Annual Book Sale 2024: My Son's Books

 

At the Planned Parenthood book sale that we attend every year, my son usually concentrates on the science fiction and fantasy books, plus graphic novels. He often finds one or two books for me in that area, by authors I especially like.

This year we only went to the sale in the last few days, because my husband and I had Covid when the sale began. 

Here I am featuring six of the books he purchased this year, and you will notice that a number of them are cross-genre, with a mystery element.

Station Eternity by Mur Lafferty

First published October 2022

Science Fiction / Mystery

From the back of the book:

From idyllic small towns to claustrophobic urban landscapes, Mallory Viridian is constantly embroiled in murder cases that only she has the insight to solve. But outside of a classic mystery novel, being surrounded by death doesn’t make you a charming amateur detective, it makes you a suspect and a social pariah. So when Mallory gets the opportunity to take refuge on a sentient space station, she thinks she has the solution. Surely the murders will stop if her only company is alien beings. At first her new existence is peacefully quiet…and markedly devoid of homicide.

 But when the station agrees to allow additional human guests, Mallory knows the break from her peculiar reality is over. After the first Earth shuttle arrives, and aliens and humans alike begin to die, the station is thrown into peril. Stuck smack-dab in the middle of an extraterrestrial whodunit, and wondering how in the world this keeps happening to her anyway, Mallory has to solve the crime—and fast—or the list of victims could grow to include everyone on board….

The Undetectables by Courtney Smith

First published September 2023

Fantasy / Mystery & Thriller

From the description at Penguin Random House:

Be gay, solve crime, take naps—A witty and quirky fantasy murder mystery in a folkloric world of witches, faeries, vampires, trolls and ghosts, for fans of Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey and T. J. Klune’s Under the Whispering Door.

A magical serial killer is stalking the Occult town of Wrackton...

Enter the Undetectables, a detective agency run by three witches and a ghost in a cat costume (don’t ask). They are hired to investigate the murders, but with their only case so far left unsolved, will they be up to the task?

 

Catchpenny by Charlie Huston

First published April 2024

Urban Fantasy / Paranormal Fiction / Suspense & Thriller

From the description at Penguin Random House:

A thief who can travel through mirrors, a video game that threatens to spill out of the virtual world, a doomsday cult on a collision course with destiny, and a missing teenager at the center of it all. With the world on the brink of every kind of apocalypse, humanity needs a hero. What it gets is Sid Catchpenny.

“I absolutely loved it. Catchpenny is a brilliant book, full of heart and the language is pitch-perfect. If Elmore Leonard had ever written a fantasy novel, this would be it.” —Stephen King

The Last Smile in Sunder City by Luke Arnold

First published February 2020

Paranormal fantasy / Mystery

From the author's website:

In a world that's lost its magic, a former soldier turned PI solves cases for the fantasy creatures whose lives he ruined in an imaginative debut fantasy by Black Sails actor Luke Arnold.

Walk the streets of Sunder City and meet Fetch, his magical clients, and a darkly imagined world perfect for readers of Ben Aaronovitch and Jim Butcher.

From Kirkus Reviews:

The first installment of an effortlessly readable series that could be the illegitimate love child of Terry Pratchett and Dashiell Hammett.

Southern Gods by John Hornor Jacobs

First published August 2011

Horror / Mystery & Thriller / Supernatural

From the back of the book:

A Memphis DJ hires recent World War II veteran Bull Ingram to find Ramblin' John Hastur, a mysterious bluesman whose dark, driving music — broadcast at ever-shifting frequencies by a phantom radio station — is said to make living men insane and dead men rise.

A bootlegged snippet of Hastur's strange, brooding tune fills Bull with an inexplicably murderous rage. Driven to find the song's mysterious singer, Bull hears rumors that the bluesman sold his soul to the Devil. But as Bull follows Hastur's trail into the eerie backwoods of Arkansas, he'll learn there are forces much more malevolent than the Devil and reckonings more painful than Hell . . .

All Men of Genius by Lev AC Rosen

Published September 2011 by Tor Publishing Group

Steampunk / Young Adult

From the description at Open Road Media:

A comedic Steampunk sensation inspired by both Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, All Men of Genius follows Violet Adams as she disguises herself as her twin brother to gain entry to Victorian London's most prestigious scientific academy, and once there, encounters blackmail, mystery, and love.

Violet Adams wants to attend Illyria College, a widely renowned school for the most brilliant up-and-coming scientific minds, founded by the late Duke Illyria, the greatest scientist of the Victorian Age. The school is run by his son, Ernest, who has held to his father's policy that the small, exclusive college remain male-only. Violet sees her opportunity when her father departs for America. She disguises herself as her twin brother, Ashton, and gains entry.

Classics Club Spin #39, October 2024

 

The latest Classics Club Spin has been announced. To join in, I choose twenty books from my classics list. On Sunday, October 20, the Classics Club will post a number from 1 through 20. The goal is to read whatever book falls under that number on my Spin List by December 18, 2024.

So, here is my list of 20 books for the spin...

1. Edna Ferber – Show Boat
2. Patricia Highsmith – The Talented Mr.Ripley (1955)
3. Shirley Jackson – We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962)
4. Madeleine L'Engle – A Wrinkle in Time (1962)
5. William Shakespeare – Much Ado About Nothing (1598)
6. Mary Shelley – Frankenstein (1818)
7. John Steinbeck – Cannery Row (1945)
8. William Thackeray – Vanity Fair (1848)
9. Oscar Wilde – The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)
10. Virginia Woolf – Flush (1933)
11. Chinua Achebe – Things Fall Apart (1958)
12. Roald Dahl – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964)
13. Charlotte Brontë – Jane Eyre (1847) 
14. Anne Brontë – Agnes Grey (1847)
15. Albert Camus – The Stranger (1942)
16. Lewis Carroll – Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
17. John Meade Falkner – The Nebuly Coat (1903)
18. Muriel Spark – The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961)
19. Graham Greene – Our Man in Havana (1958)
20. Ray Bradbury – Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

This list is almost the same as last month. I replaced my last spin book, which I completed, with The Nebuly Coat. I am currently reading The Wind in the Willows, so I replaced that one with The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

I will be happy with any book from the list. The two books I would most like to be selected are A Wrinkle in Time by L'Engle and Cannery Row by Steinbeck. There are some that I expect to be challenging reads, such as Much Ado About Nothing by Shakespeare or Vanity Fair by Thackeray or The Talented Mr.Ripley by Highsmith. 

Short Story Wednesday: Shadow Voices, ed. by John Connolly

 

The subtitle for this volume of short stories is "300 years of Irish Genre Fiction, A History in Stories." The first story is from 1729, "A Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift. The last story is from 2019, "The Boughs Withered When I Told Them My Dreams" by Maura McHugh.

My husband and I bought this book because we both like short stories and we thought there would be stories that would appeal to both of us in this book. We bought the eBook edition because it is a great price and it is a very large book, at over 1000 pages. Connolly's introduction is very good, very informative. And he has provided lengthy introductions for each author and the story included for that author.

This is a difficult book to describe, so I am going to use the overview at Connolly's web site: 

Lemuel Gulliver, Dracula, Narnia — the history of Irish fiction is a history of genre fiction: horror, romantic fiction, science fiction, crime writing, and more. Irish writers have produced pioneering tales of detection, terrifying ghost stories, and ground-breaking women’s popular literature. In a single volume, John Connolly presents the history of Irish genre writing and uses it to explore how we think about fiction itself.

Deeply researched and passionately argued, SHADOW VOICES takes the lives of more than sixty writers — by turns tragic, amusing, and adventurous, but always extraordinary — and sets them alongside the stories they have written to create a new way of looking at genre and literature, both Irish and beyond. Here are vampires and monsters, murderers and cannibals. Here are female criminal masterminds and dogged detectives, star-crossed lovers and vengeful spouses.

I read three stories from the book. None of those stories were my usual reading, but they were all good stories. 

"The Man in the Bell" (1821) by William Maginn

This is a very brief story and as such I don't want to tell too much about. A young man is a bell ringer for his church. He relates the events when he got trapped in the belfry when his friends start ringing the bell. Well written.

"The Witching Hour" (1884) Margaret Wolfe Hungerford 

Hungerford was a prolific writer of romantic fiction, both novels and short stories. This story is part ghost story, part romance. Three servants have left the employment of the Vernon family. The latest to leave is the cook. The servants have all been scared by an apparition walking around upstairs. Mr. and Mrs. Vernon have a beautiful daughter, Dolores, who is engaged to Frank Harley, who is staying at the Vernon's home. He volunteers to stay up late that night and see if he can view the ghost and solve the problem. 

"Fly Away Tiger, Fly Away Thumb" (1953) Brian Moore 

The introduction to this story was especially interesting because Connolly explored Brian Moore's life, especially in relation to his writing and gave me lots of recommendations for books to look for. Moore was born in Ireland but later emigrated to Canada. Connolly notes that, in this story, Moore drew on his experiences in Naples during World War II.

The story is very strange, and tells of a magician who is abducted by a gang of outlaws, who demand a huge ransom to return him to his band of performers. He does escape of course. The story has some gruesome aspects, but it was entertaining.

I look forward to trying more stories from this book. I will try more of the earlier stories and some of the stories from contemporary authors.

Books Read in August 2024

There is one advantage to looking back on my August reading six weeks later. I was very glad to see that most of the crime fiction I read was from older books, published between 1925 and 1978. 

Here are the books I read in August...

Nonfiction / Letters

The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters (2007) by Charlotte Mosley  (Editor)

I enjoyed reading this very much, even though it was 800 plus pages long and took me over a year to finish. In some ways it was like a social history of the UK, covering the effects that different times had on the Mitford sisters. Most of the letters seem to have been between Deborah, Diana, and Nancy, but Deborah also kept in touch with Jessica, who moved to the US, became a US citizen, and lived a very different life from her sisters. Although each letter was clearly identified as to who was writing and who was the recipient, plus date written and location of the letter writer, they were not an easy read because the sisters always used nicknames when writing to and referring to the others. I would only recommend this to those who are very interested in the Mitford family; the letters allow the reader to see a different side of them that doesn't come through in the biographies. 

Science Fiction / Time Travel

A Symphony of Echoes (2013) by Jodi Taylor

This is the second book in a time-travel series. The main protagonists are historians or technical people who provide support for the historians. They all work for St. Mary’s Institute of Historical Research. This book was a very fast-paced adventure. It strains one's ability to suspend disbelief at times, but it moves so fast that you hardly notice. The characters are engaging but there are a lot of them to keep track of. The story is a combination of hopping around in history, and the adventures that come along with that, and a good bit of humor and some romance. 

Crime Fiction

Birdcage (1978) by Victor Canning

This is the fifth book in a very loose series about the Birdcage group, a covert British intelligence agency. I love this series, even though the books are often very dark. See my review.

The Madonna of the Sleeping Cars (1925) by Maurice Dekobra

This is a fun and sometimes entertaining espionage story from 1925, but it did not work well for me. It seemed much more like an adventure story with some political intrigue. See my review.

A Great Reckoning (2016) by Louise Penny

This book is the 12th in the Armand Gamache series by Louise Penny. I enjoyed it immensely. See my review. 

The Lady in the Lake (1943) by Raymond Chandler

This is the 4th book in the Philip Marlowe series. My favorite thing about reading Chandler's books is his beautiful prose. See my review.

Curtains for Three (1950) by Rex Stout

This book in the Nero Wolfe series consists of three novellas: "Disguise for Murder", "Bullet for One", and "The Gun with Wings". See posts on these here and here.

The Case of the Late Pig (1937) by Margery Allingham

This is the 8th book in the Albert Campion series. It is unusual for this series because it is told in 1st person narration by Campion. It is very short at 148 pages and I got confused with all the characters at times, but I enjoyed it still. Allingham is one of my favorite Golden Age authors; I put her at the same level as Agatha Christie although their writing style is entirely different. 

Currently reading

I am now reading Then We Take Berlin by John Lawton, published in 2013. This is the first book in the Joe Wilderness series. I think others in the series are set in the 1960s, but so far this book has focused on Berlin and other parts of Germany at the time World War II ended.

The three photos at the top and bottom of this post are from years ago (2011 and 2012) when we visited the Santa Barbara Zoo, the grounds of the Natural History Museum, and Rocky Nook Park. Click on the images for best viewing quality.

The Madonna of the Sleeping Cars: Maurice Dekobra

Summary from the back of the Melville House edition:

One of the biggest bestsellers of all time, and one of the first and most influential spy novels of the twentieth century, this delightful romp is now back in print after fifty years.

Taking place after the Russian Revolution shook Europe to its core, it tells the story of Lady Diana Wynham, who relishes trampling on the sensibilities of British Society, and her secretary, Prince Gerard Séliman, the perfect gentleman, equally at home in an Istanbul bazaar or a London charity matinée.

Faced with the prospect of financial ruin, Lady Diana launches a plan to regain control of her inheritance, a field of oil wells seized by the Soviets. She dispatches Gerard on the Orient Express to take care of the matter.

This was one of the books from my 20 Books of Summer list; it was the second book I read in August, just over two months ago.

I want to start out by saying that this is not a bad book; it is fun and entertaining at times, and at only 250 pages it was a fast read. However, it did not live up to my expectations at all.

My thoughts:

• The novel is billed as a spy novel but seems much more like an adventure story to me. There is a good bit of political intrigue, and the part that was set in Russia was interesting, but I have no idea how accurate it was. 
• It was less realistic than the James Bond novels by Ian Fleming (which have a lot of variation within the series so that a few are realistic and several are more on the fluffy side). The Madonna of the Sleeping Cars was published in 1925, was very successful at that time, and was exploring issues such as women's roles in society. I would have been more impressed with that if everyone in the book had not been rich or had a title. 
• Just the fact that a woman is in charge and directing her male secretary to make the dangerous trip into Soviet Russia makes this an unusual novel for the time it was written. And the main villain among the Soviets is a beautiful female spy, Irina Mouravieff.
• A minor point: the title was misleading. The implication is that there is much traveling on trains; if so, I missed it, and Lady Diana stays behind in any case.
• I did not have any problem finishing the book, it is very readable, but I did not care for any of the characters. Most were rich and entitled.

I have two copies of this book: the Dell Mapback edition, a reprint from 1948, and the Melville House edition, published in 2012. The latter has an interesting afterword by René Steinke.

I will point you to a more favorable review at A Work in Progress.

 -----------------------------

Publisher:   Melville House, 2012 (orig. pub. 1925)
Translator:  Neal Wainwright
Length:       320 pages
Format:       Trade Paper
Setting:       London, Soviet Russia
Genre:        Thriller
Source:       Purchased in 2013.

Short Story Wednesday: Ladies' Lunch by Lore Segal

 

This book of short stories was published by Lore Segal in 2023 on her 95th birthday. It consists of 16 stories; 10 of them are about the "Ladies' Lunch" group. This group of older women, now in their 90s, have been meeting for lunch for thirty years or more, usually at the home of one of the group. There are five ladies named as the main group (Ruth, Bridget, Farah, Lotte, and Bessie) but others are mentioned in later stories. Obviously over time their health and abilities have been affected by age, and at this point they often think of "how they will shuffle off this mortal coil."

Some of the stories are sad but not all of them. Most of them had a humorous element also.

My favorite stories were...

• "Ladies' Lunch" is focused on Lotte, as several stories are. This one is about Lotte's move to a care home, Green Trees, because she requires care and she cannot get along with any of her live-in caregivers.
• "Making Good" is not a Ladies' Lunch story. A group of people, half Jewish Holocaust survivors and half people from Vienna who were Nazi supporters during the war, or their descendants, take part in a Bridge Building Workshop to reconcile their differences. This was one of the longer stories in the book at 23 pages.
• "Pneumonia Chronicles" is an autobiographical story based on the time when the author was in the hospital for two weeks during the Covid pandemic. She had pneumonia, not Covid, but her children could not visit her when she was hospitalized.

I enjoy collections with stories that are linked and create an overall story when read together. As with any collection, there are some outstanding stories and some that did not do that much for me. I know I will reread this book and find more to enjoy in the stories.

I finished reading this book on Monday, October 7, and later in the day I learned that Lore Segal had died on that day, at age 96.

The stories in Lore Segal's Ladies' Lunch were recommended by Jeff Meyerson who comments on Short Story Wednesday posts at Patricia Abbott's blog. I thank Jeff for this recommendation and many others that I followed up on.

Birdcage: Victor Canning

Birdcage is about the machinations of a British intelligence agency, referred to as "Birdcage" because its offices are in Birdcage Walk in London. There is very little oversight of this covert security group and the agents are generally amoral, although they believe that their mission is important to the welfare of the country. In reality, the higher ups are just trying to protect the government in question which they serve blindly.

This story is set in Portugal, Gloucester, and London. A young nun leaves her Portuguese monastery, feeling that she has betrayed her vows. She attempts to drown herself in the sea but by some miracle is rescued at the last minute. The man who rescues her is a regular guy, easygoing and not ambitious. 

We soon find out that the nun's real name is Sarah Branton, daughter of Lady Jean Branton, a former agent for the Birdcage group. Lady Jean is dead, but the Birdcage agents are keeping an eye on Sarah to make sure that she doesn't have damaging information about their group.

This is the fifth book in a very loose series about the Birdcage group. Especially in the first few books in the series, it is hard to see any connections between the books; there are no repeating characters for example. The tone is the same, and the department is unnamed in the early books. But as the series continues some of the agents feature in multiple books. However, my point here is that though I may be reading them as a series, they easily can be read as standalone books. 

It only recently occurred to me that this series often has a psychological / romantic suspense plot running through it. In fitting with the espionage aspects of the story, the outcome of these romantic plots are entirely unpredictable; sometimes there is a happy, optimistic ending ... sometimes not. This one is even more obviously of that type, since Sarah Branton and the man who rescues her quickly develop a bond and a growing attraction to each other.

I enjoy the glimpses of nature, and especially birds, running through all the stories. The sense of place is very prominent. I think this might be distracting to some readers, but it is one of the elements that keeps me coming back for more. The stories in this series can be very dark.

Victor Canning is one of my favorite authors. He wrote a lot of books starting in the 1930s and through the 1980s, some general fiction, some children's fiction and some spy fiction. I have stuck with his spy fiction or mystery novels so far, but I want to try some of his general fiction too. 

Today I was reading about Canning's life, and discovered that he was friends with Eric Ambler, another espionage author whose books I enjoy. This information was in a book by John Higgins, A Birdcage Companion. Per Higgins' website:

In 1940 he enlisted in the Army, and was sent for training with the Royal Artillery in Llandrindod Wells in mid-Wales, where he trained alongside his friend Eric Ambler. Both were commissioned as second lieutenants in 1941. We get a glimpse of Canning in those years from Eric Ambler's autobiography, Here Lies Eric Ambler.

 -----------------------------

Publisher:   Heinemann, 1978
Length:       233 pages
Format:      Hardcover
Series:       Birdcage books #3
Setting:      Portugal and the UK
Genre:       Espionage fiction
Source:      Purchased in December, 2023.

Short Story Wednesday: "This Won't Kill You" by Rex Stout

"This Won't Kill You" is a 60-page Nero Wolfe mystery novelette by Rex Stout. It was first published in the September 1952 issue of The American Magazine. It later appeared in book form in the short-story collection Three Men Out, published by Viking Press in 1954. 

I have read this story many times and it is one of my favorite novelettes in the Nero Wolfe series. It is very different from the normal short fiction in that series. For one thing, at the beginning of the story Nero Wolfe is attending a baseball game, which means he had to leave his home, which is very unusual. And in addition the story starts out being typical detection by Nero Wolfe, and then takes a turn into an adventure segment with Archie saving the day. 

Wolfe and Archie are at a baseball game because Wolfe's friend Pierre Mondor, a famous chef from Paris, is visiting  and has asked to see a baseball game. Wolfe feels he must oblige as Mondor's host, and being Wolfe he has a grateful client who can supply tickets. It soon becomes clear that the game is going very wrong; one player is missing and several of them cannot play their usual game. I won't go further into the story because I would spoil it. 

Amazingly I have found a good number of reviews of this story, and about half agree with me that this is a excellent story and half don't like it all because it is so untypical. 

There are two other novelettes in Three Men Out: "Invitation to Murder" and "The Zero Clue". I don't remember much about those stories but I will be reading them soon.

A Great Reckoning: Louise Penny

Louise Penny's Armand Gamache series is now up to 19 books, with the latest book due to be published October 29, 2024. When I began reading the series, it was primarily a police procedural series, with Gamache as a Chief Inspector of the Surêté du Québec. 

This book is the 12th in the series, and in a previous book in the series, Gamache left his position as head of homicide. At least two of the books after that focus on mysteries not related to Gamache's role as a policeman. But both he and his wife knew that he would someday look for a new career and return to active work. At the beginning of this story, Gamache has made that decision and accepted an offer to become the head of the Sûreté Academy. In the past, the Sûreté had become filled with corrupt officials and the Academy still shows the results of that influence. Gamache hopes to correct that, but he knows it will take time.

Thus this book is primarily set at the Sûreté Academy, and that is an interesting setting. But Armand and his wife Reine-Marie now live in Three Pines, so a good amount of time is also spent there. I like the books no matter where they are set, but when they are in Three Pines, it means that some of the interesting characters who live there will be featured: Ruth, Clara, Olivier and Gabriel, and Myrna at the bookstore.

Not long after Gamache comes to the Academy in his new position, an instructor at the Academy is killed. And Gamache is one of the suspects, although no one believes that it could be him. Clearly Gamache cannot run the investigation of the crime, but he is involved in the investigation as much as possible. 

There are several smaller mysteries in this story. One is why Gamache decided to approve Amelia Choquet for admission to the academy. She is a misfit, has been in trouble with the law and has obvious tattoos and piercings. He obviously feels some connection to her. 

There is another mystery around an old map found in the walls of Olivier and Gabriel's bistro in Three Pines. It turns out to be an orienteering map; some cadets from the Academy and the residents of Three Pines work together to figure out its origins.

At this point in the series, I have a hard time reviewing the books because going into much detail can spoil plot points of earlier books in the series. I also think that reading the books in order is important because some of characters just seem needlessly quirky and irritating without know some of their background.

The mysteries in this series are always rewarding. Usually very complex and sometimes circuitous and perplexing, they keep me guessing. I never even came close to suspecting the perpetrator in this book.

Louise Penny is very good at creating characters we want to read about. She also continues to develop the characters, both the main characters and the continuing secondary characters in Three Pines. It is hard to look back and compare all the books, but I think this is my favorite book so far. 

See other reviews at Mysteries and More from Saskatchewan and Mysteries in Paradise.

 -----------------------------
Publisher:   Minotaur Books, 2016 
Length:      386 pages
Format:      Hardcover
Series:       Armand Gamache, #12
Setting:      Quebec, Canada
Genre:        Police Procedural
Source:      I purchased this book.

Short Story Wednesday: Fantasy and Science Fiction

At the Planned Parenthood Book Sale last year, I found two groups of science fiction and fantasy magazines tied together, for sale for a few dollars per bundle. This week I pulled out one of those and read some stories from it.

These stories come from the October/November 2000 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. 

"Dreamseed" by Carolyn Ives Gilman

This is a novelette about the discovery of a young man found in a box in a warehouse, hidden there for fifteen years, placed in a induced state of perpetual sleep. His name is Aspen, and he is the son of Dr. Semic, who developed a theory of dreams and how people could share dreams and develop realities in their sleep. But while Aspen has been dreaming all these years the world has been taken over by a contagion that has caused conflict between different groups. 

This was my first story by Gilman, but I am definitely interested in reading more by her. Per Goodreads, in her professional career, "Gilman is a historian specializing in 18th and early 19th-century North American history, particularly frontier and Native history."

"The Devil Disinvests" by Scott Bradfield

A very fun short story in which the Devil decides to leave his business of torturing and bartering for souls and live a normal life in a beachfront cottage in California. He falls in love, marries, and has two kids. One of his disgruntled ex-employees comes back for revenge.

"Earth's Blood" by Kate Wilhelm

This is the story I was most interested in. Kate Wilhelm has written two mystery series and many stand alone novels in the mystery and science fiction genres. She was married to Damon Knight, also a very well-known author of science fiction. Yet this is the first piece of writing I have read by Kate Wilhelm. Kate Wilhelm's fiction was first recommended to me by Todd Mason at Sweet Freedom.

"Earth's Blood", a novelette, did not disappoint. The protagonist is a down on his luck photographer who picks up a low-paying job to scout for a suitable location for a low-budget horror story. He is looking for a ghost town with a good setting. The build-up seems like the story will be about ghosts and horror, but the plot goes in a different direction. The story has lots of depth and detail and a great ending.

"Magic, Maples and Maryanne" by Robert Sheckley

This was another humorous short story, about a man who worked in a department store and practiced magic at night, alone in his home. The floor manager at the department store catches him doing some magic at work, and persuades him to let a few friends make some money on the magic.

"Auspicious Eggs" by James Morrow

This is a much darker story, a novelette that mixes technology, religious beliefs, and reproductive rights and ends up being a very uncomfortable story. Interesting but I would not want to read it again.

My Ántonia: Willa Cather

 

This is the first book I have read by Willa Cather and I now understand why other readers are so effusive in their praise for the book. The book was published in 1918 and begins in the 1890s, at a period when immigrant families were settling on homesteads on the prairies.

The story focuses primarily on Ántonia Shimerda, the daughter of Bohemian immigrant parents who have settled on a farm on the Nebraska prairies. The Shimerda family doesn't have much money and suffer from inadequate shelter and food the first year they are at the farm. The nearest family is the Burdens. Jim Burden arrived in Nebraska on the same train as Ántonia and her family. His parents had both died in the previous year, and his cousins sent him to live with his grandparents. The house the Burdens live in is a wooden frame house, with a basement, and a floor and a half built above the basement. The Shimerda's home is basically a cave in the earth, but they hope to eventually build a house to take its place. The Burdens are the Shimerda's closest neighbors and they try to help the Bohemian family as much as possible.

There are so many interesting aspects to this book that I could never cover them all. The descriptions of backbreaking work on a farm; the difficulties of the immigrants, most of which cannot speak much English; life on the prairies and in the small towns. Ántonia is a girl full of life; she and Jim have adventures while still on the farm, and develop a lifelong friendship. He would like their relationship to be more than that.

The story is narrated by Jim Burden starting when he is about ten and meets Ántonia and her family. He likes Ántonia immediately and volunteers to teach her to read. Both Ántonia and Jim have to do work on their farms, but Ántonia must contribute much more just to help her family survive. As she grows older she takes on more and more of the heavy farm work, trying to compete with her older brother Ambrosch. 

A few years later the Burdens move to Black Hawk, buying a house and renting their farm. Jim's grandparents want him to go to school. Mrs. Burden worries about Ántonia laboring on the farm, and finds her a place to work as a housekeeper with one of their neighbors. This brings positive changes into Antonia's life. 

The book is divided into five sections. Book I is "The Shimerdas"; Book II is "The Hired Girls"; Book III is "Lena Lingard"; Book IV is "The Pioneer Woman's Story"; and Book V is "Cuzak's Boys". After the first longer section dealing with the years that the Shimerdas and the Burdens are neighbors out on the prairie, the following sections are vignettes that follow portions of Jim's and Ántonia's lives after adulthood.

In "The Hired Girls", various of the immigrant farm girls are hired by families in Black Hawk, the nearby town, and learn new skills and make their own way in the world. 

Book III follows the career of Lena Lingard, a Norwegian immigrant who has learned dressmaking skills and has set up a shop in Black Hawk. She is a liberated woman who is not interested in marriage or a family, and plays a big part in Jim's development. This was one of my favorite parts of the book and Lena is a wonderful character. 

"The Pioneer Woman's Story" is very brief and brings Jim and the reader up to date on Antonia's life at that point. I was not prepared for how emotionally I would react to the last section, "Cuzak's Boys", when Jim sees Ántonia for the first time in many years.

As I noted above, there are many things I loved about this book. This was set in an area and a time that I have little experience or knowledge about. But the best parts were how well all of the characters are described and developed throughout the book; and the beauty of the writing and the descriptions of nature.

Short Story Wednesday: Stories from Fire Watch by Connie Willis

 

Back in August 2022, I read the novelette, "Fire Watch," by Connie Willis. It was published in a collection with the same title, and was part of the same universe as Willis's Oxford Time Travel series: Doomsday Book (1992), To Say Nothing of the Dog (1995), Blackout (2010), and All Clear (2010). I liked "Fire Watch" a lot but I did think that it might not be too clear if the reader had not read at least one of the books in her time travel series.

After reading an additional three stories from Fire Watch last week, I hesitated to write a post about them. Mainly because I found the stories confusing, and two of them I did not really understand at all. 

"Service for the Burial of the Dead"

This one was pretty good. It is a ghost story, set in the 1800s (I am guessing). A young woman is shunned by her neighbors because she has had an affair with a young man. He dies and she dares to attend the funeral. Embarrassed, she leaves the chapel and goes into a room nearby. To her surprise her lover is there, and says he won't reveal himself to any one else until the father of his fiancee settles his debts. The story is somewhat open ended.

"Lost and Found"

An apocalyptic story about cults and the state stealing treasures from the churches. It isn't that this story is totally unclear, it is more that I wanted some more concrete information on what is going on.

"All My Darling Daughters"

This story was long and very icky, but I could not stop reading it. I was hoping there would be some resolution that would make it worth reading. It is science fiction and it concerns a school (on a large space craft). It was about sex and fathers and implied rape and incest. Some reviewers loved this story and others hated it, so don't take my reaction too seriously.

"Blued Moon"

I did not want to give up on the stories in this book and only report on ones that I had mixed reactions to. The fourth story I read was "Blued Moon." It was a highly recommended story by Willis. It was undoubtedly the best story of these four. It is a romantic comedy and a fun and humorous read. It involves a project to restore the ozone layer, which may or may not have disastrous results.

There are seven more stories left in this book and I will persevere,  plus I have two more books of Willis's short stories to read.

Two Novels by Raymond Chandler

 

Raymond Chandler is a very well-known and highly regarded author of hard-boiled mysteries featuring Philip Marlowe. He was also a major influence on future writers in that subgenre. I have read five of the Philip Marlowe novels and I rate all of them very highly. However, it is not the mystery plots that keep me coming back, it is Chandler's writing style that I love.

The Lady in the Lake

Philip Marlowe, a private detective with an office in Hollywood, is hired by Derace Kingsley to find his wife, who has been missing for about a month. The marriage was on shaky ground anyway, and he had received a telegram that she was going to Mexico to get a divorce and marry another man, Chris Lavery. Then a few weeks later, he is told that her car had been left unclaimed at a San Bernardino hotel. He is mostly concerned that she is going to cause some kind of scandal and he will lose his job. 

The plot does get very complex. Kingsley has a cabin on a private lake in the mountains near San Bernardino. Bill Chess is the caretaker for the cabins on the lake; his wife, Muriel, left him about the same time Kingsley's wife supposedly left for Mexico. When Marlowe goes to the lake to interview Chess, they find a decomposed dead body in the lake. Chess assumes it is his wife. There are many characters involved, and an excess of suspects. 

In addition to the beautiful writing and the terrific dialogue, there were several appealing things about The Lady in the Lake. The book was published in 1943, and it was written after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. The US was involved in World War II and there is evidence of this throughout the book. This book also seemed to have more humor than other books in the series.

The edition above of The Lady in the Lake is my favorite. It has cover art by Tom Adams, who also illustrated the covers for many paperback editions of Agatha Cristie's mysteries. 

The Long Goodbye

I read The Long Goodbye over two years ago, in 2022. I didn't write a full review at the time and I decided this would be a good time to review it.

In this book Philip Marlow gets involved with two very messed-up men, both alcoholics. Terry Lennox hires Marlowe to drive him to Mexico, no questions asked, and Marlowe goes along with it, because he trusts Lennox. When he gets back to L.A. he finds that Lennox's wife is dead and the police think that Lennox killed her. Following this, Marlowe is hired to find a once successful author, Roger Wade, who has been missing for three days. He finds him and returns him to his wife at their beach house. They want Marlowe to stay with them and keep Wade sober and working on his book. Marlowe doesn't want to get involved with that situation but he keeps getting dragged back into it. That doesn't sound like a complex story but there are many characters, and the two "cases" start to merge. 

These are my notes from two years ago shortly after I read the book:

The writing is beautiful. The reading experience was wonderful, even if the plot confused me (and defies description without spoiling the story). This seemed very different from the first three books. Marlowe never has a real client in this one. He tries to help two different people, over several months time, and neither one seems to deserve his help. The whole experience seems aimless but all the threads come together in the end, with some surprises. 

The Long Goodbye was published in 1953, 10 years after The Lady in the Lake was published. It is the 6th book in the series. 

Short Story Wednesday: "Scribbling" by Helen DeWitt

"Scribbling" by Helen DeWitt was published in the July 18, 2024 issue of The New York Review of Books. The story was fun to read but in the end I did not know what to think of it. It seemed to me to be full of whimsy, but whimsy has never really appealed to me, so why did I like it so much? It is impossible to describe adequately, and so short that I do not want to retell the story.

The premise:

A woman, Flip, is hounded by a New York agent to send him a manuscript. This irritates her husband to no end, and he is uncooperative in every way. Eventually she succeeds in sending a manuscript to get the agent off her back. The agent is thrilled and wants to discuss it. Through a series of mishaps, she finally gets to New York to meet the agent.  

I had to read the story twice, because the first time through I was trying to focus on the sequence of events, and there is much more to it than that. The next time through I focused on the writing style, which is a little over my head. I think I could re-read the story many times.

From the little I have read about Helen DeWitt, I understand that she has had problems with getting published; thus this story could certainly be poking fun at that process. 

If anyone can shed light on this story or other writing by Helen DeWitt, I would love more information on that subject.

Books Read in July 2024

 

I am so far behind on my monthly reading lists; I am writing this summary of July reading in early September. Looking back on July, there was a good bit of variety in my reading. Only three of the seven books I read were crime fiction, which is unusual. The five novels were from my 20 Books of Summer list but the two nonfiction books were not.

So here are the books I read in July...

Nonfiction / Books about Books

More Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason (2005) by Nancy Pearl

This book is part of Nancy Pearl's Book Lust series, which includes Book Lust and Book Lust to Go. I have read all three of these books multiple times, and I believe this was my fourth time to read More Book Lust. One of the limitations of this book is that it was published almost 20 years ago and so could be considered out of date. For me, that doesn't matter, as I want to know about older authors as well as newer ones. The book is divided into various topics. Many of the topics include mystery and crime fiction suggestions, which I appreciate. And each time I reread the books, I discover new books and authors.

Nonfiction / Travel / Adventure

Lost Lands, Forgotten Stories (2002) Alexandra Pratt 

The subtitle of this book is "A Woman's Journey into the Heart of Labrador." Pratt describes a challenging canoeing expedition that she took with a native guide (of the Innu tribe) on a series of rivers in Labrador. It was an amazing journey. See my review.

Science Fiction

A Closed and Common Orbit (2016) by Becky Chambers

This is the second book in the Wayfarers series; the first two books are only loosely connected. The only characters shared between the two books are Pepper, an engineer, and Lovelace, an AI that ran the ship in the first book. I loved the writing and the story telling and the world building.

Fantasy

The Dead Fathers Club (2006) by Matt Haig

This is a modern retelling of Hamlet. The main character and narrator is 11-year-old Philip Noble whose father recently died in a car accident. I am not sure if it was aimed at adults or young adults, and I am still not sure what I think of it. I liked it, mostly, and it definitely wasn't boring. It was very funny at times and I was pleased with the ending.

Crime Fiction

A Cast of Falcons (2016) by Steve Burrows

Steve Burrows is a Canadian author and this was the first book I read for the Canadian Reading Challenge. A Cast of Falcons is the third book in Burrow's Birder Murder Mystery series. See my review.

War Game (1976) by Anthony Price

Anthony Price published 19 novels; all featured David Audley, a British spy during the Cold War. The focus in this espionage series is on characterization and intellect, not action, although there is some of that present. Most of the books in this series have historical events infused into a present day story (keeping in mind that they were written between 1970 and 1990). In Other Paths to Glory, which won the Gold Dagger in 1974, it was World War I and the battlefields of the Somme. In Colonel Butler's Wolf, the site of the story is Hadrian's Wall. War Game is the seventh book in the series and centers around the English Civil War and events in 1643. I love this series, but I need to read them closer together because I forget who the continuing characters are, except for David Audley.

Dark Fire (2004) by C.J. Sansom

This is a historical mystery set in London in 1540; it is the second book in a series of seven featuring lawyer Matthew Shardlake as the protagonist. In the first book, Dissolution, Shardlake was working for Thomas Cromwell, helping with the dissolution of the monasteries. In this book, it is three years later, and he is again working for Thomas Cromwell, this time under duress. See my review.

Currently reading

I am now reading The White Lioness by Henning Mankell, the 3rd book in the Wallander series. It was published in 1993. It is the story of a murder in Sweden that has its roots in South Africa, and it addresses the issues of Apartheid at that time.

 

The two photos at the top of the post were taken in our back fenced-in area in 2010. They are motivating me to spend more time cleaning up the back yard and potting up more plants. The photo immediately above is Rosie the cat, taken in 2013, the year that she came to live with us. Click on the images for best viewing quality.

Dark Fire: C.J. Sansom

Description from the back of my book:

In 1540 Henry VIII has been on the throne for thirty-one years. Lawyer Matthew Shardlake has been called upon to help a young girl accused of murder who refused to speak in her own defense even when threatened with torture. On the verge of losing his case, Shardlake is suddenly granted a reprieve. His benefactor is Thomas Cromwell, the king's feared vicar general, who offers him two more weeks to investigate the murder. In exchange, Shardlake must find a lost cache of "Dark Fire," an ancient weapon of mass destruction. 

My thoughts...

Dark Fire by C.J. Sansom is a historical mystery set in London in 1540; it is the second book in a series of seven featuring lawyer Matthew Shardlake as the protagonist. In the first book, Dissolution, Shardlake was working for Thomas Cromwell, helping with the dissolution of the monasteries. In this book, it is three years later, and he is again working for Thomas Cromwell, this time under duress. 

I have read a good bit about Thomas Cromwell in Hilary Mantel's series that starts with Wolf Hall, so I was familiar with Cromwell's career. It was interesting to see Cromwell in this book, at the point in his life when he was falling out of favor with Henry VIII. But Cromwell plays a relatively minor role in the story, and I don't think any prior knowledge is necessary to enjoy the novel.

This book is excellent historical fiction, very well written; the historical setting is described in detail but the reader is not lectured to. I was mesmerized by the story in the first chapter and stayed engaged throughout. The story is very dense, filled with action and interesting developments. The characters are all very well developed, even the secondary characters.

Dark Fire won the 2005 Ellis Peters Historical Dagger, awarded by the Crime Writers' Association (CWA).

 -----------------------------

Publisher:   Penguin Books, 2006 (orig. publ. 2004)
Length:       501 pages
Format:      Trade paperback
Series:       Matthew Shardlake #2
Setting:      England, 1540
Genre:       Historical Mystery
Source:      Purchased at the Planned Parenthood Book Sale, 2019.

Short Story Wednesday: "Bullet for One" by Rex Stout

"Bullet for One" is a 68-page novella in the Nero Wolfe series, and was first published in The American Magazine in July 1948, the year of my birth. It is one of three stories in Curtains for Three, published in 1950. 

As usual, Archie Goodwin, Nero Wolfe's assistant, narrates the story. Some semi-regular characters are included: Saul Panzer and Orrie Cather, freelance detectives; and Inspector Cramer of the NYC police. Lily Rowan, Archie's sometimes female companion, makes a brief appearance.

This story features five people who are suspected of murdering Sigmund Keyes, an industrial designer who was shot while riding horseback in New York's Central Park. These five people gather at Nero Wolfe's office to hire him to prove that another person, Victor Talbott, is guilty. Victor Talbott was Keyes' sales agent, and is in love with his daughter. He also has the best alibi of all of the suspects. The five suspects that Wolfe is working for are three people who worked in the same office with Keyes, plus his daughter, Dorothy Keyes, and a stable hand at the Riding Academy near Central Park. 

This was a funny story, and I think it was more humorous because it included some of the regular characters in addition to Archie and Wolfe. Archie gets his feeling hurt because Wolfe assigns all the interesting jobs to Saul and Orrie. Wolfe is mainly concerned with food and his orchids while he sends others off to do research. Although some of the facts are hidden from the reader until close to the end, it was a clever ending.

I read another story in the book recently also, but it is a hard one for me to review. It may be my favorite story in this book.

"The Gun with Wings" is about two lovers who come to Wolfe with a problem. They know that the woman's husband was killed and they haven't told anyone what they know, because each of them is afraid that the other might be the murderer. (Her husband was a piece of work.) They want Wolfe to find out who the murderer is so that they can get married. Now that is an unusual problem. 

I reviewed "Disguise for Murder," the third story in Curtains for Three, in April of this year.