Markon reads 2020

Hi, I'm belatedly adding a thread here. I'm mostly playing Bingo Dog this year. My main thread is hosted at Club Read, including my Bingo card here.

However, I'm also going to try and track the two genres I read most in: mystery and science fiction.

And I think I'll track non fiction this year too.

Goals? Have fun!

Science Fiction

1. Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky (finished New years weekend)
2. Resurgence by C. J. Cherryh (science fiction)
3. LaGuardia: a very modern story of immigration by Nnedi Okorafor (graphic novel)
Ann Leckie - rereads
4. Ancillary Justice
5. Ancillary Sword
6. Ancillary Mercy
7. A pale light in the black by K. D. Wagers
8. A memory called empire by Arkady Martine

Mystery

January
1. Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd by Alan Bradley
2. Edge of doom by Amanda Cross/Carolyn Heilbrun (reread)

February
3. Scarlet Fever by Rita Mae Brown
4. A better man by Louise Penny (mystery)
5. The late scholar by Jill Patton Walsh (mystery)
6. Bookman's Wake by John Dunning (mystery)
7. Land of shadows by Rachel Howzell Hall

March
8. The last ditch by Ngaio Marsh

April

Elly Griffiths
9. The chalk pit
10. The dark angel

Tony Hillerman
11. Dance hall of the dead
12. Sacred clowns
13. Talking god

Anne Hillerman
14. The tale teller
15. Rock with wings

16. Leave the grave green by Deborah Crombie
17. Trouble is what I do by Walter Mosley
18. Murder 101 by Faye Kellerman

19. Blood, salt and water by Denise Mina
20. About face by Donna Leon

Rachel Howzell Hall
21. Skies of Ash
22. Trails of echoes
23. And now she's gone

24. Verdict in blood by Gail Bowen

Nonfiction Reads


January
1. Foursome: Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keefe, Paul Strand, and Rebecca Salsbury by Carolyn Burke
2. The fall of Richard Nixon by Tom Brokaw

February
3. Manhattan: mapping the story of an island by Jennifer Thermes (history of Long Island in maps and words for juvenile audience)

March
4. The curve of time by M. Wylie Blanchet
5. Who will write our history by Samuel D. Kassow
6. Working by Robert Caro
7. The hidden world of the fox by Adele Brand
8. God land: a story of faith, loss and renewal in middle America by Lyz Lenz

August
9. Officer Clemmons by Dr. François S. Clemmons

September
10. Writing in an age of silence by Sara Paretsky

Welcome back!

>5 thornton37814: Thanks Lori!

Looks like you're off to a good start! :)

Welcome back!

>7 rabbitprincess:, >8 MissWatson: Thanks for the welcome!

Land of shadows by Rachel Howzell Hall is the first in a detective series featuring Elouise Norton, a homicide detective in Los Angeles. Smart and irreverent, Lou carries plenty of baggage. Her sister Tori disappeared when she and Lou were adolescents, and Lou carries around grief, guilt and an unsolved cold case. She walked a beat in the neighborhood she grew up in before making detective, has a good relationship with her team, and has been saddled with a new partner, Collin Taggert, a white male transfer from Colorado, running from his own problems, who has zero exposure to poor black neighborhoods like the one Lou grew up in. Oh yeah, her marriage is not in great shape either. But she does have two girlfriends, one a news reporter, that have her back emotionally.

Lou's and Collin's first case together involves the body of an adolesent female found hanging in a new development owned by the man Lou suspects in her sister's disappearance.

Fast paced, emotionally complex, Land of shadows is a good beginning to a series.

Watched Bombshell on my laptop last night, a film I missed when it came my way a few years ago. Makes me want to read a biography of Hedy Lamar.

Next up?

The Club, about a group of retired priests living in one house and what happens when someone from the Vatican comes to visit.

>11 markon: Just put that movie on hold at my library - thanks for the heads up!

>12 JayneCM: Hope you enjoy it. I found it quite interesting and a bit sad.

>11 markon: I haven't read it yet myself but there is a book by Marie Benedict called The Only Woman in the Room which is a fictional account of Hedy Lamarr's life. It appears to get mixed reviews and it certainly wouldn't replace reading a good biography but you may be interested enough to give it a try.

>14 DeltaQueen50: Thanks for the info, I'll keep it in mind. I suspect I'll read a biography before I try a novel - Fictionalized accounts often have things in them that didn't happen, and it confuses me.

>14 DeltaQueen50: Currently picking up and putting down Hedy's Folly by Richard Rhodes. It's not compelling, but is more nuanced than the documentary.

The curve of time by M. Wylie Blanchet
I read this memoir (with black & white photos) because it sounded interesting and because it fills the bingo square for a book published in my birth year.

Capri (Blanchet) was widowed in the early 1920s. In the summer she, her children, and often their dog explored the coastal waters around Vancouver Island and to the north in their 25 foot cruiser, The Caprice. This book is bit like diary entries, or a blog, condensing several years of travel between the pages of one book.

I took several weeks to read Who will write our history?: Emanuel Rignelblum, the Warsaw Ghetto and the Oyneb Shabes Archives (The by Samuel D. Kassow

This book was originally published in 2007, I saw the documentary based on the book last year, and it is now available on DVD and Amazon Prime (and possibly Hulu.) With a focus on Ringelblum, the book gives some background on the cultural/historical mileau of Poland between World War I & II, and describes the work of Oyneg Shabes, which collected, organized and hid documentation of Poland, and particularly Warsaw, during the German occupation, 1939-1943.

For me, the book was dryer than the movie, but well worth reading for the first three chapters alone. The first two gave me a glimpse of Emanuel Ringelblum's (and Oyneg Shabbes) intellectual and political development and the Jewish culture that shaped Ringelblum between World War I & II in Poland, including the foundation of YIVO (Yiddish Scientific Institute) in 1925 to preserve and study Jewish history and culture in Eastern Europe. (headquartered in New York City after World War II.)

The third chapter, “History for the people,” talks about how Ringelblum as a historian and educated Jews in general began to see themselves as creating an historical picture of Judaism that affirmed Jewish distinctiveness as a contributor to Eastern European society, rather than as a simply a religious community that Poland had welcomed as refugees. This also led to a rejection of assimilation, and an emphasis on developing Yiddish not only as a language of the people, but as an intellectual language as well.

The remaining chapters (4-9) discuss the development and different aspects if the Oyneg Shabes group Ringelblum led from 1939-1943, which chronicled the life and culture of Jewish Poland, especially Warsaw, during the German occupation. This is the group that created a report of the Chelmo massacre and smuggled it to London. Their archives were hidden before the destruction of the ghetto and partially recovered in the 1940s & 50s; the recovered documents can be accessed electrionically by researchers at United States Holocaust Museum and the hJewish Historical Institute.

Recommended for those who like a lot of detail.

I've been absent for several months, but am trying to get back in the swing of things. Here's some comments on the latest book I read.

I've read Louise Erdrich's The night watchman once, and the plot line seemed to meander. I'm reading through it a second time to note themes/details I missed, but it's due back at the library, so I won't finish.


The titular night watchman is based on Erdrich's grandfather, who worked as a watchman at night and acted as one of the leaders of his tribe's fight against termination during the day in the 1950s. In effect Thomas' literal job is as a night watchman, and in his role as leader of the tribe he functions as a watchman when the U.S. Senate decides it's time to end all treaties with Native Americans and evict them from their reservations. The book follows this fight and Pixie (Patrice) and her search for her sister and sister's infant.

As usual with an Erdrich novel, it's the characters and relationships that matter, and the ways in which the community contrives to retain it's traditional ways and what power it can that make up the focus of the novel. This one is well worth a second look if you have the time.

The grammar of God by Aviya Kushner

This is an incredibly rich stew of stories and a glimpse into some of the differences between the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) and the Christian Bible as translated into English. Aviya Kushner, poet, teacher, and former journalist uses her family's habit of arguing about the meaning of Hebrew texts and her introduction to the Christian Bible in English, via a course taught by Marilynne Robinson, to highlight some of the key differences she sees between these texts. This is a deeply personal book, as well as one that gave this reader both a glimpse into how grammar and translation influence the meaning of texts, and the rich history of Jewish study and commentary of the Torah, prophets, and writings.

Best read a chapter or two at a time with time to reflect. Will not reward readers seeking one thesis/throughline.

The searcher by Tana French

Cal Hopper has retired and moved to rural Ireland. He's always thought of himself (and the police) as being on the right (moral) side of things, and retired early when he became confused about whether this was true. By the end of the novel he'll have to face this question again, asking himself what the right thing to do is, and the answer isn't as simple as it used to be.

This novel was slower and less intense than I usually find French's books. If I wasn't so enamored of her writing, I might have found it a bit of a slog. I also found the ending to be more hopeful than her other books. I wonder if this might continue in her writing?

Welcome back! I'm looking forward to reading Tana French's new book.

>21 markon: - Oh, the new Tana French! I have been looking forward to it (with hopes that it would be an improvement over The Wych Elm). Good review!

>23 lkernagh: Lori, I hope you enjoy The searcher when you get to it. I liked The Wych elm, but I know it wasn't eveyone's cup of tea. This one is definitely different.

>22 rabbitprincess: Thanks, and thanks for getting next year's thread started.

>20 markon: The grammar of God sounds really interesting, though I confess to be taken a bit aback at the idea that I might want to read it slowly over the course of many months... or perhaps that would fit well with the very slow, many-books-at-once way I have been reading recently!

Anyway, it sounds right up my alley. Thanks for sharing or I might never have seen it!

>25 pammab: Hope you enjoy it when you get to it - I found I couldn't ready it in one or two goes, but your mileage may vary.

Master of Poisons by Andrea Hairston

Master of poisons is Hairston's 4th novel (and the only one I've read.) The story is of a land of may regions and peoples where resources are spent and approaching exhausted. The path forward for the land is contested, and the story follows Djola, the titular master of poisons, er medicine, and Awa, a young woman who is sold by her father to the Green Elders on her 12th birthday. I was fascinated by the world/cultures described, and enjoyed Awa's story much more than Djola's

The Seep by Chana Porter

I'm still trying to figure out what I think of this one, other than weird in a good way.

The Seep is Chana Porters' first novel, and it describes one person's response to The Seep, an amorphous alien who comes to earth and infiltrates the water, thus bringing everything (people, plants, buildings, etc.) under its influence. Follows one character, Trina, in her interactions with the Seep & others and her resistance to using the Seep.

This novel isn't so obviously about climate change, but one of the effects of The Seep is that people slow down and start to see/experience the planet's hurts and thus work to heal them.

My take on it right now is that The Seep, who haven't ever had bodies before, is changed by it's contact with embodied beings, though the focus of the novel is on Trina.

I completed my 2nd bingo with Rebecca Roanhorse's Black sun (mythology), and my third with Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor's The dragonfly sea (female author not from US or UK: Kenya).

Head over to my 2021 thread here.