Books
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The Road to Tender Hearts
The Road to Tender Hearts ~ Annie Hartnett PJ Halliday, an alcoholic hoarder who lives down the street from his best friend, who is also his ex-wife. He doesn’t need to work because he won 1.5 million in the lottery, which makes him popular at the local bar. He and his wife had 2 daughters, but the elder daughter died on her prom night many years prior, an event which contributed to his heavy drinking and the dissolution of their marriage. Pancakes is a strangely prescient cat who has the ability to know when someone is going to die. When he senses their imminent demise, he goes to them, so they…
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The Guest
The Guest ~ Emma Cline Alex is a 22 year old professional sex worker from New York who seems to have found herself an actual boyfriend, 50 something year old Simon. They are spending the month of August in his beautiful home in the Hamptons, where he works by day and has parties with business acquaintances many evenings, and Alex occupies her time swimming and going to the beach. At a party one evening, Alex fails to conform to Simon’s standards, flirting with another guest rather than stick by his side, and he asks her to leave, to go back to her apartment in New York. But she no longer…
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The Joy Luck Club
The Joy Luck Club ~ Amy Tan / Film Version Fearless Leader Engie recently hosted her Cool Bloggers Book Club, and the chosen book was Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club. Because I am sometimes this way, I went all in. I read the physical copy before bed at night. I listened to the audio version via my Libby app. I watched the movie once I had finished the book. I love this all immersive experience. I did the same thing with My Brilliant Friend and the rest of that engrossing series. Read. Listen. Watch. Love. For The Joy Luck Club, I would say that my preference was for the…
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James
James ~ Percival Everett James is an enslaved man on a plantation in Missouri on the Mississippi River. He lives there with his wife and daughter, and he teaches the children on the plantation how to stay as safe as possible in the presence of white people. How to code speak, avoid eye contact, play dumb, pretend to be superstitious, that kind of thing. There are two white boys, Huckleberry “Huck” Finn and Tom Sawyer, who like to play pranks on James, and he pretends to be frightened or worried or whatever will make them happy. When James learns that he is to be sold, he runs away, hoping to…
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Upcoming Reads and Foux du Fafa
Sunday, Maya and I went to the Rockridge neighborhood of Oakland to Foux du Fafa around. That is what we call it when we want to just walk around a neighborhood, maybe have a meal or a drink, do some window shopping, etc. Our more specific goal for this day was for Maya to see the temporary location of one of our favorite bookstores, as they are in the process of rebuilding their old location that was destroyed in a fire last year. We started out with lunch at a pub with a nice outdoor patio. We enjoyed watching a dad party (4 young dads with their babies) and several…
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Wave
Wave ~ Sonali Deraniyagala A woman, her husband, their kids, her parents, her friend and her friend’s mom are vacationing in Sri Lanka, where she grew up, in late December, 2004. Looking from the hotel window, she can see that something is wrong with the ocean. At first she is curious, then she realizes that something is very wrong, and she and her husband grab the kids and start to run. They run past her parents’ hotel room without stopping to warn them, and they make it to a jeep, where they pile in and drive for safety. The tsunami wave overtakes their car and they are separated. She is…
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The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo ~ Taylor Jenkins Reid Monique Grant is an unknown aspiring journalist who is summoned by a famous actress of yesteryear to write her biography. Why has she summoned Grant for the job? We do not know. Hugo’s stipulation is that the book cannot be published until after her death, but as she has no heirs, all of the proceeds, which should be vast, will go to the author. From this beginning, we learn the story of famed actress Evelyn Hugo, of her 7 husbands and 1 great love. Evelyn starts out poor, her mom dies young, her dad is a creep. She escapes to…
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The Correspondent
The Correspondent ~ Virginia Evans The Correspondent is made up of letters to and from Sybil Van Antwerp, a 70 something year old retired lawyer, mother, and divorcee living in Maryland. She writes to her best friend, her neighbor down the street, her brother who lives in France, and her children. She writes letters to authors and other famous people. She writes to the teenaged son of a friend of hers, and to an employee at a genetic research company (think 23 and Me) They generally write back. The thought and depth that she puts into her letters, and how that consideration and depth is mirrored back in the letters…
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Say You’ll Remember Me
Say You’ll Remember Me ~ Abby Jimenez Xavier is a young veterinarian with a relatively new practice in Minnesota. He has a small set of close friends, but is an only child and is estranged from his abusive parents. Samantha is a social media content provider for a mustard company, and brings her new kitten to Xavier’s practice. They do not get on well, but cannot stop thinking about each other. A few weeks later, she brings her kitten back in for a checkup, she’s taking it on a flight to California and needs a clean bill of health. This time they get on much better, and he asks her…
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And Then There Were None
And Then There Were None ~ Agatha Christie Ten strangers (8 invited guests and 2 staff) find themselves stranded in a mansion on an island off the coast of Devon, England without a boat. They do not appear to have anything in common, but the first evening they listen to a recording accusing them all of being instrumental in the deaths of others. The guest rooms all have a copy of an old rhyme, ‘10 Little Soldier Boys’. “Ten Little Soldier Boys went out to Dine, one choked his little self and then there were nine.Nine Little Soldier Boys stayed up very late; One overslept himself and then there were…
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The Anomaly
The Anomaly ~ Hervé Le Tellier, translated from French by Adriana Hunter In March of 2021, an Air France flight from Paris to New York hits extreme turbulence. The plane is damaged but lands safely. In June of 2021, an exact duplicate flight (both the plane and the passengers) attempts to land at JFK. Alarms go off when air traffic control realizes something very strange is going on, and brings in the US Department of Defense. The Anomaly follows the passengers and crew, both before the second plane lands and after. We hear from both the versions who land in March, and those who land in June. We see their…
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Foreverland
Foreverland ~ Heather Havrilesky In Foreverland, Heather Havrilesky explores her 15 year marriage to her husband. It’s a memoir told in essays, from their first meeting, falling in love, marrying and having children, and aging together. Are we really meant to sleep next to the same person every night, put up with all of their annoying habits, care for them when they need it, let them take care of you when you need it? She’s not sure that marriage is for everyone. She doesn’t seem entirely sure it’s for her. But here she is, and she loves her husband more than she is frustrated by him. I think anyone in…
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Heartwood
Heartwood ~ Amity Gaige Valerie Gillis is hiking the Appalachian Trail alone. Well, sort of alone, as there are a lot of hikers on the trail, and people sometimes hike together for days or weeks on end, and her husband is following along in his car, meeting her every few days to give her provisions. When she doesn’t show up on time, he’s not too worried at first, but after a day goes by and she still doesn’t appear, he starts to worry. The search is on, led by Beverly, the Maine State Game Warden with a perfect record for finding lost hikers. She doesn’t always find them alive, but…
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The Three Lives of Cate Kay
The Three Lives of Cate Kay ~ Kate Fagan Annie Callahan and her best friend Amanda Kent are inseparable. They are both involved in their High School theater, and dream of getting out of upstate New York and moving to Los Angeles in search of fame and fortune. After a horrible accident, Annie leaves town. Her shame at leaving is so great, she does not go back. Instead, she becomes… Cass Ford, a barista who dreams of becoming an author. On a whim, she audits a writing class at her local college, where she meets Sidney Collins, a lawyer who also wants to write. They become involved romantically, and Sidney…
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Black Cake
Black Cake ~ Charmaine Wilkerson Benny and Byron Bennett are estranged siblings, brought together by the death of their beloved mother, Eleanor. Eleanor, with help from her lawyer, has recorded a message for them, and she wants them to hear it together. This is the beginning of Black Cake, and from there we are taken back and forth in time, to learn the deep secrets that Eleanor has kept from her children. Listening to her recording, Benny and Byron discover that while they knew the essence of their mother, they did not know the details of how she became to be the woman they admired and loved. The trials she…
