The Cue Card

Hi all. Happy Remembrance Day, or Veteran’s Day to others. Here’s a toast to all who’ve served their country and those too who voted and stood up for democracy.

I was glad to see this week that many of the crazies didn’t win in the U.S. midterm election, which is quite a great relief. As Liz Cheney said the losses by far-right candidates and election deniers were a “clear victory for team normal.” Hooray. Though votes are still being counted in a few key locations so keep hope alive that the trend continues. 

Meanwhile we had a very cold week here with some single-digit days (see the steam coming off the river), but now we’re back into the 30s, which feels completely balmy in comparison. And my book club met on Zoom to discuss Nita Prose’s debut novel The Maid, which was a quirky and entertaining-enough mystery that I think everyone enjoyed. We might pick Sarah Winman’s novel Still Life next, but we will see if everyone agrees.  

In other book news I noticed that Calgary author Suzette Mayr just won Canada’s top literary award — the Giller Prize — this week for her novel The Sleeping Car Porter. Wow, that’s big for us here in Calgary! The novel just came out at the end of September so I haven’t heard a lot about it yet, but the publisher describes it this way: When a mudslide strands a Canadian passenger train in 1929, Baxter, a gay Black sleeping car porter, must contend with the perils of white passengers, ghosts, and his secret love affair.

It sounds good and I just put my name on the library wait list for it along with 515 other readers. Oh my. There’s going to be a long wait, though I’m sure the library will buy more copies.

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

Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield / Flatiron /240 pages / 2022

Synopsis: This is about a gay married couple (Miri and Leah) who seem very committed to each other, and then Leah, a marine biologist, goes on an underwater dive research mission in a submersible (with a crew of two others), which is only supposed to last a few weeks but then something mysterious goes wrong and Leah’s out there for about six months with no communication or power at the bottom of the ocean — so her partner Miri doesn’t know what’s happening back at home.

My Thoughts: 

I listened to this as audiobook, which I almost put down after the first couple sections thinking the story (mostly about their relationship) wasn’t holding me much, but then I stuck with it and by the last section called Hadal Zone I was totally invested and gripped. 

The chapters alternate between the two women Miri and Leah, and from Miri you come to know about their relationship, how they met, their backstory, and how much she is missing Leah, and from Leah emerges a picture of what is going on during the underwater ocean mission. I seemed to gravitate more to Leah’s chapters because I wanted to know what the heck was going to happen on the submarine.

Later Miri’s chapters delve into the mission and how things begin to change for Leah. Whoa. I don’t want to say too much, but it gets a bit freaky and mysterious and I was glued to the last few chapters. Not everything is resolved or explained at the end but you learn enough. Throughout the novel, the story has a lot of heartfelt words … about love, grief, and life in the oceans. You could underline probably a lot of her lines if you wanted to. It’s a weird novel but quite good too.

Life Among the Savages by Shirley Jackson / Penguin / 256 pages / 1952

Synopsis: This is a memoir of sorts published in 1952 by the author who died in 1965 and is still famous today for her various spooky tales. Many of the chapters apparently were taken from magazine articles she wrote back in the ’40s and ’50s and then were stuffed together to make this book.

My Thoughts: 

I’m intrigued by Shirley Jackson — who she was and how and why she wrote the tales that she did. She seemed a whiz and a huge talent. And I try to read one of her books around Halloween time each year. So far, I’ve read two of her novels — The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in a Castle — both of which I admired as well as her short story The Lottery, which is a chilling classic. 

From this memoir, I was hoping to get a glimpse of Shirley — the writer, who wrote spooky tales, but most of this book is about her and her husband and their lives raising their children. It’s a very domestic look … and you might never suspect her creative darker sides if you read this. She’s all light and humor with her kids and husband. Parts of it are indeed funny and other parts get a bit tedious about the antics of her young kids and their everyday lives at school and home. Everyone thinks their kids are cuter than perhaps anyone else wants to hear — so you get a lot of tales of them. 

 Still I was glad I finished this one, though it wasn’t exactly what I was looking for. Shirley seemed a very patient and caring Mother … to her three kids, the fourth one is born at the end of the book. The good thing about this domestic memoir … is that we find out that Shirley had a funny sense of humor. And at one point she says she believes in ghosts and later says she wasn’t about to mess with a broken furnace and get electrocuted. But you can’t glean too much of her fiction writing from this book. In fact, I really wonder how she got all her writing done while raising her kids and the amount of cooking — which she seemed to enjoy — doing for them and for her apparently unfaithful husband. But I’m glad she did.

After finishing the memoir, I looked up Shirley Jackson’s children who seem to be well and all close to their 80s now, and one son Laurence Jackson Hyman put out a book of her letters in 2021 and an early short story of hers just this year. Wow, so her writings continue to come out. 

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

Hi. Are you gearing up for Halloween? I admit I haven’t read anything spooky lately, but we had a crazy week weather-wise that reminds me of Halloween-time. I think one afternoon this past week reached a golden 75F degrees and then just days later — today — we had our first snowstorm of the season! Wow we got dumped on — maybe 10 inches, it’s still coming. I think all the wet snow could break branches so I’ve gone out to knock the snow off our trees.

Good thing I just put away the tomato plants for the year. I’m sure the snow will melt away this coming week, though it reminds me winter is just around the corner. I used to avoid winter but now I try to embrace the fun things about it like cross-country skiing, hot coco, and happy dogs, lol.

In book news, I see that Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka just won the 2022 Booker Prize for his novel The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, which is his second novel that came 10 years after his first, Whoa! The judges called it “a searing, mordantly funny satire set amid the murderous mayhem of a Sri Lanka beset by civil war.”

I’m going to put it on my list for sometime down the road. The Booker has a way of introducing me to new authors. And I might try his first novel called The Legend of Pradeep Mathew as well — which I hear is about an aging sportswriter who goes on a madcap search for a famous cricket player. It sounds like the author has both humor and depth to him, which is usually a winning combination. Congrats to Shehan!

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

Natural History: Stories by Andrea Barrett / Norton / 208 pages / 2022

I was most interested to check out this book because author Andrea Barrett is known for writing so eloquently about the natural world and her focus on the early women in science is much to be admired. Yet I’ve only read her novel The Voyage of the Narwhal from 1998, which I recall liking quite a bit. So I snatched this one up as an audiobook and liked parts of it but was looking for a bit more.

This book is a collection of six interconnected short stories that includes various characters from her fiction over the years, which I hadn’t read so there were times I was a bit confused by who was who and how they were related. I was most interested in following the woman Henrietta Atkins, a school teacher and butterfly/moth collector who has a long friendship with the notable science writer Daphne Bannister and tells a lie that ends her ties to a close male friend.

Henrietta seems to be the main character in this collection with some stories moving back and forth throughout her life, following her friendships, regrets about her life choices, and those related to her. Most of them are set in a small community in central New York state.

There were glimpses for me of wonder and interest in these science-natural history-related stories and some great writing … but just as I was getting hooked on one then sometimes it would change to someone or something else without fully completing for me the event or character’s resolution to it.

So while I liked how it linked the stories of Henrietta’s life and those who knew her, I found there were a lot of characters and she lost me on some aspects of all of them. Still I liked how she showed the admirable legacy of women passing along their career interests in natural history and science to the next generation.

Thanks to the publisher W.W. Norton for giving me an advanced copy to review.

Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid / Ballantine / 384 pages / 2022

This novel was on my summer list. Remember summer? My poor summer list … I only read 5 out of 10 novels on it as I snuck in a few others. Paltry I know, but I haven’t given up on those novels. They’re still on my radar.

As for this one, I picked it up because I’m a huge tennis fan, player, and even officiator … but I found the main character tennis champion Carrie Soto to be a pretty unlikable character the whole way through until the very end where she lightens up a bit. I know she’s supposed to be flawed as a tough, brash “battle axe” who knows what she wants, but she makes for a pretty cold fish.

Sure I can admire Carrie’s slice backhand, natural athleticism, and her will to come out of retirement to give the tour and the Grand Slams one more shot at age 37, but her personality and mind left me pretty flat. I like a little more spice and thought to my sports heroes.

Granted the novel is a fast read — it’s light fare — so it’s about as easy going down as pudding on a spoon, but it stays pretty much the same the whole way through — one match or training session after another. I can watch pro tennis for hours … but in this novel — not so much. The dialogue is pretty perfunctory and most of what happens is sort of obvious — as well as a few things in the story about tennis are a bit of a stretch, like her being able to beat a guy pro player (her training partner), or a graphite racket breaking after a shot, or coming back from ACL surgery like she does etc.

But I went with those things. And I admire TJR for writing a tennis novel as I love sports novels generally — and tennis even more. (I’m not against strong female characters or competitive ones — it’s just that Carrie Soto seems pretty mean — winning is everything! — most of the way through this.) But I liked how TJR inserted the band’s name Daisy Jones & the Six into the narrative (from her earlier novel) when Carrie is reading an article about them, which was fun. I guess I liked that TJR novel about Daisy Jones — which had more to it — more than this one … though I might be in the minority about not totally loving Carrie Soto.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these authors and what did you think? Happy Halloween week.

Hi, how is everyone’s October going? All is well here and today we will celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving. It’s hard to believe, but it’s here already. It always has me confused to have Thanksgiving before Halloween (being an American) but that’s how things are done up north.

And we’ve been having some of the prettiest days of the year lately and it’s nice that many of the trees are full of golden leaves and the air is crisp and clear. Here is a photo of Stella on a recent morning walk as we head into the trees.

We’ve been spending some time at our new house in the countryside on weekends, which has been a lot of fun. We will go there later today with the dogs and a picnic. It’s still empty so we will use lawn chairs for seats, lol.

We’ve been making decisions on renovations and interior decorating, which will start later this month. So we won’t be moving in completely until maybe December. Still it’s fun to go — as there’s much that needs to be done … as well as to see in the country. Yesterday while bicycling — not far from there — we saw a lone moose on a hillside. Such an awkward and interesting animal. This one was fairly young and didn’t have much of a rack on his head but he looked serene and still. 

And now I will leave you with reviews of what I finished lately. 

The Maid by Nita Prose / Ballantine / 304 pages / 2022

This debut novel by a Canadian author came out in January and was quite a hit early on so I’m a bit late to the party about it, but like others, I found the story entertaining and an engaging audio listen. I picked the novel for my book club, which was looking for something light and fun to read …. as opposed to all the deep and depressing stuff we usually discuss, LOL. So this novel I think fits the bill well and was actually much better than I expected.

As many already know, it follows the story of Molly Gray, a 25-year-old girl who was raised and lived with her dear Grandmother before she passed away, and now Molly works as a maid at the Regency Grand Hotel. Molly seems to be somewhere on the autism spectrum and is a bit unique. She’s a neat freak and likes order and being a maid, but often takes things completely at face value, which leaves her a bit vulnerable to being taken advantage of and being conned. In time Molly becomes entangled in a murder case after she finds a guest dead — the wealthy Mr. Black — in a hotel suite. The police come to believe she’s a suspect and Molly finds herself in a heap of trouble.

What follows is a light mystery and a murder trial of the case. The story might have a couple wobbles towards the end as it links all the dots, but still it’s quite enjoyable thanks to Molly being an endearing protagonist along with some turns and clever writing along the way. It has a way of making perspectives about truth and justice, and similarities of the human condition between the haves and have-nots become visible and important — just like Molly. 

The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka / Knopf / 192 pages / 2022

This was my first Otsuka novel and at first in some places her style of listing things at length as part of her storytelling — such as all of the swimmers at the pool and all of the things the elderly lady Alice remembers — sort of tried my patience. It also took me a little while to get used to her collective narration in this book. But after awhile I was drawn in by the relatability and the perceptiveness of what she describes as well as the sound of her poetry-style of prose, which is read expertly for the audio by Traci Kato-Kiriyama. I became so captured that I listened to various chapters several times over. 

At first is the story of the pool and a group of committed swimmers who use it … and then a crack in the pool develops. It becomes almost mystical or alien: what the crack is or means for the swimmers. Later the story transitions to the life of the elderly swimmer Alice and her estranged daughter who witnesses her dementia and decline and seems too late in trying to get back into her life. For anyone who has experienced a parent going through this … this novel will hit home right into your heart. 

Early on, the novel seems to have some tongue and cheek humor to it and parts were a bit funny as described. I laughed at parts. Towards the end, dealing with Alice’s dementia the tone is quite direct and doesn’t shy away from the awfulness of the disease, which so many elderly seniors go through. It’s sad and rings true. I see now what an Otsuka novel can do. She is a unique writer and I haven’t read anyone quite like her before perhaps. I will have to go back sometime and read her earlier novels. 

On Animals by Susan Orlean / Avid Reader Press / 256 pages / 2021

I’m an Orlean fan … of her writing, her humor, her sensibilities, and her love of animals. My husband and I listened to this nonfiction book as an audiobook read by the author while we were on an eight-hour road trip to the lake in September. 

Fourteen chapters of these are journalistic essays that were written over the years about such things as: chickens, mules, dogs, oxen, pandas, orcas, tigers, rabbits, lions, donkeys, and taxidermists. I had no idea Orlean, a writer at the New Yorker, had written these essays or that she was such an animal person, but I’m glad she is.

Her journalistic essays are pretty factual pieces, which include some nuggets of solid reporting and enlightenment to her readers on her subject matters. She seems to have the perfect eye, fascination, and skill to conveying incredible things about these wonderful creatures. My husband liked Orlean’s journalistic pieces best … and while I liked some particularly well such as the chapters about: chickens, pandas, the lost dog, the orca, and the donkeys, I sort of liked her personal chapters best such as her introduction about how she came to be an animal person, and her concluding essay about the farm and animals she once had in the Hudson Valley. 

In those, her lovely personality and humor shine through as do her feelings for her fellow companions. I can relate to many of her sentiments for animals and enjoyed much of the book, but for those who aren’t as keyed into the details of certain animals and their owners this book will likely not be for them.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these books and what did you think?  

Ahoy. Did you watch the Queen’s funeral today? Wow we had it on, which is saying something since my husband and I have been away this past week with the dogs at Kootenay Lake outside of Nelson, BC. It’s a beautiful area (just about four hours north of Spokane, Washington) and has been a perfect getaway from our house being on the market and the current destruction of our street going on back home. The City is putting in new pipes apparently, but the timing couldn’t be worse. So it’s been a great time to flee. 

We had planned this trip back in the spring and it’s worked out well. Is there anything better than a fall (or almost fall) getaway? Probably not. The air feels clear and cool. And a heavy rainstorm seems to have squelched the smoke from the wildfires for the time being. We are enjoying some walks and bike rides around the area and have watched the Kokanee salmon do their spawning in the creeks. The bears are out and about, but we have mostly steered clear of them, though one left paw prints on the deck overnight and the dogs didn’t even wake up. I guess they are too tired from all their swimming. And now I’ll leave you with reviews of what I finished lately. 

On Java Road by Lawrence Osborne / Hogarth Press / 256 pages / 2022

This novel is set in Hong Kong around 2019 during the time of the civil unrest, protestors, and the Chinese crackdowns, which adds a large intrigue factor. The story follows Adrian Gyle, a British reporter in his 50s living on Java Road, who’s been in Hong Kong 20 years, as he finds his career on the way down and crosses paths with his old Cambridge friend Jimmy Tang, the son of one of Hong Kong’s wealthiest families. They are socioeconomically very different — Adrian was a scholarship boy in college from a place no one had heard of and Jimmy rich and foreign, but they bonded over their studies of Chinese poetry and language. 

These many years later their friendship still includes a complex, enticing exchange of banter, privilege, and class, and at first you don’t know where the story’s headed. There’s a tense atmosphere on the streets of Hong Kong as those, like Adrian, side with the young pro-democracy protestors and others, like Jimmy’s billionaire family, with the Chinese authorities wanting to put them down. Either way, many like Jimmy, see these protestors on a suicide mission and that revolution will never happen there in a hundred years. 

Then Jimmy, who’s married, gets secretly involved with a 23-year-old-whip-smart protestor Rebecca To, whose wealthy family the Tangs have long known. Adrian also seems drawn to Rebecca, and you wonder if he will get involved with her, but then Jimmy’s affair with Rebecca suddenly gets exposed and she goes missing. Soon Adrian begins trying to find her and to investigate if Jimmy had anything to do with her disappearance.

It’s an intricate, slow-burn story that poses questions about their friendship, trust, and life in Hong Kong. This was my first novel by this author and I was impressed by how much the Hong Kong setting and the main character’s struggle to keep a moral compass become apart of the story. You have to be a bit patient letting it meander and unwind where it wants – but those who like foreign-based novels with some intrigue I think will be well-rewarded in the end. I was caught up in it and hope to read more of Osborne’s books set in other far-flung places. Currently he’s based in Bangkok and seems like one of smartest novelists we have writing today. 

The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar / Morrow / 336 pages / 2006

Whoa. Author Thrity Umrigar is always a wonderful storyteller but man her novels can have a lot of very hard and sad things happen in them that will slice you open and leave you to bleed. I have read two prior to this that include: The Story Hour and Everybody’s Son. This one, which came out back in 2006, was no exception. I listened to the audio for a book club discussion, and sometime I will go on to read her 2018 sequel The Secrets Between Us, which I’m sure will leave me another incomprehensible mess. 

Umrigar’s stories have a way of accentuating the cruel inequalities between people and comparing their worlds. In this novel, Bhima is a 65-year-old illiterate servant to an upper-class Parsi woman named Sera Dubash in Bombay, India. They both have girls that are pregnant — but Bhima’s granddaughter Maya (who she has raised) is unwed and has brought shame upon her house. She was the first to be attending college in her family (thanks to Sera paying for her) and now this catastrophe has happened and she has had to drop out. 

Sera’s daughter Dinoz, on the other hand, is newly married to Viraf and they are expecting soon. During the crisis over Maya’s dilemma, both Bhima, who has always been poor, and Sera reflect back on their family misfortunes and tough marriages, which turn out to be not good. In fact their husbands and other males in the novel are humans that will make you want to twist their necks in two … they are terrible and the source of much misery. But Bhima and Sera persevere and rely on one another over the years, and Bhima and Maya become like family to Sera’s even though they are not in the same class. Their trust seems firm. 

Then towards the end Bhima learns something that rocks her world and will have repercussions far and wide. It’s a twist that I didn’t exactly see coming but then wasn’t too surprised by it either. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire so to speak. So the novel ends soon after with a rift that hopefully will be resolved in the sequel. 

The storytelling and writing in this one are excellent and the author really gets into both of the women’s shoes, alternating chapters and scenes from their viewpoints. I felt for both of them and liked both. The book made me see that India is well behind in women’s rights, but sadly it’s a story that can still happen anywhere. 

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these books or authors and if so, what did you think? 

Hi everyone. It’s almost September! I haven’t been around too much as life has been busy, but I think I’m back now to post more regularly. And I look forward to visiting all of your blogs again and seeing what you’ve been reading. I had a good visit with my parents in Southern California, and I also enjoyed a reunion with two old friends who I grew up with back in the day. We had fun times catching up while at the beach, where we once escaped to from the hot desert. We were able to pick up so-to-speak where we left off, LOL.

Now I’m back home and our house is up for sale so my husband and I are trying to keep it nice as well as sparse while still trying to live in it with two dogs. Our Labs are wondering where all their toys and beds went. The market has slowed a bit so that is unfortunate, but we are okay to wait and see who wants a great home.

Meanwhile I’m looking forward to all the good books coming out in September and October. I should have had a fall Preview post up by now but that will have to come next weekend.

September is always my favorite month — as it’s my birthday month — as well as being a beautiful time of year. It feels like a new beginning after summer, which we are sorry to see go. There is a tinge of fall now in the air here, and the mornings are a bit cooler, but we still have warm days. The kids in town are heading back to school (I believe it’s Sept. 1 here), so summer is winding down quickly. It’s a bit hard to believe!

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

Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt / Ecco / 368 pages / 2022

Yes this debut novel is charming and sweet, and made for a nice summer audio of characters who’ve experienced family loss and are looking for connection and a way forward. I gave it 3.7 stars but many others gave it a much higher rating, so keep that in mind. It might be just me, being preoccupied these days, and not you.

The story involves an intelligent octopus Marcellus … and widowed Tova, age 70, who befriends him while working at the Sowell Bay Aquarium at night in the (fictional) small town north of Seattle. Tova has gone through a lot, especially years ago with the loss of her son when he was 18. The other main character a boy, Cameron, age 30, drove me a bit nuts, but his story of being abandoned by his addiction-plagued mother when he was 9 and looking for his father, eventually brings him to the Northwest town where he meets Tova and their stories eventually dovetail in a way.

There’s quite a few coincidences in this novel and character or plot stretches perhaps but the overarching feelings of people needing connection seems genuine, and I liked its theme of companionship with animals and its renderings of animals being much more perceptive and smarter than we realize. Marcellus, the octopus, narrates various chapters and is a likable and wise enough character that somehow it doesn’t come off as hokey. And he figures a way to help Tova that’s clever.

By the end, I came to sympathize with the three main characters (Tova, Cameron, and Marcellus) who persevere against their dilemmas, and the ending was good even if somewhat predictable. It seems this novel proved to be popular this summer due to the octopus and friendship aspect I gather.

Against the Ice: The Classic Arctic Survival Story by Ejnar Mikkelsen / 224 pages / (first published in 1955 titled Two Against the Ice)

Whoa I did not know about this real-life journey before, which consisted mainly of two Danish men who become abandoned on the northwest coastline of Greenland from Aug. 1909 when their wooden ship with shipmates gets stuck in the ice to July 2012.

Explorer Ejnar Mikkelsen and a mechanic named Iversen set out in the wilds freezing and trying to stay alive with their sled dogs, traveling hundreds of miles across snow and ice. They had gone to Greenland in 1909 to look for the remains and records of three men who did not return from an earlier expedition there, but then their ship with the others — the Alabama — gets stuck hundreds of miles from where they believe the mens’ remains to be, so just the two set off on sleds with dogs. Yikes they find one man’s frozen corpse and recover the mens’ lost records, but then it takes eight months to get back to the ship at Shannon Island and no one is there when they do. Luckily their shipmates erected a small hut with provisions, so they winter there two more times before eventually being found by a ship.

I listened to the audiobook of Ejnar’s pretty grisly, epic account. It’s filled with how they stayed alive in Arctic temps and traveled with their dogs taking the brunt of their journey and not making it back. Dog lovers beware — this story might be a bit harsh for you to endure. But Ejnar tells quite a vivid story of endurance and survival against the odds, about two men who make a good team together in order to keep going.

This account was a good intro to me of Greenland’s early period. And I liked how Ejnar describes their journey and how the two worked together (they didn’t fight) — and only a few times did I become confused where they were, or what was going on. There is much going back and forth, sledding and freezing too. I felt the cold and frostbite along the way as well as sheer hunger, scurvy, and exhaustion. Somehow they keep their wits about them, even after a close polar bear attack, and the loss of their overworked dogs.

I haven’t seen the Netflix movie (Against the Ice) of Ejnar’s account that came out this past March and from where I heard about the book. But apparently explorer Ejnar Mikkelsen made two other trips to Greenland in the 1920s and ’30s, and lived till the ripe age of 90 in 1971. It’s safe to say, he became a Danish hero for his expeditions. Apparently his so-called Alabama hut on Shannon Island, Greenland, still exists, if you are wanting to visit it.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read or heard about these books, and if so what did you think? Ps. If the title of this post rings familiar to you — it’s thanks to a song by the Doors circa 1968, which sums up: “When summer’s gone / Where will we be?”

Hi, I hope everyone is doing well and enjoying a pleasant August day. It’s gorgeous here this weekend and I had a nice bike ride this morning, pedaling 35 miles over hill and dale. Yesterday the dogs and I walked along the river and I took some photos of wildflowers and flowering weeds, see below. We passed some boys fishing, who caught a big rainbow trout right as we walked by. It was great to watch as one boy reeled it in and the other pulled it in with the net. The dogs were fascinated by the flopping fish, which was released after a photo with the boy who caught it. It’s all catch and release on the river. 

Also thanks to everyone for their kind words last week about our exciting news about moving to the countryside. We will put our house on the market this week so who knows how that will go.

Meanwhile I fly out on Thursday to Southern California to visit my parents, my brother, and a couple old friends, whom I’m having a reunion with at the beach. We were the three musketeers back in junior high school, and now they live in Northern California and I haven’t seen them in years. We might not have been all together at the beach since 1983, when Madonna’s first album came out, as we used to sing the songs on the way back to the desert, LOL. Those were the days.

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

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus / Doubleday / 400 pages / 2022

Synopsis: Set in 1960s California, the novel is about Elizabeth Zott, an unapologetic determined scientist who finds her education and career opportunities thwarted by sexism and inequality. She falls for a fellow scientist, who introduces her to the sport of rowing and they have an intelligent dog named 6:30 and later a child Madeline “Mad” Zott. Through misfortune, things for Elizabeth take a detour and she finds herself hosting a TV cooking show that empowers housewives and takes off in popularity. 

My Thoughts: I loved this novel, which I listened to as an audiobook read by Miranda Raison, and so far it’s my book of the summer. (Wait, didn’t I say that about The Daughter of Doctor Moreau? That one was good, but this one perhaps connected even more.) I laughed in places, I nodded about the female experiences of inequality and sexism … and I found the story endearing and hard to put down. Not only is Elizabeth Zott strong-willed and a hoot to follow, but the other characters are likable too — her next door neighbor Harriet Sloane, who’s trapped in a miserable marriage, and Elizabeth’s child Mad Zott, who at age 5 has read most of Dickens … and Elizabeth’s partner Calvin and her cooking show boss Walter Pine … even the HR woman (who comes to see the light late about sexism) adds some complexity. 

Overall I fell into the story hook, line, and sinker. It’s funny in parts plus I give it extra points for including a dog, crazily named 6:30, central to it and a sport — in this case rowing. So it features a sport, a dog, strong female characters … and a winsome storyline about an important subject matter — but that also includes humor — what more do you want? Kudos to debut author Bonnie Garmus who delivers. It’s a relatable book to most females alive … that involves sexism and inequality in the 1960s workplace and society, but it could just as well have been about the 1970s, ’80s … and even ’90s. 

Elizabeth Zott is an uncompromising character who fights to be treated equally and others treated fairly. She’s a character I won’t soon forget and I admired how author Bonnie Garmus used her mother’s own experiences as well as her own to fuel the indomitable Zott. Good luck to Brie Larson who will star in a series based on the book for Apple TV+. I was impressed by Brie as Jeannette Walls in The Glass Castle so perhaps she can tackle playing Elizabeth Zott too.

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

Hey thanks to everyone who stopped by last week and had nice things to say about the “pretty exciting news,” which I held off sharing until now. So without further ado … can we have a drumroll please … The news, which several of you seemed to have guessed correctly at, is that we’re moving! We bought a house with land in the Alberta countryside about 45 to 50 minutes south of where we live now in the city. Woohoo. It’s a bit of a farm or ranch-style house and even comes with a red barn in the back field, which is quite different for us. (The photo pictured is not where it is but where I went bicycling last week, so keep that mountain view a bit separate in your mind.) 

We’ve been at our present city location for 17 years now, ever since I moved to Canada (first part-time in 2006, then full-time in 2010). We still love our little place here, but we wanted to try something new and different. And we are very surprised it actually happened because others wanted the place too, so it stunned us when the owners picked our offer out of a handful. We were just very lucky it came through. Was it destiny? 

The only trouble is now we have to sell our current house. So it is going on the market in two weeks, while I’m going to be away visiting my parents in California, which I had planned beforehand. I’m not making this stuff up! So we have much to do to get ready, but I think we can pull it off, if we put our pedals to the metal, so to speak. The dogs will probably be a bit bewildered when we start packing up but hopefully all of us will like it in the end. We don’t plan to move into the new house till maybe November as we’ll be doing some fix-ups there first. Though excited, I’m also a bit torn over our old place, which we put our hearts into over these past many years.

So there you have it. The news in a nutshell. And now I’ll leave you with a review of the novel I finished lately. 

Unlikely Animals by Annie Hartnett / Ballantine / 368 pages / 2022

Brief Synopsis: This is about a family who live in a small town in New Hampshire who are going though some strains for various reasons, notably because the father Clive Starling, who had an affair awhile back, is apparently dying now from a rare brain disease. 

My Thoughts: I liked parts of this novel, notably the characters. There’s the daughter: Emma Starling, age 22, known for her healing hands, who returns home after never starting med school in California which they thought she was doing … and her brother Auggie who is a recovering addict to Oxy pills … and Ingrid, their mother who’s unhappy with their father and takes up with the family doctor, and especially the dying father Clive Starling, who is acting a bit unusual due to his brain illness and diagnosis. 

The characters seem pretty likable, especially the colorful personality of Clive and Emma, who wants to spend time and help her Dad before he worsens. While back in her hometown, Emma starts teaching 5th grade at the local school, while trying to figure things out. And Clive wants her to help him find her old best friend Crystal Nash, who’s been missing for a while and people think is dead after getting involved with opioids. And Auggie is in town putting together a play of the Titanic. All this seems enough. 

But somewhere a long the line, the plot and other various components, seem to go a bit overboard and I began to lose some patience with it. There’s voices of local dead people in the cemetery who weigh in along the way, including from the early 20th-century naturalist, Ernest Harold Baynes, who once had a lot of wild animals living on his large estate in town. Then there’s also tangents of the plot involving the opioid crisis, the Crystal Nash missing person case, the kids at Emma’s school, and a pet fox, and a troubled deer that lays waste to the inside of a house. Some of it’s fun, charming, and absurdist stuff (like the deer episode), while other parts just go on a bit too much or overboard. 

I think I’m in the minority of those who didn’t overly love this quirky novel, though I liked how it eventually pulls the family together in a warm-hearted way and its authentic small-town feel. I just lost a bit of patience along the way in how it gets there. I gave the story, which I listened to as an audiobook, 3.5 stars on Goodreads.

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