Abide With Me ~ Elizabeth Strout Tyler Caskey, a young minister in West Annett, Maine, is mourning the loss of his wife. He has two daughters, Katherine and Jeannie. Katherine is in Kindergarten, and is acting up at school and church. Jeannie lives with Tyler’s mother while he figures things out. Connie Hatch works as a housekeeper and helps with Katherine as well. It’s late 1959, and Tyler is struggling to make sense of his loss, to help his daughter through her grief, to guide his congregation, even as the gossip around town turns mean. Charlie and Doris Austin are congregants in the church, and Doris is the organist during…

Pictures from the Little Free Libraries that I pass on my walks. The picture at the top of the post is of the children’s garden in a nearby park, which is right next to one of the LFL. I am enjoying using them for part of my decluttering project, though I will donate some to our library as well. Do you have many Little Free Libraries near you? Do you enjoy straightening them out and making them look better? Do you make deposits and withdrawals?

Orbital ~ Samantha Harvey YOU GUYS – I LOVED THIS BOOK. 6 astronauts/cosmonauts from various countries and continents are floating 250 miles above the earth, scientists on the International Space Station. The Space Station orbits Earth 16 times in 24 hours, and Orbital is a one day, 16 orbit slice of life. Is there a plot? Eh. There is shit going on down on Earth and there are astronauts heading to the Moon, but none if it affects them directly in the here and now. Does a lot happen? A couple of things. Is this a gorgeous, quiet, beautifully written love letter to our planet? Absolutely. The inhabitants of the…

I Who Have Never Known Men ~ Jacqueline Harpman, Translated from French by Ros Schwartz The unnamed protagonist of I Who Have Never Known Men has no memory of life outside of the underground bunker where she lives imprisoned with 39 other women. They were all adults when they were captured, but she was a baby and was raised by them. They have no idea why they are here, the only interaction with other human beings is with the harsh guards who watch over them, bring them food, and prevent them from breaking any of their arbitrary rules. Then one day, while the guard has the keys in the lock…

Good Dirt ~ Charmaine Wilkerson Ebony (Ebby) Freeman is 10 years old when she is witness to a home invasion gone wrong, where her 15 year old brother, Baz, is shot and killed. Because her family is one of very few wealthy Black families in a tony Connecticut neighborhood, the crime is the subject of a lot of media attention. Whenever Ebby meets someone new, she waits for that realization of who she is to dawn on them, for the pity and curiosity to make itself known. We first meet her almost 20 years later, when her (white) well to do fiancé ghosts her on their wedding day. 9 months later,…

Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping (On a Dead Man) ~ Jesse Sutanto Vera Wong is back in this sequel to Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, and I couldn’t be happier. A year after Vera came downstairs in her San Francisco Chinatown tea shop and found a dead man, her life has new meaning. She has a group of found family, young people who were actually her suspects in that murder, and her son Tilly is living with Selena, the detective who was working on that case. Her shop is bustling. But she is bored and needs a challenge. If only another person would end up dead so she could…

Go As A River ~ Shelley Read After Victoria “Torie” Nash’s mother, aunt, and cousin are killed in a car accident, she is left behind as the ‘woman of the house’ at her family peach orchard in Colorado with her father, her brother, and her uncle. Her father has changed since losing his wife, he is despondent and angry. Her brother, Seth, has always been a cruel bully, and without their mother’s stern discipline, he becomes more so. Her uncle is an angry man who came home from WWII in a wheel chair, and depends upon his family to care for him. Go As A River begins when Torie is…

Dream Count ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Dream Count is told from the point of view of four African women, three are wealthy and successful women from Nigeria, one is a hotel employee from Ghana. Chiamaka is a travel writer from a wealthy Nigerian family, and as the book begins she is in the lockdown part of the pandemic, and is considering her shitty taste in men. Zikora is a successful lawyer, and her section begins as she is in labor, attended by her mother, the baby’s father nowhere in sight. Omelogor is Chiamaka’s cousin, a former banker, now intellectual studying how pornography is currently teaching youth unrealistic lessons about sex.…

33 Place Brugmann ~ Alice Austin It is August, 1939, in a wealthy Brussels neighborhood. The residents of a prosperous apartment building include a Jewish art dealer, Leo Raphael, his wife Sophia, and their children, Julian and Esther; an architect, Francois Sauvin and his art student daughter, Charlotte; an army colonel; a lawyer; a seamstress; a notary; and a few other well-to-do tenants. The art dealer and his family emigrate to England, where Julian joins the Royal Air Force, and Esther becomes a war nurse. The remaining residents stay in Brussels and have to find their way under the increasing limitations and dangers of Nazi occupation. The story unfolds in…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…