October Preview

Posted on October 1, 2022 by Susan

Whoa October is here. The fall colors seem to have come very quickly this year. We’ve had a fairly mellow week, but my thoughts go out to all those in Southwest Florida and those who were in Hurricane Ian’s path. The damage and flooding look devastating. To those in need: may you find help and get power back on soon. Not sure there are any words to console judging by the photos and epic scale of disaster. It’s just mind-boggling. 

Which reminds me we just finished watching the TV series Five Days at Memorial on AppleTV+ based on Sheri Fink’s prize-winning book about a hospital that’s cutoff in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It’s totally daunting. But the reconstructed set and cast featuring Vera Farmiga and Cherry Jones at the hospital are terrific. It’ll make you sweat and bring alive what horrible conditions so many went through then. Scary stuff. See it if you can face the ordeal.

Meanwhile I’ll have to add a spooky read to my stack this month since it’s Halloween time. Perhaps it’ll be another Shirley Jackson book. Are you planning to read anything scary, or take part in the RIP Challenge? I’m sure there’s a lot of good choices out there.

And now let’s dip into what’s new releasing this month. In fiction, there’s a lot of notable well-known authors who have novels coming out. And I’m pretty much sticking to those authors’ books for my five picks this month. Usually I branch out to other lesser-known authors, but this time I’m just too curious to read what the big guns are putting out. 

First due out is Celeste Ng’s novel Our Missing Hearts (releasing Oct. 4), which is set in a dystopian near future, about a son who is trying to find his mother in an America where the U.S. government is separating families and normalizing violence against Asian Americans.

It’s a family drama during a scary time. As Kirkus Reviews writes: “Taut and terrifying, Ng’s cautionary tale transports us into an American tomorrow that is all too easy to imagine.” Yikes. I’ve read and liked Ng’s other two novels so I plan to read this new one as well. 

Next up is Barbara Kingsolver’s new novel Demon Copperhead (due out Oct. 18),which is said to be a modern-day adaptation of David Copperfield about a boy’s coming of age in southern Appalachia’s Lee County, Virginia. Kingsolver’s account draws on the impact of the opioid epidemic on Appalachia and details the boy’s life as he struggles through foster care, hunger, and rural hardships. It sounds good and comes about four years after her last novel Unsheltered in 2018. Kingsolver has lived with family on a farm in southern Virginia since 2004, after many years prior to that in southern Arizona.

Then there’s George Saunders’s latest short story collection Liberation Day (due out Oct. 18), which features nine new stories. I have not read his much heralded short story collections before, but I did like his creative prize-winning 2017 novel Lincoln in the Bardo. Who can forget that?

Publishers Weekly says his new collection includes quieter character studies than his other collections but has enough to satisfy his longtime fans. Will it?

Though if you’re looking for a more involved novel, perhaps Signal Fires (due out Oct. 18) by Dani Shapiro could be just the drama. It’s about the connections between two families in suburban New York, whose lives crisscross most notably over two fateful nights: one with a death and the other a birth. Hmm. Meg Wolitzer calls it a “haunting, moving, and propulsive exploration of family secrets.” I have not read Shapiro before, but this is her first novel in 15 years after her 2019 memoir Inheritance, which was quite a success. 

Lastly in novels, there’s either The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy (due out Oct 25) or John Irving’s latest The Last Chairlift (releasing Oct. 18), which is a boggling 912 pages. I think I’ll go with McCarthy’s novel as my final pick as Irving’s seems too meandering and long. Publishers Weekly calls it an “overblown and underplotted behemoth of a novel” that apparently will test a reader’s patience. Still there might be moments of glory in it.  

As for McCarthy, his new one features a salvage diver in New Orleans who’s tasked with investigating a plane crash in the Gulf. Hmm. The novel is part one of a two-volume set with the second novel called Stella Maris coming in December. It sounds good and it’s been awhile since I last read McCarthy whose unforgettable novel The Road came out in 2006. 

In screen releases this month, Cate Blanchett in the movie Tár (due out Oct. 7) is getting the most positive hype. It’s a psychological drama about a great classical music composer/conductor, played by Blanchett, who becomes the first female chief conductor of a major German orchestra. I gather from the trailer she goes a little off the deep end in the process but we will see.

I will watch most projects Blanchett does, though I was too disturbed to see her play conservative Phyllis Schlafly in the TV series Mrs. America, so I probably last saw her in the movies Carol in 2015 and Blue Jasmin from 2013. 

Other than that, the Shantaram series on AppleTV+ (releasing Oct. 14) might be worth seeing. It’s based on the popular 2003 novel by Gregory David Roberts about a bank robber and addict who escapes prison in Australia and flees to Bombay, India, where he reinvents himself as a doctor in slums in the 1980s. Many readers swear by the book, which they say is awesome but it’s also 944 pages. Have you read it? It might be a good retirement read. The author’s followup novel The Mountain Shadow came out in 2015. The TV series features British actor Charlie Hunnam in the main role as Lin, and the series was shot on location in India and Australia. 

A couple other notable movies look to be Till (due out Oct. 14) about the mother of Emmet Till (played by Danielle Deadwyler) and her pursuit of justice after her son’s ruthless death in 1955, and Armageddon Time (out Oct. 28) about a boy’s coming of age and his family in Queen’s New York during the 1980s, which stars Anne Hathaway, Jeremy Strong, and Anthony Hopkins. Both films look quite good and might be considered as Oscar contenders.

But if you’re looking for something lighter, the romantic comedy Ticket to Paradise (out Oct. 21) starring George Clooney and Julia Roberts as a divorced couple trying to stop their daughter’s wedding in Bali might be the ticket. The only trouble is it’s gotten pretty weak ratings and reviews so far. Still if you’re looking for a laugh or two, it might suffice.

And finally in music this month, there’s new albums by Taylor Swift, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers among others. But perhaps I will choose the new one by the folk band Bonny Light Horseman called Rolling Golden Holy (due out Oct. 7) for my pick this month. It’s the band’s second album whose first one I loved. Here is a live session that the three-person group recorded in July in Nashville. 

That’s all for now.  What about you — which new releases are you looking forward to this month? Happy October.

Posted in Top Picks | 34 Comments

Lakeside Getaway

Posted on September 19, 2022 by Susan

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? 

Posted in Books | 22 Comments

September Preview

Posted on September 6, 2022 by Susan

Greetings everyone. I hope you all had a nice Labor Day weekend. Happy September! Will your days become busier or tamer post-Labor Day? Or will they chug along at a similar pace? That is the question. I think mine will continue on at the good clip they’re on … just much to do still with the house move and selling. And like most places it’s been baking temps up here for weeks on end — and lately smoke from far-flung wildfires. The dogs have been swimming at the end of most days, but now post-Labor Day, it seems the heat is starting to drop. We might even get a chance of showers later this week, which will help against the fires. 

Meanwhile I’ve been looking at what’s releasing this month in fiction and many major authors have new novels coming out, including Maggie O’Farrell, Kate Atkinson, Paul Theroux, Ian McEwan, Robert Harris, Elizabeth Strout, and Kamila Shamsie among others. From these, I picked 12 new books to read possibilities and then cut the list down to about half that. It was too many to include my picks for October releases, so we’ll stick to September for now. Here are the ones on my radar:

I have not read any of Yiyun Li’s novels yet, but she has a new one called The Book of Goose (due out Sept. 20) that looks good, which I gather is about an intense friendship between two girls that might bring to mind Elena Ferrante’s novels. The two girls grow up in the French countryside, go to boarding school, and then years later one of them receives word in America that the other has died and so she feels free to tell her story.

Hmm. It’s probably best not to know too much beforehand, so I’ll leave it there. But I’m curious to try author Yiyun Li’s writing. She was raised in Beijing and moved to the U.S. in 2000, where she is a creative writing professor at Princeton. 

Next up British author Kate Atkinson has a big new novel called Shrines of Gaiety (due out Sept. 27), which is set in post-WWI 1920s London and includes many characters who face the highs and lows of the Jazz Age era there. It’s said to have many plots and characters and could read like a regular Dickens novel.

It’s been years since I last read Atkinson so what am I waiting for. Many people think Atkinson’s books keep getting better and better. What do you think? Are you a fan? She’s an author who grew up in York, England, and now lives in Edinburgh. 

Then there’s always Elizabeth Strout and her new novel Lucy by the Sea (due out Sept. 20), which follows her series about writer Lucy Barton. This latest one follows Lucy getting stuck for several months with her ex-husband William during the pandemic lockdown in a house by the sea in a small town in Maine. What a premise!

I’m a Strout fan so I will continue on with Lucy (and Olive) whenever there’s more. And William and Lucy are quite cute together — closer than most married couples though they’re divorced. I need to find out if they stay close, or if they’re driven apart in the new one as they rehash their past.

After that quiet read, I might try Canadian author Iain Reid’s psychological suspense thriller We Spread (due out Sept. 27) — about an elderly woman in a long-term care residence who I gather starts to wonder if she’s losing her marbles while aging, or if something else more ominous there is going on.

I have yet to read any of Reid’s suspense novels, but if this one is any good, I’ll read his 2018 novel Foe, which is becoming a movie starring Saoirse Ronan. This new novel he’s written apparently poses many questions about art, conformity, and growing old.  

Lastly in books, I’m looking at two short story collections. The first is by Ling Ma called Bliss Montage (due out Sept. 13) who wrote the 2018 novel Severance, which I liked. Kirkus Reviews says the ideas of home and belonging recur in these stories, as well as those about motherhood, academia, and abusive relationships.

Then the second book on my radar contains inter-linked stories by Andrea Barrett called Natural History (also due out Sept.13). I haven’t read Barrett in years, but I remember loving her earlier 1998 novel The Voyage of the Narwhal about an Arctic expedition, and her 1996 book Ship Fever won the National Book Award. Much of her work touches on women in science and the natural world, so I look forward to reading her latest. 

Then on the screen this month new releases include the final season of The Good Fight, the law show series that stars Christine Baranski as attorney Diane Lockhart, which was a spinoff of The Good Wife show.

One winter I think we got hooked on it and binged five seasons of the show. Now Season 6 starts Sept. 8 on Paramount Plus, which I don’t have. And I’m not sure if I can get it on Prime in Canada, but we’ll see.  

Meanwhile there’s also a new Ken Burns six-hour documentary series coming out on PBS starting Sept. 18 called The U.S. and the Holocaust about America’s response to the Holocaust before, during, and after it happened. It won’t be pretty, but it’s likely to be essential viewing and will entail the antisemitic and anti-immigration sentiments that were prevalent then as well as the stories and letters of people caught during those dark days. 

For lighter fare, there’s always the rom-com /drama movie The Good House (due out Sept. 30) based on the novel by Ann Leary about a New England realtor (played by Sigourney Weaver) whose life begins to unravel when she hooks up with an old flame from New York (played by Kevin Kline). Its critic ratings look a bit weak, but I’m still hoping it might be the ticket for something just a bit fun.

You might recall that Sigourney and Kevin Kline were together in the funny movie Dave from 1993. Now all these years later here they are back together acting. Though you might be fooled when watching the movie thinking it’s New England when actually it was filmed in Nova Scotia. Ha.

Lastly the drama movie God’s Creatures (due out Sept. 30) looks fairly decent about a mother played by Emma Watson, who is torn between covering for her son (played by Paul Mescal) when he’s accused of a crime in their small Irish fishing village — and her own sense of right and wrong. It looks angst-filled and makes one realize as usual a mother’s job watching out for her kids is never easy. 

And now I’ll leave you here with the new single Night Moves off Lissie’s new album Carving Canyons (due out Sept. 16) as my music/artist pick this month.

That’s all for now. What about you — which releases interest you this month?  Have a wonderful September.  

Posted in Top Picks | 28 Comments

Summer’s Almost Gone

Posted on August 27, 2022 by Susan

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.

The hut, pictured in 1910, where the two men wintered in Greenland. Photo courtesy the Arktisk Institut

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?”

Posted in Books | 32 Comments

Lessons in Chemistry

Posted on August 7, 2022 by Susan

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?

Posted in Books | 32 Comments

Unlikely Animals and News

Posted on July 28, 2022 by Susan

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?  

Posted in Books | 38 Comments

Doctor Moreau’s Return

Posted on July 18, 2022 by Susan

Hi all, I hope your summer is going great and you’re not sweltering too much. I have been away reffing a provincial junior tennis tournament for 11 hour days in a city 90 minutes north of here, so I was gone all of last week. It was really hot, but now it’s so nice to be home and relax with the dogs and spouse. The girls Stella and Willow have been swimming most days in the river here. They love it and are pros.

I also have some pretty exciting news that came about sort of suddenly, but I think I will share it next week when it’s fully confirmed. I don’t want to jump the gun and then have to retract it. You can try to guess what it might be, if you want or just stay tuned. 

Meanwhile I’m excited that Tuesday is the pub date of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s new novel The Daughter of Doctor Moreau. I was able to snag an early review copy and quite enjoyed it. 

It’s about Carlota, age 20, who lives with her beloved father, a doctor/scientist, on a farm in the outback of the Mexican Yucatan Peninsula in 1877. Carlota had been saved by her father Dr. Moreau when she was young of a serious malady and now he experiments on creating hybrid creatures that are part animal and part human.

So far though he has not perfected their full health or longevity. Still the hybrids live on their property and are Carlota’s best friends, especially since she’s grown up so isolated and without knowing her deceased mother. Yet Dr. Moreau’s benefactor is growing impatient waiting for better results from the doctor’s lab so he can use the hybrids as workers on his land. 

It’s a mysterious plot that lured me from the start, especially with Dr. Moreau’s hiring of a 29-year-old British property caretaker named Montgomery, who seems quite taken by Carlota and drowns his past sorrows in alcohol. Fast-forward six years and life on the farm takes a turn when the benefactor’s son Eduardo falls for Carlota and the unpleased benefactor pulls the farm’s funding and plans to take what he thinks is his. The consequences set off a reckoning that will change everything. 

I found the novel a fun summer read and a page-turner, which is based loosely on the H.G. Wells classic The Island of Doctor Moreau, published in 1896. There’s been a couple of movies made of it, notably the one I recall from 1977 had actor Michael York playing a shipwrecked survivor who comes upon a remote island where a mad scientist is carrying out sinister experiments on the island’s inhabitants. It was scary for me then and I think I only watched glimpses of it.   

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau takes a different tack than the original, re-imaging the story all quite creatively and plausibly on the Yucatan peninsula in 19th-century Mexico. I liked the daughter Carlota’s perspective who seems to find out things about her father’s secrets, lies, and obsessive scientific creations along the way that ruptures her world. Montgomery, too, is an enticing character, who alternates chapters with Carlota and takes up the hybrids’ cause. 

This is my first read of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s books and I was impressed by her writing and historical details of the times. I’d like to read more of her work. Have you read her novels: Mexican Gothic and Velvet Was the Night? This latest novel could be my pick of the summer. It has the allure of being a bit eerie, mysterious, and something you can’t turn away from till you find out what happens. Check it out, if it sounds like something for you.

Thanks to Sabrina at the publisher Del Rey for providing me with a copy to review for my thoughts. 

Next up I listened to the audio of the actor Brian Cox’s 2021 memoir Putting the Rabbit in the Hat, which he narrates well and entertainingly. I normally don’t pick up actor or celebrity memoirs, but every once in a blue moon when something calls to me I’ll do it. For whatever reason, I’ve listened to actor Michael Caine’s 2018 memoir Blowing the Bloody Doors Off and now this one.

At age 75, Brian Cox wrote this looking back on his life and career. I didn’t really know much about him before this but found out he grew up in Dundee, Scotland, with his parents who had a grocery store and his four older siblings. His father died when he was 8 which changed his world, leaving the family dirt poor and his mother with mental problems. He began acting in local theater productions and trained as an actor in London before gaining fame on the London stage and working for the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he played King Lear among other roles. He eventually left for Hollywood becoming a character actor in numerous movies. 

In the book, although he talks a bit about his family life, more time is spent talking about one production he’s done after another. I had no idea he had been in so many plays and movies, including that he played the first Hannibal Lecktor in Manhunter from 1986. Apparently he’s been in hundreds of productions, but what I mostly remember him for is his part as the father in the TV series Succession about a media mogul family, and as Winston Churchill in the movie from 2017. 

He’s a talented actor. But I wonder if readers (like me) are trying to figure out in his book if he is like the mean father he plays in Succession. I didn’t exactly get that sense from the memoir. He seemed pretty good natured recounting his life, his family (he’s been married twice with two kids with each wife), and his thoughts on acting and life lessons. 

But I still wonder a little if he has some prima donna to him. Still his bluntness on a range of topics and his fellow actors make parts of the memoir a bit refreshing and juicy. For instance he has high thoughts  of director Spike Lee but doesn’t think much of Quentin Tarantino. His favorite actor is Spencer Tracy but he looks pretty disparagingly on Johnny Depp and others. He also doesn’t proscribe to “method acting” in playing characters nor does he do much research on roles when he’s playing real people. He says the character is in the script. 

He recounts many of his long-ago productions and co-workers, which I didn’t know so those sort of passed me by. But other mentions of such actors as Laurence Olivier, Peter O’Toole, Judy Dench, and Eva Marie Saint were much appreciated. All in all the memoir was a bit of a mixed bag for me, but still I learned a bit about being on movie and theater sets and how acting works. And he recounts it all pretty entertainingly, though it does run on a bit long. 

That’s all for now. What about you — do you know these authors or actor and what did you think? 

Posted in Books | 28 Comments

Big Summer Movies

Posted on July 4, 2022 by Susan

Happy July everyone! And Happy 4th. I hope you are able to enjoy a lovely summer break somewhere. We just got back from our trip back East, which was a lot of fun. We rented a cottage along the water near the Thousands Islands area between Canada and northern New York state and there was much to see and do. We especially enjoyed bicycling around and reading by the water, where this boat went by. The humidity and conditions there are much different from where we are out West so it was a welcomed change. We arrived home to a couple days of dreary rain, which is a bit unexpected but hopefully all the rain this past month will help lessen the wildfire season.

I was thinking about summer movies and wondering what the top choice will be this season with viewers. Will it be Tom Cruise and his return in Top Gun: Maverick? Which has already been huge at the box office. In fact it’s by far the most successful movie of the year as well as the most successful of Cruise’s career. Hmm who knew … people would go bonkers for it.

I thought the movie, which I saw at the theater in a chair that moved like a rollercoaster, was quite fun — it’s not exactly brainy material, but this is summer fare after all. It ties in pretty well with the original movie from 1986, though cameos or parts for Meg Ryan and Kelly McGillis would have been a big plus. Jennifer Connolly plays her part well and somehow hasn’t aged a bit after 50 — how does she do it? Though the cheesy lines seemed more memorable from the original movie. Still the new movie delivers some fun and high-octane action. Have you seen it?

Another top summer movie contender is Elvis, which is directer Baz Luhrmann’s biopic about Elvis Presley. Critics seemed to be split on this long movie, which is said to run a bit over 2.5 hours. Some like the concert scenes and performance by Austin Butler, while others say the narration by Elvis’s manager played by Tom Hanks and the arc of the movie are a bit of a churning mess.

I haven’t seen it yet and I wonder if I’m putting it off a bit … due to the length and reviews. Still I’ll likely see it sometime this month. Who can forget where they were when Elvis died. I remember Aug. 16, 1977, when he died at age 42 — my family had rented a cottage in Laguna Beach, Calif., where I spent my time reading the novel Watership Down and trying to surf. The novel definitely made me see rabbits anew. Then I heard about Elvis’s passing and felt sad. 

Next there’s the upcoming movie Where the Crawdads Sing due out July 15. It’s likely the novel’s popularity will make it a big success. I read and liked the book in 2018, and now British actress Daisy Edgar Jones will star as Kya, the girl who grew up mostly by herself in the marshes of North Carolina. (Even though apparently the movie was filmed in Louisiana.)

The story slightly reminded me of the classic To Kill a Mockingbird because it’s set in the South and is a bit of a coming-of-age story that becomes a court case after a crime is committed. I have no idea how well it will translate to the big screen, but it should be worth checking out and could draw in a big crowd.

And lastly for summer movie contenders, I’d be remiss not to mention Thor: Love and Thunder (due out July 8), starring Chris Hemsworth and Natalie Portman among a big cast that also includes Christian Bale, Chris Pratt, and Russell Crowe. Whoa, is everyone in this? I admit I’m not typically a superhero film watcher and I didn’t see the other two Thor movies from 2011 and 2017, but I’m thinking this movie will likely do well and might be entertaining. And it has great optics. If I had to pick a Viking God like Thor, Hemsworth would definitely be my man. He’s a dreamy kind of Australian who’s 6’ 3” too. 

There you have it — so what is your choice for the top summer movie of 2022 — and which is your favorite? It’s okay to wait for streaming and avoid any crowds or the theater. Stay well and safe.

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

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan / Grove / 128 pages / 2021

I’m impressed by this short novel about Bill Furlong, a man who delivers coal to households in a small Irish town in 1985. He has a wife Eileen and five daughters who he dotes on … but something isn’t right after he makes a delivery around Christmas to the local convent and sees girls who are seemingly mistreated and slaving away. They are said to be fallen women who’ve had pregnancies out of wedlock. Bill feels for them since he never knew his father, and his teenage mother, when pregnant with him, was luckily taken in by her employer. But now his wife and the town seems to want to look the other way and keep hidden what’s going on at the convent even at a charitable time like Christmas. 

I had not known much about the “Magdalene laundries” in the convents in Ireland before reading this, but the Author’s note at the end of the book explains much about this and how awful they were. This little novel cuts to the heart, and the lean, straightforward storytelling reminded me a bit of Edith Warton’s novel Ethan Frome, perhaps too because of its descriptions of the cold and winter. In no time at all, I could feel how very cold it was … and what was happening behind closed doors.

The Stolen Hours by Allen Eskens / Mulholland Books / 320 pages / 2021

Allen Eskens has become my go-to author for small-town crime novels and this one did not disappoint. His books make for enjoyable audios that are hard to turn away from. This one stars Lila Nash as a young law prosecutor, who is the girlfriend of Joe Talbert from Eskens’s earlier books.

Lila has been a victim herself of a dreadful crime in high school but is trying to put that behind her and get her life back on track, making her way through college and law school. Unfortunately the first couple of cases she gets remind her of what happened to her in her past. The most serious of which involves a girl who’s been fished out of the river barely alive after being given a date rape drug and then assaulted. 

Soon Lila is following leads on a suspect, while also remembering similarities about the crime that affected her about eight years ago. The novel alternates chapters between Lila and the suspect, which give it a cat and mouse eerie feel. There’s also a boss in her law office that’s not working in Lila’s best interests and is out to get her fired. All of this combined make for an engaging challenge to the capable Lila Nash, who is a winsome young lawyer protagonist. Although the ending gets a little predictable, the crime novel kept me fully engaged the whole way through. 

This is the third novel I’ve completed by Eskens, who practiced criminal law for 25 years before becoming a novelist. I especially like his crime novels that feature Joe Talbert and his girlfriend Lila Nash. But apparently his next book called Forsaken Country, due out in September, is not part of this series. Too bad. 

That’s all for now. What about you — do you know these authors, and if so, what did you think?

Posted in Books, Movies | 30 Comments

June Days

Posted on June 20, 2022 by Susan

Hi. I hope everyone had a great weekend. Have you been under the heat dome lately? It seems we have been under the rain dome the past couple weeks. Luckily the rivers here seem to have crested so it doesn’t appear they will flood like they did in 2013. This photo was taken on Sunday June 12 when we went for a hike on our anniversary. It was nice to get out in the foothills with the dogs, where everything is quite green. We didn’t run into any bears but kept our eyes peeled as one was spotted in the area. 

It’s a busy time of year and we are off on Friday to vacation back East for a week in the Thousands Islands area of Ontario. It should be a lot of fun and I will report back on how it goes. We are hoping for sunny skies and plenty of bicycling and summer reading. Unfortunately the dogs will have to stay behind with the dog sitter, but the week should go by pretty quickly. And now here are reviews of what I finished lately.

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa / translated by Stephen Snyder / Picador / 192 pages / 2009

This is a quiet little novel, which I read for my book club and ended up loving. It’s about a housekeeper whose employment agency sends her to work for a 60-year-old man who has memory issues from a car accident that happened when he was 47 … so his memory can only hold things for 80 minutes.

But the housekeeper manages to adapt and work around his disability and comes to respect the Professor for his mind and his ability to teach math so well. He’s a math whiz who solves and wins mathematical contests through the mail since he doesn’t go outside much. And the housekeeper, who narrates the story, is a single mother whose boy comes to stay after school at the Professor’s place while his mother cleans and he does his homework. 

The three form a heartwarming bond over numbers — there’s a surprising amount of math equations in this book — and baseball, but I found both to be oddly enjoyable. And there’s also enough of a mysterious quality about the Professor and his sister-in-law (who oversees his care) … to keep one turning the pages in this short, moving novel. I felt I sort of knew these three and their friendship by the end and it was hard to let them go. This is my second book by Yoko Ogama whose novel The Memory Police I liked quite a bit as well. She’s a big talent in Japan. Here’s a profile of her from the New York Times in 2019.

Hell of a Book by Jason Mott / Dutton / 336 pages / 2021

The novel unfolds in two storylines with the first being about a Black author on a book tour, and the second being about a Black boy named Soot who is bullied a lot at school for the darkness of his skin. The first storyline about the author is quite funny in parts and I had to laugh about how much he seems to dislike talking and answering questions about his bestselling novel on tour. I’m not sure he was meant to go on a publicity tour, though it’s quite funny and spoof-filled about the publishing, book world. 

Along the way, the author who has an excessive imagination begins to see (or not see?) a Kid, who follows him in certain spots and you begin to wonder if the Kid is real or imaginary and what’s happened to him. Meanwhile the second, alternating storyline — about the boy Soot is quite sad and disturbing when he sees a policemen stop his father outside their house. There’s a few police pullovers in this novel that are disturbing. And the author’s examination of the Black experience and events going on today, which make their way into the story, are noteworthy, scary, and moving to hear. 

It’s interesting how the storylines eventually merge and make a strong, cohesive impact. Hell of a Book is more than I thought it’d be at first with the humorous author tour. I listened to the audiobook version read by JD Jackson and Ronald Peet, who both did a great job. With many issues to think about — it’s no wonder the novel won the National Book Award for fiction in 2021.

The Rose Code by Kate Quinn / Morrow / 656 pages / 2021 

This long sweeping novel, which took me nearly two weeks as an audiobook to finish, was a bit of a mixed bag for me. While I liked much of the historical aspects of the Enigma code breakers, particularly the women, at Bletchley Park during WWII and the atmosphere of the Blitz and the war, I thought the romance and relationship-y drama parts of the story seemed to take over a lot of the novel and the three main women characters irked me a bit at times. 

There’s Beth, who’s shy and a smart code breaker, but whose wimpy side can get a bit annoying; then there’s Mab, who marries a lovely poet named Francis Gray, but who lashes out at her close friends when tragedy strikes; and finally Osla, who I seemed to like best, because she snags a relationship with Prince Philip of Greece a couple years before he meets Queen Elizabeth. Having Prince Philip and his one-time real girlfriend as part of the story, I thought was entertaining. Osla has a bit of a party girl image to her (with Philip) – so she is a bit refreshing and you wonder about their pairing and what Philip was like then. Osla is also involved in a wrenching bomb scene that is particularly chilling.

Perhaps other aspects of the story get a bit farfetched along the way. Code breaker Beth gets put in a sanatorium (for what’s believed are indiscretions), but she still manages after a few years to discover a traitor in their midst … who her friends and her band together to try to find and capture after the war, which seems all well and good for a rousing culmination. 

Kate Quinn has an easy engaging way about her storytelling and how she weaves it all together, which rightfully earns her a lot of kudos. My only quibbles with the book is that I think I was looking for something a little bit more substantial or less romance-y in a historical tale about the lives and code-breaking of those at Bletchley Park. Perhaps I should read some memoirs and nonfiction to delve deeper into the particulars. I remember liking the 2014 movie The Imitation Game, which was about the Enigma code breakers, and there’s plenty of other books on the subject.

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

Posted in Books | 32 Comments

Summer Reading

Posted on June 9, 2022 by Susan

Hi. Happy June. Summer seems almost in full swing now even though it doesn’t officially start for a couple more weeks. It’s high pollen season here, and there’s quite a bit of yellow dust on the deck and walkways. But the lilacs are out, and our dog Willow likes having her picture taken near them.

Meanwhile, it’s been busy. We’ve had company come through town, a couple job projects to finish, and soon we’ll be going on vacation in a couple weeks back East. We’ll be staying at a cottage in the Thousand Islands area along the St. Lawrence River, near where my husband grew up, so it’ll be a bit like old times before the pandemic.

Hopefully it’ll be just the place for summer reading. I’m not exactly sure how I picked my list this year, but it includes books that either came out earlier this year, or are due out this summer. Some are books I’ve mentioned before on the blog and haven’t gotten to yet, and a few others are novels that I have advanced readers copies of, while others are just ones that seem interesting to me. I don’t think I picked many thrillers this year because I decided I usually don’t like them as much as I want to. But I tried to weave in a few lighter ones with the deeper ones to make an enticing mix. See what you think.

The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka / Feb. 22 / Knopf / 192 pages
From the award-winning author of The Buddha in the Attic comes a novel about what happens to a group of obsessed recreational swimmers when a crack appears at the bottom of their local pool.
Why I want to read it: This author is said to be top-notch, and it sounds poignant about an older woman swimmer who’s slowly losing her memory.

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus / April 5 / Doubleday /400 pages
Meet Elizabeth Zott: a one-of-a-kind scientist in 1960s California whose career takes a detour when she becomes the unlikely star of a beloved TV cooking show.
Why I want to read it: it’s been hugely popular and I’m hoping it’s a fun story.

Trust by Hernan Diaz / May 3 / Riverhead / 416 pages
“A genre-bending, time-skipping story about New York City’s elite in the roaring ’20s and Great Depression.” – Vanity Fair /
Why I want to read it: The structure of this novel seems interesting and is said to make the story seem like a puzzle to solve.

River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile by Candice Millard / May 17 / Doubleday / 368 pages
The harrowing story of one of the great feats of exploration of all time and its complicated legacy.
Why I want to read it: This was an epic undertaking to try to find the source of the Nile, and Richard Burton was said to be one of the best explorers ever.

The Lunar Housewife by Caroline Woods /June 14 /Doubleday / 320 pages
A stylish and suspenseful historical page-turner set in the 1950s that follows an up-and-coming journalist who stumbles onto a web of secrets, deceptions, and mysteries at a popular new literary magazine.
Why I want to read it: This novel seems to have some Cold War intrigue about it.

Winter Work by Dan Fesperman /July 12 / Knopf /352 pages
An exhilarating spy thriller inspired by a true story about the precious secrets up for grabs just after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Why I want to read it: I’m liking the spy and Cold War stuff these days.

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia /Del Rey/July 19
From the New York Times bestselling author of Mexican Gothic comes a dreamy reimagining of The Island of Doctor Moreau set against the backdrop of nineteenth-century Mexico.
Why I want to read it: I remember the 1977 movie of this and it was spooky.

On Java Road by Lawrence Osborne / Hogarth / Aug. 2 / 256 pages
A veteran British journalist living in Hong Kong investigates the disappearance of a student protester during the 2019 uprisings in this atmospheric novel.
Why I want to read it: The author is said to be a good writer and the subject seems intriguing.

Cyclorama by Adam Langer / Bloomsbury / Aug. 2 / 352 pages
The deeply moving, propulsive story of ten teenagers in 1982 brought together by a high school production of The Diary of Anne Frank that will shape and influence the rest of their lives, jumping forward to 2016.
Why I want to read it: The Diary of Anne Frank left a mark on me as well.

Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid / Ballantine / Aug. 30
In this powerful novel about the cost of greatness, a legendary pro tennis player attempts a comeback in 1994 when the world considers her past her prime.
Why I want to read it: I’m a tennis fan who has played the sport all my life so this premise is up my alley.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read any of these, or do you have any of them on your radar? And do you have a summer list?

Posted in Books | 33 Comments