Holiday Reading for December 22.

[sophie]

Overboard by Sara Paretsky. A good detective novel featuring V.I. Warshawski. She finds a girl, hidden in some rocks on the banks of the river while out running her dogs who lead her to the girl. The girl is barely alive, taken to a hospital and the story takes off, featuring bent cops, greedy developers, nasty family drama.. all the good stuff. I enjoyed it, and it kept me reading well past my bedtime!

[sophie]

Bloomsbury Girls by Natalie Jenner. Post war London, a bookstore, interesting characters.. what could go wrong? Mediocre writing, all sorts of irritants in the plot development… I finished it but must admit it was a slog. Meh.

[sprite]

The 7 Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.

A lot of other people liked it a lot. It was alright, but I was skimming quite a bit by the end.
A young, somewhat insecure woman is hired, unexpectedly, to interview an aging Hollywood superstar, who was married 7 times. So, story within a story.

Evelyn Hugo is unapologetic about the decisions she made as she moved out of a miserable childhood and into Hollywood stardom. The interview process gives the narrator the confidence to make life decisions, but she feels that the star is holding something back.

The story about the star's life was enjoyable and well-written, but the parts about the writer just felt... off? Almost like the author had a great idea for a novel, but it wasn't long enough, so had to pad it out.

[lillielangtry]

I have that on my shelf, sprite. I hope I enjoy it, but I picked it up off a free shelf, so if I don't I'll just put it back.

Mary Elizabeth Braddon, The Christmas Hirelings
A Victorian classic that is free on Audible. A rather sweet tale about three children who come to spend Christmas at the home of a lonely old Cornish gentleman.

[scrubb]

105) The Cellist of Sarajevo, by Steven Galloway. It follows 3 characters through a few weeks during the siege of Sarajevo. It's one of the first books I've read that really got across what it would have been like to live during those times. On top of that, in spite of the ugliness and hate that it points out, and that existed at the time, it also shows people who maintain their humanity. I really liked it.

[sprite]

Dec 19, 2022 7:42:02 GMT -5 lillielangtry said:

I have that on my shelf, sprite. I hope I enjoy it, but I picked it up off a free shelf, so if I don't I'll just put it back.

It was nice to read before bed, because it took my mind off the day, but didn't make me want to stay up late reading.

[Liiisa]

68) Akil Kumarasamy, Half-gods

A group of short stories involving mainly members of a family of Tamil Sri Lankans. Each story presents a different episodes in people's lives, either during the civil war there or here in New Jersey or other places. I thought they were really absorbing, though I have to admit I prefer a novel over short story collections because there isn't that sense of forward propulsion that keeps you reading a book. But she is a very good writer - I felt I got to know the characters, their surroundings, and the suffering from the war well.

Part of what distracted me from it halfway through was that I put it down to reread The Tempest so that I could remember the plot before going to see it on Saturday night.

[ozziegiraffe]

79. Henrietta Who, Catherine Aird. A traditional mystery, in which the woman a young woman thinks is her mother dies in a hit and run, and the coroner realises she never had children.
The police, the young woman and her friends work together to find out who she is, and why her mother was killed. Good, short mystery.

[scrubb]

The Candy House, by Jennifer Egan. Set in a slightly alternative reality where people began loading their unconscious onto the internet in the early 2000s. It tells the stories of several different people who are all connected somehow and their different experiences with, and their different attitudes towards, this huge collective unconscious. There are those who refuse to participate, those who "elude" it all and disappear, those who work with it, those who use it to understand others, etc.

It was good - she's an excellent writer. Only thing was that she introduced so many different people that I started forgetting the connections between them, or who some of them were.

[sprite]

Started Early, Took my Dog.
Kate Atkinson

Another Jackson Brodie novel. I enjoy him. I also like how he's not the key character, but rather, 2 or 3 other characters do a lot of the narrating/movement. He mostly gets jostled around by other people's actions, and then suddenly ties a bunch of knots so that everything makes sense.

[Q-pee]

The Marriage Portrait
Maggie O'Farrell

By the same woman who wrote another favourite book of mine Hamnet, she's done the same trick here, plucked a character we might know something of, and establish a whole fictional history for her. This time it's the Duchess of Ferrera based on this poem.

There are two timelines that twist and eventually combine to a dramatic final chapter.

Lots of pretty castle scenes, lots of beautiful imagery and lots of scary darkness.

I can imagine this as a movie and I would go.

[sprite]

I should really read both of those.

[Liiisa]

69) José Saramago, "The Double"

Just finished this one. I always love Saramago novels for his unique style, and the plots are of course quirky as well. In this one, a history teacher discovers that a minor local actor is essentially his identical twin, and sets out to find him; events unfold from there.

[scrubb]

That wasn't one of my favourite Saramago novels, Liiiisa, but I've found everything of his worth reading.

The Reason You Walk, by Wab Kinew. The author is a well known media person in Canada. He's a First Nations man, and this book is mostly about his father, with his own story told against his father's life.

The first few chapters were really bad - I almost stopped reading. He was talking about his grandparents and then his father in residential school, but it was like a catalogue of events, not a story, at all.

Luckily it got better when he began to talk about himself,and events he was part of. It still wasn't as engrossing as it could have been, given the material, but it was interesting.

Part of the issue, I think, was that he could not be disrespectful towards his father or other elders, and even didn't want to talk about certain moral issues, so he glossed over stuff or made excuses. Like his dad's ongoing affairs and long absences from his official family.) His starting point was that his father was a great man. For me, that case needed to be made. And it could have been made, as his father did a lot for indigenous people. But IMO the flaws also need to be acknowledged and examined, and then it may be clear that they are far outweighed by the good.

[Liiisa]

scrubb I'll admit it did slow down a bit halfway through, and I found myself reading just to get it over with, but then it picked up! Someone on mastodon noted that it's been made into a film, which I had no idea of.

[scrubb]

I've been reading a kids series. My sister mentioned that she thought I'd have loved them as a kid, and I think she's right. the Penderwicks series by Jeanne Birdsall. No magic, so they wouldn't have been my very favourites, but they really have the same feel as some of the books I grew up loving. A group of 4 girls and their widowed father, and their adventures.

I'm on the 3rd of 4 in the series - quick reads, even though they're long.

[ozziegiraffe]

80. How to Raise an Elephant, Alexander McCall Smith. A lovely MMA Ramotswe story set in Botswana. One of my favourites in the series so far.

[lillielangtry]

I'm rereading Susan Cooper's children's fantasy series, The Dark is Rising, as there is a new BBC radio adaptation of book 2 (also called The Dark is Rising). It has stood the test of time very well. The first book, Over Sea, Under Stone, was written considerably earlier and is for rather younger readers. The third book, Greenwitch, is probably the weakest of the 5 but necessary because it brings together the main characters from the first two. Such a treat at Christmastime.

[Liiisa]

70) Jennifer Wright, Get Well Soon

A collection of essays by a journalist on different historical epidemics (plus a chapter on lobotomies), which was well researched and written in a breezy, modern tone (she's written for McSweeny's, if that gives you an indication). Spawn recommended it to me, and I enjoyed it (well, as much as you can enjoy reading about things like the black plague and the horrible doctor who performed lobotomies). She ends it with a heart-rending chapter on the mismanagement of the AIDS epidemic by the Reagan administration in the early 80s.

One interesting thing about it is that instead of referring to the "developed" and "developing" world, she uses the terms "core" and "periphery," which I liked; I haven't seen those terms used since I was studying some leftist takes on international relations for university.

The final interesting thing, of course, is that this was written in 2017. I wonder if she's thinking of putting out a new edition with COVID, though she'd have to wait for COVID to end.

[Q-pee]

Men Explain Things to Me
Rebecca Solnit

It's a series of essays and published in 2014, so not very current. I must look for recent writings because things have changed in the intervening years with MeToo etc. But sadly not enough has changed.

The article in the title predates the term "mansplaining" although she's often credited for it. My only quibble is that there's quite a lot of caveats and "not all men", and that tires me.

[Q-pee]

LOL and just put this into good reads and found out I'd read it before... in 2016. Just found it on my kindle.

[Liiisa]

71) Samanta Schweblin, Seven Empty Houses

Unsettling, very well written short stories. The longest one, maybe more like a novella, is a disturbing piece from the perspective of an elderly woman.

[lillielangtry]

Storm Jameson, Company Parade
I bought this at a secondhand shop in England earlier this year. I'm amazed that there was a Yorkshire author who was so prolific - apparently she wrote over 50 books! - and I'd never even heard of her. This book was first published in 1934 and intended as the first in a series (ultimately there was only 3 of them). It follows a group of people immediately after the end of the First World War, in particular an aspiring writer called Hervey Russell who is presumably partly based on the author. THere's not exactly a conventional plot, it follows their work and, in the case of the men, their trauma from the war. It's so beautifully written, I had to pause and reread some sections.

[sprite]

Dietland, by Sarai Walker.

Um. I enjoyed it.
A very large woman has a job ghostwriting letters for the editor of a teen girls magazine, but finds herself wrapped up in a web of a collective of avengers against misogynist men, and another collective fighting the diet industry. She also starts dishing back shit to people who make fun of her size.

it's a bit odd, but funny, and a good story of personal development. I think the TV adaptation would be interesting.