Lynda in Oregon's 2024 Yarns #2

Here 'tis, the new thread.

Found it! Happy new one.

Indeed it is ("over here"). Glad you worked it out and hope all is well with you and your reading.

Dropping by to celebrate your second thread, Lynda

Happy New Thread

Happy new one!

First book in the new thread!

#57 - Three Sisters, Susan Mallery
3 stars

This was a new author to me, and I was right on the mark in thinking it was going to be very much like an Elin Hildebrand book -- quick, comfy read that's romance-y without being chicklit.

#58 - Home Before Dark, Riley Sager
3.5 stars

This is a fine spooky haunted-house tale that does get a bit convoluted at the end, but it definitely kept my attention.

Found you!! Happy new thread. : ) I just read one called Night Watching, which was super spooky. We are in synch. LOL

#59 - The First Eagle, Tony Hillerman
2.5 stars

This one seemed to take forever to get off the ground.

#60 - Violeta, Isabel Allende
3 stars

This is my first Allende work, and will probably be my last. Allende is one of my daughter's favorite authors, and when she gave this book to me a few months ago, I promised I would read it. Otherwise, I would have bailed fairly early on.

Written as an autobiographical "letter" from a 100-year-old woman recounting the many events of her life, this should be an epic spanning the years 1920 to 2020. Allende's character is born into a wealthy family, they lose their fortune and retreat to the country where she ultimately enters into a loveless marriage, walks away from it, and bears two children to her abusive lover. She raises a grandchild, lives through political upheaval, takes numerous lovers, makes a lot of money, and eventually ends her days as a philanthropist funding women's rights organizations. But the tone of the novel is uniformly bland and the reader is held so firmly at arm's length that it's impossible to develop any emotional connection to the characters.

#61 - Clytemnestra, by Costanza Casati
4.5 stars

Really enjoyed this masterful retelling of one of the most prominent stories in Greek myth, this time from the viewpoint of a woman often portrayed as treacherous and vengeful but little more.

The ending was a little wobbly, and I particularly had problems with the character of Aegisthus, but overall it was a great read. Full review is over here, if you're interested.

#62 - Tom Mix Died for Your Sins, Darryl Ponicsan
2.5 stars

This one showed up on my wishlist, though I have no idea why, and reading it didn't clarify the issue at all. It's one of those "fictographies" in which a real person's life is massaged into novel form -- a genre which I tend to find frustrating. There were a few interesting moments in it, but overall it was pretty mediocre.

Ah, well, they can't all be winners.

#63 - Pink Eye, Tom Norton
3.5 stars
LTER

This debut novel takes a pretty cynical look at academia, the military/science complex, the entertainment industry, and humankind in general, but with an unexpected soft spot for a couple of stoner high school students who start out just wanting to be paid for their gig and end up having to save the galaxy. Or maybe not.

#64 - the Devil & Uncle Will, Harold Miles
3 stars

An okay read, but nothing to get excited about as a young man sits down with his black-sheep uncle near the end of the old man's life to hear the stories of the older man's adventures. Not sure I would consider it humor. Nostalgia maybe, but not humor.

June Reads

Lucky (?) 13 this month. At least I didn’t rack up any DNFs!

Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati and Lost Moon by Lovell & Kruger tied for best read of June. Fiction and fact, ancient legend and high tech futurology … kind of emblematic of my all-over-the-place reading habits!

Honorable mention this month included Home Before Dark, by Riley Sager, The First Eagle by Tony Hillerman, Hang the Moon, by Jeanette Walls, and Three Sisters by Susan Mallery.

Then we get into so-so territory with a disappointing Violeta by Isabel Allende, The Boy from the Woods by Harlan Coben, Tom Mix Died for Your Sins by Darryl Ponicsan, and a trio of LTERs, Pink Eye by Tom Norton, Mexicanos Hustle by J. Benjamin Sanders, and Hiding Places by E.J. Post.

Maybe there will be some fireworks for July.

#65 - The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride
4 stars

Won this one from the local library. It had been on my Wish List, so it was a nice bonus, and I raced through it in two days. I did enjoy its rambling style and the intricacies of plot.

#66 - Adventures of a Verbivore, Richard Lederer
3.5 stars

Back in the day before we all automatically carted around a dozen libraries in our phones, tablets, and other electronic devices, I used to always keep what I referred to as an "emergency book" in the car. Emergency books tended to be episodic, but entertaining. They were volumes I could pick up and read in case of an unexpected period of waiting: in a doctor's office, for a child's athletic practice to be over, to get the car's oil changed, or during any other enforced period of idleness that lasted more than about 5 minutes but required me to stay in one place.

As I was reading Lederer's light-hearted collection of puzzles, wordplay, essays, and ruminations on a lifetime of play amidst the thickets of the English language, it dawned on me that this would have been an excellent emergency book, since it can be picked up and put down at random intervals and yet be as entertaining as it would have been if read cover-to-cover in an afternoon.

I didn't realize until this evening that the emergency book has largely disappeared from my life.

I think I miss it.

Angela Lansbury, Rob Edelman
DNF

Just could not get through this stultifyingly boring bio.

Lansbury's long career was, in general, untouched by scandal and unthreatened by medical catastrophe. And, probably since she was in her 40s before she achieved superstar status (on Broadway and later television), she seems to have avoided overweening egomania as well.

Who knew that sidestepping all these mainstays of the usual show-biz life would render her biography about as exciting as watching paint dry?

Ah, well. Can't win 'em all.

#67 A Marriage Made in Heaven, Erma Bombeck
3.5 stars

Rebound read from the DNF (see post 20).

I was a young wife/mom during the heyday of Bombeck's career and always enjoyed her humor. It's interesting to see how her subect matter changed and her style mellowed as she aged. The humor in this one is more gentle, and the chapter near the end about becoming your mother's Mom is really touching. (Readers who've been through the process will understand.)

>21 LyndaInOregon: Ah, yes, I can relate to all of that. Always enjoyed Bombeck "back in the day"

#68 - Such Kindness, Andre Dubus III
1 star
Group read

This depressing and self-consciously cosmic tale of a man who has lost everything realizing that the only way to recover is to begin giving back is hokey and over-written and manipulative.

Other than that.....

It was also a group read, or I would have bailed at about page 100.

This has not been a good month so far. I think I'm going to temporarily abandon my "whatever's next on the TBR shelf" method for choosing the next book and do some trolling through the collection to find something that looks enjoyable. There may be a Tana French novel fairly near the top. And my ILL of Lords and Ladies should be coming in next week.

What do you do when you've had a spate of duds and so-so reads?

>11 LyndaInOregon: Please go back and start with her first books, before she escaped from Chili and moved to California ; the house of spirits, eva luna, paula, speaks to her homeland her life there and living under a dictator. Unless you are really turned off by magical realism, I think you might enjoy these

>18 LyndaInOregon: That was a good one!! : )

>21 LyndaInOregon: just stay away from the play that was written about her a few times. really poorly done. But I did love her work. She lived in my neck of the woods and I saw her on stage a few times.

>23 LyndaInOregon: go for a walk, listen to music, catch up on mags, know tha t youve done this before and will find a gem soon

#69 - Anxious People, Fredrik Backman
4.5 Stars

Finally! I had forgotten this was in my TBR stack, and it was just what I needed to dispel the crankies.

Nothing is quite what it seems to be in Backman's complicated tale of an incompetent bank robber, a motley group of hostages, and a father-son police team trying to get to the bottom of what really happened. What really happened is a sweet and funny tale about redemption, love, and the often-unseen ties that bind us to one another.

Favorite quotation from early in the book, as the younger of the two cops attempts to coax a coherent statement from a flighty witness:

He presses his thumbs hard against his eyebrows, as if he hopes they're two buttons and if he keeps them pressed at the same time for ten seconds, he'll be able to restore life to its factory settings.

I was really hoping that would work for him, because there are times I desperately want to restore MY life to its factory settings...........

>28 LyndaInOregon: Love Backman. : )

#70 - Lords and Ladies, Terry Pratchett
3.5 stars
Group Read

#71 - I'll Walk Alone, Mary Higgins Clark
3 stars

This unlikely concoction features a woman framed for the kidnapping of her own child, and a series of oh-by-the-way coincidences that lead to the discovery of the plot.

Of all the things I've lost, I think I miss my memory the most.....

Was in the bookstore the other day and saw a title on the "Now in Paperback" section. The title tickled what used to be my memory, and I thought, "Oh, yeah, I was waiting for that to come out in paperback." So I bought it.

Started it last night, and thought ... "Well, okay. Not sure it's what I expected, but whatever." It's shaping up to be a grown-up romance novel about second chances. It's called The Year of What If.

Today, I was shelving a couple of swap books in the TBR stack and found a memoir about taking a year off one's career track to explore the "dream jobs" of one's youth. It's called My What If Year.

Yup. I not only conflated the two titles, I bought the Patrick novel thinking it was the Miranda memoir -- which I already had.

Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh. I wouldn't be so annoyed if this were a one-off, but it happens fairly frequently. Guess I need to move all my TBRs from the database on my PC to Library Thing, so I can check stuff like that when I'm away from home. (But that still wouldn't help if I searched for the wrong title!)

>32 LyndaInOregon: Don't feel lonely Lynda. I don't even want to think about the times I have purchased a book I already own :(. (my bookclub friends may not mind though since I usually find a new home for the duplicates with one of them)

>33 RebaRelishesReading: Both titles will probably end up on the swap shelf, since I seldom keep anything but reference books and The Really Good Stuff. Just a minor annoyance to remind me how fast the gray matter is turning to sludge....

#72 - The Year of What If, Phaedra Patrick
3.5 stars

Grown-up romance about superstition, second chances, and family. Not much challenge here, but an entertaining read.

I have to say "grown-up" based on the chronological ages and professional status of the protagonists, but the female lead is making decisions that would feel right at home in a 20-something chick-lit novel.

This is the book I was whining about in Post 32, upthread. Will be interesting to see if the book I thought I was buying (still in the TBR stack) is any better.

#73 - Katharine's Remarkable Road Trip, Gail Ward Olmsted
2.5 stars - LTER

This otherwise engaging tale of a feisty 77-year-old who sets out on a 270-mile automobile journey alone in 1907 is marred by so many anachronisms that the story itself is mostly lost.

Full review is here.

Lynda

I'm 71, and will be 72 in September. Increasingly, I forget many things. But, overall, I still can remember quite a bit. But, when it is books that I forget, I get upset.

Hang in there dear one. Life is still good.

>36 LyndaInOregon: “flying by the seat of our pants” Oh I laughed and laughed how could this author make these mistakes. they truly ruined what could have been a great read. where was the editor? well too bad but it did make me laugh

>38 cindydavid4: I think the author was the editor. This LTER was from Black Rose Writing, which has usually offered professional-level books for review (at least, that's been my experience), but this one certainly needed a fresh set of eyeballs before it was distributed.

If my hackles hadn't been up over the cover, the "unplugged" icebox, and the "flying by the seat of our pants" line, I probably wouldn't have been quite so sensitive to the other anachronisms. The sad thing is that of the ones I caught and checked on, none of them required more than a quick google search.

DH and I were avid Model A'ers for years, so I might have been a bit more sensitive to some of the things (like the license plate, paper map, and glove box issues) than someone who's never been involved in the antique car hobby. But if I were to write a book with a background setting I knew almost nothing about (let's choose motorcycle riding, just because), I think I'd seek out a biker and say "Can you read this and see if I've really boogered up anything?"

#74 - The Breakaway, Jennifer Weiner
4 stars

Weiner’s latest novel sneaks up on you, threatens at one point to veer into soap opera territory (let’s just say the dust-cover synopsis all but spells it out), and then zaps you with an ending that breaks virtually all the contemporary fiction rules.

Full review is here.

I seriously considered holding off on posting this because it would have made a nice "75" for the challenge. :-) But I see there's a Tana French novel next in line, and French has never disappointed me, so we'll give #74 to Weiner and let the chips fall where they may!

Okay -- big #75! Not the title I had intended, but my ILL came in, so I slipped it into the line-up.

#75 - When Two Feathers Fell from the Sky, Margaret Verble
4 stars

I can't review this. I can't even describe it. It's a historical novel, also a love story. And a ghost story. And a tale of racial violence, genocide, and the tangled heritage of chattel slavery in the American South. Also PTSD. And the spiritual connection between humans and animals. Other than that....

I did enjoy it, though. I see some reviewers have compared Verble to Louise Erdrich, based probably on the Native American protagonist and on the use of magical realism. Or ... wait. What's the line between magical realism and a plain old-fashioned ghost story?

Congrats on reaching #75! With any luck, I should make it in about a month...

>41 LyndaInOregon: Adding congrats for achieving 75 already, and it's only July!!. Sounds like an interesting book to get there with too.

Congrats!

#76 - The Searcher, Tana French
3.5 stars

This isn't really French's best effort. It's a meandering, glacial-paced tale of an ex-cop who moves from Chicago to a small Irish village after his marriage implodes and the pressures of the job begin to eat at his soul.

Not much happens for the first 300 pages as Cal Hooper mopes around considering the scenery, picks away at repairs to the tumbledown cottage he's purchased, lifts a few at the local pub, and reluctantly looks into the disappearance of a young man from a ragtag family up the mountainside. It's not until French rings in a major twist that things start moving. Observant readers will likely have picked up at least a couple of the key points long before that.

Once things get rolling, the last 150 pages deliver in fine style. It's just a long, long way to get there.

#77 - Boy's Life, Robert McCammon
5 stars

This wonderful nostalgic novel, with its frank homage to Ray Bradbury, explores the twelfth year in the life of its protagonist, Cory Mackenson. With 1960s Zephyr, Alabama standing in for 1920s Green Town, Illinois, Cory and his buddies traverse a season of devils and angels, monsters and miracles as they travel from childhood to the fringes of that unexplored territory called Grown-Up.

This is a time when the monsters that roamed the Saturday matinee movie screen began to seep into real life, sometimes into real people the boys had always known, a time when a bicycle was as good as a magic carpet, and a time when – amazingly, terrifyingly, those omnipotent gods-on-earth called parents, began to be revealed as Just People after all, with fears and concerns of their own which sometimes spilled over into a boy’s life.

There’s a rambling understory here that begins with a terrifying crime and ends with its resolution, but mostly the journey is told in episodic chapters, many of which could stand alone as first-class short stories, though most of them move the plot along in tiny increments. It’s peopled with characters real, almost-real, maybe-real, and … well, where does magical realism become fantasy? And does it matter whether a boy fights off a river monster with a twig broom in the real world or in an altered state that allows him to survive raging floodwaters?

This is a wonderful read for any fan of Bradbury’s, for anyone who ever sat mesmerized through an episode of The Twilight Zone, and for anyone who remembers that childhood journey through fields that now exist in memory alone.

>77 RebaRelishesReading: I am very interesting in Boy's Life . I will check my local library for this one. If not, it is worth purchasing at Barnes and Noble.

Thanks, as always, for your excellent reviews!!!

>46 LyndaInOregon: I read Boy's Life earlier this year & enjoyed it immensely.

>48 ChrisG1: I think it was your BB on Boy's Life that made me chase it down! So, consider that a successful recommendation. Thanks!

#78 - The Halloween Tree, Ray Bradbury
3.5 stars

By pure coincidence, this little volume floated to the top of the TBR stack hot on the heels of Robert McCammon's paean to Bradbury, via Boy's Life.

I'm a major Bradbury fan, but this one just didn't do it for me. For one thing, I've always felt that his strong suit was the short story. Get in, get the job done, get out. Neither characterization nor dialogue has ever been his forte -- that honor goes to the sheer power and beauty in the way he uses language, and in his utilization of the fantastic in brief and blinding glimpses of worlds beyond our own.

So ... a novella-length YA that attempts a full-gallop trip through humanity's attempts to deal with death is a pretty heavy lift. It was ... okay ... and that's not an adjective I would normally use for his work.

Lynda, Have you read Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury?

It is one of my favorites.

As always, I appreciate your well-written reviews!

>51 Whisper1: Oh, yes. 'Something Wicked' is a classic. McCammon gives that one a nod, too, in 'Boy's Life'.

Ive read all of Bradburys books, and have a huge tome of his short stories. I think Ill have to read Boys life!

>53 cindydavid4: This is all Chris G's fault. He hit me with a BB, then Linda (Whisper1) said she'd like to read it, and now you've been wounded by the same BB. Maybe we should have put together a group read?

Actually, it might be fun to do a Bradbury group read, since that was the thread that originally led to Boys Life!

>54 LyndaInOregon: A group Ray Bradbury read sounds good. Count me in.

Life was out of control this past year as a result of heping a friend whose husband did. But, in the past weeks, from necessity of health issues, including a sick cat, I'm sticking to slowing down.

I'm not sure if you mentioned how you learned of Ray Bradbury's works. If so, I apologize that I didn't note it.

I very much liked his The Illustrated Man which I read years ago.

>54 LyndaInOregon: oh Id love that! how should we do that, where and when?

>55 Whisper1: pretty sure I was reading his books in jr hi off my sisters shelf. About the same time I clicked with Arthur Clark. Once I discovered that the library had them, I found more authors of sci/fi and fan.

#79 - The Book of Lost Friends, Lisa Wingate
4.5 stars

This was a marvelous book to wind up the month with. Wingate’s fact-based historical fiction is a well-crafted tale of a bit of American history largely unknown by most of her readers.

In the years following the Civil War, many formerly-enslaved people turned to a unique system to try to locate family members scattered in the chaotic years preceding Emancipation. They published or shared small classified advertisements, printed mostly in newspapers that catered to Black churches in the South, seeking news of family members sold, scattered by economic disruption, or lost to conscription. Dozens of these advertisements are reproduced in The Book of Lost Friends, and their cumulative emotional impact gives the fictionalized story of one such searcher a stunning depth.

Full review is here.

JULY READS

This turned out to be quite a month, with 15 reads and one DNF. Top of the list are Boy's Life and The Book of Lost Friends, both discussed a few posts upthread. From there, in descending order:

Anxious People, Fredrik Backman
The Breakaway, Jennifer Weiner
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, James McBride
When Two Feathers Fell from the Sky, Margaret Verble
Adventures of a Verbivore, Richard Lederer
The Year of What If, Phaedra Patrick
The Searcher, Tana French
The Halloween Tree, Ray Bradbury
Lords and Ladies, Terry Pratchett (LT Group Read)
A Marriage Made in Heaven, Erma Bombeck
I'll Walk Alone, Mary Higgins Clark
Katharine's Remarkable Road Trip, Gail Ward Olmsted (LTER)
Such Kindness, Andre Dubus III (F2F Book Club Group Read & Dud of the Month)

For those who might be interested in the Ray Bradbury readalong we've been kicking around, the set-up post for the thread is here.

#80 - Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi
3.5 stars

I probably need to pay a little more attention to the order in which my TBR stack is arranged, as I've just finished the second book in a row that talks about disruption of family lives and lines due to the African slave trade.

The Book of Lost Friends, which I read last week, limited itself to one woman's search for her lost mother and siblings; Gyasi's covers 8 generations and roughly 300 years as it traces the lives and descendants of half-sisters, one of whom marries a British slave trader, the other of whom is caught up by the trade and transported to America.

Different tones, different approaches, and I'm not even going to attempt to review Gyasi's work, except to say that, as ambitious as it was, it really needed to be about three times as long. (Think Michener's Hawaii.) As the reader follows the descendants of Effi, in Africa, and of Esi, in America, the chapters jump from one line to the other, and from one (or more) generation to the next and eventually it begins to feel like a 4-hour movie speeded up to run in a 30-minute TV spot.

#81 - The Other Family, Wendy Corsi Straub
3 stars

Overly complex plotting, an unreliable narrator, and an out-of-left field resolution mar this novel about a California family who temporarily relocates to New York and occupies a house where a decades-past tragedy still resonates. I had most of it figured out about halfway through the book.

#82 The Dolphin House, Audry Schulman
4 stars - Group Read

In the mid-60s, multiple unusual experiments were funded dealing with the possibility of genuine communication between humans and animal species. Apes were particularly targeted, but so were dolphins, and this novel is based on a real experiment that ultimately blew up in scandal.

There were two rather unusual things about the dolphin experiment. One was that one of the experimenters was a young woman lacking both scientific training and academic background; the other was that she literally lived with one of the dolphin subjects 24/7 in a partially-submerged apartment dubbed a "homearium".

I particularly enjoyed the parallel tracks of behavior modification Schulman sets out here -- as the humans try to modify the dolphins' behaviors, the dolphins are doing a bit of modification work of their own.

Full review is here.

#83 - The Thing About My Uncle, Peter J. Stavros
2.5 stars
LTER

I wasn't particularly impressed with this one. The plot was predictable (angry, unmotivated kid gets kicked out of school so single mom sends him off to live in the woods with bachelor uncle and get straightened out), the narrative voice was totally inconsistent and never really sounded like it came from an adolescent, and there were a lot of things that just didn't seem plausible.

Ah, well, you can't win 'em all.

>58 LyndaInOregon: Your review of The Book of Lost Friends by Lisa Wingateis is stellar, as well as Anxious People by Fredrik Backcman I added both to my tbr list. As always, your writing is strong, and very detailed.

My local library has both books! Two good reads hopefully to be read this month.

Thanks!!

#84 - The Ballad of Falling Rock, Jordan Dotson
3.5 stars
LTER

This is a beautiful, lyrical, and at times, magical novel, but it loses points for being way too long. Set in Appalachia mostly from 1938 to 1988, it also hearkens back to Native American myth, to the American folklore tale of Robert Johnson (who may or may not have sold his soul to the devil at a certain crossroads), and touches on even older legends about the power of music.

Full review is over here.

#85 - Impossible Things, Connie Willis
4 stars

Short story collection, about evenly divided between serous and funny. "Ado" has been one of my favorites since I read it, probably in Asimov's.

#86 - The Hollow Places, T. Kingfisher
4.5 stars

Genuinely scary book about what happens when a portal to a parallel dimension is accidentally opened in a small museum of oddities.

Kingfisher knows that the worst monsters are not ones that can be seen or described clearly but always hover just out of our visual range, and are known only by observing the horrible things they have done, or are trying to do.

She knows something else, too -- she understands that the human brain can be traumatized to the point where the only alternatives are to find humor -- the more ridiculous, the better -- in the situation, or disintegrate completely. Her well-drawn but offbeat characters persevere, figure things out, support each other, and occasionally run like hell as they attempt to navigate a world full of unspeakable horrors and return to their own universe -- and slam the door behind them.

This is a ripping good read, but don't start it in the evening unless you're prepared to sit up all night to finish it. (Because if you get more than a couple of feet into the hollow places, you're not going to sleep, anyway.)

#87 - The Hunter, Tana French
4 stars

There’s a long, slow build to this sequel to “The Searcher”, which also took its own time getting to the meat of the plot. French seems to be moving away from straight-up mysteries -- there's a crime, and there's a character or group of characters intent on solving it and here's how they do it -- and into some kind of hybrid genre in which the crime may or may not be morally justified and the main characters' struggles are concentrated less on Catching The Bad Guy and more on Is Catching Him Really Serving Justice?

Her prose is still worth reading, but readers need to settle in and accept the story on its own terms.

AUGUST READS

Nine books read in August – a bit below my average, but a high page count to make up for it. On the good-news side, the Tana French novel ran over 400 pages and her prose is so good that you really just have to slow down and enjoy it. On the bad-news side, the LTER The Ballad of Falling Rock toted up 562 pages in e-format and was about 200 pages too long. I probably would have bailed if I hadn’t agreed to review it.

Standout was The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher, a new author to me but one I’ll be looking for whenever I want the socks scared off me. The Connie Willis short story collection Impossible Things was a strong runner-up.

Others, in the order I rated them –
The Hunter, Tana French
Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi
The Dolphin House, Audrey Schulman (group read)
Blank, Zibby Owens (group read)
The Ballad of Falling Rock, Jordan Dotson (an LTER
The Other Family, Wendy Staub
The Thing About My Uncle, Peter Stavros (another LTER)

I am officially DNF'ing All the Light We Cannot See. Yes, I know it has gotten rave reviews, including several from LTers, but I have been struggling with it for over a week and have managed to drag myself through 156 pages.

Last night, I went on line to read some reviews to try to figure out what I'm missing and discovered that not all reviewers were enchanted with it. (Which is okay; not every book will hit it out of the park with every reader.) I also came across a couple of spoilers that reinforced my suspicion that even if I managed to finish it, I'd end up just being annoyed at myself for investing the time.

So, on to something else, probably These Women, which is at the top of the TBR stack.

>71 LyndaInOregon: I suspect my glowing reaction may have influenced you. Sorry it didn't work for you.

>71 LyndaInOregon: I liked it but had my problems with it. just do not try the tv series that came out last year, cut important movements from the book and really ruined the movements that stayed. The two young ladies who play the young and the adult Marie-Laure are incredible. Both are visually impaired and I thought their perfomances outstanding I hope to see them in more films

>79 LyndaInOregon: Congratulations on reading nine books in August!!

We're still planning on having a meet-up near Powell's when Roni (Roni's reading) on 9/21. Hope you can make it. I'll post more on Oregon Meetups 2024! when I have an idea how many will be there.

>75 RebaRelishesReading: My sister & BIL arrive from Maryland on 9/21. (Some days you just can't win.)

>76 LyndaInOregon: I'm sorry but understand. Hope you have a great family visit.

>77 RebaRelishesReading: This has been an "interesting" month. Every single weekend has had two conflicting events. I keep agitating for a movement to steal some weekends from February, when it's too cold here to enjoy things, and move them to the summertime, when we could make much better use of them, but I don't seem to be gaining much traction. Maybe after we resolve the Daylight Savings Time nonsense, we can move on to Weekend Savings Time....

#88 - The Tenant, Victoria T
1/2 star
LTER

I don't normally request author-offered books for review, and this is why. In fact, I don't remember requesting this one at all, but it showed up through the LTER system so I read it. Okay, I skimmed it, because after the first five pages I thoroughly disliked all the characters and after the first 25 pages, I knew exactly where it was going.

>79 LyndaInOregon: 1/2 star says a lot! I hope your next read is a lot better! Happy Sunday.

#89 - Maskerade, Terry Pratchett
4 stars
Group Read

The extras and asides on this one were funnier than the main storyline, though it did make me want to lay hands on a DVD of "Phantom of the Opera", which I've never seen.

Nanny Ogg's recipe book had me howling, as did the final scene where the characters in an opera go wildly offbook yet still manage to hit every operatic cliche out there.

>81 LyndaInOregon: Lynda, When Phantom of the Opera was on Broadway in NYC, I took my daughter, then late teens to see this play. We were fortunate to obtain seats in the third row from the stage. We both very much enjoyed it. It remains her favorite play.

>82 Whisper1: I found a DVD through the interlibrary loan system and have ordered it. Certainly not the same as seeing in on Broadway, though!

#90 - Fire Keeper's Daughter, Angeline Boulley
4 stars

Readers who are outside this debut novel’s target YA demographic may have to slog a bit to get into the story, centering on a young biracial woman trying to accommodate the expectations of both the White and Native sides of her family. But the effort pays off bigtime in a climax and post-climax conclusion that brings the Anishinaabe culture, which has been simmering along nicely in the background, to a full boil.

There are echoes of Louise Erdrich here, and if Boulley can strip future work of excess baggage, she could become a major voice in the genre.

#91 - The Autobiography of Mr. Spock, Unia McCormack
3 stars

This was a valiant attempt to cobble together the multiple timelines of Spock's life via an end-of-life written document/diary/memoir conveniently invented for the author's purpose. Unfortunately, the resulting work is dull as dishwater.

Full review is over here, if you're interested.

>84 LyndaInOregon: I've been meaning to read The Fire Keeper's Daughter. Your review prompts me to move it up further on the September list.

Congratulations on reading 91 books!!!

>86 Whisper1: Happy to oblige!

What a miserable reading month I've had! Only six books read -- probably a record low for me! -- and only the Pratchett book really felt worth the effort. (In defense, we spent some time traveling and also had house-guests for a week, so circumstances were not conducive to a lot of reading hours. But still!)

Here's the list, in descending order:

Maskerade, Terry Pratchett - Not really the funniest of the Witches sub-group, but the ending sequence where the opera goes wildly off-book, was very funny.

Firekeeper's Daughter, Angeline Boulley - A young Ojibwe woman finds herself drawn into an FBI investigation of the drug traffic wreaking havoc on her community. YA, and a bit romance-y, but once Boulley gets that out of her system, it turns into a pretty good book.

These Women, Ivy Pochoda - Gritty and depressing novel about a series of murders of sex workers in Los Angeles, the victims' families (specifically, their mothers), and the female cop who won't let a cold case stay cold.

The Autobiography of Mr. Spock, Una McCormack - Valiant attempt to cobble together the multiple timelines of Spock's life via an end-of-life written document/diary/memoir conveniently invented for the author's purpose. Unfortunately, the resulting work is dull as dishwater.

The Tenant, Victoria T - LTER - A truly abysmal and amateurish story with cardboard characters, a predictable plot, and stilted writing style. A successful young couple buys their dream house and rents their old house to a woman who initiates an affair with the husband, then proceeds to blackmail him.

And the DNF - All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr - I just couldn't get into this weighty and slow-moving tale of a blind French girl and an orphan German boy whose life paths cross in the closing days of WWII.

Hoping for more & better things in October!

Good luck with your October reading.

Sorry September reading didn't live up to hopes -- may you do better in October!!

#91 - Lady, LCW Allingham
3.5 stars, LTER

There have been a lot of books and movies in which the spunky young heroine dons masculine attire, and which -- frankly -- usually say more about Ye Olden Dayes' desperate need for good optometrists than they say about successful cross-dressing. And it's usually just a device to get a romance going once the deception is discovered.

LCW Allingham's historical novel, set during the Wars of the Roses, takes a more measured and practical view here. Allingham gives her heroine a plausible backstory to build from and puts her in a literal life-and-death situation for hundreds of people, thus propelling her into an on-and-off impersonation of her ailing husband.

Full review is here, if you're interested.

This one's worth a read if you're interested in the time period.

#92 - The Goldsmith's Daughter, Tanya Landman
3.5 stars

This YA novel is set in the Aztec capital city of Tenochtitlán at the time of the arrival of the Conquistadores, and is told from the viewpoint of the titular (?) goldsmith’s daughter, Itacate.

(That question mark is there because the database insists that this book's title is "Aztec", even though the Touchstone comes up correctly, and all the book covers shown carry the "Goldsmith" title. Computers are strange.)

Anyway, there's more to this than just the spunky young heroine rebelling against the restrictions of Life As A Girl, and winds up being a fairly grim reconstruction of the collapse of the Aztec empire at the hands of the European invaders.

#93 - I'm Just a Person, Tig Notaro
4.5 stars

I raced through this brutally honest memoir by the stand-up comic whose personal life imploded in a single year of loss. There are other good reviews on the site (MWarner2018's in particular), so I'm not going to try to add anything.

Lynda, I'm not familiar with Tig Notaro. But, I will read this book. 4.5 Stars is a high rating!

>94 Whisper1: She's a stand-up comic. There are some videos on YouTube, if you want to google them.

I first saw her in a guest acting spot on the TV series "Star Trek: Discovery". Her character was the ONLY person in the cast that I was the least bit interested in following, and one thing led to another.

Lynda, I've added the book to my list, and tomorrow I'll check her YouTube videos.

Many thanks!

>91 LyndaInOregon: Ye Olden Dayes' desperate need for good optometrists

Hilarious!

#94 - The Newcomer, Mary Kay Andrews
3.5 stars

Breezy mystery/romance that falls into the "beach read" category and is in fact set on Florida's Gulf Coast. Readers won't gain any IQ points with this, but won't lose any brain cells, either. My favorite scene involves a very pissed-off little-old-lady with a walker. Moral of the story (okay, of that scene): Do Not Mess With Us.

Full Review linky.

>98 LyndaInOregon: As always, your reviews are stellar!

#95 - Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, Atul Gawande
5 stars

If you've been following this thread for any length of time, you'll know that I rarely hand out five stars. This book probably deserves six.

We will all, sooner or later, face our own mortality. Many of us will be intimately involved in the final days of loved ones. Gawande -- a surgeon, writer, professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, takes a look at the ways modern medicine gets it right -- and wrong -- when we deal with death and dying.

Full review is over here. This one really deserves your attention.

Hi Lynda. I also gave this book five stars when I read it in 2015. Thanks, as always for your excellent review!!

>84 LyndaInOregon: I know I own a copy of the Firekeeper's Daughter but despite many attempts to locate it, I cannot find it. I will obtain a copy at the library. Then, most likely after obtaining it from the library, I'll find the bookon one of my man shelves.

It was a chilly, and beautiful day today. I did some chores around the house, and then tonight went to Lowe's to purchase three gallons, and one quart of paint. The kitchen was one of the first tasks I did after Will passed away. But, after some nicks and dings, it is time for a fresh coat with a new color. Light green is replacing grey. And, the door way and trim that are currently brown from stain used instead of paint. I purchased a quart of eggshell white. The person who knew a lot about painting after working in that department for five years told me to paint the walls and ceiling first, and then the woodwork.

Because of all the fusions in my neck and spine, I'm not able to move my neck to paint the ceiling, I'll ask my son in law or grand daughter Kayla and her friend. The loft area needs to be re-painted, but that will be one of the last major projects. It is a very large room with high ceilings.

Home ownership is a lot of major work. While I purchased the paint to redo the deck, I didn't get this done during the summer.

All good wishes for healthy days and nights for you and John!

>100 LyndaInOregon: He had an essay in the New Yorker a while back and thought how refreshing to see a dr taking that stand. Meant to read that book before, thanks for the remnder

#96 - My What If Year, Alisha Fernandez Miranda
3 stars

Although Miranda repeatedly admits to a level of privilege that allowed her to spend a year stepping back from a successful career to find new challenges and pursue old dreams, this memoir still often comes off as dilettantism.

#97 - The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Taylor Jenkins Reid
4 stars

I almost picked this up the first time I saw it, assuming it was going to be one of those trashy-but-juicy stories about Big Bad Hollywood. And then I thought, "no, I'm not going to drop seventeen bucks on that." Then the reviews started coming in, so when it came up on my swap site, I requested it.

And it's actually a well-crafted piece about a very complex, not always likeable woman who plucks a struggling journalist out of obscurity to write her tell-all biography, which is definitely not your usual Hollywood saga. Most readers will have a glimmering of what the big reveal is going to be, but few will get it exactly right. (I was close, but not on the money.)

#98 - Stone Blind, Natalie Haynes
4 stars

I enjoyed this, but wasn't blown away by it, as I was by her nonfiction study, Pandora's Jar.

Haynes uses an odd construction here, with multiple narrators and styles; as one other reviewer mentioned, there's not really as much Medusa in here as one would expect of a novel telling her story.

It was still worth reading, and had unexpected bits of humor in it as lustful gods, scheming goddesses, spiteful semi-divines, oracles with inevitably tragic predictions, and a few befuddled humans attempt to navigate a game board where all the good cards are held by the Olympians.

There is eventually a payoff and a resolution, but impatient readers may have jumped ship before that point.

#99 - All By Myself, Alone, Marry Higgins Clark
3 stars

Kind of a snoozer about the maiden voyage of an ultra-luxurious ocean cruiser plagued by violence associated with a supposedly-cursed necklace owned by one of the passengers.

The first MHC book I ever read was Where Are the Children? and it literally kept me up all night reading it. I don't think she's ever reached that pinnacle since, though the hope that she will keeps me picking up her books and, inevitably, being disappointed. Some of us are just slow learners.

#100 - The October Country, Ray Bradbury
5 stars

How wonderfully appropriate that my 100th book for the year should be a re-read of one of my favorite Ray Bradbury short story collections. If you haven't been following the group read discussion thread, here's the link.

Arguably the best of Bradbury's short story collections, this dark and powerful collection can still raise the reader's hackles with quiet little horror stories like "The Emissary", "The Scythe", "The Jar", and "Next In Line".

The 100-book point also seems like a good place to end this thread, with the 2024 adventure continuing over here.