September book club selection: North Woods

This month it was my turn to host book club, and since we've begun letting the hostess pick the book, I had to choose something. Lately we've read a lot of what I consider "fluff" fiction, light and mildly entertaining but not all that literary. I decided that this time, I wanted something with a little more meat to it. I did an internet search for the best books of the past couple of years and came up with three titles that I thought sounded promising. Last month I told the group a little about the three books I was considering and put it to a vote. North Woods by Daniel Mason was the winner. 

What a joy this book was to me! It's the best thing I've read in ages. I think it's going to join my list of all-time favorite books, and that's a short list. 

From Goodreads:

A sweeping novel about a single house in the woods of New England, told through the lives of those who inhabit it across the centuries—a daring, moving tale of memory and fate from the Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Piano Tuner and The Winter Soldier.

When a pair of young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become home to an extraordinary succession of inhabitants. An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to apples. A pair of spinster twins survive war and famine, only to succumb to envy and desire. A crime reporter unearths a mass grave, but finds the ancient trees refuse to give up their secrets. A lovelorn painter, a conman, a stalking panther, a lusty beetle; as each one confronts the mysteries of the north woods, they come to realize that the dark, raucous, beautiful past is very much alive.

Traversing cycles of history, nature, and even literature, North Woods shows the myriad, magical ways in which we’re connected to our environment and to one another, across time, language and space. Written along with the seasons and divided into the twelve months of the year, it is an unforgettable novel about secrets and fates that asks the timeless how do we live on, even after we’re gone?

North Woods was so beautifully written that I found myself reading and rereading passages and wanting to take my time and savor them. Since I'd bought a copy and offered to let my friend Marian borrow it before book club, I had to read it much faster than I wanted to. To give you an idea of how much I loved it, when she brought it back to me the night of book club, I immediately started to re-read it. I'm taking my time and finding so many wonderful things I missed the first time.

Spanning centuries from the perspective of one small piece of land in northwestern Massachusetts, it's the history of a place, with the human characters coming and going across the years alongside the changing flora and fauna of the area. From NPR's review:

North Woods manages, impressively, to balance both the narrow and the long view, intimately focusing on the lives of each of the house's inhabitants, yet expansively encompassing American history, natural history, and the relentless march of time and the cycle of the seasons.

And from the Washington Post book review:

Indeed, to read “North Woods” is to suffer the sweet sorrow of falling in love with fresh residents only to see them swept away by the passing seasons. Persist. The silent spaces between these stories articulate what the residents can’t. Their errant lives begin locking together in a winding chain of unlikely history. And when the moonlight strikes just right, you may even see some past homeowner flit across the corner of a page once again.

As you may have guessed, North Woods made for a really nice discussion. I even printed out a "book club guide" from the publisher's website.

As usual, I made a lot of food! We had a crudité platter, deviled eggs, ham and Swiss cheese sliders (pictured here before going in the oven and toasted!) hot spinach and artichoke dip, tortilla chips and plain potato chips. 

I bought ready-made desserts from Sam's. Large, fancy cupcakes and apple pie.

I also had several bottles of wine, as well as a cooler filled with ice and hard apple cider, assorted sodas, and bottled water.

I really enjoyed the book and highly recommend it, and I'm happy to say my hosting responsibilities are fulfilled for another year! 

Book review: The Silent Patient

While I sit here and wait to go to my 2:30 doctor's appointment, I thought I'd pass the time by writing a quick review of my book club's selection for June: The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides.

First, a brief synopsis from Goodreads.

The Silent Patient is a shocking psychological thriller of a woman’s act of violence against her husband—and of the therapist obsessed with uncovering her motive.

Alicia Berenson’s life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London’s most desirable areas. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face, and then never speaks another word.

Alicia’s refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London.

Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations—a search for the truth that threatens to consume him....

I'm impressed that this is the author's first book. Everyone kept saying that the "twist" at the end was shocking and that you'd never be able to figure it out. That turned out to be 100% true! I was trying hard to figure it out while I read (and came up with some crazy theories) but I wasn't even close. The reveal was so well done that you're literally in the middle of a sentence when it all falls in place and it's a giant WTF?! moment. And it's a particularly nasty twist, too. It hits like a punch to the gut. It made me uncomfortable, to be honest, and a friend I spoke to yesterday said it made her so uncomfortable that she just couldn't like the book despite how well done it was. I'll be interested to see what the rest of the group thought. We have our meeting tomorrow night.

Dr. Spo might well be interested in The Silent Patient because of the relationship between Alicia and her psychotherapist, Theo, and how his story runs parallel to hers. I kept thinking of him as I read it. If you're interested, it's a quick and entertaining summer read, especially if you enjoy psychological thrillers and mysteries, and I'd lay wagers on the fact that you won't see the ending coming. Disturbing or not, it was good fun and I thought it was a nice choice for book club.

Book review: Hollow Kingdom

You guys, I read the most incredible book this past week. It's called Hollow Kingdom by Kira Jane Buxton.

To start, here is a short summary from Goodreads:

One pet crow fights to save humanity from an apocalypse in this uniquely hilarious debut from a genre-bending literary author.

S.T., a domesticated crow, is a bird of simple pleasures: hanging out with his owner Big Jim, trading insults with Seattle's wild crows (those idiots), and enjoying the finest food humankind has to offer: Cheetos ®.

Then Big Jim's eyeball falls out of his head, and S.T. starts to feel like something isn't quite right. His most tried-and-true remedies--from beak-delivered beer to the slobbering affection of Big Jim's loyal but dim-witted dog, Dennis--fail to cure Big Jim's debilitating malady. S.T. is left with no choice but to abandon his old life and venture out into a wild and frightening new world with his trusty steed Dennis, where he discovers that the neighbors are devouring each other and the local wildlife is abuzz with rumors of dangerous new predators roaming Seattle. Humanity's extinction has seemingly arrived, and the only one determined to save it is a foul-mouthed crow whose knowledge of the world around him comes from his TV-watching education.

Hollow Kingdom is a humorous, big-hearted, and boundlessly beautiful romp through the apocalypse and the world that comes after, where even a cowardly crow can become a hero.

Admittedly, this book might not be everyone's cup of tea. Hell, if the narrator hadn't been a crow I'd probably never have given it a second look (being a crazy bird lady as I am). S.T. (short for Shit Turd, named by Big Jim, his human) loves to swear, and then there are zombies. I know, I know...... it sounds absurd, doesn't it?

Here's a couple of excerpts from Ilana Masad's review from NPR books:


The novel is largely narrated by a domesticated crow named S.T. — short for something unprintable — who has spent his life with a beer-drinking, junk-food-eating, sports-loving, breast-obsessed man named Big Jim, who raised S.T. from a hatchling. A dopey, lazy dog named Dennis rounds out their little Seattle-based family. When Big Jim's eye unexpectedly falls out of his head, S.T. knows something is very wrong, but it takes him a good long while before he gives up on his beloved MoFo — S.T.'s term for humans, learned at Big Jim's bosom — and leaves home, accompanied by Dennis.
…….

Soon enough, it becomes clear that humanity has been seized by something awful. The MoFos wander around aimlessly, their heads bobbing, their fingers swiping at objects without screens, their flesh rotting off them indiscriminately (honestly, don't read this book while you're eating if you're squeamish. Buxton is extremely talented at writing the more horrifying descriptions of the MoFos' physical condition). They don't seem very intent on eating or drinking, they've lost their language, and they become incredibly violent towards living creatures if disturbed — in fact, it's Big Jim's attempt to take a bite out of S.T. that sends the poor crow off to discover what's going on.

S.T. is a brilliant narrator, partially because he has reverence for human things like Cheetos and baked goods and football fandom, but also because he has only half a grasp on what certain human things mean. The book is laced with little jokes referring to pop culture and human idiosyncrasies and narratives...

…..

But S.T.'s love of MoFos, and the deep ache he feels for Big Jim and the life he used to lead read as incredibly sincere. He mourns our loss like few other animals in the book do:

I thought about the other Dennises out there. How many more of him were there, creatures who'd been loyal and good to the MoFos? [...] Creatures with scales or bristles or down, slobbering tongues, good hearts, gentle souls, and soft mouths. Creatures who knew the magic of MoFos, what they give us in protection and affection, what it means to love them with all of your heart and nose and beak. The feeling of those funny bald fingers that can open books and cans of refried beans gently sliding down your back. MoFo is family.

Ultimately, though, S.T.'s real challenge is learning that wild animals, like the murder of crows that roosts at the nearby university campus, are just as creative, resourceful, and lively as the humans he loves. His identity crisis — he so wishes to be human, but isn't and can't become one — is never quite resolved, but he learns, slowly, how to work with his own kind, how to live in this new version of the world.

While it's deeply disconcerting, reading about our own extinction, there is a lot we can learn from S.T. and Dennis the dog's symbiotic relationship in this novel. There's a lot we can learn from S.T.'s getting over his own prejudices about other animals — like seagulls and penguins — in order to work with them. In his wholesale love of us, a species a fellow crow calls "a plague on the earth ... not able to control their numbers or their consumption of the land, and so Nature did it for them," S.T. ultimately gave me hope that maybe, just maybe, we still have a chance to turn things around before Nature is so fed up that she really does set her sights on destroying us for good.

I absolutely loved this book. I laughed literally out loud over and over, and cried several times, too. This book is incredibly touching at times. I fell in love with Shit Turd and the dog Dennis. Maybe it's because of my 12 years of living with a parrot, but S.T. and Dennis' longing for Big Jim and their old life with him really struck a chord. The author has a relationship with two half domesticated crows and has been surrounded by all sorts of other animals, both wild and domesticated. It really shows, too, especially in all the little vignettes told from other species' point of view that she scattered through the book.

If you don't mind a quirky read that's kind of a cross between The Walking Dead and The Art of Racing in the Rain, I think you just might love Hollow Kingdom! 

5 STARS

Book Review: Big Little Lies

It's been a long time since I read a book that I could barely stand to put down. It's always pure pleasure to find something to read that grabs you so hard that you race to the finish despite wanting to slow down and savor the ride. I found a book like that this past weekend: Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty.




I have to admit that this wasn't something I was ever interested in reading until I saw the first two episodes of the limited HBO series adapted from the book. It's been on the bestseller list at work for ages, but it didn't look at all like the kind of book I would enjoy. It just goes to show that you should never discount something out of hand like that! I'm not much a mystery fan, either, but this mystery had an intriguing twist: from the beginning of the book (and the tv show) you know that someone has been murdered--but you don't know who or how or why. You do know where it takes place, though, and it's the unlikeliest of places--a primary school parents' event, a trivia night/costume party fundraiser.

The plot is told from the point of view of three main characters: Madeline, the 40 year old, sharp mouthed and witty mother of two whose ex husband (and his new younger yoga-loving wife) drives her crazy; Celeste, whose seemingly perfect life and storybook marriage to the handsome, rich Perry is covering up a dark secret; and Jane, a struggling single mother of a little boy named Ziggy who just moved to town. Jane's past is a mystery, as is the identity of her child's father. When little Ziggy
is accused of trying to strangle another child in his kindergarten class (which he denies doing) it
sets off a chain of shocking events among the parents. But could playground bullying between little children really lead the adults to commit a murder? That's the question at the heart of the book.

From the first episode of Big Little Lies I watched, I was intrigued. Who on earth could be dead, and how, and why? And the actors in the show are superb: Nicole Kidman as Celeste, Reece Witherspoon as Madeline, Shailene Woodley as Jane, Alexander Skarsgard as Perry, Adam Scott as Madeline's current husband Ed, and Zoe Kravitz as the new younger wife of Madeline's ex. Since only two episodes have aired so far, I had to know what happened next, so I bought the book the next day at work. And I couldn't put it down!

I read Big Little Lies in 24 hours, that's how enjoyable it was! I had no idea who had been murdered until I started the last chapter, and then it turned out I was wrong. And the threads of the plot are all tied up so skillfully that I wanted to give the author a round of applause at the end! It's about secrets and gossip and the big little lies we sometimes tell ourselves just to get through life.

It's been a while since a book gave me so much pure enjoyment. I still plan to watch the rest of the series, too. Read this book, guys....I think you'll like it too!

Two book reviews

Since I haven't posted any book reviews in a while, I decided to make up for it today and post two small ones for books I've read recently.

The first book is The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende. Here's a short synopsis from Goodreads. com:

In 1939, as Poland falls under the shadow of the Nazis, young Alma Belasco's parents send her away to live in safety with an aunt and uncle in their opulent mansion in San Francisco. There, as the rest of the world goes to war, she encounters Ichimei Fukuda, the quiet and gentle son of the family's Japanese gardener. Unnoticed by those around them, a tender love affair begins to blossom. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the two are cruelly pulled apart as Ichimei and his family, like thousands of other Japanese Americans are declared enemies and forcibly relocated to internment camps run by the United States government. Throughout their lifetimes, Alma and Ichimei reunite again and again, but theirs is a love that they are forever forced to hide from the world.

Decades later, Alma is nearing the end of her long and eventful life. Irina Bazili, a care worker struggling to come to terms with her own troubled past, meets the elderly woman and her grandson, Seth, at San Francisco's charmingly eccentric Lark House nursing home. As Irina and Seth forge a friendship, they become intrigued by a series of mysterious gifts and letters sent to Alma, eventually learning about Ichimei and this extraordinary secret passion that has endured for nearly seventy years.


I was really looking forward to this book, because I'd never read anything by Allende and she's supposed to be one of the great modern writers. To my disappointment, the characters were somewhat flat and the "great love affair" between Alma and Ichimei barely got half a chapter's description. I didn't feel any emotional connection to their story at all.  I read a review somewhere that said that "Allende tells us rather than shows us" what the characters were like and that's as good a description of what I disliked about the book as I can think of. I also thought some of the characters made choices and had ways of thinking about things that didn't ring true at all. It was an easy read, but overall I thought it kind of bland and I was disappointed that it left me with very little desire to read another Allende book anytime soon.

Last week after hearing praise for a year or so about The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman and seeing photos from the film that's about to be released, I decided it was time to read it.

Here's the Goodreads plot description:


After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby.

Tom, whose records as a lighthouse keeper are meticulous and whose moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the man and infant immediately. But Isabel has taken the tiny baby to her breast. Against Tom’s judgment, they claim her as their own and name her Lucy. When she is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the world. Their choice has devastated one of them.

M. L. Stedman’s mesmerizing, beautifully written novel seduces us into accommodating Isabel’s decision to keep this “gift from God.” And we are swept into a story about extraordinarily compelling characters seeking to find their North Star in a world where there is no right answer, where justice for one person is another’s tragic loss.

First let me say, the writing here is sometimes quite beautiful. I loved the descriptions of tiny, desolate Janus Rock and the life of the lightkeepers who live there. The tides, the stars at night, the constant wind and waves of the shore, the workings of the lighthouse, all were described beautifully. But then, there were the characters. I thought I was going to have major empathy for Isabel, the grieving mother who finds the baby and considers her a gift straight from God....but as the book goes on and her husband, Tom, struggles with the morality of what they've done (especially after they find out who the baby really belongs to) I started to dislike her more and more. She's completely unsympathetic to Lucy's birth family and insists on keeping the secret that the baby doesn't really belong to them. And she's horrible to her husband who, despite his love for the child, wants to do the right thing by the grieving birth mother.  In fact, Tom is the character I felt the most deeply for which was a real surprise to me. By the end of the book I just wanted to slap Isabel...her behavior in the second half of the book was just atrocious! I was also quite saddened by how the book turned out, but I knew early on that the ending wasn't going to be sunshine and roses for anyone involved. I read The Light Between Oceans in two days, and really enjoyed it. The characters I've seen chosen for the movie look really good, and while I probably won't be seeing it in the theater, I will be interested in watching it eventually. Here's a trailer if you're interested:

https://youtu.be/YSX-mpsVutQ

Book review: Uprooted by Naomi Novik

“Our Dragon doesn’t eat the girls he takes, no matter what stories they tell outside our valley. We hear them sometimes, from travelers passing through. They talk as though we were doing human sacrifice, and he were a real dragon. Of course that’s not true: he may be a wizard and immortal, but he’s still a man, and our fathers would band together and kill him if he wanted to eat one of us every ten years. He protects us against the Wood, and we’re grateful, but not that grateful.”

So begins the story of a peasant girl named Agnieszka and her beloved home in a tiny village that sits unfortunately close to a sinister, corrupted, sentient Wood. The Wood deserves the capital W because it's practically a character in its own right--and a terrifying one. A wizard called the Dragon lives in a tower high above the valley where Agnieszka's village is located, and he helps to keep the evil of the Wood in check. In return for his protection, once every 10 years he chooses a young woman to leave her family and serve him. After 10 years, she is free to return home, but the girls never do. They go off to the capital to live, or to the university, but they never choose to return home for more than a brief visit when their service is over.

"He doesn't devour them really; it only feels that way. He takes a girl to his tower, and ten years later he lets her go, but by then she's someone different. Her clothes are too fine and she talks like a courtier and she's been living alone with a man for ten years, so of course she's ruined, even though the girls all say he never puts a hand on them. What else could they say? And that's not the worst of it--after all, the Dragon gives them a purse full of silver for their dowry when he lets them go, so anyone would be happy to marry them, ruined or not. But they don't want to marry anyone. They don't want to stay at all."

When Uprooted begins, it's the year of the choosing, and everyone is sure the Dragon will take Agnieszka's dearest friend, Kasia.

"The Dragon didn't always take the prettiest girl, but he always took the most special one, somehow: if there was one girl who was far and away the prettiest, or the most bright, or the best dancer, or especially kind, somehow he always picked her out, even though he scarcely exchanged a word with the girls before he made his choice. And Kasia was all those things."

But of course, it's not Kasia the Dragon chooses, it's Agnieszka.

Agnieszka, who is chronically clumsy and untidy, and has no especial skills beyond an affinity for wandering in the forest and gathering herbs and berries and plants. She's not terribly pretty, she's can't sing or cook, and her clothes and hair are always unkempt no matter how hard she tries to stay neat and clean. The one thing Agnieszka does have is a kind heart and absolutely loyalty to the people she loves. Shortly after the Dragon takes her to his tower and begins to teach her magic, the Wood's corruption spreads into her village. A villager is horribly corrupted and must be dealt with, and Kasia is taken and trapped inside an evil heart-tree deep in the Wood.  Agnieszka's fierce love and determination are Kasia's, and the village's, only hope.

I can't tell you how much I loved this book. The author references Polish mythology to create this stunning piece of dark fantasy fiction. Uprooted reads like an Eastern European fairy tale, but with well developed characters and a totally fresh feel. I adored the dark, brooding Dragon, the plucky and girl-next-door type heroine, and the sinister, evil, frightening Wood.

The other members of my new book club adored Uprooted, too. Martina had read it last year, as had I, and we knew it would be a good choice for our first book club selection. Marla read it in three days, and immediately re-read it because she had devoured it so quickly the first time she was afraid she had probably missed some things! The other three members who read it all agreed that it was fabulous. And guess what? Ellen DeGeneres and Warner Bros. have bought the rights to make a movie next year! We're all really excited to see how it turns out.

Uprooted has been nominated for several awards: a Hugo 2016 for best novel; a Nebula award for best novel 2015; and a Goodreads Choice 2015 for young adult fantasy and science fiction.

Later tonight, or tomorrow, I will share pictures and recipes from our Uprooted book club party yesterday (which was a big success!).

Short Book Review: A Man Called Ove

For the month of February my book club decided to read A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman. Last night we met up at a local beer brewery/bar/restaurant to discuss it. Of the eleven of us that showed up, everyone liked it and several of us (myself included) absolutely loved it.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18774964-a-man-called-ove

Ove is a fifty-nine year old man who is bitter, curmudgeonly, sarcastic, socially inept, and at at times hysterically funny. From the very first chapter ("A Man Called Ove Buys a Computer Which is Not a Computer") when Ove doesn't understand how an ipad works, and so lashes out at the poor kid who happens to be waiting on him in the Apple store, I found myself laughing out loud at Ove's furious tirades against the world. He's set in his ways, and quick to call anyone an idiot who doesn't do things "properly". Modern society is a disappointment to him, as are most things. He's the classic grumpy old man that we can all relate to.

A Pregnant Foreign Woman (how Ove thinks of her) named Parvaneh moves in next door with her husband and two children, and somehow she and her small daughters take a shine to the irritable and deeply unhappy man. It's quickly obvious that Ove is going to have a heart of gold beneath his hard exterior, but the author is skillful in revealing both his backstory and his developing relationship with the family bit by bit in beautifully written vignettes.

The chapters have the best names, too, like "A Man Called Ove Does Not Pay A Three-Kronor Surcharge", "A Man Called Ove and a Lot Of Bastards Sticking Their Noses In", and "A Man Called Ove and a Brat Who Draws in Color". This book made me laugh and cry several times, and that's a rare feat in any book for me! Several other members of my book club felt the same way about it. My Goodreads rating is 4+ out of 5 stars.

I highly recommend A Man Called Ove to all my avid reader friends!

November Book Review: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

My favorite read for the month of November was a re-reading of one of my favorite classics, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith.

The book is set in the early 20th century in the slums of Brooklyn. It's a coming of age story about a little girl named Francie Nolan who lives in extreme poverty with her hardworking but uneducated mother, her loving but alcoholic father, and her little brother Neeley. Her parents are the children of immigrants who have to struggle to survive, and life is hard for the family. In fact, it reminded me of Angela's Ashes and Francie's character is a bit like Frank McCourt's American counterpart. Francie is a sensitive girl trying to make sense of the harsh world she was born into and during the course of the book she slowly grows up to be a young woman with a bright future despite the hardships of her childhood.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn captures something of the American spirit in the early years of the 20th century when immigrants and first generation citizens were struggling to make a life for themselves here. There is sadness and struggle and plenty of harsh realities, but also love and beauty and resilience. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is an American classic and well worth a read if you like stories about the human condition and the triumph of the human spirit.

The Cephalopod Coffeehouse book review..."The Ghost Writer"

It's time for my monthly book review hosted by The Cephalopod Coffeehouse  over at http://armchairsquid.blogspot.com/?m=1

For October I decided to review The Ghost Writer by John Harwood.  It wasn't the best book I read this month, although there really weren't any standouts. Since tomorrow is Halloween I thought that a horror novel would be appropriate.

Well. This book was definitely creepy in parts. It's the story of a young boy named Gerard growing up in Australia whose mother had immigrated from England before he was born. Her early life is a mystery, and she refuses to tell him much of anything about her past. He sneaks a look inside a locked drawer one day and discovers a photograph of his great grandmother, who wrote and published ghost stories in the 1890's. His mother goes absolutely mad with rage when she finds him going through the drawer but still won't tell him anything about why there's the need for such secrecy.  Shortly afterwards, a mysterious young girl named Alice writes to him and wants to become pen pals. Then things get really weird....

Things get a bit confusing sometimes  because several of Viola's (the great grandmother) stories are told in the course of the novel. Her children and grandchildren find and read them, and it's quickly apparent that some of them are actually coming true. The characters are hard to keep straight after a while, and the ending is kind of messy. But there are some genuinely spine - tingling moments..my favorite is when a woman is reading in a library, and a thick fog starts to creep up around her. Then she realizes that a porcelain doll is coming after her in the fog....and she can hear the rustling of it's dress....and as she tries to feel her way out, she keeps waiting to feel it's cold little porcelain hand touch her....the thought made me shudder! There's not much creepier than porcelain dolls, in my opinion!

Overall, The Ghost Writer was a good Halloween read, but not something I would bother re-reading.

The Cephalopod Coffeehouse September Book Review--The Little Stranger

It's time for The Cephalopod Coffeehouse, hosted by The Armchair Squid.

My favorite read for the month of September, without a doubt, was The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters.

From the Goodreads site:

The Little Stranger

by Sarah Waters

The Little Stranger  

The Little Stranger follows the strange adventures of Dr. Faraday, the son of a maid who has built a life of quiet respectability as a country doctor. One dusty postwar summer in his home of rural Warwickshire, he is called to a patient at Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for more than two centuries, the Georgian house, once grand and handsome, is now in decline-its The Little Stranger follows the strange adventures of Dr. Faraday, the son of a maid who has built a life of quiet respectability as a country doctor. One dusty postwar summer in his home of rural Warwickshire, he is called to a patient at Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for more than two centuries, the Georgian house, once grand and handsome, is now in decline-its masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, the clock in its stable yard permanently fixed at twenty to nine. But are the Ayreses haunted by something more ominous than a dying way of life? Little does Dr. Faraday know how closely, and how terrifyingly, their story is about to become entwined with his.

 

Sarah Waters might just be my new favorite novelist. I seem to gravitate to female British authors and Waters is so very skillful. I read The Paying Guests early in the month, and was really impressed with it. My only criticism of that book was that the ending fell a little flat. I wanted to try one more of Waters novels since I liked her writing style so much. And The Little Stranger is one of my favorite kinds of stories: a gothic tale in the vein of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca.

 

The book is creepy, but in a very subtle way. It takes it's time and the dread builds slowly; from the very beginning you're not sure whether the house is haunted, the people are all going mad, or if someone is deliberately trying to terrify the Ayers family. Waters is an excellent writer, and the book is so well written that you keep turning pages even when the plot is moving slowly. And the ending is so very worth it! It's masterfully done, in my humble opinion., so much better than the ending to The Paying Guests. I've been pressing The Little Stranger on my friends (the ones who like this sort of novel) and I wish one of them would hurry up and finish soon so I can discuss the ending with someone! The last couple of chapters will send a cold chill down your spine and leave behind a lingering haunted feeling. 4.5 stars.

 

 

 

Book club tonight

Tonight I'll be going to my second meeting with one of the two book clubs I joined recently, and guess what? I still have 3/4 of the book to finish!

Reading Woman, Renoir

Thank goodness I have the day off and finishing it won't be a problem. But I hate it when I put things off until the last minute like this. It's not really like me to put something off for this long, though. Especially when it involves reading.

To be fair, though, I'm not really digging this book. I purposely put off reading it for a while because I read quickly, and I know from experience that if I start the next month's selection right away it won't be fresh in my mind to discuss three and a half weeks later. So I waited until the meeting was one week out before downloading it onto my Nook, and when I finally started it I didn't really like it. So then I kept finding other stuff to read instead, and now I only have a couple of hours to finish! The book is Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi.

I will finish the book this afternoon, and I'll post a short review of it later in the week. I'm curious about what the other book club members thought of it, and I'm looking forward to tonight's meeting even if the book isn't my favorite. The group is made up of about 12-15 women and is a sub-group of our city's Welcoming Club. The one meeting I've been to so far was a lot of fun--we met up at local beer brewery/bar/restaurant place--and the discussion was lively and interesting. (Last month we discussed The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt). Tonight we're meeting at the home of the lady who is the president of the Welcoming Club and a very active book club member. Occasionally someone with the space and inclination will volunteer to host a meeting. It should be fun.

Well, off to spend an afternoon finishing the book and washing a couple of loads of laundry. At some point I hope to get in a good long walk with the dogs, too. The weather has turned a tiny bit cooler and I feel the need for some fresh air and exercise. I may even bake a peach pie late in the afternoon. Today is going to be a nice day.


Have a good one, everyone!

The Cephalopod Coffeehouse monthly book review--All the Light We Cannot See

I'm joining in the monthly book discussion over at The Cephalopod Coffeehouse and sharing a review of my favorite read for the month of July.

The best book I read this month, and probably so far this year, was All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr.

This is the story of a young blind girl named Marie-Laure LeBlanc and a German orphan named Werner that takes place during WW2. Marie-Laure is the daughter of a locksmith and curator from the Paris museum of natural history, and she and her father have fled to the walled city of St Malo, which is occupied by German forces, to wait out the war with her reclusive great-uncle, an emotionally fragile veteran of WW1. Marie's father builds her small models of all the buildings and houses of San Malo, and then teaches her to navigate the city streets so that she can have a measure of independence.

Werner and his little sister, Jutta, are living in an orphanage at the beginning of the book. Their father was killed in a coal mining accident, and all the boys in that area expect to grow up and work in the mines. Werner is small for his age and somewhat frail, but he's brilliant and has a special aptitude for working with radios and transmitters. When a German officer who lives nearby hears of his ability to repair radios, he sends for him to fix one. He's so impressed with the boy's work that he gives Werner a recommendation to go a Nazi military training school. Werner is totally unsuitable for military training, and the school is full of horrors, but his brilliance and aptitude for engineering is recognized immediately and developed for the Third Reich's war machine.

Each chapter is short and switches between the point of view of Marie, Werner, and a German officer who's obsessed with finding a valuable jewel that has been smuggled out if the Paris museum along with other national treasures to keep them safe from the Germans. Marie's father and two other men all left Paris with jewels....one real and two fakes, and no one knows who got the real one.  The officer is slowly hunting down the real one, which Marie's father has.

It's quickly apparent that Werner and Marie-Laure are destined to cross paths. Their stories are told with such poignancy that it will break your heart. The writing is beautiful, but the plot is quite sad. As in real life, there are very few happily ever afters during wartime.

Normally when I think of WW2 I think of the suffering of the Jewish people and of the horrors they had to endure, but until I read this book I never considered how terrible the war was for other people, too. The boys forced to fight for the Nazis, the townspeople in San Malo, the allied soldiers, even ordinary German citizens just trying to survive during wartime.....what a terrible, terrible thing war is. What a waste.

This book will stay with me for a long, long time. The beautiful, heartbreaking humanity of it makes it worthy of the Pulitzer prize it received. 5 stars.

Bright spots, book review, and other assorted stuff

Bright spots this second week of September:

• Several beautiful sunsets featuring the waxing crescent moon and Venus shining like a jewel in the western sky.
• The very beginning of the trees changing colors in my neighborhood, and the feeling of fall approaching as the days grow shorter and shorter.
• A weekend off coming up! I had originally planned to have my Mid Autumn moon party this weekend. Since the party has been called off, I've decided to spend the weekend doing things for myself that I'll enjoy: shopping at the farmer's market, cooking and baking, planting some fall flowers in containers on our patio, and spending quality time with Gregg and our pets.
• A cleaner-than-usual house. I originally requested an extra day off this week to do housework (for the party) and so that's just what I did. I cleaned for hours yesterday, so now my weekend off can be spent doing fun stuff without guilt!
• My perpetually happy dog and our daily walks with her.

Also: I've recently read a wonderful book. It's called Tell the Wolves I'm Home by Carol Rifka Brunt.

It's the story of a 14 year old girl dealing with the death of her beloved gay uncle during the height of the AIDS epidemic in 1987. She strikes up an unlikely friendship with her uncle's grieving partner, a relationship she must keep secret from her family, who hate and fear the man they believe killed the uncle. June and Toby are both lonely, both outsiders, and both grieving the loss of the person they loved best in all the world.

 The story resonated deeply with me. I was 12 years old in 1987, and I vividly remember the fear and misinformation about AIDS that was prevalent then. The author's insight into the inner workings of an awkward adolescent girl dealing with a terrible loss was nothing short of amazing. This story was so beautifully told that it broke my heart a little bit. Tell the Wolves I'm Home was a completely unexpected pleasure, bittersweet and lovely.

One other thing I've been enjoying for the past few days is a new app I purchased for my tablet called Distant Suns. It's an astronomy app that gives you an up to the minute view of the night sky from your location. You can look up all sorts of information about stars, planets, galaxies, and deep space objects as well as meteor showers, eclipses, and other space phenomena. Technology is such a wonderful thing!

That's been my week in a nutshell. Have a great weekend, everyone!

Book review: Cloud Atlas

It occurred to me recently that I almost never recommend books on this blog, even though I'm an avid reader and typically finish a new book about once a week. I have lots of old favorites that I reread regularly, but it's rare that I find a new book or author that really appeals to me. Last week I purchased a copy of Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, and it turned out to be one of the best fiction novels I've read in a long, long time. This book is brilliant!

The setup of the novel is clever, although a bit confusing at first. There are bits and pieces of stories set up like a puzzle that must be solved to make sense of everything. There are characters from different times and places that are all interconnected despite their profoundly different lives (a young man aboard a 19th century whaling ship in the south Pacific, a college aged journalist investigating a corporate cover up from the 1970's, a genetically engineered worker female clone from sometime in the future, a post-apocalyptic man in the distant future living a primitive sort of life in the mountains of Hawaii, and others) they are all connected and are basically the same soul, connected through time and space. Each story is told in it's own character's unique voice, and the way the whole thing ties together by the end is nothing short of amazing. Some of the passages are simply beautiful and insightful, and the story is an incredible journey back and forth through time.

This is not a quick read (or it shouldn't be) and must be read carefully to understand what is happening. In fact, I was fairly confused until the middle, when the stories recommenced in reverse order and all of the peices fell into place. David Mitchell is a genius, and goes right to the top of list of new favorite authors. Four stars!!!

The movie version of Cloud Atlas was just released here in the US, starring Tom Hanks. I've heard that the movie is excellent, but as always, I would recommend reading the book first. Here is a passage I love that seems to sum up the book quite well, with it's theme of rebirth and reincarnation:

"...I watched clouds awobbly from the floor o' that kayak. Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies, an' tho' a cloud's shape nor hue nor size don't stay the same, it's still a cloud an' so is a soul. Who can say where the cloud's blowed from or who the soul'll be 'morrow? Only Sonmi the east an' the west an' the compass an' the atlas, yay, only the atlas o'clouds."