The Cue Card

Hi all. It looks like we’re winding down the year … so I wanted to I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas or Happy Hanukkah or whatever holidays you observe for the week ahead. May your time with family and friends and loved ones be special and dear. Or should I say deer … like this one who showed up yesterday evening to eat from our bird feeder, lol.

Anyways, thanks for taking time this year to stop by here, whether occasionally or regularly. It’s been a fun journey to discuss books and reading with you in particular … as well as shows and movies and music. Your thoughts and insights always make things more enjoyable and richer.

My husband and I will be having a quiet Christmas at home this year with our two Labrador dogs and some gifts. He always goes a bit overboard even when three gifts is the proposed limit.   

Usually I get all my books from the library … but around this time of year I’ll make an exception and ask Santa for a few. Here is my Santa list this year (above). I have asked for three nonfiction books and two big novels to read. Have you read any of these or have them on your TBR?  They look good.

And now I’ll leave you with a review of what I finished lately. 

Seascraper by Benjamin Wood / Scribner / 176 pages / 2025

5 stars. This transfixing novel, which I read as a buddy read with Tina at Turn the Page, came at just the right time in my year-end reading and packs a lot in for a short book.

Set in the early 1960s, Thomas Flett, 20, is the young man who carries on his family’s business of shrimping with nets aided by a horse and a cart when the tides go out in his seashore town in northwest England. It’s cold and dreary hard work amid the Irish Sea, and Thomas does it almost by rote but not with much joy. He’d rather be practicing songs on his guitar, which he hides from his mother (since he bought it by selling his grandfather’s timepiece). But it’s just Thomas and his mother now in their meager home and he must provide. 

Then comes a stranger to their door — an American film director named Edgar Acheson — who wants to hire Thomas to help on location. It’s just the grim shoreline and place Edgar wants for his next film. And Thomas can help by showing him the best spots and pointing out the dangerous “sinkpits” to avoid. 

Edgar is quite the character and the plot takes a couple mysterious twists and turns … during which Thomas goes through an awakening of sorts. The writing wonderfully conjures up the frigid conditions amid the rain and stormy sea … with the steadfast horse by Thomas’s side while lugging the nets. It’s sort of a dark small gem of a tale, but it also has a shred of light too. It made a strong impression on me and I will look for whatever British author Benjamin Wood writes next. He’s one to watch.

That’s all for now. What about you — what books do you want for Christmas? Happy holidays.

Hi bookworms. How was your week? Are you staying warm? We had another nippy week here and both my husband and I were sick with head colds (bahhh), which in addition to my knee recovery was not too fun. I hope we’ll be able to throw off the illness this coming week and get into the holiday spirit.

Has it even felt like Christmas yet? I’m not even sure because I’ve been quite sequestered at home. I have watched a couple drippy holiday Hallmark movies from the couch, lol, but I haven’t done much shopping, decorating, or holiday gathering yet. I’m not supposed to drive till six weeks post-surgery, but Monday will be five weeks so the end line is nearing. Santa might just come in the nick of time. 

Meanwhile in book news, I just saw this article on the best literary or book podcasts for 2025 — none of which I knew about. Do you listen and like any book podcasts or book Youtubers? Sometimes I’ll listen to Sarah’s Bookshelves live podcast, or NPR’s Book of the Day. I might also check out Open Book With Jenna, the Book Club Review, or BBC’s A Good Read, or the NYT’s Book Review. But I’m open to hearing which you like either as a podcast or booktube; do you like any good ones? Here’s a couple more book podcast lists here and here. 

And now I’ll leave you with a couple reviews of what I finished lately. 

Pick a Color by Souvankham Thammavongsa /Knopf Canada /188 pgs /2025

3 stars. Granted this slim first novel has garnered much acclaim since it came out, including the 2025 Giller Prize, and there are several passages worth taking note … but overall the story didn’t do too much for me.

It takes place in a nail salon and follows the life of Ning, 42, the salon’s owner, who lives above the salon. She banters with a few of her hired girls who all wear the same black uniforms and the same length black hair. They work hard to give manicures and pedicures and drum up business to returning clients and walk-ins, who tell Ning about their lives though she likes her quiet. Her customers are often loud or uppity and Ning seems to mock them behind their backs with the staff in their foreign language. 

She previously had been let go by a rival nail salon and that boss got under her skin. Much of her observations reflect on her own lonely life and you wish you knew a bit more to figure her out. There’s some intriguing passages of her former life as a boxer and what happened to her then and her coach’s tips to her that still come to her throughout the day. But unfortunately I found it a bit of work to stay invested in the day at the nail salon amid the ladies’ often snide banter that grows a bit wearisome. Still the setting felt ripe as an exploration of class and character interactions and blue collar lives on the periphery. 

Shepherd’s Sight: A Farming Life by Barbara McLean/ ECW/ 240 pgs / 2024

4 stars. I enjoyed reading this nonfiction book about the author’s life as a sheep farmer for over 50 years, which is organized in the book by months and seasons. She has good info to share about her raising and caring for sheep, and as a weaver, and living on her and her husband’s farm in rural Ontario, Canada.

She has Border Leicester sheep — which are a bit different — known for their high-quality wool, which is prized by handspinners and weavers such as her. She uses the sheep mostly for wool on her farm but also sells them when they are no longer productive for their meat. 

She describes about how when she first started out she and her husband (a doctor) bought the dilapidated farm — they named Lambquarters — but knew nothing about sheep farming or weaving wool and spent the first year just improving the house and facilities there. Her husband was away all the time delivering babies, while she learned the ropes from neighbors and agricultural courses about what to do. Over the years, she gained a remarkable amount of experience and knowledge about the sheep, which she closely monitors and are very dear to her. 

The book entails much about the hard work (and also the joy) of raising and breeding sheep and keeping them healthy and safe from predators. The way she helps with breached lamb births and a variety of sheep ailments was eye-opening. I also marked many notes in the book and like how the author spoke about the agricultural changes she’s seen in farming over the years and the trends happening now. For instance, ploughing fields is used a lot less … and many farmers are farming into their 80s since younger people are moving to the cities … as small farms sadly can’t make enough for families to live on. 

The author looks back on her life describing various farm incidents and droughts and storms that were particularly challenging. She also speaks about aging on the farm and worries that now in her 70s she won’t be able to keep going for much longer, but she loves it — the land they live on seems beautiful — and she doesn’t want to give it up. I sympathized with her and hope she will be able to stick with it for years to come. Her life and work from the book seem quite inspiring. 

This was my second nonfiction farming book in a row … the first being Sue Hubbell’s book A Country Life about her years as a beekeeper … and now this one about raising sheep. I’m enjoying learning a bit about the pastural ways of life, which is where we are living now. Here is a cool video of author Barbara McLean with her sheep.

That’s all for now. What about you — do you know these books and what do you think? Happy holidays. 

Hi bookworms. How’s your week been? We’ve had another quiet wintry week here. It was nice to get a bit more snow for cross-country skiing. My husband has been taking our dog Willow on a couple excursions into the mountains to ski. She loves it, but after two hours she’s ready to crash on the way home.

Meanwhile I’ve been doing my PT knee exercises and watching the birds go crazy at the outside bird feeder. The birds seem very active at the feeder when it’s this cold outside. The blue jays, the Northern flickers, and the Eurasian collared doves are big visitors … as well as the smaller sparrows, the house finches, and the black-capped chickadees. They are a marvel to watch flit back and forth from the trees to the feeder and the bushes and all around.  

In book news this week, I see that Swedish author Fredrik Backman won the Goodreads Fiction Choice Award for his novel My Friends … beating out Charlotte McConaghy’s novel Wild Dark Shore by some 60,000 votes and also Virginia Evans’s novel The Correspondent, which came in third place. Backman’s fans are legion and perhaps the Choice Awards are a bit of a popularity contest more than solely about quality, right?

On The Washington Post’s Best Book list and The New York Times list, only one book made it onto both and that was Charlotte Wood’s novel Stone Yard Devotional, which I gave 3.5 stars back in June and had some misgivings about. Still to each their own. I hope to make my own favorite book list at the very end of the year. And I enjoy seeing your lists as well. Will you be making one?

And now I’ll leave you with a review of what I finished lately. 

A Country Year: Living the Questions by Sue Hubbell / Random House / 240 pages / 1986

3.7 stars. Back in the late 1980s, I was living the dream in a Colorado ski town working at the local indie bookstore and enjoying outdoor recreation nonstop. My bookstore shift started at 2 p.m. and I usually got out of there around 10:30 p.m., which I liked since I could use the free mornings to run up mountains and back with my German shepherd dog Sophie.

During this time I became familiar with the small but well-equipped Natural History or Nature section at the bookstore and started to read Dian Fossey, Jane Goodall, Farley Mowat, Loren Eiseley, Barry Lopez, and Rick Bass among others.

And that’s when I ran into Sue Hubbell’s book. By then Sue was living in the Ozark Mountains of southern Missouri as a commercial beekeeper. Her thirty-year marriage had broken up and she had been living mostly alone for 12 years in a cabin on the wild 90-acre farm they had bought. She was in her 50s and running a large honey-producing operation. At certain times of the year, she would drive on trips all over the country selling the honey she had gathered from her bees.

She seemed to fear nothing — not the copperheads, the recluse spiders or the icky termites she examines — but liked writing about them and reveled especially in her long days among her twenty bee hives, each one containing some 60,000 bees. At one point she mentions clearing 33,000 pounds of honey from her honey house. She was also very resourceful in making most of the repairs on her farm … often taking time to fix one thing or another whether it be to the cabin, or on the roof or with the farm equipment or to her old truck. She was handy. And she wasn’t exactly a hermit but seemed popular in the nearby town and with locals and other farmers and neighbors. She mentions her son’s visits to the farm a few times.

This book, which I reread last week, details her work and life there. Sue was a keenly observant naturalist and in it she tells in small scientific detail about the various critters, plants, and insects she encounters along the way … everything from bats, spiders, snakes, skunks, opossums, birds, and of course her beloved bees. (She knew a lot about insects.)

It’s not exactly a breezy memoir but is divided up by the seasons and is mainly nature notes about what she encounters on the farm. Still I appreciated her wisdom and perspective about things large and small. Sadly Sue passed away in 2018 at age 83. She wrote numerous articles in her day and a couple books, and I think she was a hero of sorts.

That’s all for now. This book was on my nonfiction list that I posted in November.

What about you — have you liked any particular nature reads? Cheers. Happy holiday season.

Hi bookworms. How was your week? Yesterday we took a drive into our local mountains and parked at the top of the pass. There was some snowflakes swirling about and it was nice to get out and see the natural world after my knee surgery. Does this picture at left look like a painting or a photo? Lol.

We saw some bighorn sheep on the way back, but otherwise it was fairly quiet out there. Soon the park service will close the mountain gate on Dec. 1, and so it will be snowed in for the winter. You can continue to hike up there if you want, but otherwise nature and wildlife get a nice reprieve from humans and cars. This week there’s more snow forecasted for the mountains and we should get some too at the house. Happy Thanksgiving week to those in the States.

Also yesterday was our dog Willow’s fifth birthday. Here she is trying to help out my husband with the chores. Willow was a pandemic baby born into this world in November 2020. We got her when we felt our other dog Stella, then 9, was getting a bit too old to go cross-country skiing very far. As you know, Stella and Willow have become a dynamic duo over the years 🙂 and they continue to live their best lives.

In book news, you might have seen last week that Lebanese author Rabih Alameddine’s novel The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother) won the fiction prize for the National Book Award. The novel is set in Lebanon and “chronicles a family’s turbulent but happy lives” and the “unbreakable attachment of a [gay] son and his mother.” This novel was released in September and flew under my radar and I’m still a bit unsure about it, but it has a 4.18 rating on Goodreads … should you want to check it out.

Meanwhile Laotian-Canadian writer Souvankham Thammavongsa won this year’s Canadian Giller Prize last week for her second book of fiction Pick a Colour. It’s about the day in the life of a weary nail salon owner (a retired boxer) as she toils away for the privileged clients who don’t even know her true name. The novel is only 192 pages, but it sounds like it packs quite a punch … and is said to be about loneliness, love, labor, and class. I’m one of 349 who are on the wait list for it at the library, so we will see.

And now I’ll leave you with a couple reviews of what I finished lately.

Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks / Viking / 224 pages / 2025

4 stars. Sadly back on Memorial Day weekend 2019, Pulitzer-prize winning author Gerald Brooks’s husband historian Tony Horwitz suddenly died of a heart attack on the street in DC at the age of 60. He was on a book tour and Geraldine was not with him at the time. She had learned of it by a rather brief and imprudent call by an ER doctor while at home on Martha’s Vineyard.

This touching memoir follows those immediate days and months after the shocking death of her vibrant husband, who wrote a number of best-selling nonfiction books — along with alternating chapters several years later of a trip she takes to Flinders Island off Australia, where she finally goes to give herself the time and space to fully grieve him.

Geraldine had met Tony in graduate school at Columbia University and they had been married for 35 years. During their careers, they had taken news correspondent jobs in Australia and the Middle East and later became book authors after becoming parents to their two sons. At the time of Tony’s passing, they had been “empty-nesters” only for two years, living on their farm on Martha’s Vineyard. This book details their lives together as well as gives helpful insights into dealing with grief and sudden loss of a loved one.

I found her memoir both moving and wise and it helped a bit in light of the loss of my own father in March. It’s a good tribute to her husband Tony Horwitz, who wrote some great books, and I sympathized with her a lot. One side note is: I had met and interviewed Geraldine Brooks online for Publishers Weekly in April 2022 about her novel Horse. Back then I could sense the enormity of her loss hovering, but I could only say I was sorry, which felt pretty inept. I’m glad she gave herself the time in February 2023 to go to Flinders Island to do the work of grieving and remembering that would help her.

Here is a quote from the book I liked:
This story of a death is the story that dominates my life. Here I have retold it, rethought it. But I can’t change it. Tony is dead. Present tense. He will be dead in the present, in my present for as long as I am alive. I cannot change that story. I can only change myself.
Write the truest thing you know, said old man Hemingway.
Dear reader this is it.

Culpability by Bruce Holsinger / Spiegel & Grau / 380 pages / 2025

Synopsis: “A family heading to their son’s high school lacrosse game is thrown into chaos when their self-driving minivan is involved in a fatal accident. As each family member wrestles with their responsibility for the crash and how much trust they should put in AI, the author grapples evocatively with the trade-offs of automated life. This timely tale leaves readers with much to chew on.” — per Kirkus Reviews and Publishers Weekly.

My Thoughts: 3.75 stars. This thriller and family drama novel, which was chosen by Oprah for her book club in July, had some pluses and minuses for me. I liked how the family’s autonomous car crash raises various ethical issues about artificial intelligence in our world and how sticky and tricky that all will be especially as it becomes more and more prevalent in the future. Parts of the story are pretty gripping and I followed it as an audiobook closely to see what would happen.

But the main family is overall pretty annoying and a later accident that happens while they’re recovering at a beach house on the Chesapeake Bay overshadows a bit of the main plot. I thought the novel was sort of trying to do a bit too much and maybe was half successful. Still it’s a thought-provoking glimpse into today’s AI world and maybe it only suffers from being a bit over-the-top. Still it’s a popular fiction kind of read so that’s pretty typical.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these and if so, what did you think? Happy Turkey Day.

Hi Bookworms. How are you? I’m sorry I’ve not been about to visit blogs in a while as I was down for the count last week with the knee replacement surgery, but this week should be better and I can see what you all are up to and reading. Man surgery can put you off your game! The first couple days after were quite rough, but now I find with post-op Day 6 the pain has lessened and I’m getting more into a groove of a recovery plan. Come spring, I should be back to some of my regular activities.

In book news, we need to talk about the Booker Prize. Wow congrats to British-Hungarian author David Szalay for winning the prize last week for his novel Flesh. (In Canada they like to point out that Szalay was born in Montreal, lol.) I have not read his novel yet, but I know fellow bookie Carmen liked it and thought it was one to watch. And indeed it cleaned up.

Publishers Weekly says it’s about a “taciturn Hungarian man who serially attempts to build a new life after his traumatic adolescence.” Apparently the judges were taken with it because as chief judge Roddy Doyle said: “We had never read anything quite like it … a novel that uses white space on the page so well … as if the author is inviting the reader … to observe — almost to create — the character with him.” Hmm, food for thought if you decide to get a library copy, which I should be doing soon.

And stay tuned this week when Canada’s Giller Prize will be announced on Monday and the National Book Awards on Wednesday. It’ll be an interesting week. And now I’ll leave you with a review of what I finished lately.

The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession by Michael Finkel / Knopf / 240 pages / 2023

This is quite an eye-popping true crime account about a 20+ year-old misfit French man (Stephane Breitwieser) who in broad daylight stole more than 200 works of art from museums across Europe between 1995 and 2001, turning his mother’s attic into a trove of treasure.

His girlfriend Anne-Catherine Kleinklaus was his accomplice along the way. Apparently unlike other art thieves he stole not to enrich himself monetarily through ransoms or the black market but to surround himself with beauty. Hmm, I think the author tries to analyze this angle — as if it gives the thief more depth or gravitas? It’s definitely something unusual in light of other art thieves.

Thanks to Tina at Turn the Page for reading this one with me as part of a buddy read. It is an usual story that vividly recounts how this odd couple were able to pull off this crazy illegal undertaking. The guy, a self-made art freak, seemed pretty pathological … a narcissist who compulsively couldn’t control his urges to take significant artworks, particularly from the Renaissance period. He was out of control and he and his girlfriend were hitting museums at a pace unseen like before. They would visit a museum and sort of obscond with precious works under their clothes. Whether Anne-Catherine was bullied and under his thumb is up for discussion in the book … as well as whether the guy’s mother knew what her son was up to in her attic as well.

The book pretty fascinatingly details their long illegal raid across Europe and also reveals how poor (generally speaking) museum security is and how lenient the prison sentences are for art thieves globally. I had no idea about the ins and outs of much of this, which were a bit shocking. By the end of the book, I think Tina and I were both disgusted and done with all three culprits: the man, his girlfriend, and his mother. They had little to no shred of moral fiber to them nor responsibility. And what happens to the art is tragic. I will let you find out more about it. The book is fast and pretty short.

I’ve read the author’s other book The Stranger in the Woods from 2017, which is also about a freaky guy loner and thief. He seems to have that narrative down cold, so not sure what book will come next. I rarely read true crime books but once in a blue moon I will. Remember the Golden State Killer book from 2018 — I think that was my last one. The Art Thief is a book that counts for my nonfiction challenge.

That’s all for now. I was also planning to leave a review of Bruce Holsinger’s novel Culpability, which I finished recently on audio, but I think I will wait till next week as it’s getting late and I need a breather, lol.

Cheers All. Happy reading.

Hi bookworms, how goes it? Anything going on in your neck of the woods? So far we’ve had mild and windy conditions here the past month, and you can see from this sunset picture that all the leaves are down.

We might even go for a bike ride later today since it’s supposed to be 60 degrees in the afternoon. It’s all pretty warm for our parts now. Just last week, I had the snow tires put on the car to get ready for the season, but who knows when the snow will actually hit.  

Even the bears are still out and about. My husband and brother-in-law saw this family of a mama grizzly and three cubs last week when they went hiking in the local mountains. They were in the car and not on the trail at the time. A police officer told them that the bears had been seen along that stretch of road all summer.

It’s good the bears are all right and have not been hit by a car. When you see an amazing family like that, you definitely stop the car and watch them amble along, minding their own business. The cubs are getting big as you can see. Soon I hope they’ll be hibernating in a den away from the road. 

Meanwhile the Booker Prize winner will be announced Monday night. It could be a surprise pick or not. The judges seem to like to trick us, right?

I’ll wait to hear as I’ll be recovering from my knee replacement surgery that very day, argh. There’s nowhere to hide now. I’ve waited on a surgery list for almost two years and now the time has come. I’ll try to be brave. I offer this photo of a 1000-piece puzzle on rescue dogs that I finally finished after it was on our dining room table all summer long. I left it there in frustration as I couldn’t get much going on it for long a while. Then in October inspiration struck, lol. 

And now I’ll leave you with a review of what I finished lately. 

H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald / Grove / 288 pages / 2015

This popular memoir was first published in the U.K. back in 2014 and then in North America in 2015. It was big then … about an English professor at Cambridge, a falconer, who details her year of training a young goshawk bird all the while navigating her grief over her father’s sudden death from a heart attack.

Many of you have read this one, and I had started it at various times but then got waylaid. So when Kathy at the blog Reading Matters reviewed it so favorably in August, I decided to add it back to my list. I thought it might help with my own father’s passing earlier this year. 

My Thoughts: 4 stars. I loved the adventures the author has with her goshawk Mabel, especially when Mabel starts flying in wild habitats with the author following in dogged pursuit. Mabel is quite the hunter (as a bird of prey) and every pheasant and rabbit should beware … many end up dead in the book. I also liked hearing about how Macdonald comes to understand the bird and the training they go through, which is very gradual over time. The descriptions of Mabel and the woodlands where she thrives are terrific. And it’s evident how Macdonald’s time with Mabel helps her with the grief over losing her father, which is palpable. 

I was less drawn to the parts she writes about of the author T.H. White and his 1951 bird-training book The Goshawk, which Macdonald draws parallels to throughout her memoir. White seemed to be fighting his own demons and for some reason these extensive parts in Macdonald’s memoir distracted me from the parts about Mabel that I wished to get back to. I could have used less about T.H. White and more about how her pursuits helped with her grief over her father, which could’ve been talked about a bit more. 

I listened to the audiobook version narrated by the author who reads it wonderfully. I’m late to the party on this book but better late than never. It’s interesting to note that I have the ebook, the paperback copy, and the audio of this memoir (a trifecta of sorts), so I really wanted to get to it. 

Also I had no idea there is the film H is for Hawk coming out this December (with wider release in January) with Claire Foy as Helen Macdonald. Yay! Author Emma Donoghue was a co-writer on the screenplay. Here is a peek at the trailer for it. 

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read this and what did you think? What are you reading now? 

Hi bookworms, how’s it going? It’s been another quick week here with more windy, mild conditions. Our dog Willow has been out sunning herself with the pumpkins on the front stoop. She’s apparently protecting them, lol. It’s almost Halloween (already?!) and I realize I haven’t read any ghoulish kind of fiction this month. I usually like to pick up some kind of spooky thing. Though I did read the crime novel The Death of Us this month and watched The Lost Bus movie about the fire in California, both of which have some scary elements to them. But it’s not the same as a Shirley Jackson kind of tale or a movie or book that’s got haunted houses and ghosts causing havoc in the night. Have you read any this month? What would you recommend (either book or show)?

And I know it’s late October, but it’s better late than never to talk about a recap of my Summer reading Challenge. The ones pictured above were the 15 books I picked at the end of May that I hoped to get to. And I did finish them all except for one, which was Tim Winton’s novel Juice. That novel alluded me and it’s not easy to find, but I still plan to read it sometime. The rest were all quite good and I didn’t find any duds among the bunch. It’s hard to rate which ones I liked best or that stood out to me (most were four stars), but I’ve tried to list them below in some kind of order of which I thought were strongest. I’m still tinkering with the order.

• Audition by Katie Kitamura — it’s up for the Booker
• A Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhirst — an unreal lost at sea true tale
• Nesting by Roisin O’Donnell — an Irish women’s abusive marriage and escape
• Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall — a British love triangle gone wrong
• The Death of Us by Abigail Dean — a married couple’s struggles after a home invasion
• Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie — the lives of four African women who are at a crossroads
• Heartwood by Amity Gaige — an all out search for a lost hiker
• Rabbit Moon by Jennifer Haigh — a hit-and-run accident upends a women’s life in Shanghai
• The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali — a lasting female friendship set during the political upheavals of Iran
• Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid — the early days of female astronauts in the space program
• So Far Gone by Jess Walter — an older reclusive man journeys to protect his grandkids from a militant group
• Tilt by Emma Pattee — a pregnant woman’s journey across her city in the aftermath of a major earthquake
• The Last Secret Agent by Pippa LaTour — a female spy’s true tale of her days in Nazi Occupied France
• The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus by Emma Knight — a woman at the University of Edinburgh tries to find out secrets about her parents

So there you have it. All in all, it was a pretty lively summer of reading with these books. And I pretty much liked them all. Did you read any of these?

And now I’ll leave you with a review of what I finished lately.

Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie / Knopf / 416 pages / 2025

Synopsis: Each segment of the novel follows a different African woman during the pandemic who are all friends — Chiamaka, Zikora, Kadiatou, and Omelogor — as they come to crossroads in their lives and figure a path forward.

Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer who recalls her past lovers and struggles with her choices and regrets. While Zikora is a lawyer in D.C. about to experience motherhood for the first time and upset that her partner has left. Whereas the outspoken Omelogor leaves a job of fraud in Nigeria to enter an MBA program in the States, only to find herself angered by her righteous classmates. And most disturbingly, Kadiatou is assaulted by a prominent man while at her hotel cleaning job and it blows into a public scandal.

My Thoughts: This was one of my last books on my summer reading list, lol. I thought there would be more interaction between the four women and it would be about their friendship, but no, the segments for the most part are pretty separate and it’s mostly about each of their lives and what they experience separately. It almost seemed like linked stories of the women, all of which have echoes of feminist themes.

I listened to it as an audiobook and the different narrators enlivened the story, and the first half with the women Chiamaka, Zikora, and Kadiatou I was engaged with. But then the latter half with Omelogor and a final part with Chiamaka went a bit off the tracks for me. My mind wandered and it sort of exhausted me as it went on too much. So the early parts kept me interested and the later parts tired me a bit. It seems I might have liked her 2013 novel Americanah slightly more, but I was glad to have finished this one too as I liked the women generally and the book’s feminist themes.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read any of these and what did you think? How’s your reading been?

Hi ho, it’s been a quick week. First off, thanks to those who participated in the No Kings peaceful protests yesterday, so good to express one’s first amendment right to free speech against what is happening under the current U.S. administration. It looked to be a great turnout!

We didn’t have any near us in Canada, but we do support the sentiments. It’s been a while since I flew to Denver in January 2017 to participate in the Women’s March, and if I had more notice, I’d like to have done so again. I was just in D.C. and I missed the march this time. But my brother shared some protest photos where he was in Pasadena, Calif., and my sister in San Francisco. All and all it seemed a great day. 

It was a bit quieter here. Our snow from last week melted and we’re back to fall again. I’ve been walking our younger dog Willow down our road. Stella is too old now to go too far. 

And I’m gearing up for a knee replacement surgery I’m having the second week of November. Sigh. I’ve been through this before — two years ago I did the first knee, now I’m doing the other. It’s quite an ordeal … but after three months I hope to be back walking okay and feeling fairly normal. And the good news might be: I’ll be ready for activities come spring and summer next year. Yay.

In book news, I don’t think I ever pictured the Booker Prize shortlist so here it is above. The prize will be announced on Nov. 10 and I would be a bit of a fool to pick which one will win since the judges seem to like to trick us at the last minute. I have only read Katie Kitamura’s novel Audition so far but I’d particularly like to read Flesh and Sonia and Sunny when my copy at the library comes in. I think the winner will be likely one of those three. Though then The Land in Winter or Flashlight will get it right? I’m slightly leaning towards Kiran Desai’s novel Sonia and Sunny for the win, but I haven’t read it yet, so what do I know. Katie Kitamura is certainly a beguiling kind of writer with her odd/lone protagonists and I’ve read and liked all three of her books. So your guess is as good as mine.

And now I’ll leave you with a couple reviews of what I finished lately. 

The Death of Us by Abigail Dean / Viking / 336 pages / 2025

Synopsis: This novel follows the lives of a young married couple in their 30s in London (Isabel and Edward) who struggle in the aftermath of a violent home invasion that changes their lives. Twenty-five years later, divorced and in their 50s, they find themselves (along with the other victims) gearing for the upcoming trial of the arrested perpetrator. Told in alternating chapters by Isabel and Edward you get their differing views on the case, their faults, and struggles, but also their connection to one another and love. 

My Thoughts: 4.0 stars. I don’t often read crime novels but this one was hailed very highly when it came out in April and I added it to my summer list. It’s a pretty potent crime story … of a serial killer/rapist on a spree, so trigger warnings abound. But it also unfolds quite convincingly and effectively and you come to know and root for the married couple Isabel and Edward. What happens to them impacts their lives and marriage in ways that catch you up and propel you through the story. 

The story swirls around quite long with small developments in their case and in their marriage as it crumbles a bit. They get to know a few of the other victims as well as the detective Etta Eliogu closely and Isabel makes a fateful decision when the case goes cold that she hopes might lure the perpetrator out in some way. 

It’s a different kind of crime story — not really a whodunit since you come to know that — but more of a victims’ story. The novel has a couple ebbs and flows in it and maybe a couple confusing transitions — since it jumps non-chronologically between the timelines — that I had to go back for in the audiobook. Still it’s easy enough to follow and you really get a sense of the characters of Isabel and Edward as real people … and root for their marriage and an arrest of the South London home invader. It’s a crime novel that was well worth my while.

The Fact Checker by Austin Kelley / Atlantic Monthly / 256 pages / 2025

Synopsis: This novel follows an unnamed protagonist who’s an obsessive fact checker at the New Yorker magazine circa 2004 in NYC. His job is to check every little detail on articles to make sure they’re the truth. He’s handled various serious pieces on terrorists, but then later he gets tripped up on an easier article he doesn’t expect to have any problems with …. about an organic farm that brings produce to the farmer’s market in the city.

He spends time (and a night) with a woman named Sylvia who works there who says something “nefarious” is going on but then she disappears the day after. He becomes worried and goes on a quest to find out what happened to her and if allegations about the place are true.

My Thoughts: 3.7 stars. I’m bucking the trend of the book’s low ratings on Goodreads (it did receive critical praise elsewhere). Austen Kelley deserves more love for this quirky, amusing novel. I too dabbled as a newspaper copy editor for years and I had to laugh particularly at the start of this debut. Then parts of it get a bit weird, other parts are amusing as he eventually makes a trip to the farm (a cult like place) to find out what’s going on. 

Along the way the protagonist comes off as a pretty endearing bar-going, baseball-loving, factoid-loving mess of a nerd who can’t let things go. He must get to the bottom of it and his search for truth and the facts and to help Sylvia. And he will … probably by mistake one day into the future. I think I could have a drink with him, but I don’t know where his friend Sylvia is. You’ll find out a little at the end. Note: the novel has one trigger warning for an odd scene of a sheep being killed, which I didn’t care for, so that was my quibble. Otherwise thumbs up.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read either of these and what did you think? How’s your reading going?