Books
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Wild Dark Shore
Wild Dark Shore ~ Charlotte McConaghy Dominic (Dom) Salt and his three children live on remote Shearwater Island near Antarctica, caretakers of a seed vault meant to maintain the planet’s plant diversity in case of extinctions. They share the island with a small group of scientists who are performing experiments and caring for the seed vault. Climate change means that the island will soon be uninhabitable and that the seeds must be moved and the people evacuated. Several weeks before the ship is scheduled to come evacuate the island, there is a huge storm, and a woman (Rowan) washes up on shore, gravely injured but alive. The communications equipment is…
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Trust
Trust ~ Hernan Diaz Andrew and Mildred Bevel are the couple at the heart of Trust. Andrew is a stock market billionaire in the 1920s, Mildred is his philanthropist wife. Their story is told through four separate books. First is a biographic novel, which paints Andrew as an opportunist and Mildred as suffering from mental illness. Next is an unfinished autobiography, where Andrew works to defend his legacy from the unflattering descriptions of the novel. Then comes the memoir of the woman who was his ghost writer for the autobiography, who finds Mildred to be the more interesting of the two, even as Andrew works to keep her legacy limited…
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The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Dubois ~ Honorée Fanonne Jeffers Ailey Garfield is a young American woman of African, Scottish, and Native American descent, growing up in a highly educated family with high expectations. Her parents are Belle and Geoff Garfield, a teacher (professor? I don’t remember) and a medical doctor. Ailey and her sisters, Lydia and Coco, all suffer sexual abuse at the hands of their grandfather, ‘Gandy’. None of them know that the other two have suffered, they all thought that their silence, demanded under threat of the murder of their family, has protected the others. This abuse haunts them all, but leads them in different directions with…
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My Oxford Year
Yesterday, I had thoughts of perhaps going to see the film adaptation of Hamnet, which is getting very good reviews. I enjoyed but did not love the book, but I am considering rereading it. However, I woke up with a head cold and decided to take it easy instead. I skipped my weights and my walk, and did a simple yoga for sick recovery stretch instead. I wrote out a few Christmas Cards, then decided to watch the film adaptation of My Oxford Year, a romantic tragedy written by Julia Whelan, which I read (and enjoyed) last year. Anna (named Ella in the book) is spending a year abroad at…
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Her Many Faces
Her Many Faces ~ Nicci Cloke Katherine (Katie) Cole is a waitress at a super exclusive men’s club where 4 very powerful men die of poisoning one night, and she is accused. Her Many Faces is a phycological mystery where the question of ‘did she do it’ is examined by 5 men. This was an effective way to tell the story, none of it from Katie’s POV. The men who consider her case all have their own opinions and agendas, none are neutral to her possible innocence or guilt. I liked this, that they were all unreliable to a point, and I didn’t know who or what to believe. This…
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I’ll Come to You
I’ll Come to You ~ Rebecca Kaufmann It is January, 1995. Ellen is recently divorced, but she doesn’t really understand what went wrong in her marriage. She goes on a blind date with Gary that doesn’t really go well, and she decides that what they need next Christmas is to have a family holiday, with her ex husband included. Perhaps they can cool down between now and then and reconcile. Ellen’s son, Paul, is married to Corinne, and they are expecting a baby. They struggled to get to this point. Corinne’s brother (Rob) is a used car salesman with a history of lying that has followed him through his life,…
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Audition
Audition ~ Katie Kitamura A well known but not famous middle aged actress meets a young man for lunch. Who are they to each other? She thinks they are strangers, he thinks she is his mother. Which is correct? This is the opening to Audition, an entirely bingeable book about shifting reality, what if, and figuring out how well we actually know someone. Our unnamed narrator is preparing to open a new play in New York, and is having trouble connecting with her role, as well as with her husband. Xavier is the young man who thinks she may be his mother, and who gets a job as the assistant…
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Maggie
Maggie; or A Man and A Woman Walk into a Bar ~ Katie Yee The unnamed protagonist of Maggie has a lot going on. She has two small children, her husband no longer loves her and is moving in with his new girlfriend, Maggie, and our protagonist has cancer. In honor of her husband’s girlfriend, she names her tumor ‘Maggie’. This book had some funny moments, and it was poignant in its own way, but mostly I felt like it skimmed the surface too much, and I never really felt engaged with the protagonist. I found her behavior to be somewhat ridiculous and unrealistic. For a quick listen, it was…
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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…
