What are you reading the week of February 17, 2024?

I had long, busy week with no time for reading.

I didn't have a busy week, so there was much time for books and for ignoring housework.

I read two thrillers - None of This is True by Lisa Jewell, and All Her Fault by Andrea Mara. The first was very good, the second was disappointing. I also finished an audiobook - A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas, which turned out to be high fantasy, a sub-genre that I don't really care for.

Next up is Gone with the Wind. It was my mother's favourite book. She pretended to be sick so she didn't have to go to school in order to read it, which, if you knew my mother, borders on criminal behaviour, so I'm curious about it.

>1 fredbacon: How's the pup doing?

Wrapped up The Rise of Rome yesterday evening. Have started Astrotopia, the first of a run of fairly short works that'll included Anatomy of a Campaign, Mammoths at the Gates, and Babel (no, not Rebecca Kuang's now controversial fantasy).

I finished The Devastating Boys last night, a good short story collection by Elizabeth Taylor. I'm continuing with When McKinsey Comes to Town and The Windup Girl and I think I will also start The Thirteenth Tale.

I’m so glad to be reading These Old Shades right now. It’s a lovely distraction.

I am in the very middle of The Master & Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. There is still a lot of reflection to do and I have yet to finish it, let's just say i am trying very hard not to read it in the pace I want to which is more on the devouring spectrum of pace. :)

Giant: Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, James Dean, Edna Ferber, and the Making of a Legendary American Film
Don Graham
4/5 stars
I have seen this film years ago and highly enjoyed it. The author did a nice job of relating the history of the making of this film and the events around the actors lives in that time period. I am definitely going to re-watch it.

Still reading Pan: The Great God's Modern Return and Last Train from Atlanta (which I'm giving myself plenty of breaks when the subject matter gets too heavy). Also going between The Once and Future King and When Gods Die, a Sebastian St Cyr mystery for some easier reading.

>8 JulieLill: The area they filmed this has hills. It was filmed near Alpine, Texas. I also have liked the movie but have not seen it for a long time.

I am reading Texas Born by Diana Palmer.

>3 Shrike58: He's doing well. We had a fun day at the local dog park this afternoon. It's a good outlet for his excess puppy energy. He just turned 10 months old this week. I gave him a bath yesterday, so he played in the mud this afternoon. He came home looking like a mud ball. It was about 37 degrees, so I nearly froze, but he was running around like a race horse. He likes to get the other dogs all wound up and chasing him. Then he runs through a group of dog owners or under a bench at full speed to try and escape the pursuers.

Enjoying this audio via hoopla ~

Sea Glass Cottage (A Hope Harbor Novel, Book #8)
by Irene Hannon

Everything That Rises Must Converge–Flannery O’Connor
Book on CD performed by by Bronson Pinchot, Karen White, Mark Bramhall, and Lorna Raver.
3.5***

I’ve been meaning to read O’Connor for quite some time, and a challenge to read a book published the year I was fifteen, led me to this collection of short stories published posthumously, after O’Connor died at age 39 from complications of lupus.

I like Southern literature, and particularly Southern Gothic literature. The dark themes explored in such works intrigue and interest me. O’Connor excelled at this.

She gives us characters with flaws (both obvious and slightly hidden) and forces them to interact with others frequently against a backdrop of racial tension. (In this collection, the title story Everything that Rises Must Converge and the final one Judgment Day focus on the changing perceptions in 1950s-1960s America.) O’Connor also frequently includes religion, and her characters sometimes show a change in their religious adherence. While her characters may be blind to their (and others’) faults, the reader has a clear view.

There are occasional bits of … well, not exactly “humor” but lighter observations which lessen the tension and give the reader a short break from the frequently bleak story.

The audiobook features a quartet of talented voice artists. Unfortunately, I cannot clearly tell which person narrated which story, other than the men taking on those stories that primarily featured a male point of view, while the women voiced the tales with a female point of view.

Velvet Was the Night – Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Digital audiobook performed by Gisela Chipe
4****

Adapted from the book jacket: 1970s, Mexico City, Maite is a secretary who live: the latest issue of Secret Romance. When her next-door neighbor, Leonora, disappears under suspicious circumstances, Maite finds herself searching for the missing woman – and journeying deeper into Leonora’s secret life of student radicals and dissidents. Meanwhile, someone else is also looking for Leonora. Elvis is an eccentric criminal who longs to escape his own life. As Maite and Elvis come closer to discovering the truth behind Leonora’s disappearance, they can no longer escape the danger that threatens to consume their lives.

My reactions:
This is the third book by Moreno-Garcia that I’ve read and by far my favorite. In this work she does NOT include paranormal, horror, or magical realism elements. Rather she writes a wonderful noir crime novel based on historical events in Mexico, with interesting characters, multiple twists and turns in the plot and an unlikely partnership that I’d love to see again.

Maite starts as a somewhat naïve, dreamy young woman, more interested in romance stories that what is actually happening around her. But once she’s caught up in the mystery of her missing neighbor, Maite shows her intelligence, grit and determination.

Elvis is a marvel. A street punk and henchman, who love literature and music. He’s not sure he is where he wants to be in life and the events that unfold help him find a better life path.

The action is fast and furious, and totally believable. Well done, Ms Moreno-Garcia!

Gisela Chipe does a marvelous job of performing the audiobook. I particularly loved how she interpreted Maite.

I'm about a third of the way through Lan Samantha Chang's multi-generational family novel of (so far) 20th-century China, Inheritance. I'm enjoying it quite a lot, though somehow it's also been relatively slow going.

I finished When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World's Most Powerful Consulting Firm yesterday. Ugh - so disturbing what this one company has been involved in world-wide. Their values can often be a mis-match to their mission: To help create positive, enduring change in the world.

I'm back into The Wind-up Girl and have also started The Thirteenth Tale.

>2 ahef1963: I read Gone With the Wind on my honeymoon and loved it. I hope you enjoy it too.

Right now I'm reading The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry. 100 pages in we're still meeting new characters but I think the story is about to take off.

Untold Stories Of America it's a book of short stories that rhyme at the end is a biography of the author's unbelievable life story it's an Amazon ebook
Drugs are Bad

I saw a half empty glass
After I entered my chemistry class

So I took a sip
And it sent me on a trip

I thought I saw a green Ford
But it was actually the chalk board

A bottle of drain-o
Looked like a volcano

As I looked up
The volcano erupt

That’s when the over head lights
Started having sword fights

Knowing I was acting a fool
I decided to leave school

The hall monitor told me to halt
I thought he wanted me to join his cult

When I ran out the door
I heard a lion make a loud roar

Then a beautiful princess
Said welcome to the wilderness

Navigating the terrain
It started to rain

Which in return
Caused my eyes to burn

Realizing that it was mace
I noticed I was being chased

A cop read me my rights
In the shadow of his car’s red and blue lights

So I put on my best suit
To explain why I didn’t know she was a prostitute

Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs
Jennifer Finney Boylan
4/5 stars
This is the autobiography of Jennifer Finney Boylan who talks about her life when she becomes a transgender. She also writes about her love of her dogs and what she learned from each of them. Nicely written.

Push – Sapphire
Digital audiobook narrated by the author
5*****

I’ve wanted to read this ever since the Oscars ceremony that highlighted the film (which I have yet to see).

Precious Jones is a young pregnant black teenager, who is functionally illiterate and the product of an abusive home. But Precious has a fierce determination to care for the baby growing inside her and to better her life. She WILL learn to read. She WILL keep her baby. She WILL succeed.

The issues raised are horrific and difficult to read about and process. Brava to Sapphire for highlighting the plight of young people such as her protagonist. The writing is raw and brutal; the story is gripping and inspiring. My heart broke for Precious, even as I cheered her on.

I did have a copy of the text handy, as I typically do for audiobooks. But I didn’t look at it until I had finished listening. On opening that first page I am struck by the author’s use of vernacular dialect, and the kind of misspellings a person like Precious would resort to in writing her own story. I’m reminded of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, and how listening to the audio of that work made it easier to absorb the story.

The author narrates the audiobook herself, and I cannot imagine that anyone else would have done a better job.

I finished One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn yesterday. I ran across it while doing some book organizing and in light of Navalny's death, thought it would be a good time to finally read it. The 182 pages pack a powerful punch and the book does exactly what it says on the tin - from when he wakes up to when he puts his head down after a long day of surviving in a Siberian hard-labor prison camp.

Continuing with The Thirteenth Tale and The Windup Girl, I have also started dipping into The Book Lovers' Miscellany.

Ursula Under – Ingrid Hill
3***

I don’t remember why I put this on my TBR list, though I suspect it was a recommendation from my local indie bookseller back in 2004. Having finally read it, I wonder why I kept it on the list for so long.

The basic story line is that a two-year-old child, Ursula Wong, falls into an abandoned mine while on a holiday with her parents in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. While her parents wait for the rescue teams to organize and arrive at the remote location, and for the painstaking preparations they need to make to shore up the mine before attempting to go after the child, the author goes back in time to give us Ursula’s ancestry. The story line moves back and forth in time from the drama unfolding in Michigan to the 3rd century BC where we meet a Chinese alchemist, to 17th-century Europe, to Ursula’s great-grandfather who died in a mine collapse. Some of these stories were fascinating, others failed to capture my attention.

Hill does have some strikingly original and beautifully written passages in the book. And those fed my love of literary fiction and kept me turning pages, hoping for more of this. But, it was a slog to get through. It took me over a month to finish it, because I kept putting it aside for other books that required less brain power to enjoy. (I did have a number of other things on my plate which kept me from doing much reading, so it’s not entirely the book’s fault.)

So, while I appreciate the message that each of us owes much to our varied ancestry, the novel seemed bogged down by the complex structure and timeframe Hill chose for delivering her message.

The new thread is up over here.