the novel begins. Maryam’s sister Mara has died in Tehran and her 12-year-old son Saeed has come to live with his aunt. His arrival precipitates a series of events that lead Maryam to retreat to Mazareh and eventually to reveal to Sarah the sequence of events that propelled her to her life in England, with her heart still tied to Mazareh. The mysteries of Maryam’s past must be revealed and resolved to bring peace and wellbeing of sorts to the entire family. This is a moving novel with strong characters and lyrical, sensuous descriptions of settings, tastes, smells, and emotions. <br /><br /><br />Jane Sanderson, Eden Falls (2013). The chronicle of the inhabitants of Netherwood and Ravenscliffe continues. It is 1902 and Eve MacLeod’s brother Silas Whittam, who made his millions in the Jamaican banana trade, has outfitted ships to carry luxury passengers as well as bananas and bring them to his fancy English-style hotel in Jamaica. Eve’s first-born son Seth is the assistant manager of his uncle’s hotel. Silas is imperious with the Jamaican staff and as a result he is dissatisfied with their grudging performance. Much to the dismay of Eve’s husband Daniel, Seth asks Eve to come to Jamaica to put things to rights with the local staff. The marriage of Eve’s friend Anna and Labor MP Amos Sykes is also strained by their differing outlooks on social class, politics and economics. Meanwhile, life of the gentry at Netherwood Hall is disrupted by the flighty new American Countess Thea and Lady Henrietta’s notorious actions as a leader in the women’s suffrage movement. Not all of the conflicts are resolved by the end of the novel, so we can hope for a continuation of the life stories of these engrossing characters. </div>
Laura Nemethhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18049198850321076490noreply@blogger.com0