Books
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The Paris Express
The Paris Express ~ Emma Donoghue A full cast of characters ride the express train from Granville, Normandy to Paris in October of 1895. Among them are a young physiologist, a painter, an aging Russian housekeeper, a young boy traveling alone, a (very) pregnant woman, a few parliamentarians, and a young anarchist with dreams of glory for her cause (and a bomb). The train itself is a character and has some consciousness of the danger, but no emotions nor any control over preventing it. As we travel along the route, we learn more of each character, of their secrets and hopes. Mado, the anarchist, has made a bomb and is…
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Memorial Days
Memorial Days ~ Geraldine Brooks Fiction writer Geraldine Brooks was married to non-fiction writer Tony Horwitz for 35 years when, on Memorial Day in 2019, just before his 61st birthday, he suddenly collapsed on a sidewalk in Washington, DC and died in the middle of a tour for his most recent book. Memorial Days is her memoir of his death and the time following, and mostly alternates between the confusing and horrible days just after his death, and a trip she takes in 2023 to a tiny Australian island in order to grieve his loss in her own way, away from Western culture and its constructs. She is heartbroken, tired…
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Independent Bookstore Day
Saturday was Independent Bookstore Day, so Ted and I decided to go to Berkeley and see what we might find there. The last time we went book shopping, we went to two bookstores, East Bay Booksellers and Pegasus Books. This time we went to Mrs. Dalloway’s. I started out taking pictures of books that I want to read but will probably listen via my Libby App, and then eventually succumbed to temptation and bought some books. First up, the books I will listen to via Libby. Real Americans ~ Rachel Khong Ted saw this one and said it sounded like a book I would enjoy, and I feel like some…
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All Fours
All Fours ~ Miranda July In All Fours, Miranda July’s unnamed peri-menopausal protagonist decides that she will take a recent windfall and drive across the country alone rather than flying, because she wants to become the kind of person who does such things, and hopes that by changing her basic self, she will be able to recapture the ecstatic love she shared with her husband when their infant child was in the NICU seven years ago. Our protagonist, a semi-famous artist who creates art in several genres, makes her plans and starts out on her trip, but only gets about half an hour away from home before being waylaid by…
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Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance
Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance ~ Alison Espach Sally and Kathy are teenaged sisters in small town Connecticut. Kathy is a few years older than Sally, she is finishing her Junior Year of High School while Sally is finishing up 7th grade. Both girls have been obsessed with Billy Barnes, graduating senior and basketball star, since he jumped off the school roof a few years prior. Eventually Kathy starts dating Billy, leaving Sally behind. In Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance, Sally is telling Kathy the story of her life and everything that has transpired, from the vantage point of 15 years in the future. This is a story of profound…
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Three Days in June
Three Days in June ~ Anne Tyler Three Days in June is the story of Gail Baines, who is fired the day before her daughter’s wedding (or maybe she quits, it’s one of those conversations). Her ex-husband, Max, is in town for the wedding and shows up unannounced to stay with her, bringing a rescue cat that he hopes she will want to adopt. In the span of three days, secrets come out, new wounds are inflicted, old wounds are healed. Gail is the standard prickly character that you will find in an Anne Tyler novel. She has feelings and thoughts, she just doesn’t express them. When she sees her…
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The Girl Who Was Taken
The Girl Who Was Taken ~ Charlie Donlea Megan and Nicole are two High School students, graduating students from different friend groups who disappear one night from the same party. Megan escapes their abductor 2 weeks later, but Nicole is gone. Gone gone. Nicole’s sister, Livia is a forensic pathology fellow working to become a coroner. A year after the abduction, a body is found in a lake that Livia feels must somehow be connected to her sister, and she works with Megan to try to solve the mystery. This book was recommended to me, and I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, it was pretty riveting,…
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Book Shopping
Now that I’ve caught up on the books I’ve read/listened to for the last couple of weeks, I’ll tell you about my book shopping finds. One recent Friday, Ted worked a half day, and we went to Oakland for our Friday night dinner. We went early to do a little book shopping. We started at East Bay Booksellers, a favorite of ours that suffered a major fire last year, but they are thankfully in a temporary location just down the street while their store is repaired. Then we went to dinner at a local place we really enjoy, and then to Pegasus Books, another great Indy place in the neighborhood.…
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The Third Gilmore Girl
The Third Gilmore Girl ~ Kelly Bishop I came to Gilmore Girls late, as it was on against Buffy and there was no way I was going to miss Buffy. Some friends recommended it though, so I started watching it via DVDs that I got from the library. Like Engie, I feel that Emily, the matriarch of the Gilmore clan, is the best character. I would absolutely not want her for a mother, but as a TV character, she’s awesome. I decided I loved her in the first season when she quipped “Your father doesn’t know what he wants. He’d get his hair cut at the butcher if I let…
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The Girls from Corona del Mar
The Girls from Corona Del Mar ~ Rufi Thorpe At the beginning of The Girls from Corona Del Mar, Mia and Lorrie Ann are high school best friends, and Mia is in trouble. She is pregnant (with a boy she doesn’t even like, she just wanted to get the deed over with so she would no longer be a virgin). Mia has an abortion, and decides that the only way to get out of sports practice the following day (don’t ask me what sport, all sports are the same to me. Likely there was a ball involved) is to have Lorrie Ann take a hammer to her toe and break…
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The Anthropocene Reviewed
The Anthropocene Reviewed ~ John Green A memoir in the form of a collection of essays where the author reviews various aspects of the human-centered planet on a five-star scale, exploring topics both mundane and grand. He reviews hot dogs in Iceland, the QWERT keyboard, Diet Dr. Pepper, orbital sunsets, the plague, Monopoly, the movie Harvey, on and on. In each essay we learn more about the author, about his struggles with anxiety, his family, his hopes and fears. Among other things, he discusses climate change, the pandemic, history, and science. I really enjoyed a lot of these essays, and found them engrossing and moving, but mostly memoir and essay…
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The Friend
The Friend ~ Sigrid Nunez The unnamed protagonist of The Friend is a writer and professor in a tiny apartment in Manhattan, a self proclaimed cat person, who inherits a Great Dane, Apollo, when her mentor and close friend dies of suicide. She is buried in grief for her friend, she does not want a dog, her landlord does not allow dogs, and here she is with a dog that weighs (quite a bit) more than she does. What happens is predictable to any animal lover. She falls in love with Apollo. “When you’re lying in bed full of night thoughts,” she thinks, “such as why did your friend have…
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Be Ready When the Luck Happens
Be Ready When the Luck Happens ~ Ina Garten From the author’s website: ”From a difficult childhood to meeting and marrying the love of her life, Jeffrey, while still in college, from a boring bureaucratic job in Washington, DC to answering an ad for a specialty food store in the Hamptons, from the owner of one Barefoot Contessa shop to author of bestselling cookbooks and celebrated television host, Ina has blazed her own trail and, in the meantime, taught millions of people how to cook and entertain. Now, she invites them to come closer to experience her story in vivid detail and to share the important life lessons she learned…
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Home Stretch
Home Stretch ~ Graham Norton Another book about growing up gay in Ireland. This one begins with a group of 6 young adults involved in a horrible car accident on the eve of a wedding in 1987. The bride, groom, and bridesmaid are all killed. The survivors are the sister of the bride, the driver, and one other young man. One of the survivors is Conner, who leaves the village rather than live with the constant shame of being the driver who caused the death of three young people. He ends up living in London for a while, then in New York, where he forges a new life for himself.…
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The Heart’s Invisible Furies
The Heart’s Invisible Furies ~ John Boyne Cyril Avery is born in Dublin in 1945, to a young unwed woman, Catherine, who relinquishes him to a convent to be adopted. He is raised by Maude and Charles Avery, a couple who want a son because it seems the thing to do. Maude is a writer and is mostly interested in writing her books and chain smoking cigarettes. Charles is a businessman (I don’t remember what he does actually) and is kind of shady. One day when Cyril is 7, Charles’ lawyer comes to the house with his two young children, Julian (7) and Alice (5 or 6). Julian and Cyril…
