Anne's bookshelf: all en-US Sun, 11 May 2025 13:00:08 -0700 60 Anne's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg He Gets That From Me 56518754
After delivering twin babies and proudly handing them off to the Rigsdales, Maggie finally gets her life on a positive trajectory: she earns her degree, lands a great job, and builds a family of her own. She can’t fathom why, ten years after the fact, the fertility clinic is calling to ask for a follow-up DNA test.]]> 295 Jacqueline Friedland 1684630975 Anne 3 This is book with great promise and is about the perils of surrogacy. Maggie is a surrogate for two gay men and gives birth to twin boys after eggs fertilized by both men are implanted in her uterus. All is good until it isn't when a DNA test of the twins determines that one of the twins is not biologically related to either of the male parents. Further testing proves that Maggie is the mother of the other. So, then the story becomes the consequences of this revelation. It's a great story starter but where the book falls apart is that the back stories of Maggie and the dads don't hinge well and everything becomes quite muddy. Told in real time and flashback by Maggie and Dom (one of the dad's), it's page turning readable and would been wonderful had the last third of the story been streamlined and edited more strongly. An epilogue with a twist that comes too late also murkies up the finale.]]> 3.76 2021 He Gets That From Me
author: Jacqueline Friedland
name: Anne
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2025/05/11
date added: 2025/05/11
shelves:
review:
3.5 Stars
This is book with great promise and is about the perils of surrogacy. Maggie is a surrogate for two gay men and gives birth to twin boys after eggs fertilized by both men are implanted in her uterus. All is good until it isn't when a DNA test of the twins determines that one of the twins is not biologically related to either of the male parents. Further testing proves that Maggie is the mother of the other. So, then the story becomes the consequences of this revelation. It's a great story starter but where the book falls apart is that the back stories of Maggie and the dads don't hinge well and everything becomes quite muddy. Told in real time and flashback by Maggie and Dom (one of the dad's), it's page turning readable and would been wonderful had the last third of the story been streamlined and edited more strongly. An epilogue with a twist that comes too late also murkies up the finale.
]]> Atonement 6867
On a hot summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses the flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant. But Briony's incomplete grasp of adult motives—together with her precocious literary gifts—brings about a crime that will change all their lives.

As it follows that crime's repercussions through the chaos and carnage of World War II and into the close of the twentieth century, Atonement engages the reader on every conceivable level, with an ease and authority that mark it as a genuine masterpiece.]]> 351 Ian McEwan 038572179X Anne 0 3.94 2001 Atonement
author: Ian McEwan
name: Anne
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2001
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay]]> 3985 639 Michael Chabon 0312282990 Anne 0 4.18 2000 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
author: Michael Chabon
name: Anne
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2000
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves:
review:

]]> V for Vendetta 5805 "Remember, remember the fifth of November..."

A frightening and powerful tale of the loss of freedom and identity in a chillingly believable totalitarian world, V for Vendetta stands as one of the highest achievements of the comics medium and a defining work for creators Alan Moore and David Lloyd.

Set in an imagined future England that has given itself over to fascism, this groundbreaking story captures both the suffocating nature of life in an authoritarian police state and the redemptive power of the human spirit which rebels against it. Crafted with sterling clarity and intelligence, V for Vendetta brings an unequaled depth of characterization and verisimilitude to its unflinching account of oppression and resistance.]]> 296 Alan Moore 1401207928 Anne 0 4.26 1990 V for Vendetta
author: Alan Moore
name: Anne
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1990
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves:
review:

]]> The Name of the Rose 119073 552 Umberto Eco 0156001314 Anne 0 4.13 1980 The Name of the Rose
author: Umberto Eco
name: Anne
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1980
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings]]> 5081331
Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings will touch hearts and change minds for as long as people read.]]> 289 Maya Angelou 0345514408 Anne 0 4.25 1969 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
author: Maya Angelou
name: Anne
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1969
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Charlie Bucket, #1)]]> 232187 155 Roald Dahl 0141301155 Anne 0 4.11 1964 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Charlie Bucket, #1)
author: Roald Dahl
name: Anne
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1964
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves:
review:

]]> The Bell Jar 56616095 (back cover)]]> 288 Sylvia Plath 0060837020 Anne 0 4.11 1963 The Bell Jar
author: Sylvia Plath
name: Anne
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1963
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Wrinkle in Time (Time Quintet, #1)]]> 10808486 NEWBERY MEDAL WINNER � TIME MAGAZINE’S 100 BEST FANTASY BOOKS OF ALL TIME � NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM DISNEY
Read the ground-breaking science fiction and fantasy classic that has delighted children for over 60 years!
"A Wrinkle in Time is one of my favorite books of all time. I've read it so often, I know it by heart." —Meg Cabot

Late one night, three otherworldly creatures appear and sweep Meg Murry, her brother Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin O'Keefe away on a mission to save Mr. Murry, who has gone missing while doing top-secret work for the government. They travel via tesseract--a wrinkle that transports one across space and time--to the planet Camazotz, where Mr. Murry is being held captive. There they discover a dark force that threatens not only Mr. Murry but the safety of the whole universe.

A Wrinkle in Time is the first book in Madeleine L’Engle’s Time Quintet.]]> 228 Madeleine L'Engle Anne 0 4.02 1962 A Wrinkle in Time (Time Quintet, #1)
author: Madeleine L'Engle
name: Anne
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1962
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves:
review:

]]> The Haunting of Hill House 6393407 246 Shirley Jackson 0141191449 Anne 0 3.88 1959 The Haunting of Hill House
author: Shirley Jackson
name: Anne
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1959
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves:
review:

]]> The Catcher in the Rye 5107 It's Christmas time and Holden Caulfield has just been expelled from yet another school...

Fleeing the crooks at Pencey Prep, he pinballs around New York City seeking solace in fleeting encounters—shooting the bull with strangers in dive hotels, wandering alone round Central Park, getting beaten up by pimps and cut down by erstwhile girlfriends. The city is beautiful and terrible, in all its neon loneliness and seedy glamour, its mingled sense of possibility and emptiness. Holden passes through it like a ghost, thinking always of his kid sister Phoebe, the only person who really understands him, and his determination to escape the phonies and find a life of true meaning.

The Catcher in the Rye is an all-time classic in coming-of-age literature- an elegy to teenage alienation, capturing the deeply human need for connection and the bewildering sense of loss as we leave childhood behind.

J.D. Salinger's (1919�2010) classic novel of teenage angst and rebellion was first published in 1951. The novel was included on Time's 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923. It was named by Modern Library and its readers as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. It has been frequently challenged in the court for its liberal use of profanity and portrayal of sexuality and in the 1950's and 60's it was the novel that every teenage boy wants to read.]]> 277 J.D. Salinger 0316769177 Anne 0 3.81 1951 The Catcher in the Rye
author: J.D. Salinger
name: Anne
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1951
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves:
review:

]]> I Capture the Castle 33602148 I Capture the Castle tells the story of seventeen-year-old Cassandra Mortmain and her family, who live in not-so-genteel poverty in a ramshackle old English castle. Here she strives, over six turbulent months, to hone her writing skills. She fills three notebooks with sharply funny yet poignant entries. Her journals candidly chronicle the great changes that take place within the castle's walls and her own first descent into love. By the time she pens her final entry, she has "captured the castle"-- and the heart of the reader-- in one of literature's most enchanting entertainments.]]> 390 Dodie Smith 1250146690 Anne 0 4.02 1948 I Capture the Castle
author: Dodie Smith
name: Anne
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1948
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves:
review:

]]> The Diary of a Young Girl 9266856 The Diary of a Young Girl is among the most enduring documents of the twentieth century. Since its publication in 1947, it has been a beloved and deeply admired monument to the indestructible nature of the human spirit, read by millions of people and translated into more than fifty-five languages. Doubleday, which published the first English translation of the diary in 1952, now offers a new translation that captures Anne's youthful spirit and restores the original material omitted by Anne's father, Otto -- approximately thirty percent of the diary. The elder Frank excised details about Anne's emerging sexuality, and about the often-stormy relations between Anne and her mother. Anne Frank and her family, fleeing the horrors of Nazi occupation forces, hid in the back of an Amsterdam office building for two years. This is Anne's record of that time. She was thirteen when the family went into the "Secret Annex," and in these pages, she grows to be a young woman and proves to be an insightful observer of human nature as well. A timeless story discovered by each new generation, The Diary of a Young Girl stands without peer. For young readers and adults, it continues to bring to life this young woman, who for a time survived the worst horrors the modern world had seen -- and who remained triumphantly and heartbreakingly human throughout her ordeal.]]> 351 Anne Frank Anne 0 4.36 1947 The Diary of a Young Girl
author: Anne Frank
name: Anne
average rating: 4.36
book published: 1947
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves:
review:

]]> The Glass Menagerie 6336561 92 Tennessee Williams 0141190264 Anne 0 3.85 1945 The Glass Menagerie
author: Tennessee Williams
name: Anne
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1945
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves:
review:

]]> The Little Prince 157993
Few stories are as widely read and as universally cherished by children and adults alike as The Little Prince, presented here in a stunning new translation with carefully restored artwork. The definitive edition of a worldwide classic, it will capture the hearts of readers of all ages.]]> 96 Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 0152023984 Anne 0 4.32 1943 The Little Prince
author: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
name: Anne
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1943
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves:
review:

]]> The Grapes of Wrath 4395 The Grapes of Wrath is a landmark of American literature. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. Although it follows the movement of thousands of men and women and the transformation of an entire nation, The Grapes of Wrath is also the story of one Oklahoma family, the Joads, who are driven off their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity.

First published in 1939, The Grapes of Wrath summed up its era in the way that Uncle Tom's Cabin summed up the years of slavery before the Civil War. Sensitive to fascist and communist criticism, Steinbeck insisted that "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" be printed in its entirety in the first edition of the book—which takes its title from the first verse: "He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored." At once a naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck’s fictional chronicle of the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s is perhaps the most American of American Classics.]]> 455 John Steinbeck Anne 0 3.88 1939 The Grapes of Wrath
author: John Steinbeck
name: Anne
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1939
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves:
review:

]]> Rebecca 594139 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780380730407.

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. . ."

With these words, the reader is ushered into an isolated gray stone mansion on the windswept Cornish coast, as the second Mrs. Maxim de Winter recalls the chilling the chilling events that transpired as she began her new life as the young bride of a husband she barely knew. For in every corner of every room were phantoms of a time dead but not forgotten—a past devotedly preserved by the sinister housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers: a suite immaculate and untouched, clothing laid out and ready to be worn, but not by any of the great house's current occupants. With an eerie presentiment of evil tightening her heart, the second Mrs. de Winter walked in the shadow of her mysterious predecessor, determined to uncover the darkest secrets and shattering truths about Maxim's first wife—the late and hauntingly beautiful Rebecca.

This special edition of Rebecca includes excerpts from Daphne du Maurier's The Rebecca Notebook and Other Memories, an essay on the real Manderley, du Maurier's original epilogue to the book, and more.]]> 410 Daphne du Maurier Anne 0 4.25 1938 Rebecca
author: Daphne du Maurier
name: Anne
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1938
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Gaudy Night (Lord Peter Wimsey, #12)]]> 44494254 An alternative cover edition for this ASIN can be found here.

The great Dorothy L. Sayers is considered by many to be the premier detective novelist of the Golden Age, and her dashing sleuth, Lord Peter Wimsey, one of mystery fiction’s most enduring and endearing protagonists. Acclaimed author Ruth Rendell has expressed her admiration for Sayers’s work, praising her “great fertility of invention, ingenuity, and wonderful eye for detail.� The third Dorothy L. Sayers classic to feature mystery writer Harriet Vane, Gaudy Night is now back in print with an introduction by Elizabeth George, herself a crime fiction master. Gaudy Night takes Harriet and her paramour, Lord Peter, to Oxford University, Harriet’s alma mater, for a reunion, only to find themselves the targets of a nightmare of harassment and mysterious, murderous threats.]]> 591 Dorothy L. Sayers Anne 0 4.29 1935 Gaudy Night (Lord Peter Wimsey, #12)
author: Dorothy L. Sayers
name: Anne
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1935
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves:
review:

]]> Tender Is the Night 46164 Tender Is the Night is the tragic romance of the young actress Rosemary Hoyt and the stylish American couple Dick and Nicole Diver. A brilliant young psychiatrist at the time of his marriage, Dick is both husband and doctor to Nicole, whose wealth goads him into a lifestyle not his own, and whose growing strength highlights Dick's harrowing demise. A profound study of the romantic concept of character, Tender Is the Night is lyrical, expansive, and hauntingly evocative.]]> 430 F. Scott Fitzgerald Anne 0 3.81 1934 Tender Is the Night
author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
name: Anne
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1934
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (Hercule Poirot, #4)]]> 6251566
However, the evening post brought Roger one last fatal scrap of information, but before he could finish reading the letter, he was stabbed to death. Luckily one of Roger’s friends and the newest resident to retire to this normally quiet village takes over—none other than Monsieur Hercule Poirot . . .]]> 214 Agatha Christie Anne 0 4.27 1926 The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (Hercule Poirot, #4)
author: Agatha Christie
name: Anne
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1926
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village]]> 57405598 Thinking of a foray to a quaint English village? You'll think twice after reading this tongue-in-cheek illustrated guide to the countless murderous possibilities lurking behind these villages' bucolic façades—from bestselling author Maureen Johnson and illustrator Jay Cooper.

A weekend roaming narrow old lanes, touring the faded glories of a country manor, and quaffing pints in the pub. How charming. That is, unless you have the misfortune of finding yourself in an English Murder Village, where danger lurks around each picturesque cobblestone corner and every sip of tea may be your last. If you insist on your travels, do yourself a favor and bring a copy of this little book. It may just keep you alive.

Brought to life with dozens of Gorey-esque drawings by illustrator Jay Cooper and peppered with allusions to classic crime series and unmistakably British murder lore, Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village gives you the tools you need to avoid the same fate, should you find yourself in a suspiciously cozy English village (or simply dream of going). Good luck, and whatever you do, avoid the vicar.]]> 128 Maureen Johnson 1984859625 Anne 4 W/C - can’t get more British than that!]]> 4.02 2021 Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village
author: Maureen Johnson
name: Anne
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/27
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves:
review:
A graphic guide for anyone who has watched all 24 + seasons of Midsommer Murders. No red herring is left unexplored. Charming, whimsical and a great gift for a mystery aficionado who might be in need of some dark humor. Do not go digital here; the best place to enjoy this little gem might be the
W/C - can’t get more British than that!
]]> <![CDATA[Be Ready When the Luck Happens]]> 209192698 In her long-awaited memoir, Ina Garten—aka the Barefoot Contessa, author of thirteen bestselling cookbooks, beloved Food Network personality, Instagram sensation, and cultural icon—shares her personal story with readers hungry for a seat at her table.Ěý

Here, for the first time, Ina Garten presents an intimate, entertaining, and inspiring account of her remarkable journey. Ina’s gift is to make everything look easy, yet all her accomplishments have been the result of hard work, audacious choices, and exquisite attention to detail. In her unmistakable voice (no one tells a story like Ina), she brings her past and her process to life in a high-spirited and no-holds-barred memoir that chronicles decades of personal challenges, adventures (and misadventures) and unexpected career twists, all delivered with her signature combination of playfulness and purpose.

From a difficult childhood to meeting the love of her life, Jeffrey, and marrying him while still in college, from a boring bureaucratic job in Washington, D.C., to answering an ad for a specialty food store in the Hamptons, from the owner of one Barefoot Contessa shop to author of bestselling cookbooks and celebrated television host, Ina has blazed her own trail and, in the meantime, taught millions of people how to cook and entertain. Now, she invites them to come closer to experience her story in vivid detail and to share the important life lessons she learned along the way: do what you love because if you love it you’ll be really good at it, swing for the fences, and always Be Ready When the Luck Happens.]]> 320 Ina Garten 0593799895 Anne 3 4.24 2024 Be Ready When the Luck Happens
author: Ina Garten
name: Anne
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/25
date added: 2025/04/25
shelves:
review:
It’s the smugness of it all. As an age contemporary of Ina’s, I’ve lived through the same times and although I’m truly impressed by all her accomplishments she’s tone deaf about the kind of financial privilege she’s had all her life…the privilege to buy real estate almost at will, the privilege of hopping on a plane to Paris at a moment’s notice, the privilege of being able to source the finest quality ingredients for her cooking experiences. Yes, she had a difficult childhood, and yes, she’s totally focussed and works very hard,but there’s something elusive about this memoir. And there’s too much Jeffrey - can he possibly be the saint Ina portrays him to be? Where are Ina’s warts? Where are Jeffrey’s warts? BUT, she has produced some beautiful recipes, an for that I’m a fan.
]]> <![CDATA[Dead End in Norvelt (Norvelt, #1)]]> 9858488 Dead End in Norvelt is a novel about two months for aĚýkid named Jack Gantos, whose plans for vacationĚýexcitement are shot downĚýwhen he is "grounded for life"Ěýby his feuding parents, and whose nose spews blood at every little shock he gets.

But plenty of excitement (and shocks) are coming Jack's way once his mom loans him out to help a feisty oldĚýneighbor with a most unusual chore—typewriting obituaries filled with stories about the people who founded his Utopian town. As one obituary leads to another, Jack is launched on a strange adventure involvingĚýmolten wax, Eleanor Roosevelt, twisted promises, a homemade airplane, Girl Scout cookies, a man on a trike, a dancing plague, voices from the past, Hells Angels . . . and possibly murder.ĚýĚý
Ěý]]> 341 Jack Gantos 0374379939 Anne 3 ya 3.72 2011 Dead End in Norvelt (Norvelt, #1)
author: Jack Gantos
name: Anne
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2011
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/20
date added: 2025/04/20
shelves: ya
review:
Usually a big Jack Gantos fan, but this one does not make the cut. As the Newbery Winner for 2012, it only confirms my suspicions that this award from the American Library Association is only as good as the committee picking it. Basically "Dead End in Norvelt" tries too hard and is actually not very funny which is something you expect from Jack Gantos. It does have its quirky moments that are pretty amusing but overall there's an inconsistent story line, a set of feuding parents who don't make a lot of sense, and way too much about Jack's nose and its inclination to bleed at almost anything. There's some incidental history thrown in that's quite interesting because it give the back story to a famous Eleanor Roosevelt supported Depression model community in Pennsylvania. Throw in the Hell's Angels, a hustling Funeral Director, the Girl Scouts and Jack's arthritic elderly girl friend and you've got a lot going on - yet the seams do not knit together well. Stick to Gantos' earlier books.
]]> <![CDATA[I Feel Bad About My Neck and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman]]> 8765
The woman who brought us "When Harry Met Sally"..., "Sleepless in Seattle", "You've Got Mail", and "Bewitched," and the author of best sellers "Heartburn," "Scribble Scribble," and "Crazy Salad," discusses everything -from how much she hates her purse to how much time she spends attempting to stop the clock: the hair dye, the treadmill, the lotions and creams that promise to slow the aging process but never do. Oh, and she can't stand the way her neck looks. But her dermatologist tells her there's no quick fix for that.

Ephron chronicles her life as an obsessed cook, passionate city dweller, and hapless parent. She recounts her anything-but-glamorous days as a White House intern during the JFK years ("I am probably the only young woman who ever worked in the Kennedy White House that the President did not make a pass at") and shares how she fell in and out of love with Bill Clinton - from a distance, of course. But mostly she speaks frankly and uproariously about life as a woman of a certain age.

Utterly courageous, wickedly funny, and unexpectedly moving in its truth telling, "I Feel Bad About My Neck" is a book of wisdom, advice, and laugh-out-loud moments, a scrumptious, irresistible treat.]]> 139 Nora Ephron 0307264556 Anne 4 3.72 2006 I Feel Bad About My Neck and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman
author: Nora Ephron
name: Anne
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2006
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/03
date added: 2025/04/03
shelves:
review:
Published in 2006, this collection of humorous essays on being female and the aging process stands up very well. Just the same from the viewpoint of 2025, it is about a “niche� of society that today many women would be unable to relate to. Ephron is an urbanite (NYC) of some relative wealth and opportunity. At 60+ she is still very concerned with the superficial - her neck, her haircut and colorist etc - and spends an inordinate amount of energy on her disappointments about physically aging. Ephron died in 2012 and would be enormously confused about changes that have been inflicted on her world by advances in technology and movements like “Me Too�. But she is a witty and very observant writer who has an uncanny take on the minutiae that drives life in her world, and we are grateful for her talent as the screenwriter of some of our favorite classic movies.
]]> <![CDATA[The Drowned (Quirke, #10 and St. John Strafford, #5)]]> 203647816 From the renowned Booker Prize winner and nationally bestselling author of Snow comes a richly atmospheric new mystery about a woman’s sudden disappearance in a small coastal town in Ireland, where nothing is as it seems.

"John Banville is one of my favorite writers alive, and I pick up his books whenever I need a reminder how to write a good sentence.”—R.F. Kuang

“He had seen drowned people. A sight not to be forgotten.�

1950s, rural Ireland. A loner comes across a mysteriously empty car in a field. Knowing he shouldn’t approach but unable to hold back, he soon finds himself embroiled in a troubling missing person case, as a husband claims his wife may have thrown herself into the sea.

Called in from Dublin to investigate is Detective Inspector Strafford, who soon turns to his old ally—the flawed but brilliant pathologist Quirke—a man he is linked to in increasingly complicated ways. But as the case unfolds, events from the past resurface that may have life-altering ramifications for all involved.

At once a searing mystery and a profound meditation on the hidden worlds we all inhabit,ĚýThe DrownedĚýis the next great Strafford and QuirkeĚýnovel from a beloved writer at the top of his game.]]> 336 John Banville 1335000593 Anne 4 3.51 2024 The Drowned (Quirke, #10 and St. John Strafford, #5)
author: John Banville
name: Anne
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/25
date added: 2025/03/25
shelves:
review:
Ah, no one does atmosphere quite like John Banville, and “The Drowned� is no exception as the author returns to his beloved 1950’s Dublin and environs. His prose is often exquisite often bordering on the poetic. In his Quirke books Banville is often not long on plot, and “The Drowned� is both an example and an exception in that the plot is a slow burn and is both tense and emotionally complicated. In this outing, the auburn tressed wife of a Trinity History Professor driving her vintage Mercedes in an isolated spot, has a spat with her husband and leaps from the car and disappears. The police are called in and everything is not as it seems including the tortuous relationship (the lead character) Detective Inspector Strafford shares with the pathologist (Quirke) which is also confounded by Strafford’s affair with Quirke’s daughter, Phoebe. All the suspects are elegantly rendered, including a tortured convicted paedophile -and the story moves to its inevitable revelation. If Banville had not chosen to deliver the ending so awkwardly and obviously this would have been a full-on 5 Star read. Yet, it’s still a treat to be in the streets, and greens, and pubs of Banville’s Dublin.
]]> All the Broken Places 61111301
Then, a new family moves into the apartment below her. In spite of herself, Gretel can't help but begin a friendship with the little boy, Henry, though his presence brings back memories she would rather forget. One night, she witnesses a disturbing, violent argument between Henry's beautiful mother and his arrogant father, one that threatens Gretel's hard-won, self-contained existence.

All The Broken Places moves back and forth in time between Gretel's girlhood in Germany to present-day London as a woman whose life has been haunted by the past. Now, Gretel faces a similar crossroads to one she encountered long ago. Back then, she denied her own complicity, but now, faced with a chance to interrogate her guilt, grief and remorse, she can choose to save a young boy. If she does, she will be forced to reveal the secrets she has spent a lifetime protecting. This time, she can make a different choice than before -- whatever the cost to herself....

From the New York Times bestselling author John Boyne, a devastating, beautiful story about a woman who must confront the sins of her own terrible past, and a present in which it is never too late for bravery. ]]> 400 John Boyne 0593653068 Anne 4 I think I had forgotten what an amazing storyteller John Boyne is! If you examine it closely, the plot of “All the Broken Places� approaches the absurd. Despite this Boyne has created a magnificent page turner that propels the reader through Germany, France, Australia and England over 8O years to 2022. This is Gretel Fernsby’s story. Gretel, the daughter of the Commandant of Auschwitz, and older sister of Bruno, the boy in the striped pajamas. What a brilliant character Gretel is as she deals with her own complicity in the reality of the Nazi extermination, including her grief and guilt which ultimately results in an incredible act of restitution. Boyne has created an eminently readable compelling novel.]]> 4.43 2022 All the Broken Places
author: John Boyne
name: Anne
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/16
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves:
review:
4.5 Stars
I think I had forgotten what an amazing storyteller John Boyne is! If you examine it closely, the plot of “All the Broken Places� approaches the absurd. Despite this Boyne has created a magnificent page turner that propels the reader through Germany, France, Australia and England over 8O years to 2022. This is Gretel Fernsby’s story. Gretel, the daughter of the Commandant of Auschwitz, and older sister of Bruno, the boy in the striped pajamas. What a brilliant character Gretel is as she deals with her own complicity in the reality of the Nazi extermination, including her grief and guilt which ultimately results in an incredible act of restitution. Boyne has created an eminently readable compelling novel.
]]> <![CDATA[From Here to the Great Unknown]]> 204905217
A month later, Lisa Marie was dead, and the world would never know her story in her own words, never know the passionate, joyful, caring, and complicated woman that Riley loved and grieved.

Riley got the tapes that her mother had recorded for the book, laid in her bed, and listened as Lisa Marie told story after story about smashing golf carts together in the yards of Graceland, about the unconditional love she felt from her father, about being upstairs, just the two of them. About getting dragged screaming out of the bathroom as she ran towards his body on the floor. About living in Los Angeles with her mother, getting sent to school after school, always kicked out, always in trouble. About her singular, lifelong relationship with Danny Keough, about being married to Michael Jackson, what they shared in common. About motherhood. About deep addiction. About ever-present grief. Riley knew she had to fulfill her mother’s wish to reveal these memories, incandescent and painful, to the world.

To make her mother known.

This extraordinary book is written in both Lisa Marie’s and Riley’s voices, a mother and daughter communicating—from this world to the one beyond—as they try to heal each other. Profoundly moving and deeply revealing, From Here to the Great Unknown is a book like no other—the last words of the only child of an American icon.]]> 304 Lisa Marie Presley 0593733878 Anne 4 From a veteran memoir reader, From Here to the Great Unknown is definitely in blockbuster range. It is the life of Elvis Presley’s only child told in her own word fragments and recorded memories pieced together with the observations of her oldest daughter, Riley Keough who has a magic and direct touch of her own with words. She also appears to be the sanest individual in the story and can even stand back and recognize the absurdity of her own childhood. Parts of the book are devastatingly heartbreaking to read, as both Lisa and Riley paint an almost too realistic picture of the true costs of celebrity and too much wealth - including addiction (Elvis, Lisa, Ben, Michael Jackson). There are many unanswered questions - especially with regard to Lisa and her mother, Priscilla. But still it’s a compelling and yes, authentic read.]]> 4.26 2024 From Here to the Great Unknown
author: Lisa Marie Presley
name: Anne
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/13
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves:
review:
4.5 Stars
From a veteran memoir reader, From Here to the Great Unknown is definitely in blockbuster range. It is the life of Elvis Presley’s only child told in her own word fragments and recorded memories pieced together with the observations of her oldest daughter, Riley Keough who has a magic and direct touch of her own with words. She also appears to be the sanest individual in the story and can even stand back and recognize the absurdity of her own childhood. Parts of the book are devastatingly heartbreaking to read, as both Lisa and Riley paint an almost too realistic picture of the true costs of celebrity and too much wealth - including addiction (Elvis, Lisa, Ben, Michael Jackson). There are many unanswered questions - especially with regard to Lisa and her mother, Priscilla. But still it’s a compelling and yes, authentic read.
]]> Slow Dance 198530925
They were just friends. Best friends. Allies. They spent entire summers sitting on Shiloh’s porch steps, dreaming about the future. They were both going to get out of north Omaha—Shiloh would go to college and become an actress, and Cary would join the Navy. They promised each other that their friendship would never change.

Well, Shiloh did go to college, and Cary did join the Navy. And yet, somehow, everything changed.

Now Shiloh’s thirty-three, and it’s been fourteen years since she talked to Cary. She’s been married and divorced. She has two kids. And she’s back living in the same house she grew up in. Her life is nothing like she planned.

When she’s invited to an old friend’s wedding, all Shiloh can think about is whether Cary will be there—and whether she hopes he will be. Would Cary even want to talk to her? After everything?

The answer is yes. And yes. And yes.

Slow Dance is the story of two kids who fell in love before they knew enough about love to recognize it. Two friends who lost everything. Two adults who just feel lost.

It’s the story of Shiloh and Cary, who everyone thought would end up together, trying to find their way back to the start.]]> 400 Rainbow Rowell 0063380196 Anne 3 3.63 2024 Slow Dance
author: Rainbow Rowell
name: Anne
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/11
date added: 2025/03/11
shelves:
review:
So disappointed in this adult outing by Rainbow Rowell that I almost bailed on this �84 years long� (another reviewer) novel about second chance love. This is the story of two Omaha teenagers growing up on the wrong side of Omaha and joined at the hip in high school. Shiloh and Carey almost commit to each other at 19, but fate intervenes when Carey becomes a full time naval officer and Shiloh marries someone else and becomes a parent to Junie and Gus. They meet fourteen years later at a mutual friend’s wedding. The trouble is that neither Shiloh or Carey are particularly likeable and Shiloh freely admits to all sorts of personality quirks including her dislike of other people (and parties). Carey is very earnest and not the best communicator. Actually that goes for Shiloh too whose style of communication is mostly whiny. I guess there’s a happy ending but part of me just thinks they deserve each other. Rowell has some strengths - she can make the mundane quite interesting, and she’s a pro a writing dialogue (and lots of it). Best thing in the book - Junie and Gus.
]]> <![CDATA[Very Old Bones (Albany Cycle, #5)]]> 46584
Orson Purcell, bastard son of Peter, and half-mad himself, encounters his first true solace through this obsessive and close-knit family he has never quite entered; most especially through his Aunt Molly, whose intense love affair holds secrets that only another love can resurrect. It is through Orson's modern eye that we see the tragedies, obsessions, and clandestine joys of this singular family.

This is climatic work in William Kennedy's Albany Cycle, riding on the melody of its language and the power of its story, which is full of surprise, comedy, terror, and earthly delight.]]> 304 William Kennedy 0140138986 Anne 3 3.79 1992 Very Old Bones (Albany Cycle, #5)
author: William Kennedy
name: Anne
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1992
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/01
date added: 2025/03/01
shelves:
review:
The culmination (1958)of the story of an Irish-American family - the Phelans of Albany, New York. The book is narrated by Orson Purcell, the more or less acknowledged son of Peter Phelan (a successful artist) who at the beginning of the book is planning on presenting his last will and testament to what remains of his family which originally had seven siblings who form the backbone of this story. The book can be described as a tragi-comedy with regular bursts of black humor as the fates of the family members are revealed via Orson’s remembrances. Orson has suffered a couple of mental health breakdowns which color his perspective, but this does not render him a sympathetic figure. But the bigger problem is that none of the Phelans are particularly likeable or attractive, and William Kennedy really doesn’t know when to stop, and when to put down the thesaurus. Yet, he’s an enormously talented writer.
]]> <![CDATA[My Name Is Lucy Barton (Amgash, #1)]]> 25893709 193 Elizabeth Strout 1400067693 Anne 4 3.56 2016 My Name Is Lucy Barton (Amgash, #1)
author: Elizabeth Strout
name: Anne
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/30
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves:
review:
Only wish I had started here #1 (in the Amgash) books. This is a tender and emotional yet wholly unsympathetic examination of mother-daughter estrangement as told by a daughter who has but one question - does my mother love me? Lucy is seriously ill in a NYC hospital when her husband William arranges for her mother to visit from Illinois. Her mother sits beside Lucy’s bed for five days following an estrangement of several years. The two passively dance around each other as they talk about Lucy’s childhood in Amgash and through those seemingly unimportant conversations we learn much about who Lucy is and why. Much of Lucy’s past is heartbreakingly sad but she punches above her weight almost unconsciously. Not very much actually happens in this book but Elizabeth Strout in her fine direct prose leaves the reader much to ponder on and reflect about. I am looking forward to the later installments.
]]> <![CDATA[Jennie's Boy: A Newfoundland Childhood]]> 60196086 310 Wayne Johnston 1039001661 Anne 0 to-read 3.73 2022 Jennie's Boy: A Newfoundland Childhood
author: Wayne Johnston
name: Anne
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Fatal Inheritance: How a Family Misfortune Revealed a Deadly Medical Mystery]]> 198902282 Named a best book of the year by Amazon and Kirkus

Weaving his own moving family story with a sweeping history of cancer research, Lawrence Ingrassia delivers an intimate, gripping tale that sits at the intersection of memoir and medical thriller

Ingrassia lost his mother, two sisters, brother, and nephew to cancer—different cancers developing at different points throughout their lives. And while highly unusual, his family is not the only one to wonder whether their heartbreak is the result of unbelievable bad luck, or if there might be another explanation.

Through meticulous research and riveting storytelling, Ingrassia takes us from the 1960s—when Dr. Frederick Pei Li and Dr. Joseph Fraumeni Jr. first met, not yet knowing that they would help make a groundbreaking discovery that would affect cancer patients for decades to come—to present day, as Ingrassia and countless others continue to unpack and build upon Li and Fraumeni’s initial discoveries, and to understand what this means for their families.

In the face of seemingly unbearable loss, Ingrassia holds onto hope. He urges us to “fight like Charlie,� his nephew who battled cancer his entire life starting with a rare tumor in his cheek at the age of two—and to look toward the future, as gene sequencing, screening protocols, CRISPR gene editing, and other developing technologies may continue to extend lifespans and perhaps, one day, even offer cures.]]> 320 Lawrence Ingrassia 1250837227 Anne 4 For the author, LFS is beyond personal as he is now the longest living member of his nuclear family and the winner of their LFS family sweepstakes. He lost all three of his siblings to various forms of cancer (two at young ages), while the story of the death of his 39 year old nephew Charlie is deeply heartbreaking.]]> 4.26 2024 A Fatal Inheritance: How a Family Misfortune Revealed a Deadly Medical Mystery
author: Lawrence Ingrassia
name: Anne
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/26
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves:
review:
“Fatal Inheritance� is totally engrossing, meticulously written and researched and in the end very illuminating about the history of the search to find genetic markers as a cause for cancer. The search and confirmation of what came to be known as Li-Fraumeni Syndrome (which eventually identified the mutant tumor suppressor P-53 gene) took decades of hard dedication. While the syndrome remains rare, it is very important in the annals of cancer as it lead the way to breakthroughs in what the medical/scientific community viewed as the causes of cancer. It was followed by the better known BRCA breast cancer inheritance gene. And there is still a long way to go in this quest.
For the author, LFS is beyond personal as he is now the longest living member of his nuclear family and the winner of their LFS family sweepstakes. He lost all three of his siblings to various forms of cancer (two at young ages), while the story of the death of his 39 year old nephew Charlie is deeply heartbreaking.
]]> Small Things Like These 58662236
Already an international bestseller, Small Things Like These is a deeply affecting story of hope, quiet heroism, and empathy from one of our most critically lauded and iconic writers.]]> 128 Claire Keegan 0802158749 Anne 5 4.13 2021 Small Things Like These
author: Claire Keegan
name: Anne
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/13
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves:
review:
A small jewel of a book, and a rare 5 star rating from me. It is the story of Bill Furlong, a coal merchant in a depressed area of Ireland in 1985. Bill is doing fine economically due to the essential nature of his business. His wife and five daughters want for little although there are few luxuries. They live next to a local convent and laundry. Still Bill experiences a disquieting moment when he discovers a young girl locked in a shed at the convent while delivering coal. He cannot rest with the knowledge of this child. Keegan’s prose is spare but exquisite - as much is found in the gaps as in the actual narrative. An almost perfect Christmas story of empathy and hope. Bonus: Cillian Murphy plays Bill in the movie!
]]> <![CDATA[Heartstopper: Volume Five (Heartstopper, #5)]]> 125045190 Boy meets boy. Boys become friends. Boys fall in love. The bestselling LGBTQ+ graphic novel about life, love, and everything that happens in this is the fifth volume of the much-loved HEARTSTOPPER series, featuring gorgeous two-color artwork.

Nick and Charlie are very much in love. They’ve finally said those three little words, and Charlie has almost persuaded his mum to let him sleep over at Nick’s house... but with Nick going off to university next year, is everything about to change?

By Alice Oseman, winner of the YA Book Prize, Heartstopper encompasses all the small moments of Nick and Charlie’s lives that together make up something larger, which speaks to all of us.]]> 318 Alice Oseman 1338807501 Anne 0 to-read 4.45 2023 Heartstopper: Volume Five (Heartstopper, #5)
author: Alice Oseman
name: Anne
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The God of the Woods 199698485 When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide

Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.

As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.]]> 490 Liz Moore Anne 4 The God of the Woods is a pretty exceptional mystery with a convoluted plot and a gaggle of interesting characters and, of course, the obligatory red herrings. Two bound together mysteries -disappearances - occurring in 1961 and 1975 - the first, eight year old Bear Van Der Wal and 14 years later his teenage (13?) sister, Barbara. Both disappear in the secluded wilderness of upper New York State from the family “camp� which is no camp but the family’s conception of a cabin in the woods. Tied to this magnificent log cabin, is the “Wilderness Training Camp� conceived by Barbara and Bear’s grandfather, Peter Van der Wal II. This sets the geographical scene. The offspring of the scions of NYC society are the select and selected campers.
While solving the mystery of what actually happened to these two unfortunate children, the reader takes a dive into the labyrinth of several generations of the family along with their longstanding friends and the â€localsâ€� who are hopelessly intertwined with the Van Der Wal interests. This provides an opportunity to explore the great class divide which wholly frames the plot which meanders non-sequentially through both people and time.
But the meandering ramps up into a real tension filled page turner that keeps everyone on the edge of their seats all the way to a pretty satisfactory finale.]]> 4.15 2024 The God of the Woods
author: Liz Moore
name: Anne
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/04
date added: 2025/01/04
shelves:
review:
4.5 Stars
The God of the Woods is a pretty exceptional mystery with a convoluted plot and a gaggle of interesting characters and, of course, the obligatory red herrings. Two bound together mysteries -disappearances - occurring in 1961 and 1975 - the first, eight year old Bear Van Der Wal and 14 years later his teenage (13?) sister, Barbara. Both disappear in the secluded wilderness of upper New York State from the family “camp� which is no camp but the family’s conception of a cabin in the woods. Tied to this magnificent log cabin, is the “Wilderness Training Camp� conceived by Barbara and Bear’s grandfather, Peter Van der Wal II. This sets the geographical scene. The offspring of the scions of NYC society are the select and selected campers.
While solving the mystery of what actually happened to these two unfortunate children, the reader takes a dive into the labyrinth of several generations of the family along with their longstanding friends and the â€localsâ€� who are hopelessly intertwined with the Van Der Wal interests. This provides an opportunity to explore the great class divide which wholly frames the plot which meanders non-sequentially through both people and time.
But the meandering ramps up into a real tension filled page turner that keeps everyone on the edge of their seats all the way to a pretty satisfactory finale.
]]> Long Island Compromise 55777544 “Were we gangsters? No. But did we know how to start a fire?�

In 1980, a wealthy businessman named Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his driveway, brutalized, and held for ransom. He is returned to his wife and kids less than a week later, only slightly the worse, and the family moves on with their lives, resuming their prized places in the saga of the American dream, comforted in the realization that though their money may have been what endangered them, it is also what assured them their safety.

But now, nearly forty years later, it’s clear that perhaps nobody ever got over anything, after all. Carl has spent the ensuing years secretly seeking closure to the matter of his kidnapping, while his wife, Ruth, has spent her potential protecting her husband’s emotional health. Their three grown children aren’t doing much better: Nathan’s chronic fear won’t allow him to advance at his law firm; Beamer, a Hollywood screenwriter, will consume anything—substance, foodstuff, women—in order to numb his own perpetual terror; and Jenny has spent her life so bent on proving that she’s not a product of her family’s pathology that she has come to define it. As they hover at the delicate precipice of a different kind of survival, they learn that the family fortune has dwindled to just about nothing, and they must face desperate questions about how much their wealth has played a part in both their lives� successes and failures.

Long Island Compromise spans the entirety of one family’s history, winding through decades and generations, all the way to the outrageous present, and confronting the mainstays of American Jewish life: tradition, the pursuit of success, the terror of history, fear of the future, old wives� tales, evil eyes, ambition, achievement, boredom, dybbuks, inheritance, pyramid schemes, right-wing capitalists, beta-blockers, psychics, and the mostly unspoken love and shared experience that unite a family forever.]]> 464 Taffy Brodesser-Akner 0593133498 Anne 4 But in further contemplation, it is a much deeper dig into the consequences of inter generational trauma. The trauma begins when Carl Fletcher is kidnapped. He is the young father running the firm after the untimely death of his father who escaped the Holocaust and founded the company. Carl’s pregnant wife Ruth is charged with bringing the ransom to the kidnappers. This one act sets up the rest of the story especially as it pertains to her two sons and daughter.
The author brings the story full circle although never in a “feel good� kind of way. Everyone is strikingly damaged and truthfully not very appealing human beings. But it is definitely told with panache and verve. Taffy pulls it off. Look for the limited series streaming somewhere!]]> 3.72 2024 Long Island Compromise
author: Taffy Brodesser-Akner
name: Anne
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/20
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves:
review:
The talented Taffy has another winner in her sophomore debut, “The Long Island Compromise� which might even be better than “Fleischman Is In Trouble� her first novel about the demise of a once successful marriage. LI Compromise might be considered satire or parody as it reveals the dysfunctional lives of several generations of a reform Jewish family who are wealthy scions of local society owing to their ownership of a factory which supplies bespoke styrofoam packing to the world.
But in further contemplation, it is a much deeper dig into the consequences of inter generational trauma. The trauma begins when Carl Fletcher is kidnapped. He is the young father running the firm after the untimely death of his father who escaped the Holocaust and founded the company. Carl’s pregnant wife Ruth is charged with bringing the ransom to the kidnappers. This one act sets up the rest of the story especially as it pertains to her two sons and daughter.
The author brings the story full circle although never in a “feel good� kind of way. Everyone is strikingly damaged and truthfully not very appealing human beings. But it is definitely told with panache and verve. Taffy pulls it off. Look for the limited series streaming somewhere!
]]> James 173754979 A brilliant reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—both harrowing and satirical—told from the enslaved Jim's point of view

When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.

Brimming with nuanced humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a literary icon, this brilliant and tender novel radically illuminates Jim's agency, intelligence, and compassion as never before. James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first-century American literature.

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780385550369.]]> 303 Percival Everett Anne 4 4.46 2024 James
author: Percival Everett
name: Anne
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/12
date added: 2024/12/12
shelves:
review:
“James� is garnering a lot of attention as a re-working of “Huckleberry Finn�. Winner of this year’s National Book Award for Fiction and currently shortlisted for the Booker Prize, it is apparently faithful to the original by Mark Twain. As someone who has not read HF, I can only attest that “James� might be the ultimate picaresque novel as we follow the trials of Jim, an indentured slave, as he escapes his lot both with and without Huck. With its non-stop action and danger everywhere, there is no doubt that this book will soon be a movie. Then there’s the blockbuster finale! A couple of quibbles from this reader - first, I’m not sure the conceit of “slave talk� opposed to regular speech actually works, but it is an essential part of the novel. About half the book is dialogue which renders any inner characterization of the major characters kind of moot. It would have been a welcome addition to have some background about Jim (and his family) and even of Huck. Still it’s an edge of the seat read that many will love, and an explicit primer on American slavery.
]]> <![CDATA[Running with a Police Escort: Tales from the Back of the Pack]]> 28695759
Three months later, Jill did the previously unthinkable and ran her very first 5k at the Cleveland Metropolitan Zoo. Battling the infamous hills of the course, Jill conquered her fears and finished—but in dead last. Yep, the police were reopening the streets behind her. But Jill didn’t let that get her down—because when you run for your health and happiness, your only real competition is yourself.

Six years and more than one hundred pounds lost later, Jill is still running and racing regularly, and she is a proud member of the back of the pack in every race that she has entered. In Running with a Police Escort, Jill chronicles her racing adventures, proving that being a slow runner takes just as much guts and heart as being an Olympic champion. At turns heartbreaking and hilarious, Running with a Police Escort is for every runner who has never won a race but still loves the sport.
]]> 252 Jill Grunenwald 1510712798 Anne 3 3.46 Running with a Police Escort: Tales from the Back of the Pack
author: Jill Grunenwald
name: Anne
average rating: 3.46
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/09
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves:
review:
Having discovered Jill Grunenwald in “Reading Behind Bars� which left me somewhat perplexed, I decided to read “Running With A Police Escort� to see what had become of Librarian Jill and her out-sized personality which tends to land erratically with some degree of peculiarity. Here (in this memoir) under pressure from her sister Amy, Jill takes up running to try and lose some weight and gain some better health. She is to be congratulated for both her efforts and her honesty about the whole project. She’s a pretty sparky writer but is also a monumental profanity laced motor-mouth who never seems to know when to stop talking. There is only so much that can be interestingly said about running and training for running, and the geography of Cleveland. Way too much repetition and I started wondering why this girl/woman was so obsessive and egocentric about her life. She seems to be constantly seeking something while publicly proclaiming her views on a lot of things including her investment in fat positivity. Naturally, she has found a new cause to champion - wait for it - Pin Ball competition!
]]> The Appeal (The Appeal, #1) 54621096 447 Janice Hallett 1788165292 Anne 3 3.83 2021 The Appeal (The Appeal, #1)
author: Janice Hallett
name: Anne
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2024/10/20
date added: 2024/10/20
shelves:
review:
An interesting conceit - create a mystery out of the paper and digital trail that is examined by the defense lawyer for the young nurse “Issie� who is charged with the murder of a friend that she has been obsessively involved with. The cast of characters is essentially a non-professional drama troupe which both women belong to and the story unfolds through shared e-mail, messaging, stickies etc. The real problem of the novel lies in a very complicated and pretty implausible plot and a huge cast of characters to keep straight. The format more or less prohibits probing character development with the possible exception of Issie. Still, pretty clever in concept. Less so in its iteration.
]]> Prophet Song 200624156 SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2023SHORTLISTED FOR THE AN POST IRISH BOOK AWARDS 2023

On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police on her step. They have arrived to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist.

Ireland is falling apart, caught in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny. As the life she knows and the ones she loves disappear before her eyes, Eilish must contend with the dystopian logic of her new, unraveling country. How far will she go to save her family? And what—or who—is she willing to leave behind?

Exhilarating, terrifying and surprisingly intimate, Prophet Song offers a shocking vision of a country at war and a deeply human portrait of a mother’s fight to hold her family together.]]> 244 Paul Lynch Anne 0 to-read 4.22 2023 Prophet Song
author: Paul Lynch
name: Anne
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Eventide (Plainsong, #2) 89884 Plainsong returns to the high-plains town of Holt, Colorado, with a novel of masterful authority. The aging McPheron brothers are learning to live without Victoria Roubideaux, the single mother they took in and who has now left their ranch to start college. A lonely young boy stoically cares for his grandfather while a disabled couple tries to protect their violent relative. As these lives unfold and intersect, Eventide unveils the immemorial truths about human beings: their fragility and resilience, their selfishness and goodness, and their ability to find family in one another.]]> 300 Kent Haruf 0375725768 Anne 4 4.21 2004 Eventide (Plainsong, #2)
author: Kent Haruf
name: Anne
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2004
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/05
date added: 2024/10/05
shelves:
review:
The sequel to “Plainsong�. Haruf returns to Holt, Colorado with some returning characters (the McPheron brothers, principally) but book two lacks some of the brilliance of the first, largely because it lacks the steady positivity of “Plainsong� and its sense of hope. The characters here are more downtrodden and perhaps more realistic. A young boy charged with the care of his grandfather, a mother whose husband abandons her and her daughters, two developmentally challenged parents struggling to keep their family intact. Thankfully Raymond McPheron is rewarded with some happiness after the brutal death of his brother and the departure of his foster daughter to college. A lovely read but a little more sunshine would have been welcome.
]]> The Gathering 998133 The Gathering, a moving, evocative portrait of a large Irish family and a shot of fresh blood into the Irish literary tradition, combining the lyricism of the old with the shock of the new. The nine surviving children of the Hegarty clan are gathering in Dublin for the wake of their wayward brother, Liam, drowned in the sea. His sister, Veronica, collects the body and keeps the dead man company, guarding the secret she shares with him—something that happened in their grandmother’s house in the winter of 1968. As Enright traces the line of betrayal and redemption through three generations her distinctive intelligence twists the world a fraction and gives it back to us in a new and unforgettable light. The Gathering is a daring, witty, and insightful family epic, clarified through Anne Enright’s unblinking eye. It is a novel about love and disappointment, about how memories warp and secrets fester, and how fate is written in the body, not in the stars.]]> 261 Anne Enright 0802170390 Anne 4 “The Gathering� would have won a rare 5 star rating from me if Enright had not made the ending so acutely abrupt and left this reader somewhat bereft. This is Veronica Hegarty’s story or unraveling in the face of her brother’s Liam’s suicide in the sea near Bristol. Liam and Veronica are middling children in a large Irish Catholic family and due to their mother’s dubious mental health they are shipped off to their maternal Grandmother’s home along with another younger sister, Kitty around 1968. Liam and Veronica are shaped by events from that time and Veronica is distraught about her failure to save Liam. The plot is chaotic, less than chronological, sometimes frustrating but the whole story is saved by Enright’s black wit and rapier observations along with the sublimity of her writing. The wake scene alone is worth the read.]]> 3.12 2007 The Gathering
author: Anne Enright
name: Anne
average rating: 3.12
book published: 2007
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/23
date added: 2024/09/23
shelves:
review:
4.5 Stars
“The Gathering� would have won a rare 5 star rating from me if Enright had not made the ending so acutely abrupt and left this reader somewhat bereft. This is Veronica Hegarty’s story or unraveling in the face of her brother’s Liam’s suicide in the sea near Bristol. Liam and Veronica are middling children in a large Irish Catholic family and due to their mother’s dubious mental health they are shipped off to their maternal Grandmother’s home along with another younger sister, Kitty around 1968. Liam and Veronica are shaped by events from that time and Veronica is distraught about her failure to save Liam. The plot is chaotic, less than chronological, sometimes frustrating but the whole story is saved by Enright’s black wit and rapier observations along with the sublimity of her writing. The wake scene alone is worth the read.
]]> <![CDATA[Death at the Sign of the Rook (Jackson Brodie, #6)]]> 203164357 The stage is set. Marooned overnight by a snowstorm in a grand country house are a cast of characters and a setting that even Agatha Christie might recognize â€� a vicar, an Army major, a Dowager, a sleuth and his sidekick - except that the sleuth is Jackson Brodie, and the â€sidekickâ€� is DC Reggie Chase.

The crumbling house - Burton Makepeace and its chatelaine the Dowager Lady Milton - suffered the loss of their last remaining painting of any value, a Turner, some years ago. The housekeeper, Sophie, who disappeared the same night, is suspected of stealing it.

Jackson, a reluctant hostage to the snowstorm, has been investigating the theft of another The Woman with a Weasel, a portrait, taken from the house of an elderly widow, on the morning she died. The suspect this time is the widow’s carer, Melanie. Is this a coincidence or is there a connection? And what secrets does The Woman with a Weasel hold? The puzzle is Jackson’s to solve. And let’s not forget that a convicted murderer is on the run on the moors around Burton Makepeace.

All the while, in a bid to make money, Burton Makepeace is determined to keep hosting a shambolic Murder Mystery that acts as a backdrop while the real drama is being played out in the house.

A brilliantly plotted, supremely entertaining, and utterly compulsive tour de force from a great writer at the height of her powers.]]> 320 Kate Atkinson 0385547994 Anne 4 3.68 2024 Death at the Sign of the Rook (Jackson Brodie, #6)
author: Kate Atkinson
name: Anne
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/18
date added: 2024/09/18
shelves:
review:
Always a joy when Jackson Brodie returns. It was a long wait and sadly in this outing there were too many other characters beyond Brodie - not many of them endearing, except perhaps Reggie (Brodie’s sidekick) and Simon the Vicar who has lost his faith along with his voice. But this pseudo cozy mystery set in the wilds of Yorkshire is not meant to be taken too seriously and Kate Atkinson does not disappoint in skewering contemporary life when Brodie is reduced to searching for a missing masterpiece or maybe two from one one of the great houses in the region. While the plot may be thin and the beginning slow, read this for a great escape and Atkinson’s laugh out loud sense of the absurd.
]]> Creation Lake 207300960 416 Rachel Kushner 1982116528 Anne 0 to-read 3.34 2024 Creation Lake
author: Rachel Kushner
name: Anne
average rating: 3.34
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Story of Us 61722720 From the author of Canada Reads finalist Scarborough, a stunning new novel about the unbreakable bond of family and the magic that can happen when we meet in the middle

Like many Overseas Filipino Workers, Mary Grace Concepcion has lived a life of sacrifices. First, she left her husband, Ale, to be a caregiver in Hong Kong. Now, she has travelled even farther, to Canada, in the hopes of one day sponsoring Ale and having children of their own.

But when she arrives in Toronto, she must navigate a series of bewildering and careless employers and unruly children. Mary Grace seeks new employment as a Personal Support Worker and begins caring for Liz, an elderly patient suffering from Alzheimer's disease, whose health is as fragile as her rundown bungalow beside the Rouge River in Scarborough. While Mary Grace's time with her charge challenges her conservative beliefs, she soon becomes Liz's biggest ally, and the friendship that grows between them will turn out to be just as legendary as Liz's past.

Beautifully narrated by the all-seeing eye of Mary Grace's newborn baby, The Story of Us is a novel about sisterhood, about blood and chosen family, and about how belonging can be found where we least expect it.]]> 304 Catherine Hernandez 1443459763 Anne 4 No doubt this is an eye-opening read and the author is a talented storyteller. The plot is captivating although uneven; certain sections feeling more truthful than others, the finale somewhat rushed. It would have been a 5 star read for me if it had been better paced.]]> 4.17 2023 The Story of Us
author: Catherine Hernandez
name: Anne
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/04
date added: 2024/09/04
shelves:
review:
Forget the brouhaha over the “Maybe Baby� narrator, “The Story of Us� is largely important because it reveals in spades, the true reality of the Overseas Filipino Worker who leaves home to be a nanny or personal support worker (PSW) in some foreign country to support family left behind in the Philippines. The hero of this story is Mary Grace Concepcion who leaves behind her husband to nanny in Hong Kong. When she learns that Canada has a program which will allow her to obtain permanent residence and to bring her husband to Canada, she decides this is the route for her and heads to Toronto. Naturally, life is not the “wine and roses� of her expectations, and in a moment of desperation at the loss of her current position, she takes a 24/7 job as a PSW to a demented elderly transwoman named Liz. It is through this relationship that both Liz and MG bloom and become loving and accepting friends - though this may be described as a threesome when MG’s narrator baby finally arrives.
No doubt this is an eye-opening read and the author is a talented storyteller. The plot is captivating although uneven; certain sections feeling more truthful than others, the finale somewhat rushed. It would have been a 5 star read for me if it had been better paced.
]]> Plainsong (Plainsong, #1) 77156
In the small town of Holt, Colorado, a high school teacher is confronted with raising his two boys alone after their mother retreats first to the bedroom, then altogether. A teenage girl—her father long since disappeared, her mother unwilling to have her in the house—is pregnant, alone herself, with nowhere to go. And out in the country, two brothers, elderly bachelors, work the family homestead, the only world they've ever known.

From these unsettled lives emerges a vision of life, and of the town and landscape that bind them together—their fates somehow overcoming the powerful circumstances of place and station, their confusion, curiosity, dignity and humor intact and resonant. As the milieu widens to embrace fully four generations, Kent Haruf displays an emotional and aesthetic authority to rival the past masters of a classic American tradition.

Utterly true to the rhythms and patterns of life, Plainsong is a novel to care about, believe in, and learn from.]]> 301 Kent Haruf 0375705856 Anne 5 4.02 1999 Plainsong (Plainsong, #1)
author: Kent Haruf
name: Anne
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1999
rating: 5
read at: 2024/08/19
date added: 2024/08/19
shelves:
review:
In this sweet lovely novel, Haruf makes the ordinary extraordinary. We, the readers, almost instantly care about the major characters - two young brothers (Bobby and Isaac) aged 9 and 10, two elderly bachelor brothers (Harold and Raymond), two local school teachers (Maggie and Guthrie) who are the moral and human scaffolding in this story. Are any of them perfect? No, but each tries to do the right thing when confronting the everyday moral dilemmas each of them face. One singular story line involving the elderly brothers who agree to physically care for a seventeen year old pregnant teenager (Victoria) is particularly compelling. Are their villains? Of course. But even there, Haruf’s spare carefully selected prose leaves them more dignity than perhaps they deserve. Plainsong receives a rare 5 Stars from this lifetime reader.
]]> <![CDATA[The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise]]> 200869482
But the story of the garden doesn’t always enact larger patterns of privilege and exclusion. It’s also a place of rebel outposts and communal dreams. From the improbable queer utopia conjured by Derek Jarman on the beach at Dungeness to the fertile vision of a common Eden propagated by William Morris, new modes of living can and have been attempted amidst the flower beds, experiments that could prove vital in the coming era of climate change.

The result is a humming, glowing tapestry, a beautiful and exacting account of the abundant pleasures and possibilities of not as a place to hide from the world but as a site of encounter and discovery, bee-loud and pollen-laden.]]> 336 Olivia Laing 0393882004 Anne 4 3.86 2024 The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise
author: Olivia Laing
name: Anne
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/17
date added: 2024/08/17
shelves:
review:
Did you know that the word “paradise� is Persian for garden? This was just the beginning of a long slog with this book which ostensibly is a memoir of Olivia Lang’s creation of her first ever garden during Covid in Sussex. However, Laing is at heart an academic and she uses this book as an opportunity to review the concept of garden over both time and place, rather idiosyncratically as she chooses various gardens that she is emotionally connected to. At the same time, she reads and absorbs Milton’s “Paradise Lost� using it as a metaphor to the obsession she experiences as she builds her own idea of paradise. In order to make sense of where she was going in her intellectual gardening, I found myself googling as much as I found myself reading. I really needed real images of the gardens - hers and all the others that were inspiring the discourse. In short, I learned a lot and I have few regrets over my choice of this book. It was genuinely tiring, sometimes tiresome but ultimately fascinating.
]]> <![CDATA[The Man in the Wooden Hat (Old Filth, #2)]]> 6570431 Old Filth has been acclaimed as Jane Gardam's masterpiece, a book where life and art merge. And now that beautiful, haunting novel has been joined by a companion that also bursts with humor and wisdom: The Man in the Wooden Hat.

Old Filth was Eddie's story. The Man in the Wooden Hat is the history of his marriage told from the perspective of his wife, Betty, a character as vivid and enchanting as Filth himself.

They met in Hong Kong after the war. Betty had spent the duration in a Japanese internment camp. Filth was already a successful barrister, handsome, fast becoming rich, in need of a wife but unaccustomed to romance. A perfect English couple of the late 1940s.

As a portrait of a marriage, with all the bittersweet secrets and surprising fulfillment of the 50-year union of two remarkable people, the novel is a triumph. The Man in the Wooden Hat is fiction of a very high order from a great novelist working at the pinnacle of her considerable power. It will be read and loved and recommended by all the many thousands of readers who found its predecessor, Old Filth, so compelling and so thoroughly satisfying.]]> 233 Jane Gardam 1933372893 Anne 4 ]]> 4.04 The Man in the Wooden Hat (Old Filth, #2)
author: Jane Gardam
name: Anne
average rating: 4.04
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2016/08/24
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves:
review:
The Man in the Wooden Hat is the first companion novel to Jane Gardam's remarkable "Old Filth". But this is Betty Feathers version of her long marriage to Filth and it steadfastly surprises as Gardam continues to a weave the characters and settings of the first novel into another tight tapestry, albeit with a different focus. Betty is a person aching to break free as she suffers the nicks and wounds of a life that many would describe as estimable. She is deserving of our sympathy as she ultimately makes the "right" choices. But are those choices indeed right? Another small gem from Gardam.

]]> The Marble Collector 25394438 A forgotten childhood. A discovered life.
What if you only had one day to find out who you really were?

When Sabrina Boggs stumbles upon a mysterious collection of her father’s possessions, she discovers a truth where she never knew there was a lie. The familiar man she grew up with is suddenly a stranger to her.

An unexpected break in her monotonous daily routine leaves her just one day to unlock the secrets of the man she thought she knew. A day that unearths memories, stories and people she never knew existed. A day that changes her and those around her forever.

The Marble Collector is a thought-provoking novel about how the most ordinary decisions we make can have the most extraordinary consequences for how we live our lives. And how sometimes it’s only by shining on a light on someone else, that you can truly understand yourself.]]> 304 Cecelia Ahern 000750182X Anne 4 3.63 2015 The Marble Collector
author: Cecelia Ahern
name: Anne
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/31
date added: 2024/07/31
shelves:
review:
A number of critics have described “The Marble Collector� as boring. It is anything but. However, this is probably a book with appeal to the reader who has been around the block a few times. What Ahearn manages to do in this book is to examine the fault lines of memory as seen in the very ordinary of the day-to-day. In other words, the ordinary becomes extraordinary through (strangely) the vehicle of marbles. Fergus Boggs is in a rehab hospital in Ireland following a stroke. His only child, Sabrina, is a married mother of three worn down by the dreary routines of her day to day life. But when three boxes of marbles are delivered to Fergus, she is perplexed and is determined to learn their significance in her father’s life. Fergus is, of course, no help as his own memory is broken and fragmented. There is much to reflect on in both of their personal stories, as banal and mundane as they are and bonus, there’s a lot to find out about “marbles�.
]]> <![CDATA[Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules]]> 4140
A bestseller in its own right and a must-have for fans of the #1 bestselling author David Sedaris, a collection of his favorite short fiction.

David Sedaris is an exceptional reader. Alone in his apartment, he reads stories aloud to the point he has them memorized. Sometimes he fantasizes that he wrote them. Sometimes, when they’re his very favorite stories, he’ll fantasize about reading them in front of an audience and taking credit for them. The audience in these fantasies always loves him and gives him the respect he deserves.

David Sedaris didn’t write the stories in Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules . But he did read them. And he liked them enough to hand pick them for this collection of short fiction. Featuring such notable writers as Lorrie Moore, Alice Munro, Joyce Carol Oates, Jean Thompson, and Tobias Wolff, Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules includes some of the most influential and talented short story writers, contemporary and classic.

Perfect for fans who suffer from Sedaris fever, Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules will tide them over and provide relief.
2 hrs 56 mins]]> 256 David Sedaris 0743276124 Anne 4 3.68 2005 Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules
author: David Sedaris
name: Anne
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2005
rating: 4
read at: 2024/07/27
date added: 2024/07/27
shelves:
review:
From 2005, a collection of short stories selected by essayist and humorist, David Sedaris. They are, as you might expect in sum extremely character driven, as Sedaris is always attracted to the quirks and foibles of the human condition in his own writing. Some of the stories are unexpectedly dark and some racist (Flannery O’Connor). I was reminded once again about how I truly dislike reading the bleak and horrifying fiction of Joyce Carol Oates, here in this collection represented by an extremely graphic rape story. Collectively though the book is a good read leaving the reader with lingering thoughts and questions.
]]> The Hunter (Cal Hooper, #2) 174156145
Cal Hooper took early retirement from Chicago PD and moved to rural Ireland looking for peace. He’s found it, more or he’s built a relationship with a local woman, Lena, and he’s gradually turning Trey Reddy from a half-feral teenager into a good kid going good places. But then Trey’s long-absent father reappears, bringing along an English millionaire and a scheme to find gold in the townland, and suddenly everything the three of them have been building is under threat. Cal and Lena are both ready to do whatever it takes to protect Trey, but Trey doesn’t want protecting. What she wants is revenge.

A nuanced, atmospheric tale that explores what we’ll do for our loved ones, what we’ll do for revenge, and what we sacrifice when the two collide.]]> 467 Tana French 0593493435 Anne 4 3.95 2024 The Hunter (Cal Hooper, #2)
author: Tana French
name: Anne
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/28
date added: 2024/06/28
shelves:
review:
This is one of those books that benefits from the one that came before, in this case “The Searcher�. Many of the same characters populate “The Hunter� and the setting remains the same (West Ireland). In no way could this be regarded as a conventional mystery - no one actually dies until the middle of the book. With her utter mastery of both character and dialogue, French unfolds the plot through both the continuing saga of Cal Hooper, a former Chicago cop who blew into this small mountainous Irish community and that of the local child Trey (short for Theresa) Reddy who he rescued in the first book. The plot darkens when Trey’s ne-er do well feckless father Johnny appears after an absence of four years with big plans and big scams. Things ensue. The book is a slow burn but a worthwhile read as French guiltlessly entraps her readers into an affectionate attachment to the motley crew of characters who inhabit this story.
]]> The Wild Laughter 49090877
A sharp snapshot of a family and a nation suddenly unmoored, this epic-in-miniature explores cowardice and sacrifice, faith rewarded and abandoned, the stories we tell ourselves and the ones we resist. Hilarious, poignant and utterly fresh, The Wild Laughter cements Caoilinn Hughes' position as one of Ireland's most audacious, nuanced and insightful young writers.]]> 200 Caoilinn Hughes 1786077809 Anne 4 3.82 2020 The Wild Laughter
author: Caoilinn Hughes
name: Anne
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/20
date added: 2024/06/21
shelves:
review:
In short a black comedy about assisted suicide in Ireland following the failure of the Celtic Tiger in 2008, with a touch of the Cain and Abel story thrown in for good measure. Written in witty prose so Irish that fellow Irish author John Boyne suggested it might be a bit much for the locals. But Hughes is also a poet and there is much to be entertained about in this story of two brothers Cormac and Doherty (Hart) Black who help “the Chief� (their father) end his own life. Manus Black achieves his want but the actual death goes badly awry. The cast of supporting characters are wonderful, certain events as narrated by Hart are bleakly hysterical. I particularly enjoyed a poker game between the two brothers who use the Irish equivalent of Pringles as poker chips - bought by their mother Nora a from winnings on a scratch card. Intentionally written as black comedy, there is an underlying message evident about the legal need for assisted suicide or medical assistance in dying.
]]> <![CDATA[Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow]]> 214335028 A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A GLOBE AND MAIL BESTSELLER
A JIMMY FALLON BOOK CLUB PICK

In this exhilarating novel by the best-selling author of The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry two friends—often in love, but never lovers—come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.

"Utterly brilliant. In this sweeping, gorgeously written novel, Gabrielle Zevin charts the beauty, tenacity, and fragility of human love and creativity. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is one of the best books I've ever read." —John Green

On a bitter cold day, in the December of his Junior Year at Harvard, Sam Masur exits a subway car and sees, amid the hordes of people waiting on the platform, Sadie Green. He calls her name. For a moment, she pretends she hasn’t heard him, but then, she turns, and a game begins: a legendary collaboration that will launch them to stardom. They borrow money, beg favors, and, before even graduating college, they have created their first blockbuster, Ichigo: a game where players can escape the confines of a body and the betrayals of a heart, and where death means nothing more than a chance to restart and play again. This is the story of the perfect worlds Sam and Sadie build, the imperfect world they live in, and of everything that comes after success: Money. Fame. Duplicity. Tragedy.

Spanning over thirty years, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Venice Beach, California, and lands in between and far beyond, Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a dazzling and intricately imagined novel that examines the multifarious nature of identity, games as artform, technology and the human experience, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play, and above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love. Yes, it is a love story, but it is not one you have read before.]]> 416 Gabrielle Zevin 0735243360 Anne 0 to-read 4.04 2022 Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
author: Gabrielle Zevin
name: Anne
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/06/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory]]> 58284103 Run Towards the Danger explores memory and the dialogue between her past and her present

These are the most dangerous stories of my life. The ones I have avoided, the ones I haven't told, the ones that have kept me awake on countless nights. As these stories found echoes in my adult life, and then went another, better way than they did in childhood, they became lighter and easier to carry.

Sarah Polley's work as an actor, screenwriter, and director is celebrated for its honesty, complexity, and deep humanity. She brings all those qualities, along with her exquisite storytelling chops, to these six essays. Each one captures a piece of Polley's life as she remembers it, while at the same time examining the fallibility of memory, the mutability of reality in the mind, and the possibility of experiencing the past anew, as the person she is now but was not then. As Polley writes, the past and present are in a "reciprocal pressure dance."

Polley contemplates stories from her own life ranging from stage fright to high-risk childbirth to endangerment and more. After struggling with the aftermath of a concussion, Polley met a specialist who gave her wholly new advice: to recover from a traumatic injury, she had to retrain her mind to strength by charging towards the very activities that triggered her symptoms. With riveting clarity, she shows the power of applying that same advice to other areas of her life in order to find a path forward, a way through. Rather than live in a protective crouch, she had to run towards the danger.

In this extraordinary book, Polley explores what it is to live in one's body, in a constant state of becoming, learning, and changing.]]> 272 Sarah Polley 0593300351 Anne 4 Six brilliant essays from Canada’s Childhood Sweetheart, Sarah Polley. As wonderfully successful in adulthood as in her childhood, this raw and honest depiction of her life to date is heartbreaking to read. Polley is a survivor of so much - severe scoliosis and endometriosis, early death of her mother, the trauma and reality of the life of a child actor, abuse by Jian Ghomeshi and rather more recently being majorly concussed when a fire extinguisher accidentally dropped on her head. There is very little doubt about why she left acting permanently, but it is also our gain as she devotes her undeniable intelligence to writing and directing (along with taking home an Oscar). We will continue to root for her successes - professional and personal. She is a humble champion.]]> 4.29 2022 Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory
author: Sarah Polley
name: Anne
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/06/08
date added: 2024/06/08
shelves:
review:
4.5 Stars
Six brilliant essays from Canada’s Childhood Sweetheart, Sarah Polley. As wonderfully successful in adulthood as in her childhood, this raw and honest depiction of her life to date is heartbreaking to read. Polley is a survivor of so much - severe scoliosis and endometriosis, early death of her mother, the trauma and reality of the life of a child actor, abuse by Jian Ghomeshi and rather more recently being majorly concussed when a fire extinguisher accidentally dropped on her head. There is very little doubt about why she left acting permanently, but it is also our gain as she devotes her undeniable intelligence to writing and directing (along with taking home an Oscar). We will continue to root for her successes - professional and personal. She is a humble champion.
]]> <![CDATA[This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind]]> 19111468 A haunting, magnificently written memoir by Ivan Doig about growing up in the American West



Ivan Doig grew up in the rugged wilderness of western Montana among the sheepherders and denizens of small-town saloons and valley ranches. What he deciphers from his past with piercing clarity is not only a raw sense of land and how it shapes us but also of the ties to our mothers and fathers, to those who love us, and our inextricable connection to those who shaped our values in our search for intimacy, independence, love, and family. A powerfully told story, This House of Sky is at once especially American and universal in its ability to awaken a longing for an explicable past.]]> 338 Ivan Doig 0547488556 Anne 4 4.44 1978 This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind
author: Ivan Doig
name: Anne
average rating: 4.44
book published: 1978
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/27
date added: 2024/05/27
shelves:
review:
Ivan Doig is a master wordsmith and this is a brilliant tribute to a place and time that is still so close and yet has totally evaporated. With the exception of the big sky and the Rocky Mountains the childhood version of Ivan’s childhood does not exist. On Ivan’s sixth birthday, his young mother Berneta dies from asthma leaving his father a widower and Ivan motherless. The story then flows from Charlie’s willful attempts to raise Ivan well despite some pretty huge obstacles, principally that Charlie is an itinerant sheep sharecropper who has few skills beyond those tied to managing sheep. Enter Ivan’s recently widowed grandmother. She and Charlie form an uneasy alliance despite not liking each other but both are determined to see Ivan right and provide him with some stability. These two personalities become the backbone of the book and as entertaining as they are, there is a big void. That’s Ivan. This is a memoir and we really never get to know Ivan. He is acquiescing all the time; he is never a defiant teenager. He accepts every move he’s requested to. He always avoids trouble and his wife Carol is “perfect�, always agreeably in synch with Ivan. Nothing can take away from the beauty and the poetry that is Doig’s trademark, but I needed something more relatable with Ivan. A map of Montana is useful.
]]> <![CDATA[Wendy and the Lost Boys: The Uncommon Life of Wendy Wasserstein]]> 10369875
In Wendy and the Lost Boys bestselling author Julie Salamon explores the life of playwright Wendy Wasserstein's most expertly crafted herself. The first woman playwright to win a Tony Award, Wendy Wasserstein was a Broadway titan. But with her high- pitched giggle and unkempt curls, she projected an image of warmth and familiarity. Everyone knew Wendy Wasserstein. Or thought they did.

Born on October 18, 1950, in Brooklyn, New York, to Polish Jewish immigrant parents, Wendy was the youngest of Lola and Morris Wasserstein's five children. Lola had big dreams for her children. They didn't Sandra, Wendy's glamorous sister, became a high- ranking corporate executive at a time when Fortune 500 companies were an impenetrable boys club. Their brother Bruce became a billionaire superstar of the investment banking world. Yet behind the family's remarkable success was a fiercely guarded world of private tragedies.

Wendy perfected the family art of secrecy while cultivating a densely populated inner circle. Her friends included theater elite such as playwright Christopher Durang, Lincoln Center Artistic Director André Bishop, former New York Times theater critic Frank Rich, and countless others.

And still almost no one knew that Wendy was pregnant when, at age forty-eight, she was rushed to Mount Sinai Hospital to deliver Lucy Jane three months premature. The paternity of her daughter remains a mystery. At the time of Wendy's tragically early death less than six years later, very few were aware that she was gravely ill. The cherished confidante to so many, Wendy privately endured her greatest heartbreaks alone.

In Wendy and the Lost Boys , Salamon assembles the fractured pieces, revealing Wendy in full. Though she lived an uncommon life, she spoke to a generation of women during an era of vast change. Revisiting Wendy's works- The Heidi Chronicles and others-we see Wendy in the free space of the theater, where her many selves all found voice. Here Wendy spoke in the most intimate of terms about everything that matters family and love, dreams and devastation. And that is the Wendy of Neverland, the Wendy who will never grow old.]]> 461 Julie Salamon 1594202982 Anne 5 3.85 2011 Wendy and the Lost Boys: The Uncommon Life of Wendy Wasserstein
author: Julie Salamon
name: Anne
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2011
rating: 5
read at: 2024/05/15
date added: 2024/05/15
shelves:
review:
After a reprise of the essay “Complications� in the New Yorker for Mother’s Day, I knew I wanted to know more about Wendy Wasserstein as a contemporary to me. As a Canadian hick who has no familiarity with the New York theatre scene, Google was a total bonus while reading this impeccable biography. Immaculately and sensitively researched, Salamon brings Wendy back to life, minus her trademark wit and humor. From the time she was born into a wealthy secular Jewish family in 1950 until her death, Wendy was one of a kind. Despite being born into the kind of wealth that few of us will ever know, Wendy had more than her share of personal challenges and secrets. Salamon documents this so well that the book reads like page-turner fiction. Gets 5 Stars from me.
]]> <![CDATA[The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau]]> 36448591

As Manfred cowers beneath Gorski’s watchful eye, the murderous secrets of his past begin to catch up with him and his carefully crafted veneer of normalcy falters. His booze-soaked unraveling carries him from Saint-Louis to the back alleys of Strasbourg. Graeme Macrae Burnet’s masterful play on literary form featuring an unreliable narrator makes for a grimly entertaining psychological thriller that questions if it is possible—or even desirable—to know another man’s mind.]]> 231 Graeme Macrae Burnet 1510723110 Anne 4 3.81 2014 The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau
author: Graeme Macrae Burnet
name: Anne
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/13
date added: 2024/05/13
shelves:
review:
Full disclosure first - the book is set in Alsace, a place that I find extremely appealing and attractive and Burnet is an author whose attention to detail makes the setting sing. That said, this is also an emotive mystery noire featuring two fine antagonists - the creepy banker Manfred Baumann and the police detective, Georges Gorski. Each is compelling in his own right even as the reader knows “the truth� almost from the beginning of the novel. Adele herself is mostly a red herring. But it is the cagey cat and dog relationship between Baumann and Gorski that makes this book a fine read. Both harbour secrets that make for interesting twists and turns and a somewhat surprising finish. Burnet is a mannered, clever writer well worth the reader’s time.
]]> Tom Lake 63241104 In this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of America’s finest writers.

In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.

Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.]]> 309 Ann Patchett 006332752X Anne 3 I’m stretching my rating to 3.5 to acknowledge Ann Patchett’s lovely writing. Nobody does bucolic and the minutiae of domesticity quite like Patchett. The reader is lulled into the world she creates - in this case a fruit farm in Northern Michigan during the recent pandemic. Lara Nelson is sequestered there with her husband Joe and her three adult daughters (Emily, Maisie, Nell) and they are all working hard to bring in the cherry crop. The daughters request that their mother tell them the story of her youth when she was an actress in summer stock (at Tom Lake) and had an “affair� with Peter Duke who eventually became a famous television and movie star. And just how did their dad Joe fit into the picture? Unfortunately although there’s a lot of potential here, Patchett fails to develop her characters with enough weight and tension to make them truly interesting. With the exception of Duke and his celebrity vices, everybody is pretty bland and “nice�. The three sisters never squabble, Joe is never jealous, Lara never regrets her choices. The story within the story is also a bit of a stretch, and in the end, it’s all a bit of a soothing yawn.]]> 3.92 2023 Tom Lake
author: Ann Patchett
name: Anne
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/04/30
date added: 2024/04/30
shelves:
review:
3.5 Stars
I’m stretching my rating to 3.5 to acknowledge Ann Patchett’s lovely writing. Nobody does bucolic and the minutiae of domesticity quite like Patchett. The reader is lulled into the world she creates - in this case a fruit farm in Northern Michigan during the recent pandemic. Lara Nelson is sequestered there with her husband Joe and her three adult daughters (Emily, Maisie, Nell) and they are all working hard to bring in the cherry crop. The daughters request that their mother tell them the story of her youth when she was an actress in summer stock (at Tom Lake) and had an “affair� with Peter Duke who eventually became a famous television and movie star. And just how did their dad Joe fit into the picture? Unfortunately although there’s a lot of potential here, Patchett fails to develop her characters with enough weight and tension to make them truly interesting. With the exception of Duke and his celebrity vices, everybody is pretty bland and “nice�. The three sisters never squabble, Joe is never jealous, Lara never regrets her choices. The story within the story is also a bit of a stretch, and in the end, it’s all a bit of a soothing yawn.
]]> Close to Home 62039294
But when Sean returns home from university, he finds much of the same-the same friends doing the same gear in the same clubs; the same lost broth­ers and mad fathers; the same closed doors; the same silences. There are no jobs, Sean's degree isn't worth the paper it's written on, and no one will give him the time of day. One night, he assaults a stranger at a party, and everything begins to come undone.

Close to Home begins with this sudden act of violence and expands into a startling portrait of working-class Ireland under the long shadow of the Troubles. It's a first novel drawn from life, written with the immediacy of thought. It's about what happens when men get desperate, about the cycles of loss and trauma and secrecy that keep them trapped, and about the struggle to get free.]]> 288 Michael Magee 0374608326 Anne 4 4.05 2023 Close to Home
author: Michael Magee
name: Anne
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/12
date added: 2024/04/12
shelves:
review:
This is a truly impressive debut from Michael Magee. Shades of Shuggie Bain but at the same time quite different. Sean Maguire escapes Belfast to gain a university degree (English Literature) in Liverpool. Events following his graduation force him home to the life he’s always imagined he’d flee. There’s no work, he’s intermittently homeless, and he ends up doing 200 hours of community service after he severely assaults someone who insults his family. Drinking, lots of drugs, petty thievery - there is no light. Yet Sean’s voice is so authentic that this book feels like a necessary and worthwhile read. The book is chronically short on plot, but is still gripping as Sean deals with the endless precarity and stupidity in his life. Somehow, the reader keeps rooting for Sean and the author wisely ends the tale with a wee speck of hope.
]]> Absolution 101404407
In Saigon in 1963, two young American wives form a wary alliance. Tricia is a starry-eyed newlywed, married to a rising oil engineer “on loan� to US Navy Intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three, a talented hostess and determined altruist, on a mission to relieve the “wretchedness� she sees all around her.

When Tricia miscarries, Charlene sweeps her into a cabal of well-dressed do-gooder American wives. Armed with baskets filled with candy and toys, they descend on hospitals, orphanages, and a leper colony on the coast, determined to relieve suffering, no matter the cost.

Sixty years later, Charlene’s daughter reaches out to Tricia, now widowed and living in Washington. As the two relive their shared experience in Saigon, they are forced to come to terms with the ways their own lives have been shaped and stunted by Charlene’s pursuit of “inconsequential good.�

With a narrative impact that recalls Graham Greene’s The Quiet American , Alice McDermott confronts the unresolved mysteries and ironies of America’s tragic interference in Southeast Asia.]]> 324 Alice McDermott 0374610487 Anne 4 Patricia arrives in Saigon in 1963 as a newlywed and plus 1 for her military attaché husband and is soon absorbed into the social cabal of Charlene, another military wife and mother of three children, including Rainey her eight year old daughter whose Barbie doll catapults both Patricia and Charlene into some truly morally ambiguous activities that escalate via Charlene’s hard edge determinism and little disguised manipulation. All in the name of charity. The story unfolds some sixty years later through the eyes of Patricia and Rainey as they attempt to understand and contextualize the events of what Charlene did just before the fall of Saigon, and of course how this changed their own lives. The writing is beautiful and evocative and Saigon itself feels distressingly real and hot and tense with the occupation. A read that will stick for a while - much food for thought.]]> 3.68 2023 Absolution
author: Alice McDermott
name: Anne
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/04/06
date added: 2024/04/07
shelves:
review:
4.5 Stars
Patricia arrives in Saigon in 1963 as a newlywed and plus 1 for her military attaché husband and is soon absorbed into the social cabal of Charlene, another military wife and mother of three children, including Rainey her eight year old daughter whose Barbie doll catapults both Patricia and Charlene into some truly morally ambiguous activities that escalate via Charlene’s hard edge determinism and little disguised manipulation. All in the name of charity. The story unfolds some sixty years later through the eyes of Patricia and Rainey as they attempt to understand and contextualize the events of what Charlene did just before the fall of Saigon, and of course how this changed their own lives. The writing is beautiful and evocative and Saigon itself feels distressingly real and hot and tense with the occupation. A read that will stick for a while - much food for thought.
]]> Something About Alexa 198967877
The woods behind seventeen-year-old Jayden James� home in Forks, Washington are a place of many things. They are his escape from the bourbon ghost of his mother, the tireless torment of the town bully, and the place where he first lays eyes on Alexa, the new girl in town—a girl who makes his heart feel as if it beats for the first time.

Yes, the woods are his shelter. His haven. His hope. But�

They are also a place best known for the town’s storybook vampire/werewolf lore.

The place where mysterious murders are about to shake up the town during the height of its annual Forever Twilight in Forks Festival.

And the place where he just woke up with blood on his hands.

Twilight gets a 21st century Frankensteinian twist with this electrifying debut, a page-turning reimagining of the cult classic that is timely, relevant, and deeply engrossing.]]> 407 Leanne Hockley 1998030008 Anne 3 4.45 Something About Alexa
author: Leanne Hockley
name: Anne
average rating: 4.45
book published:
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/23
date added: 2024/03/23
shelves:
review:
There’s a good YA â€paranormalâ€� yarn lurking between the covers of “Something About Alexaâ€� but the book would have likely benefited by some judicious editing - perhaps a hundred pages to tighten up the plot so that reader spends a lot less time in forest at night with Jayden James - a troubled youth who becomes obsessed with a new girl in his 12th grade class - Alexa. Love at first sight! There are a lot of plot twists and turns and repetitions that deal peripherally with the fact that there are locally a number of unsolved murders of young girls, and because Jayden is plagued by nocturnal sleepwalking episodes that he cannot remember, he becomes convinced that he may be involved in the murders. Red herrings abound but eventually Hockley provides an exciting finale and the ultimate revelation about the truth of Alexa.
]]> <![CDATA[The Way of the Bear (Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito, #26)]]> 61812400 Fossil harvesting, ancient lore, greed, rejected love and murder combine in this gripping new installment of New York Times bestselling author Anne Hillerman's Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito series.

An unexpected death on a lonely road outside of Utah's Bears Ears National Park raises questions for Navajo Tribal Police officers Jim Chee and Bernadette Manuelito. Why would a seasoned outdoorsman and well-known paleontologist freeze to death within walking distance of his car? A second death brings more turmoil. Who is the unidentified man killed during a home invasion where nothing seems to have been taken? Why was he murdered?

The Bears Ears area, at the edge of the Navajo Nation, is celebrated for its abundance of early human habitation sites and the discovery of unique fossils which revolutionized the scientific view of how early animals dealt with their changing world. For Chee and Bernie, the area glows with geological interest and spiritual insight. But their visit to this achingly beautiful place is disrupted by a current of unprecedented violence that sweeps them both into danger.

An illicit business, a fossilized jaw bone, hints of witchcraft, and a mysterious disappearance during a blizzard and to the peril. It will take all of Manuelito's and Chee's experience, skill, and intuition to navigate the threats that arise beneath the twin buttes that give Bears Ears its name and to see justice served.]]> 281 Anne Hillerman 0062908391 Anne 3 3.82 2023 The Way of the Bear (Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito, #26)
author: Anne Hillerman
name: Anne
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/03/06
date added: 2024/03/06
shelves:
review:
Despite “The Way of the Bear� winning a few prizes, it’s really just a mediocre, so-so mystery jumped up with a snow storm in a new National Park in Utah. It’s also wildly didactic as Anne Hillerman wants us all to be aware of the environmental issues surrounding fossil gathering and the illicit sale of said fossils. This is the first of the Anne Hillerman versions of her father’s famous Navajo mystery series I’ve read and in this outing, Joe Chee and his wife, Bernie Manuellito are featured while Joe Leaphorn is in Hawaii. The plot, if it could be described as such, is littered with bodies which of course in the end will all be connected - yes, by paleontology! But, none of it hinges together particularly well. Characterization is skimpy while there is a concerted effort to educate the reader in all things Navajo and environmental. More plot and complex people needed, less pedantry.
]]> <![CDATA[The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 83ÂĽ Years Old]]> 35960007 A #1 international bestseller in the vein of Fredrik Bachman's A Man Called Ove: an irresistible, funny, charming, and tender-hearted tale about friendship, love, and an old man who is young at heart.
Technically speaking, Hendrik Groen is....elderly. But at age 83 1/4, this feisty, indomitable curmudgeon has no plans to go out quietly. Bored of weak tea and potted geraniums, exasperated by the indignities of aging, Hendrik has decided to rebel--on his own terms. He begins writing an exposé: secretly recording the antics of day-to-day life in his retirement home, where he refuses to take himself, or his fellow "inmates," too seriously.
With an eccentric group of friends he founds the wickedly anarchic Old-But-Not-Dead Club--"Rule #3: No Whining Allowed"--and he and his best friend, Evert, gleefully stir up trouble, enraging the home's humorless director and turning themselves into unlikely heroes. And when a sweet and sassy widow moves in next door, he polishes his shoes, grooms what's left of his hair, and determines to savor every ounce of joy in the time he has left, with hilarious and tender consequences.


A bestselling phenomenon that has captured imaginations around the world, The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen is inspiring, charming, and laugh-out-loud funny with a deep and poignant core: a page-turning delight for readers of any age.

*Includes reading group guide*]]> 384 Hendrik Groen 1455542156 Anne 4 3.82 2014 The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 83ÂĽ Years Old
author: Hendrik Groen
name: Anne
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/21
date added: 2024/02/21
shelves:
review:
Having loved “The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole�, I decided to bookend it with Hendrik Groener’s secret diary at age 83 and a bit. More bittersweet but as delightful as Adrian Mole, Hendrik lives in a seniors� supported residence in Amsterdam. Fed up with the whining and other assorted indignities of old age, Hendrik forms an “Old But Not Dead Yet� with 5 fellow residents. Each is responsible for one adventure. On every outing the realities of old age bite but the crew is intrepid as well as profane. Hendrik finds love and grief, but also joy and determination. As a sidebar, the tribulations of providing dignified elder care in the Netherlands is no different than the prevailing North American model. The book has been adapted as a Dutch television series.
]]> <![CDATA[Transsexual Apostate: My Journey Back to Reality]]> 199501640 227 Debbie Hayton 1800753101 Anne 2 3.79 2024 Transsexual Apostate: My Journey Back to Reality
author: Debbie Hayton
name: Anne
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/02/17
date added: 2024/02/17
shelves:
review:
This is an appalling book. It’s not about the content where Debbie Hayton professes to see the light as a transwoman. The problem is that the whole book is a screed about gender identity ideology (as in self-identified). Debbie, by training a secondary physics teacher is also a veteran union rep. She’s also a policy wonk who would make Hilary Clinton look like a punter. In attempting to make her point over and over and yet again over, Debbie is an utter bore - even when she opens the book with an overtly graphic description of her bottom surgery. She never manages to make her point even when she comes up with some jumbo-jumbo science to explain her need to transition as a forty-something year old. Do not think about spending money on this book. I only finished it because I mistakenly spent money hoping to discover some illumination and understanding about the transgender epidemic we are currently experiencing.
]]> Elegy for April (Quirke, #3) 7431670 Quirke � the hard-drinking, insatiably curious Dublin pathologist � is back, and he's determined to find his daughter's best friend, a well-connected young doctor

April Latimer has vanished. A junior doctor at a local hospital, she is something of a scandal in the conservative and highly patriarchal society of 1950s Dublin. Though her family is one of the most respected in the city, she is known for being independent-minded; her taste in men, for instance, is decidedly unconventional.

Now April has disappeared, and her friend Phoebe Griffin suspects the worst. Frantic, Phoebe seeks out Quirke, her brilliant but erratic father, and asks him for help. Sober again after intensive treatment for alcoholism, Quirke enlists his old sparring partner, Detective Inspector Hackett, in the search for the missing young woman. In their separate ways the two men follow April's trail through some of the darker byways of the city to uncover crucial information on her whereabouts. And as Quirke becomes deeply involved in April's murky story, he encounters complicated and ugly truths about family savagery, Catholic ruthlessness, and race hatred.

Both an absorbing crime novel and a brilliant portrait of the difficult and relentless love between a father and his daughter, this is Benjamin Black at his sparkling best.


]]> 293 Benjamin Black 0805090916 Anne 4 3.61 2010 Elegy for April (Quirke, #3)
author: Benjamin Black
name: Anne
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2024/02/10
date added: 2024/02/10
shelves:
review:
I am a sucker for Irish fiction. This is John Banville in Benjamin Black mode with #3 in the Quirke series. Quirke is a middle aged drunk pathologist living in Dublin. He is a widower with an adult child (Phoebe) who he abandoned as an infant. In this outing Phoebe approaches her father for help in locating her missing friend, April Latimer. Black is never much about plot and this book is more about why April has vanished. But what it does in spades is take the reader to the fabulous ambience of 1950’s Dublin where everything is dark and dismal - so much so that everyone has to seriously smoke and drink. To lighten the darkness, Black gives Quirke an exquisite 1956 Alvis car, despite the reality that Quirke does not know how to drive and lacks both a license and insurance. And yes, the truth about April is eventually revealed.
]]> A Gentleman in Moscow 29430012 He can't leave. You won't want to.

With his breakout novel Rules of Civility, Amor Towles established himself as a master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction, bringing late-1930s Manhattan to life with splendid atmosphere and a flawless command of style. A Gentleman in Moscow immerses us in another elegantly drawn era with the story of Count Alexander Rostov.

When, in 1922, the thirty-year-old Count is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, he is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. An indomitable man of erudition and wit, Rostov must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors.

Unexpectedly, the Count's reduced circumstances provide him entry to a much larger world of emotional discovery as he forges friendships with the hotel's other denizens, including a willful actress, a shrewd Kremlinite, a gregarious American, and a temperamental chef. But when fate suddenly puts the life of a young girl in his hands, he must draw on all his ingenuity to protect the future she so deserves.

Brimming with humor, a glittering cast of characters, and one beautifully rendered scene after another, this singular novel casts a spell as it relates the Count’s endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be a man of purpose.]]> 462 Amor Towles Anne 4 4.33 2016 A Gentleman in Moscow
author: Amor Towles
name: Anne
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2016
rating: 4
read at: 2023/11/21
date added: 2024/01/25
shelves:
review:
Count Alexander Rostov (aged 30) is sentenced to house arrest in Moscow's Metropol Hotel (near the Kremlin) after the Bolshevik Revolution. This is his personal story from then until 1954 as he seeks and finds purpose in a life beyond that of a Russian aristocrat pre-revolution. A bit slow in the beginning, this lengthy book gathers momentum and grace as the years fly by and we all become attached to the varied denizens of the Metropol. Written in elegant prose with more than a soupçon of charm and wit, Towles brings everything and everyone together in an utterly appealing climax which includes both mystery and intrigue. With its elegant construction, interesting characters, amazing setting and compelling storytelling there is something for every devoted reader here.
]]> <![CDATA[Blaze Me a Sun (Hallandssviten, #2)]]> 59856893 #1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER A serial killer in a small Swedish town commits his first murder the same night the prime minister is assassinated—a “thrilling and profoundly poignant� (Angie Kim) novel by one of the country’s top criminologists, hailed as “the finest crime writer we have in Sweden� (David Lagercrantz, author of The Girl in the Spider’s Web and other novels in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Series)

“Christoffer Carlsson is to the police procedural what Cormac McCarthy is to the Western.”—Anthony Marra, author of Mercury Pictures Presents and A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

A CRIMEREADS AND KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

In February 1986, the Halland police receive a call from a man who claims to have attacked his first victim. I’m going to do it again, he says before the line cuts off. By the time police officer Sven Jörgensson reaches the crime scene, the woman is taking her last breath. For Sven, this will prove a decisive moment. On the same night, Sweden plunges into a state of shock after the murder of the prime minister. Could there possibly be a connection?

As Sven becomes obsessed with the case, two more fall victim. For years, Sven remains haunted by the murders he cannot solve, fearing the killer will strike again. Having failed to catch him, Sven retires from the police, passing his obsession to his son, who has joined the force to be closer to his father.

Decades later, the case unexpectedly resurfaces when a novelist returns home to Halland amid a failed marriage and a sputtering career. The writer befriends the retired police officer, who helps the novelist—our narrator—unspool the many strands of this engrossing tale about a community confronting its shames and legacies.

A #1 bestseller in Sweden, Blaze Me a Sun marks the American debut of the youngest winner of the Best Swedish Crime Novel of the Year award, the top prize for Swedish crime writers whose past winners include Stieg Larsson and Henning Mankell.]]> 439 Christoffer Carlsson 0593449355 Anne 4 The enormously talented Christoffer Carlsson takes me instantly back to my long love affair with Henning Mankel. "Blaze Me a Sun" is likely the best Nordic noir book I've encountered in years. An excellent translation to English here affords the spare, dark prose that occupies the best of the Nordic noir cannon of work. This is a big structured novel that hinges on a murder and rape that occurred in a rural area of Sweden the same night that(Prime Minister) Olof Palme was killed in 1986. Local investigator Sven Jorgensson becomes obsessed with his inability to solve this murder and it becomes a familial psychological burden to his son Vidar(another policeman), even after Sven's death. While Sven and Vidar represent the first two strings of the story, the third actually belongs to a young novelist who went to school with Vidar and is fascinated with the long unsolved mystery. He uncovers some damaging information that sends shock waves through the community. This is definitely a character driven novel rather than an action packed one, but the case/story is so compelling that the pages of the novel turn faster and faster as the tension and suspense increase exponentially. A great read.]]> 3.85 2021 Blaze Me a Sun (Hallandssviten, #2)
author: Christoffer Carlsson
name: Anne
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/25
date added: 2024/01/25
shelves:
review:
4.5 Stars
The enormously talented Christoffer Carlsson takes me instantly back to my long love affair with Henning Mankel. "Blaze Me a Sun" is likely the best Nordic noir book I've encountered in years. An excellent translation to English here affords the spare, dark prose that occupies the best of the Nordic noir cannon of work. This is a big structured novel that hinges on a murder and rape that occurred in a rural area of Sweden the same night that(Prime Minister) Olof Palme was killed in 1986. Local investigator Sven Jorgensson becomes obsessed with his inability to solve this murder and it becomes a familial psychological burden to his son Vidar(another policeman), even after Sven's death. While Sven and Vidar represent the first two strings of the story, the third actually belongs to a young novelist who went to school with Vidar and is fascinated with the long unsolved mystery. He uncovers some damaging information that sends shock waves through the community. This is definitely a character driven novel rather than an action packed one, but the case/story is so compelling that the pages of the novel turn faster and faster as the tension and suspense increase exponentially. A great read.
]]> A New Season 123645526 352 Terry Fallis 0771094744 Anne 0 to-read 3.57 A New Season
author: Terry Fallis
name: Anne
average rating: 3.57
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Salt Path 40594089 SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA BOOK AWARD

The true story of a couple who lost everything and embarked on a transformative journey walking the South West Coast Path in England

Just days after Raynor Winn learns that Moth, her husband of thirty-two years, is terminally ill, their house and farm are taken away, along with their livelihood. With nothing left and little time, they make the brave and impulsive decision to walk the 630 miles of the sea-swept South West Coast Path, from Somerset to Dorset, through Devon and Cornwall.

Carrying only the essentials for survival on their backs, they live wild in the ancient, weathered landscape of cliffs, sea, and sky. Yet through every step, every encounter, and every test along the way, their walk becomes a remarkable and life-affirming journey. Powerfully written and unflinchingly honest, The Salt Path is ultimately a portrayal of home--how it can be lost, rebuilt, and rediscovered in the most unexpected ways.]]> 270 Raynor Winn 0143134116 Anne 0 to-read 4.00 2018 The Salt Path
author: Raynor Winn
name: Anne
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/01/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Dear Diary Boy 36687738
While set in Japan, their struggles in the school's hyper-competitive environment mirror those faced by parents here in the US and raise the same questions about the best way to educate a child—especially one that doesn’t quite fit the mold. Public or private? Competitive or nurturing? Standardized or individualized. Helicopter parenting or free-range? Amid this frenzied debate, how does one find balance and maintain a healthy parent-child relationship?

Dear Diary Boy is an intensely personal, heartwarming, and heartbreaking chronicle of one mother and child's experience in a prestigious private Tokyo school. It's a tale that will resonate with all parents as we try to answer the age-old questions of how best to educate our children and what, truly, is in their best interests versus what is in our own.]]> 240 Kumiko Makihara 1628728906 Anne 4 3.86 2018 Dear Diary Boy
author: Kumiko Makihara
name: Anne
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/18
date added: 2024/01/18
shelves:
review:
“Taro� aka Diary Boy is both the hero and also the loser in this memoir by his adoptive mother. Both the circumstances of his birth, his adoption by his Japanese mother and their unusual financial circumstances render the whole arc of Taro’s existence almost unbelievable. Makihara is about forty years old when she and her American husband adopt Taro (Kazakistan birth). The marriage does not last and mother and son return to Tokyo where they are supported financially by Makihara’s very wealthy parents. This more or less allows Makihara to enroll Taro in an elite private elementary school where she is intimately involved with every aspect of his education. He is not an easy fit into Japanese expectations and educational demands. Both child and mother suffer, but they persevere and when things get even tougher in junior high school, Makihara decides to enroll Taro in an elite boarding school in Massachusetts. In some respects, things are no better but the reader is treated to a riveting picture of the differences of the two systems. Is there a winner here? Hard to tell but Taro does show unexpected resilience and sensitivity, much of it demonstrated via the required entries in his Japanese school diary. No matter how you frame it, there is nothing approaching average in Taro’s upbringing.
]]> The Bee Sting 62039166 From the author of Skippy Dies comes Paul Murray's The Bee Sting, an irresistibly funny, wise, and thought-provoking tour de force about family, fortune, and the struggle to be a good person when the world is falling apart.

The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie’s once-lucrative car business is going under―but rather than face the music, he’s spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman. His wife Imelda is selling off her jewelry on eBay, while their teenage daughter Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge-drink her way through her final exams. And twelve-year-old PJ is putting the final touches to his grand plan to run away from home.

Where did it all go wrong? A patch of ice on the tarmac, a casual favor to a charming stranger, a bee caught beneath a bridal veil―can a single moment of bad luck change the direction of a life? And if the story has already been written―is there still time to find a happy ending?]]> 645 Paul Murray 0374600309 Anne 4 3.92 2023 The Bee Sting
author: Paul Murray
name: Anne
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/12
date added: 2024/01/12
shelves:
review:
Always a big sucker for dysfunctional Irish family epics, and “The Bee Sting� checks off all the boxes in this big narrative of the four members of the Barnes family who each in their own way fall/fail fabulously into their own personal hells. Dickie, his wife Imelda and their two children Cass and PJ tell their family’s story in their own words, with each presenting their own perspective based on their own experiences. The novel is many things, much of it dark and disturbing and it almost generates heat with its myriad detail supplied by both the physical settings and a strong cast of supporting characters. But it is also fresh and absurd and brought to a shocking, bewildering conclusion by its author who writes viscerally and instinctually. In some ways, the stream of consciousness is Irish Karl Ove Knausgard…but with more humor. Critically speaking, it could still have been as powerful with less repetition and perhaps a hundred less pages.
]]> <![CDATA[Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World]]> 61966364 A stunning account of a colossal wildfire that collided with a city and a panoramic exploration of the rapidly changingĚýrelationship between fire and humankind

In May 2016, Fort McMurray, the hub of Canada’s oil industry and America’s biggest foreign supplier, was overrun by wildfire. The multi-billion-dollar disaster melted vehicles, turned entire neighborhoods into firebombs, and drove 88,000 people from their homes in a single afternoon. Through the lens of this apocalyptic conflagration—the wildfire equivalent of Hurricane Katrina—John Vaillant warns that this was not a unique event but a shocking preview of what we must prepare for in a hotter, more flammable world.

Fire has been a partner in our evolution for millennia,Ěýshaping culture, civilization, and, very likely, our brains. Fire has enabled us to cook our food, defend and heat our homes, and power the machines that drive our titanic economy. Yet this volatile energy source has always threatened to elude our control, and in our new age of intensifying climate change, we are seeing its destructive power unleashed in previously unimaginable ways.

With masterly prose and a cinematic eye, Vaillant takes us on aĚýriveting journeyĚýthrough the intertwined histories of North America’s oil industry and the birth of climate science, to theĚýunprecedented devastation that modern forest fires wreak, and into lives forever changed by these disasters.ĚýHis urgent work is a book for—and from—our new century of fire, which has only just begun.]]> 432 John Vaillant 1524732850 Anne 5 4.31 2023 Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World
author: John Vaillant
name: Anne
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2023/12/15
date added: 2023/12/15
shelves:
review:
I lived for a decade in Ft. McMurray, between a couple of the booms. Everything McMurray in this amazing book was familiar to me. The streets, the suburbs, Suncor and Syncrude etc. Yet, the book brought on a storm of emotion as I realized just how uninformed I was about the reality of climate change and the portentous apocalyptic events on our doorsteps wherever we live on this globe. The consequences of continually rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere have been known by industry for decades, yet human nature gleefully shoves that knowledge under some carpet made of petroleum based products and presses on to maintain the status quo. The tragedy of what happened in Ft. McMurray is only the tip of a metaphorical climate iceberg and is destined to repeat itself with increasing frequency. Lahaina had not yet occurred when this book was published. Meticulously researched, “Fireweather� is a difficult but truly important read. It was not hard to figure out why it was selected as one of the top ten books of 2023 by the New York Times. PLEASE read.
]]> Old God's Time 61358640 From the two-time Booker Prize finalist author, a dazzlingly written novel exploring love, memory, grief, and long-buried secrets

Recently retired policeman Tom Kettle is settling into the quiet of his new home, a lean-to annexed to a Victorian castle overlooking the Irish Sea. For months he has barely seen a soul, catching only glimpses of his eccentric landlord and a nervous young mother who has moved in next door. Occasionally, fond memories return, of his family, his beloved wife June and their two children, Winnie and Joe.

But when two former colleagues turn up at his door with questions about a decades-old case, one which Tom never quite came to terms with, he finds himself pulled into the darkest currents of his past.

A beautiful, haunting novel, in which nothing is quite as it seems, Old God's Time is about what we live through, what we live with, and what may survive of us.]]> 261 Sebastian Barry 0593296109 Anne 4 3.76 2023 Old God's Time
author: Sebastian Barry
name: Anne
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/12/02
date added: 2023/12/02
shelves:
review:
Tom Kettle is a superannuated widowed cop living by himself on the Irish coast south of Dublin when two of his former colleagues come to visit him to collect information on a case that he had been involved with some two decades earlier. This sets off a chain of new events which force Tom to remember the terrible incident from his past - or does it? In this hauntingly poetic novel, Tom is sliding into dementia and thus it becomes difficult for both Tom and the reader to recognize what is real and what is not. Tom is the most unreliable of narrators, but slowly the past catches up with the present and what is revealed is difficult and harrowing and unforgettable - including the revelation of all the loss that Tom has been forced to embrace in the deaths of his beloved wife June and also his daughter Winnie and son, Joe. As always, Barry's language is lustrous and beautiful and he even manages to slip a McNulty into the novel. This is where Barry loses the 5 Star ranking. The ending is rushed and it is built on an add-on to the plot that seems unnecessary, although it allowed Barry to complete the story arc with literally a bang.
]]> <![CDATA[The Class: A Memoir of a Place, a Time, and Us]]> 125063508
On Tuesday, September 6, 1960, the day after Labour Day, class 9G at Etobicoke Collegiate Institute in a suburb of Toronto assembled for the first time. Its thirty-five students, having written special exams, came to be known as the “Selected Class.�

They would stay together through high school, with few exceptions. They would spend more than two hundred days a year together. Few had known each other before. Few have been in other than accidental contact in all the decades since.

Their ancestors were almost all from working-class backgrounds. Their parents had lived their formative years through depression and war. They themselves were born into a postwar world of new homes, new schools, new churches. New suburbs. Of new classes like this one. Of boundless possibilities.

When almost anything seems within reach, what do we reach for?

Ken Dryden was one of these thirty-five. In his varied, improbable life, he had wondered often how he had gotten from there to here . How any of us do. He decided to try and find his classmates, to see how they are, what they are doing, how life has been for them. They talked many long hours, in a way they had never talked before. Most had married, some divorced, most have kids, many have grandkids.

This is the story of a place, a time, and so much more.]]> 488 Ken Dryden 0771009232 Anne 4 While the narrative of this big book never flags, some sections work better than others. The stories of Ken's classmates largely focus on their "careers" sometimes in minute detail. Personal stories need some intimacy and this is largely lacking, although likely deliberately so. I don't know how you can regard the calling of hospital administrator as "magical" but it's implied here. But I guess you have to draw a line somewhere!
Also useful would have been then and now headshots, but there's only Ken the Cover Boy!
One of the more compelling sections is where Dryden spends time mulling over the impact of the Canadian Centennial in 1967. Fascinating to read especially in the context of his cohort of optimistic young Canadians. But the shiniest part of this book is when Dryden reaches his seventies and dives into whatever wisdom he's managed to collect and make sense of it all.]]> 3.84 The Class: A Memoir of a Place, a Time, and Us
author: Ken Dryden
name: Anne
average rating: 3.84
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/19
date added: 2023/10/19
shelves:
review:
In 1960, Ken Dryden entered Etobicoke Collegiate Institute as part of a "selective" class of grade nines who had been hand picked/tested from the four elementary schools which acted as feeders to ECI. When the pandemic hit and he was approaching 75, he decided to find out what had happened to the 35 students who had been part of what was called the "brain class". As I had been part of a similar streamed experiment in Western Canada I was intrigued by his quest to discover what had happened over a lifetime to his classmates. In general, he succeeded very well with this providing chronological profiles of 28 people interspersed with his own recollections and self-questioning over 5 decades. He starts with the demographics of the parents and places them in the context of Canada from the time his classmates were born in 1946/47. Little by little he unfolds each story, providing relevant statistics that explain some of the choices and events that affected this select group.
While the narrative of this big book never flags, some sections work better than others. The stories of Ken's classmates largely focus on their "careers" sometimes in minute detail. Personal stories need some intimacy and this is largely lacking, although likely deliberately so. I don't know how you can regard the calling of hospital administrator as "magical" but it's implied here. But I guess you have to draw a line somewhere!
Also useful would have been then and now headshots, but there's only Ken the Cover Boy!
One of the more compelling sections is where Dryden spends time mulling over the impact of the Canadian Centennial in 1967. Fascinating to read especially in the context of his cohort of optimistic young Canadians. But the shiniest part of this book is when Dryden reaches his seventies and dives into whatever wisdom he's managed to collect and make sense of it all.
]]> Wellness 65650229 A witty and poignant novel about marriage, middle age, tech-obsessed health culture and the bonds that keep people together

When Jack and Elizabeth meet as college students in the '90s, the two quickly join forces and hold on tight, each eager to claim a place in Chicago's thriving underground art scene with an appreciative kindred spirit.ĚýFast-forward twenty years to married life, and alongside the challenges of parenting, they encounter cults disguised as mindfulness support groups, polyamorous would-be suitors, Facebook wars, and something called Love Potion Number Nine. For the first time Jack and Elizabeth struggle to recognize one another, and the no-longer-youthful dreamers are forced to face their demons, from unfulfilled career ambitions to painful childhood memories of their own dysfunctional families. In the process Jack and Elizabeth must undertake separate, personal excavations, or risk losing the best thing in their lives: each other.Ěý]]> 611 Nathan Hill 0593536118 Anne 4 3.97 2023 Wellness
author: Nathan Hill
name: Anne
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/10/12
date added: 2023/10/12
shelves:
review:
Not being familiar with Nathan Hill, a hundred pages in I was convinced the book was satire or at the very least a screed on modern day life in America (specifically Chicago). What it really is the story of a 20 year marriage between Jack, an adjunct art professor and Elizabeth who is an expert in placebo research. At twenty years the marriage malaise has set in, and Hill attempts to explain it all in an exquisite construction of a novel, and it's the scaffolding he builds that makes this book work. Using their individual paths as children, he makes the case about why this marriage is floundering. How it got to this point. But this examination is intertwined with all the buzz of the twenty-first century - parenting, therapy, polyamory, the scourge of social media. You name it and Hill manages to magnificently include it in his big narrative. And it all works pretty well except when he gets bogged down in some sections (algorithms!). Where the story falls short is that the two protagonists - Jack and Elizabeth - are not particularly relatable or likable so that by the climax arrives the reader feels worn out from their ongoing angst and is not inclined to care the way they are supposed to. Still, it's a pretty audacious novel.
]]> Every Breath (Every, #1) 20300225
ĚýĚýĚýĚýĚýWhile Watts battles her attraction to bad-boy Mycroft, he's busy getting himself expelled and clashing with the police, becoming murder suspect number one. When Watts and Mycroft unknowingly reveal too much to the cold-blooded killer, they find themselves in the lion's den--literally. A trip to the zoo will never have quite the same meaning to Rachel Watts again...]]> 335 Ellie Marney 1770497722 Anne 4 ya 4.01 2013 Every Breath (Every, #1)
author: Ellie Marney
name: Anne
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2014/10/19
date added: 2023/09/27
shelves: ya
review:
Take two highly attractive teenage misfits, a mystery to be solved, and throw in some highly charged first romance and you've got a winning read for Young Adults. When James Mycroft and Rachel Watts discover that their friend "Homeless Dave" has been murdered, Mycroft decides that they must solve the mystery as the police are dismissing the case as a sport murder. Mycroft is an orphan with a complicated relationship with authority, while Rachel has just relocated to Melbourne when her parents lost their rural property to foreclosure. While the plot is actually pretty thin, some of the situations the two must extricate themselves from are both unique and down right exciting. The language is contemporary Australian and the author has created characters who reflect the diversity of 21st century Melbourne. A nice take on Holmes and Watson.
]]> <![CDATA[Slough House (Slough House, #7)]]> 54005204 Brexit is in full swing. And due to mysterious accidents, the Slough Houses ranks continue to thin. The seventh entry to the Slough House series is as thrilling and bleeding-edge relevant as ever.

A year after a calamitous blunder by the Russian secret service left a British citizen dead from novichok poisoning, Diana Taverner is on the warpath. What seems a gutless response from the government has pushed the Service's First Desk into mounting her own counter-offensive—but she's had to make a deal with the devil first. And given that the devil in question is arch-manipulator Peter Judd, she could be about to lose control of everything she's fought for.

Meanwhile, still reeling from recent losses, the slow horses are worried they've been pushed further into the cold. Slough House has been wiped from Service records, and fatal accidents keep happening. No wonder Jackson Lamb's crew are feeling paranoid. But have they actually been targeted? With a new populist movement taking a grip on London's streets, and the old order ensuring that everything's for sale to the highest bidder, the world's an uncomfortable place for those deemed surplus to requirements. The wise move would be to find a safe place and wait for the troubles to pass.

But the slow horses aren't famed for making wise decisions. And with enemies on all sides, not even Jackson Lamb can keep his crew from harm.]]> 312 Mick Herron 1641292369 Anne 5 4.29 2021 Slough House (Slough House, #7)
author: Mick Herron
name: Anne
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2023/09/19
date added: 2023/09/19
shelves:
review:
My first but definitely not the last Mick Herron book I have read. I am highly entertained by this band of dysfunctional spies lead by their less than intrepid (but wickedly smart) leader, Jackson Lamb. How could you not be attracted to a book where the hero is described as: “Lamb had found a bottle of malt and was in a corner smoking, looking like a bin someone had set fire to.� Based on a true event in Britain post Brexit but pre-covid, Herron manages to combine intrigue and peril and believability tempered by a big dose of humor and an inhumane amount of sarcasm. The flawed cast of characters who inhabit Slough House (for failed spies) are despite their many quirks appealing and rather charming. While the story is largely character driven, there's a pretty tight plot that explores the world of international espionage with some panache. Contemporary is the best sense, don't miss the AppleTV+ adaptation with Gary Oldham and Kirsten Scott Thomas.
]]> Other People's Worlds 599554
William Trevor was born in Mitchelstown, County Cork, in 1928, and was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He has lived in England for many years. The author of numerous acclaimed collections of short stories and novels, he has won many awards including the Whitbread Book of the Year, The James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. He has been shortlisted three times for the Booker Prize: in 1976 with his novel The Children of Dynmouth, in 1991 with Reading Turgenev and in 2002 with The Story of Lucy Gault. He recently received the prestigious David Cohen Literature Prize in recognition of a lifetime's literary achievement.]]> 224 William Trevor 0140106693 Anne 0 to-read 3.94 1980 Other People's Worlds
author: William Trevor
name: Anne
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1980
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/09/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Bel Canto 5826 318 Ann Patchett Anne 3 3.93 2001 Bel Canto
author: Ann Patchett
name: Anne
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2001
rating: 3
read at: 2023/09/05
date added: 2023/09/05
shelves:
review:
A group of inept terrorists take over the house of the vice-president of an unnamed South American country in an attempt to overthrow the government -immediately failing because the President has stayed home to watch his favorite soap opera on television. The three generals and their child warriors eventually keep 39 people hostage in the house for four months - the most important hostage being the world's most beloved soprano who keeps the group enthralled with her voice every day. There is a motley crew of significant characters who take much too long to be developed and the day to day activities of the group begin to resemble the antics of a traditional French farce with all the comings and goings. This is Patchett writing at her absurdist best and there are some wonderful emotional moments wrought by some of the characters who are kept together by Gen who is everyone's translator. The hostage scene becomes more and more bizarre until it ends. The reality is real and hard.
]]> Who Am I? 32279836 0 Carol Matas 1927663377 Anne 3 ya 3.00 1999 Who Am I?
author: Carol Matas
name: Anne
average rating: 3.00
book published: 1999
rating: 3
read at: 2017/01/05
date added: 2023/08/10
shelves: ya
review:
When privileged and wealthy teenager, Miranda, is suddenly stricken with a life threatening but poorly explained disease, her parents are on the case right away assuring her that it will all be taken care of and that she has no need to worry. This is when Miranda makes some shocking discoveries about herself and how she came to be. Suddenly, Miranda is part of a brave new universe when she finds out that she is actually the clone of her parents' first child, and that they have also created another "child" to provide spare parts to Miranda should she ever become ill. From this point, the tension mounts when Miranda has to decide the meaning of her own truth and to find answers to much deeper ethical questions of nature vs nurture. Matas then takes the reader into an arch evil scientist mystery involving a trio of clones and the dangers they encounter. This is where the book really falls down. "Who Am I?" is a reworking together of three previous SF works by Matas, and truthfully the "new" plot lacks credence and sure footed narrative. It borders on the preposterous at times, because of so many twists and turns and the reader figuring out who is impersonating who. and why.
]]> <![CDATA[Paper Trails: From the Backwoods to the Front Page, a Life in Stories]]> 63387761 One of Canada's greatest journalists shares a half century of the stories behind the stories.

From his vantage point harnessed to a tree overlooking the town of Huntsville (he tended to wander), a very young Roy MacGregor got in the habit of watching people—what they did, who they talked to, where they went. He has been getting to know his fellow Canadians and telling us all about them ever since.
ĚýĚýĚýĚýFrom his early days in the pages of Maclean's, to stints at the Toronto Star, Ottawa Citizen, National Post and most famously from his perch on page two of the Globe and Mail, MacGregor was one of the country's must-read journalists. While news media were leaning increasingly right or left, he always leaned north, his curiosity trained by the deep woods and cold lakes of Algonquin Park to share stories from Canada's farthest reaches, even as he worked in the newsrooms of its southern capitols. From Parliament to the backyard rink, subarctic shores to prairie expanses, MacGregor shaped the way Canadians saw and thought about themselves—never entirely untethered from the land and its history.
Ěý Ěý When MacGregor was still a young editor at Maclean's, the 21-year-old chief of the Waskaganish (aka Rupert's House) Crees, Billy Diamond, found in Roy a willing listener as the chief was appealing desperately to newsrooms across Ottawa, trying to bring attention to the tainted-water emergency in his community.ĚýWhere other journalists had shrugged off Diamond's appeals, MacGregor got on a tiny plane into northern Quebec. From there began a long friendship that would one day lead MacGregor to a Winnipeg secret location with Elijah Harper and his advisors, a host of the most influential Indigenous leaders in Canada, as the Manitoba MPP contemplated the Charlottetown Accord and a vote that could shatter what seemed at the time the country's last chance to save Confederation.Ěý
Ěý Ěý This was the sort of exclusive access to vital Canadian stories that Roy MacGregor always seemed to secure. And as his ardent fans will discover, the observant small-town boy turned pre-eminent journalist put his rare vantage point to exceptional use. Filled with reminiscences of an age when Canadian newsrooms were populated by outsized characters, outright rogues and passionate practitioners,Ěýthe unputdownable Paper Trails is a must-read account of a life lived in stories.]]> 426 Roy MacGregor 1039000738 Anne 4 As a long time connoisseur of memoir,â€� Paper Trails”hits all the right notes for this particular Canuck of a certain age. Roy MacGregor has had a personal window into many of the significant events of my own lifetime as a Canadian. He describes himself as having MacGregor luck in that he often found himself in the right place at the right time. MacGregor has vastly enjoyed the heyday of long form and short form journalism in Canada and has been employed by all the major vendors of print media in the country - Maclean’s, the Ottawa Citizen, The National Post, The Globe and Mail etc. and has received many accolades for his work. He is the author of over 50 books for both adults and children, but judiciously selects the anecdotes for this memoir thoughtfully and respectfully but also with wit and self-deprecation. A life well lived and we readers get to enjoy his journey down memory lane with familiar people, as well as a broad swath of Canadian geography.]]> 4.18 Paper Trails: From the Backwoods to the Front Page, a Life in Stories
author: Roy MacGregor
name: Anne
average rating: 4.18
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2023/08/05
date added: 2023/08/05
shelves:
review:
A very strong 4 Stars
As a long time connoisseur of memoir,� Paper Trails”hits all the right notes for this particular Canuck of a certain age. Roy MacGregor has had a personal window into many of the significant events of my own lifetime as a Canadian. He describes himself as having MacGregor luck in that he often found himself in the right place at the right time. MacGregor has vastly enjoyed the heyday of long form and short form journalism in Canada and has been employed by all the major vendors of print media in the country - Maclean’s, the Ottawa Citizen, The National Post, The Globe and Mail etc. and has received many accolades for his work. He is the author of over 50 books for both adults and children, but judiciously selects the anecdotes for this memoir thoughtfully and respectfully but also with wit and self-deprecation. A life well lived and we readers get to enjoy his journey down memory lane with familiar people, as well as a broad swath of Canadian geography.
]]> The Ghosts of Paris 56886337 A thrilling tale of courage and secrets set in postwar London and Paris, in which a search for a missing husband puts investigator and former war reporter Billie Walker on a collision course with an underground network of Nazi criminals

It's 1947. The world continues to grapple with the fallout of the Second World War, and former war reporter Billie Walker is finding her feet as an investigator. When a wealthy client hires Billie and her assistant Sam to track down her missing husband, the trail leads Billie back to London and Paris, where Billie's own painful memories also lurk. Jack Rake, Billie's wartime lover and, briefly, husband, is just one of the millions of people who went missing in Europe during the war. What was his fate after they left Paris together?

As Billie's search for her client's husband takes her to both the swanky bars at Paris's famous Ritz hotel and to the dank basements of the infamous Paris morgue, she'll need to keep her gun at the ready, because something even more terrible than a few painful memories might be following her around the city of lights . . .]]> 384 Tara Moss 1743096658 Anne 3 4.20 2022 The Ghosts of Paris
author: Tara Moss
name: Anne
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2023/08/04
date added: 2023/08/04
shelves:
review:
Basically this is intrepid girl investigator (Nancy Drew??) out to save the world, although this time it’s Ms Billie Walker, PI of Sydney Australia in 1947, who is called upon to go to Europe to find a missing spouse (one Richard Montgomery) and uses the trip to search for her own missing husband (Jack Rake) a journalist who was lost in the Warsaw uprising near the end of the war. The less than stellar plot is actually endlessly tedious although there are a couple of big danger scenes for Billie to escape from while she’s searching for both men, and not just a few red herrings from Billie’s days as a Nazi hunter in Oz. After hundreds of pages of accurate historical detail, Tara Moss runs out of steam and rashly brings both plot lines to a rushed and largely unsatisfactory conclusion. One of the best parts of the book featured Billie’s four days of travel from Sydney to London in a repurposed Lancaster bomber - Moss provides a look into this post-war travel that is largely unreported. Ironically, Billie is portrayed as an ultimate feminist but she seems at the same time to embody every female cliche known with regard to love and romance!
]]> <![CDATA[How to Pronounce Knife: Stories]]> 51196859 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780316422130.

In the title story of Souvankham Thammavongsa's debut collection, a young girl brings a book home from school and asks her father to help her pronounce a tricky word, a simple exchange with unforgettable consequences. Thammavongsa is a master at homing in on moments like this -- moments of exposure, dislocation, and messy feeling that push us right up against the limits of language.

The stories that make up How to Pronounce Knife focus on characters struggling to find their bearings in unfamiliar territory, or shuttling between idioms, cultures, and values. A failed boxer discovers what it truly means to be a champion when he starts painting nails at his sister's salon. A young woman tries to discern the invisible but immutable social hierarchies at a chicken processing plant. A mother coaches her daughter in the challenging art of worm harvesting.

In a taut, visceral prose style that establishes her as one of the most striking and assured voices of her generation, Thammavongsa interrogates what it means to make a living, to work, and to create meaning.

How to pronounce knife --
Paris --
Slingshot --
Randy Travis --
Mani pedi --
Chick-a-chee! --
The universe would be so cruel --
Edge of the world --
The school bus driver --
You are so embarassing --
Ewwrrkk --
The gas station --
A far distant thing --
Picking worms]]> 192 Souvankham Thammavongsa Anne 4 3.85 2020 How to Pronounce Knife: Stories
author: Souvankham Thammavongsa
name: Anne
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2023/07/09
date added: 2023/07/09
shelves:
review:
A strong 4. This short collection of stories is very powerful, yet by design each story ends ambiguously. In quiet, understated economical prose Thammavongsa explores explores both foreigness and belonging, in this case as Laos refugees resettled in Canada. These are not happy stories, by and large, and some are truly emotional time bombs. But the author also has a sly sense of humor which seeps through the generally difficult circumstances most of the characters endure - often because of their ignorance of Canadian customs that the rest of us just assume. However, the book is deserving of the many accolades it has received and leaves the reader with much to consider and think about. Definitely recommended.
]]> The Maid (Molly the Maid, #1) 55196813
Since Gran died a few months ago, twenty-five-year-old Molly has been navigating life's complexities all by herself. No matter—she throws herself with gusto into her work as a hotel maid. Her unique character, along with her obsessive love of cleaning and proper etiquette, make her an ideal fit for the job. She delights in donning her crisp uniform each morning, stocking her cart with miniature soaps and bottles, and returning guest rooms at the Regency Grand Hotel to a state of perfection.

But Molly's orderly life is upended the day she enters the suite of the infamous and wealthy Charles Black, only to find it in a state of disarray and Mr. Black himself dead in his bed. Before she knows what's happening, Molly's unusual demeanor has the police targeting her as their lead suspect. She quickly finds herself caught in a web of deception, one she has no idea how to untangle. Fortunately for Molly, friends she never knew she had unite with her in a search for clues to what really happened to Mr. Black—but will they be able to find the real killer before it's too late?

A Clue-like, locked-room mystery and a heartwarming journey of the spirit, The Maid explores what it means to be the same as everyone else and yet entirely different—and reveals that all mysteries can be solved through connection to the human heart.]]> 304 Nita Prose 0593356152 Anne 3 This might be your quintessential cozy mystery/summer beach read. Molly Gray, our maid, inhabits the autism spectrum and is a perfectionist maid in an upscale hotel. She is 25 years old and has just lost her beloved gran who has raised her. Molly conducts herself modestly and applies singular vigor to her job. Her peers regard her as a weirdo. But everything in Molly’s world abruptly changes when she is charged with the murder of one of the hotel guests. Told in the first person by Molly the story plays out with an interesting array of supporting characters and comes complete with an obligatory happy ending.
A pleasant debut that has all the hallmarks of a potential movie, but bottom line it’s still a pretty light weight book. But sometimes you just need light weight reading!]]> 3.71 2022 The Maid (Molly the Maid, #1)
author: Nita Prose
name: Anne
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2023/07/06
date added: 2023/07/06
shelves:
review:
3.5 Stars
This might be your quintessential cozy mystery/summer beach read. Molly Gray, our maid, inhabits the autism spectrum and is a perfectionist maid in an upscale hotel. She is 25 years old and has just lost her beloved gran who has raised her. Molly conducts herself modestly and applies singular vigor to her job. Her peers regard her as a weirdo. But everything in Molly’s world abruptly changes when she is charged with the murder of one of the hotel guests. Told in the first person by Molly the story plays out with an interesting array of supporting characters and comes complete with an obligatory happy ending.
A pleasant debut that has all the hallmarks of a potential movie, but bottom line it’s still a pretty light weight book. But sometimes you just need light weight reading!
]]> All the Broken Pieces 4296443
Two years after being airlifted out of war-torn Vietnam, Matt Pin is by bombs that fell like dead crows, by the family -- and the terrible secret -- he left behind. Now, inside a caring adoptive home in the United States, a series of profound events force him to choose between silence and candor, blame and forgiveness, fear and freedom.

By turns harrowing, dreamlike, sad, and triumphant, this searing debut novel, written in lucid verse, reveals an unforgettable perspective on the lasting impact of war and the healing power of love.]]> 224 Ann E. Burg 0545080924 Anne 0 to-read 3.98 2009 All the Broken Pieces
author: Ann E. Burg
name: Anne
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/07/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Money 18825 Time Magazine included the book in its list of the 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005. The story of John Self and his insatiable appetite for money, alcohol, fast food, drugs, pornography, and more, Money is ceaselessly inventive and thrillingly savage; a tale of life lived without restraint, of money and the disasters it can precipitate.]]> 394 Martin Amis 0099461889 Anne 3 3.72 1984 Money
author: Martin Amis
name: Anne
average rating: 3.72
book published: 1984
rating: 3
read at: 2023/06/30
date added: 2023/06/30
shelves:
review:
Read “Money� as homage to the recently deceased Martin Amis. Personally, a difficult read. I get that the book is a satire about the greed of the eighties, a parody of all the 80’s excess but despite the frenetic clever writing much of it was largely unlikeable, especially the main guy, “John Self�. Sadly, Amis has never encountered an adverb or adjective that he doesn’t want to display. So much so that there is little plot movement in the first half of a rather long book about Self and his obsessions with money, sex (specifically “hand jobs�) and junk food. Things pick up in the second half as Self approaches imminent ruin as the producer of pornographic films on both sides of the Atlantic. Amis is a brilliant writer, even managing to insert himself as character in “Money�. The book is also a platform for a couple of Amis� personal obsessions - bad teeth and dentists, as well as a fixation with “rugs�. For those not in the know - a “rug� is synonymous with hair. For this reader, clever just wasn’t enough.
]]> The Maid 124019445 384 Nita Prose 0735246343 Anne 0 to-read 3.72 2022 The Maid
author: Nita Prose
name: Anne
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Eden Test 60784371 The Perfect Marriage and Rock Paper Scissors, about a couple who are forced to the ultimate extremes to save their marriage—and themselves.

Seven Days. Seven Questions. Forever Changed.

Daisy and Craig’s marriage is in serious trouble. That’s why Daisy has signed up for The Eden Test, a week-long getaway for couples in need of a fresh start. Yet even as she’s struggling to salvage her marriage, it seems Craig has plans to leave her for another woman. In fact, his bags are already packed—long before he arrives to meet Daisy in this remote cabin in the woods of upstate New York.

At first, their week away is marked by solitude, connection, and natural beauty—and only a few hostile locals. But what Craig doesn’t know is that Daisy, a slyly talented actress, has her own secrets, including a burner phone she’s been using for mysterious texts. Not to mention the Eden Test itself, which poses a searing new question to the couple every day, each more explosive than the last. Their marriage was never perfect, but now the lies and revelations are piling up, as the week becomes much more than they bargained for…How far are they willing to go?

Adam Sternbergh brings his wit, originality, and a Hitchcockian sense of dread to this chilling, surprising, and wholly entertaining portrait of a marriage on the brink.]]> 336 Adam Sternbergh 1250855667 Anne 0 to-read 3.34 2023 The Eden Test
author: Adam Sternbergh
name: Anne
average rating: 3.34
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Tender Bar: A Memoir 144977
J.R. Moehringer grew up captivated by a voice. It was the voice of his father, a New York City disc jockey who vanished before J.R. spoke his first word. Sitting on the stoop, pressing an ear to the radio, J.R. would strain to hear in that plummy baritone the secrets of masculinity and identity. Though J.R.'s mother was his world, his rock, he craved something more, something faintly and hauntingly audible only in The Voice.

At eight years old, suddenly unable to find The Voice on the radio, J.R. turned in desperation to the bar on the corner, where he found a rousing chorus of new voices. Cops and poets, bookies and soldiers, movie stars and stumblebums, all sorts of men gathered in the bar to tell their stories and forget their cares. The alphas along the bar—including J.R.'s Uncle Charlie, a Humphrey Bogart look-alike; Colt, a Yogi Bear sound-alike; and Joey D, a softhearted brawler—took J.R. to the beach, to ballgames, and ultimately into their circle. They taught J.R., tended him, and provided a kind of fatherhood-by-committee.

Torn between the stirring example of his mother and the lurid romance of the bar, J.R. tried to forge a self somewhere in the center. But when it was time for J.R. to leave home, the bar became an increasingly seductive sanctuary, a place to return and regroup during his picaresque journeys—from his grandfather's tumbledown house to the hallowed towers and spires of Yale; from his absurd stint selling housewares at Lord & Taylor to his dream job at the New York Times, which became a nightmare when he found himself a faulty cog in a vast machine. Time and again the bar offered shelter from failure, rejection, heartbreak--and eventually from reality.

In the grand tradition of landmark memoirs, The Tender Bar is suspenseful, wrenching, and achingly funny. A classic American story of self-invention and escape, of the fierce love between a single mother and an only son, it's also a moving portrait of one boy's struggle to become a man, and an unforgettable depiction of how men remain, at heart, lost boys.]]> 416 J.R. Moehringer 0786888768 Anne 3 Always a sucker for an entertaining memoir, when I read that Andre Agassiz had approached JR Moehringer to ghost write his remarkably successful sports/tennis memoir, I decided to investigate some more, especially when it turned out he is also the ghost writer of “Spare�, Prince Harry’s tell all which I have no intention of reading. But JR’s personal story of being a fatherless boy in Manhasset NY who is largely mentored into adulthood by the patrons of the famous “Publican� bar is quite entertaining as we follow JR into his career as a prize winning journalist. Basically it is a series of roughly connected anecdotes - some worthy of reading, others less so. The book is uneven and could have been even better if he had chosen to emphasize some of his characters more emphatically (eg Uncle Charlie, his maternal grandparents) and fewer of the bar flies. There are also big gaps - but the latest edition addresses some of the empty areas in three epilogues. JR was cutting his teeth when he wrote this but there’s no doubt that he has buoyancy and talent as a writer.]]> 3.96 2005 The Tender Bar: A Memoir
author: J.R. Moehringer
name: Anne
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2005
rating: 3
read at: 2023/05/21
date added: 2023/05/21
shelves:
review:
3.5 Stars
Always a sucker for an entertaining memoir, when I read that Andre Agassiz had approached JR Moehringer to ghost write his remarkably successful sports/tennis memoir, I decided to investigate some more, especially when it turned out he is also the ghost writer of “Spare�, Prince Harry’s tell all which I have no intention of reading. But JR’s personal story of being a fatherless boy in Manhasset NY who is largely mentored into adulthood by the patrons of the famous “Publican� bar is quite entertaining as we follow JR into his career as a prize winning journalist. Basically it is a series of roughly connected anecdotes - some worthy of reading, others less so. The book is uneven and could have been even better if he had chosen to emphasize some of his characters more emphatically (eg Uncle Charlie, his maternal grandparents) and fewer of the bar flies. There are also big gaps - but the latest edition addresses some of the empty areas in three epilogues. JR was cutting his teeth when he wrote this but there’s no doubt that he has buoyancy and talent as a writer.
]]> The Lincoln Highway 57109107 The bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility and master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction returns with a stylish and propulsive novel set in 1950s America

In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the work farm where he has just served a year for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett’s intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother and head west where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden’s car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett’s future.

Spanning just ten days and told from multiple points of view, Towles’s third novel will satisfy fans of his multi-layered literary styling while providing them an array of new and richly imagined settings, characters, and themes.]]> 576 Amor Towles 0735222355 Anne 0 to-read 4.18 2021 The Lincoln Highway
author: Amor Towles
name: Anne
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/05/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Hello Beautiful 61771675
But then darkness from William’s past surfaces, jeopardizing not only Julia’s carefully orchestrated plans for their future, but the sisters� unshakeable devotion to one another. The result is a catastrophic family rift that changes their lives for generations. Will the loyalty that once rooted them be strong enough to draw them back together when it matters most?]]> 416 Ann Napolitano Anne 4 No doubt "Hello Beautiful" is a magnificent, multigenerational family saga riffing on "Little Women" and it is an emotional tender read. The four sisters (Julia, Sylvie, Emeline and Cecelia) would be worth the read alone, but then there's the catalyst to much of the family angst - William. There's the parents, Rose and Charlie and the next generation - Izzie and Alice. Napolitano makes each of her characters believable, lovable and real. Then she places them in a plot that is meticulously constructed with at least three mini-crises that change the trajectories of all the principle players. Not an easy task but she pulls it off with aplomb while managing to accept the challenge of what constitutes a "family" in the 2000s. The story is told more or less chronologically, but from multiple viewpoints and she also does this almost seamlessly. A book to inhale but will linger for a long while in your head.]]> 4.14 2023 Hello Beautiful
author: Ann Napolitano
name: Anne
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/05/06
date added: 2023/05/06
shelves:
review:
4.5 Stars
No doubt "Hello Beautiful" is a magnificent, multigenerational family saga riffing on "Little Women" and it is an emotional tender read. The four sisters (Julia, Sylvie, Emeline and Cecelia) would be worth the read alone, but then there's the catalyst to much of the family angst - William. There's the parents, Rose and Charlie and the next generation - Izzie and Alice. Napolitano makes each of her characters believable, lovable and real. Then she places them in a plot that is meticulously constructed with at least three mini-crises that change the trajectories of all the principle players. Not an easy task but she pulls it off with aplomb while managing to accept the challenge of what constitutes a "family" in the 2000s. The story is told more or less chronologically, but from multiple viewpoints and she also does this almost seamlessly. A book to inhale but will linger for a long while in your head.
]]> Birnam Wood 60784757 Birnam Wood is on the move . . .

Five years ago, Mira Bunting founded a guerrilla gardening group: Birnam Wood. An undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimes-philanthropic gathering of friends, this activist collective plants crops wherever no one will notice: on the sides of roads, in forgotten parks, and neglected backyards. For years, the group has struggled to break even. Then Mira stumbles on an answer, a way to finally set the group up for the long term: a landslide has closed the Korowai Pass, cutting off the town of Thorndike. Natural disaster has created an opportunity, a sizable farm seemingly abandoned.

But Mira is not the only one interested in Thorndike. Robert Lemoine, the enigmatic American billionaire, has snatched it up to build his end-times bunker--or so he tells Mira when he catches her on the property. Intrigued by Mira, Birnam Wood, and their entrepreneurial spirit, he suggests they work this land. But can they trust him? And, as their ideals and ideologies are tested, can they trust each other?

A gripping psychological thriller from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Luminaries, Birnam Wood is Shakespearean in its wit, drama, and immersion in character. A brilliantly constructed consideration of intentions, actions, and consequences, it is an unflinching examination of the human impulse to ensure our own survival.]]> 432 Eleanor Catton 0374110336 Anne 3 3.79 2023 Birnam Wood
author: Eleanor Catton
name: Anne
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2023/04/30
date added: 2023/05/01
shelves:
review:
This much anticipated eco-literary thriller by Eleanor Catton was a big disappointment to this reader. Reading it was like watching a mediocre drama on Netflix. But that would probably have been better than the book because at least we’d get to enjoy the fabulous scenery of New Zealand’s South Island. The plot, such as it is, involves an eco friendly guerrilla gardening group that encounters a nefarious American billionaire who has designs on rare minerals in a NZ national park and who has the wherewithal to pursue whatever he wants. The characters are so cardboard like that it’s even hard to determine who are the good and who are the bad guys and who to root for. Catton’s obvious intelligence is very evident in her attention to all kinds of 21st century technical wizardry…the cellphones are umbilically attached to every character. So wound up in all of this, it takes two thirds of the book to get to any kind of crescendo, and having run out of time and space the ending is far too abrupt to be acceptable.
]]> Notes on an Execution 57773248
Ansel Packer is scheduled to die in twelve hours. He knows what he’s done, and now awaits execution, the same chilling fate he forced on those girls, years ago. But Ansel doesn’t want to die; he wants to be celebrated, understood. He hoped it wouldn’t end like this, not for him.

Through a kaleidoscope of women—a mother, a sister, a homicide detective—we learn the story of Ansel’s life. We meet his mother, Lavender, a seventeen-year-old girl pushed to desperation; Hazel, twin sister to Ansel’s wife, inseparable since birth, forced to watch helplessly as her sister’s relationship threatens to devour them all; and finally, Saffy, the homicide detective hot on his trail, who has devoted herself to bringing bad men to justice but struggles to see her own life clearly. As the clock ticks down, these three women sift through the choices that culminate in tragedy, exploring the rippling fissures that such destruction inevitably leaves in its wake.

Blending breathtaking suspense with astonishing empathy, Notes on an Execution presents a chilling portrait of womanhood as it simultaneously unravels the familiar narrative of the American serial killer, interrogating our system of justice and our cultural obsession with crime stories, asking readers to consider the false promise of looking for meaning in the psyches of violent men.]]> 306 Danya Kukafka 0063052733 Anne 5 4.04 2022 Notes on an Execution
author: Danya Kukafka
name: Anne
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2023/04/08
date added: 2023/04/08
shelves:
review:
This is a serial killer book like no other. It isn’t even a whodunnit or whydunnit, but rather a story that could be described as a giant witness impact statement. Kukafka seamlessly braids together the story of Ansel Packer with the stories of three women whose lives are inalterably changed by his existence. They are diverse - the sister of one of his victims, a mixed race police officer whose past is shared with Ansel, Angel’s mother-Lavender. The beginning of Ansel’s story is so gritty, so desperate that the reader would be forgiven abandonment. But perseverance brings reward as the author works her way to the final minutes of Ansel’s life. Bouncing backward and forward through time, this is a compelling read. Very few flaws, superbly written.
]]> <![CDATA[The Three Sisters Bar and Hotel]]> 23590725 A landmark novel of the Canadian West from one of Canada’s most accomplished writers, author of The Ghost Brush and Fables of Brunswick Avenue

Gateway, Alberta, 1911. The coming of the railroad to the Canadian Rockies has brought a parade of newcomers to the heavenly Bow Valley—climbers, coal miners, artists, scientists, runaway aristocrats and remittance men. Among the latter is the poacher Herbie Wishart, who arrived on a one-way ticket and has reinvented himself as a trail guide and teller of tall tales.

Herbie becomes outfitter for a fossil-hunting expedition headed by a prominent Washington, D.C., archaeologist. Rumours say that the findings of the secrecy-shrouded Hodgson expedition, as it comes to be known, could overturn all previous knowledge about early life forms. Brought along to help in the quarry for the summer are Hodgson’s adult children, mopey Humphrey and the captivating Isabel, with whom Herbie strikes up a campside alliance. But when an early snowstorm hits and trailside grudges come to a head, the expedition mysteriously disappears. The tragedy threatens to stain the Rocky Mountain park’s reputation just as its newly elected government overseers begin to sell the pristine Canadian wilderness to the world. Despite all efforts from that year on to solve, or bury, the mystery, the disappearance will haunt Gateway, and define the futures of Herbie Wishart and his stubbornly female descendants.

The Three Sisters Bar and Hotel is at once sweeping and intimate, and bursting with heart, wit and larger-than-life characters who rival the Rocky Mountain landscape for sheer brio. Katherine Govier proves she is one of Canada’s master storytellers with this new novel, which is a groundbreaking portrait of Western Canada’s past, with all its contradictions and complexities, an intimate story of romance and family, and a tantalizing historical—and prehistorical—mystery.]]> 480 Katherine Govier 144343664X Anne 3 3.36 2016 The Three Sisters Bar and Hotel
author: Katherine Govier
name: Anne
average rating: 3.36
book published: 2016
rating: 3
read at: 2023/03/26
date added: 2023/03/26
shelves:
review:
For a book built on the premise of solving the riddle of a group of lost Americans on a scientific expedition in the Canadian Rockies near the turn of the twentieth century, The Three Sisters Bar and Hotel by Katherine Govier simply lacks tension and yes, resolution. It is almost 500 pages of tedium that is also sabotaged by Canadian history subplots/tropes such as the birth of the National Park system or the eternal presence of fake Indians, or a finale ending with a parade on Canada Day. There’s a grand array of characters in this family/generational saga but they are unusually banal, including Herbie Wishart who is the ultimate key to the ancient mystery. It’s even difficult to keep track of their names as they are frequently unmemorable. One reviewer called this a sprawling brawl of Canadian historical fiction - and considering that the story in no way unfolds in a linear fashion, it’s hard to argue with that assessment.
]]> <![CDATA[Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers]]> 56769575
For two thousand years, cadavers—some willingly, some unwittingly—have been involved in science’s boldest strides and weirdest undertakings. They’ve tested France’s first guillotines, ridden the NASA Space Shuttle, been crucified in a Parisian laboratory to test the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, and helped solve the mystery of TWA Flight 800. For every new surgical procedure, from heart transplants to gender confirmation surgery, cadavers have helped make history in their quiet way. Stiff investigates the strange lives of our bodies postmortem and answers the question: What should we do after we die?]]> 320 Mary Roach 0393881725 Anne 3 Everything you probably never wanted to know about the afterlife of cadavers. Whether the content makes you squeamish or not, you are going to acquire some surprising bits of information about dead bodies you would never have thought about - from the intricacies of embalming to the prevalence of cannibalism throughout the ages. Roach approaches the whole topic with a joking style of narrative that can be off-putting but generally works. Where the book suffers is in the tedious amount of detail Roach includes athough some chapters are more accessible than others, for eg - the Decay Farm for Corpses. Lots of research, lots to think about.]]> 4.12 2003 Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
author: Mary Roach
name: Anne
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2003
rating: 3
read at: 2023/02/26
date added: 2023/02/26
shelves:
review:
3.5 Stars
Everything you probably never wanted to know about the afterlife of cadavers. Whether the content makes you squeamish or not, you are going to acquire some surprising bits of information about dead bodies you would never have thought about - from the intricacies of embalming to the prevalence of cannibalism throughout the ages. Roach approaches the whole topic with a joking style of narrative that can be off-putting but generally works. Where the book suffers is in the tedious amount of detail Roach includes athough some chapters are more accessible than others, for eg - the Decay Farm for Corpses. Lots of research, lots to think about.
]]> <![CDATA[The Thursday Murder Club (Thursday Murder Club, #1)]]> 46000520
But when a brutal killing takes place on their very doorstep, the Thursday Murder Club find themselves in the middle of their first live case. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves.

Can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer before it's too late?

Alternate cover edition can be found here .]]> 382 Richard Osman Anne 4 Club" is for you. Four seniors living in an upscale retirement village form a club to solve unsolved murders (one of them having been a police detective in a past life). But when the owner of the retirement village is suddenly killed, the group toddles into action. The actual mystery to be solved is truly poorly plotted and gets unduly complicated but it doesn't really matter.The heart and soul of the book is the four sleuths - Elizabeth (the lead), Jane, Ibrahim and Ron. The characterizations are strong and there's more than a little wit and wisdom to be enjoyed, based on their septuagenarian status. Supporting police personnel are also likable and well fleshed out. The book is not demanding and is a delightful diversion on a chilly winter's day or on a sun baked beach (maybe far away from February in Canada). No doubt, this book will become a movie.]]> 3.86 2020 The Thursday Murder Club (Thursday Murder Club, #1)
author: Richard Osman
name: Anne
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2023/02/02
date added: 2023/02/02
shelves:
review:
If you are in need of a cozy mystery without undue violence and mayhem, "The Thursday Murder
Club" is for you. Four seniors living in an upscale retirement village form a club to solve unsolved murders (one of them having been a police detective in a past life). But when the owner of the retirement village is suddenly killed, the group toddles into action. The actual mystery to be solved is truly poorly plotted and gets unduly complicated but it doesn't really matter.The heart and soul of the book is the four sleuths - Elizabeth (the lead), Jane, Ibrahim and Ron. The characterizations are strong and there's more than a little wit and wisdom to be enjoyed, based on their septuagenarian status. Supporting police personnel are also likable and well fleshed out. The book is not demanding and is a delightful diversion on a chilly winter's day or on a sun baked beach (maybe far away from February in Canada). No doubt, this book will become a movie.
]]> <![CDATA[Superfan: How Pop Culture Broke My Heart]]> 60881189 A sharply observed memoir in pieces that uses one woman's life-long love affair with pop culture as a lens to explore family, identity, grief, the power of female rage, and what it's cost to resist the trap of being a good Chinese girl.

For most of Jen Sookfong Lee's life, pop culture was an escape from family tragedy and a means of fitting in with the larger culture around her. Anne of Green Gables promised her that, despite losing her father at the age of twelve, one day she might still have the loving family of her dreams, and Princess Diana was proof that maybe there was more to being a good girl after all. And yet as Jen grew up, she began to recognize the ways in which pop culture was not made for someone like her--the child of Chinese immigrant parents who looked for safety in the invisibility afforded by embracing model minority myths.

Ranging from the unattainable perfection of Gwyneth Paltrow and the father-figure familiarity of Bob Ross, to the long shadow cast by The Joy Luck Club and the life lessons she has learned from Rihanna, Jen weaves together key moments in pop culture with stories of her own failings, longings, and struggles as she navigates the minefields that come with carving her own path as an Asian woman, single mother, and writer. And with great wit, bracing honesty, and a deep appreciation for the ways culture shapes us, she draws direct lines between the spectacle of the popular, the intimacy of our personal bonds, and the social foundations of our collective obsessions.]]> 272 Jen Sookfong Lee 0771025211 Anne 4 3.89 2023 Superfan: How Pop Culture Broke My Heart
author: Jen Sookfong Lee
name: Anne
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/01/27
date added: 2023/01/27
shelves:
review:
A strong 4 for “Superfan�. Jen Sookfong Lee uses her personal attachment to cultural moments to make sense of her life so far, especially in the context of being born into a Chinese Canadian family in Vancouver in 1976. As the youngest of 5 girls, she is often forgotten in the family dynamic especially as her father dies when she is twelve after a prolonged bout of cancer, leaving a devastated widow whose poor command of English is never enough. So Jen loses herself in books and television as a way to alleviate the pain of home when all that is left is her mother and herself. Through linked essays she explores the concept of her different-ness from others who are not Chinese. One particularly strong essay happens when she articulates what it is like to be a fetish for young white men who often have embraced stereotypes of Chinese females…and who usually ultimately reject them for their previous partners. If there were any criticism of this strong memoir, it would be that the author blames or relies on her otherness to explain events that might be more universal than she perceives them. In short, sometimes she could just use a thicker skin!
]]> <![CDATA[Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands]]> 59069071 Celebrated cartoonist Kate Beaton vividly presents the untold story of Canada.

Before there was Kate Beaton, New York Times bestselling cartoonist of Hark A Vagrant fame, there was Katie Beaton of the Cape Breton Beatons, specifically Mabou, a tight-knit seaside community where the lobster is as abundant as beaches, fiddles, and Gaelic folk songs. After university, Beaton heads out west to take advantage of Alberta’s oil rush, part of the long tradition of East Coasters who seek gainful employment elsewhere when they can't find it in the homeland they love so much. With the singular goal of paying off her student loans, what the journey will actually cost Beaton will be far more than she anticipates.

Arriving in Fort McMurray, Beaton finds work in the lucrative camps owned and operated by the world’s largest oil companies. Being one of the few women among thousands of men, the culture shock is palpable. It does not hit home until she moves to a spartan, isolated worksite for higher pay. She encounters the harsh reality of life in the oil sands where trauma is an everyday occurrence yet never discussed. Her wounds may never heal.

Beaton’s natural cartooning prowess is on full display as she draws colossal machinery and mammoth vehicles set against a sublime Albertan backdrop of wildlife, Northern Lights, and Rocky Mountains. Her first full-length graphic narrative, Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands is an untold story of Canada: a country that prides itself on its egalitarian ethos and natural beauty while simultaneously exploiting both the riches of its land and the humanity of its people.]]> 430 Kate Beaton 1770462899 Anne 0 to-read 4.41 2022 Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands
author: Kate Beaton
name: Anne
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/01/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Brother 13271378 Coming of age in The Park, a cluster of town houses and leaning concrete towers in the disparaged outskirts of a sprawling city, Michael and Francis battle against the careless prejudices and low expectations that confront them as young men of black and brown ancestry -- teachers stream them into general classes; shopkeepers see them only as thieves; and strangers quicken their pace when the brothers are behind them. Always Michael and Francis escape into the cool air of the Rouge Valley, a scar of green wilderness that cuts through their neighbourhood, where they are free to imagine better lives for themselves.
Propelled by the pulsing beats and styles of hip hop, Francis, the older of the two brothers, dreams of a future in music. Michael's dreams are of Aisha, the smartest girl in their high school whose own eyes are firmly set on a life elsewhere. But the bright hopes of all three are violently, irrevocably thwarted by a tragic shooting, and the police crackdown and suffocating suspicion that follow.
With devastating emotional force David Chariandy, a unique and exciting voice in Canadian literature, crafts a heartbreaking and timely story about the profound love that exists between brothers and the senseless loss of lives cut short with the shot of a gun.]]> 192 David Chariandy 0771022905 Anne 4 4.07 2017 Brother
author: David Chariandy
name: Anne
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2022/04/27
date added: 2023/01/12
shelves:
review:
Powerful and ultimately humbling, this is the recent Canadian immigrant experience writ large. When Michael (the narrator) and Francis' parents come to Canada from Trinidad they are seeking a better life, but the reality is the dead end "life". The father disappears and Mother is left to fend for herself and her two boys in the immigrant ghetto of Scarborough, providing for them with menial cleaning jobs. All three of them are penned in by their circumstances, although they hope for more they come to the slow realization that they will never fit in or ever find a way to economic security. When the book opens, it soon becomes clear that the whole story of this family is haunted by Francis the older brother. Over the course of the novel, in beautiful precise prose the tragedy of Francis unfurls and how this comes to define all of their lives. But, the author does leave a wee positive window into the future - a maybe for Michael.
]]> <![CDATA[Good in Bed (Cannie Shapiro, #1)]]> 14748
For twenty-eight years, things have been tripping along nicely for Cannie Shapiro. Sure, her mother has come charging out of the closet, and her father has long since dropped out of her world. But she loves her friends, her rat terrier, Nifkin, and her job as pop culture reporter for The Philadelphia Examiner. She's even made a tenuous peace with her plus-size body.

But the day she opens up a national women's magazine and sees the words "Loving a Larger Woman" above her ex-boyfriend's byline, Cannie is plunged into misery...and the most amazing year of her life. From Philadelphia to Hollywood and back home again, she charts a new course for herself: mourning her losses, facing her past, and figuring out who she is and who she can become.]]> 376 Jennifer Weiner 0743418174 Anne 4 3.76 2002 Good in Bed (Cannie Shapiro, #1)
author: Jennifer Weiner
name: Anne
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2002
rating: 4
read at: 2021/12/11
date added: 2023/01/12
shelves:
review:
This is a book which has managed to achieve a 20th anniversary edition, so it must have something going for it! 27 year old Cannie Shapiro who self describes as a larger woman takes us down the rabbit hole of her life after she discovers her (ex) boyfriend Bruce has published a very public opinion piece on what it is like to love a “fat� woman. It’s quite well known now, that this book is quite auto-biographical for its author, Jennifer Weiner, but it’s really more than high end “chicklit�. Some of the attitudes shown (particularly) towards homosexuality do have a two decades old feel, but much of what Cannie feels and experiences still feels really fresh and her journey has some very unexpected surprises. Weiner’s writing is sarcastic, sassy, witty. Other than being too much inclined to navel gaze and whine, Cannie still strives and thrives - a winner, I’d say.
]]>