What are you reading the week of May 18, 2024?

I decided that I needed something a bit less depressing to read and that made me feel as if I was learning something new. I've started a textbook on Evolutionary Genetics. It will probably take me 3-4 weeks unless I intersperse it with other things as a change of pace.

I'll just copy this over from the last thread since I posted so late there:

I finished The Miracle at Coogan's Bluff by Thomas Kiernan. This one's more or less for baseball fans only, as it is a history of the famous National League pennant race when the New York Giants made up a 13 1/2 game deficit over the last 6 weeks of the season to catch the Brooklyn Dodgers and force a playoff series that was decided in most dramatic fashion. The second half of the book is comprised of interviews with most of the principle members of that Giants team and many of the conversations get at the dynamics of team sports in general. I am away from home right now, visiting family, and will post a review in the usual spots upon my return.

ETA: My review is now up on my Club Read thread.

I've just started Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica by Zora Neale Hurston. Originally published in 1938, this is Hurston's work of travelogue/anthroplogy I've not read anything of Hurston's except Their Eyes Were Watching God, so I'm very much looking forward to this.

Having finished up The British Pacific Fleet, the line-up for the coming week looks like War Veterans and Fascism in Interwar Europe, Repast, and Cahokia Jazz.

I just started Billy Summers by Stephen King.

>3 Shrike58: My wife just read Cahokia Jazz and absolutely loved it.

The Covenant of Water – Abraham Verghese
Digital audiobook read by the author.
5*****

An epic tale of one family in Kerala, India, over nearly eight decades, spanning the time frame from 1900 to 1977. The story begins with a twelve-year-old girl traveling by boat to her wedding to a forty-year-old widower. She will eventually become Big Ammachi, the matriarch of a family with an unusual “condition” – in every generation someone dies of drowning.

Gosh, but Verghese can write! The landscape is practically a character, and, of course, given the family “condition” it is vital to this story. There is a lot of drama in this decades-long story, from family relationships to adultery to tragic accidents to political upheaval. Verghese touches on classicism, colonialism, racism and sexism. But this is NOT an unhappy book.

The family relationships are loving and tender. Big Ammachi is a wonderful character. She holds her family together and helps to lead them into the future. And there are several humorous exchanges that help to lighten the mood.

And that ending. My heart swelled.

I appreciated the medical information I gleaned from this, as well as the information regarding certain historical events that I hadn’t previously learned about.

Verhgese narrates the audiobook himself. He excelled at voicing the various Indian characters, but his European accents failed. Towards the end, I had to remind myself that Digby was a Caucasian Scot.

Enjoying this audio via Libby ~

Random in Death: (An Eve Dallas/In Death Novel, #58)
by J. D. Robb

I just started Carys Davies' Clear and already know I'm going to love it.

>4 PaperbackPirate: I loved Billy Summers.

I finished The Poor Mouth which was an exaggerated satire of the Gaelic Islanders. Their miserable lives were presented as humorous although very little of it seemed humorous to me.

I'm sharing my reading time between Erec and Enide and The Once and Future King, with a little bit of The Niebelungenlied added from time to time. Definitely letting my inner medieval enthusiast enjoy herself!

The Wasp Factory
Iain Banks
3/5 stars
This a very dark story about a family of all men. Frank Cauldhame is 16 years old and a murderer, but no one knows about it. 1984

Ms Demeanor – Elinor Lipman
Digital audiobook performed by Piper Goodeve
3***

An attorney is spotted by a nosy neighbor with binoculars engaging in consensual sex on her rooftop patio. The outraged busybody calls police and Jane Morgan is convicted of indecent behavior and sentenced to six months of house confinement. With no job and stuck at home, life looks bleak. But then her doorman lets slip that there is another resident of her building who is also wearing an ankle monitor. And so Jane meets Perry Salisbury, whose white-collar crime doesn’t completely put him out of the picture.

This is a delightful modern-day rom-com with an interesting plot twist, or three. I just love Lipman’s sense of humor!

Jane’s twin sister provides moral (and financial) support. Her relationship with Perry moves along nicely. But wait … why are police knocking on Jane’s door once again? You’ll have to read the book to find out.

The audiobook is performed by Piper Goodeve, who does a fine job. She sets a good pace, and I was engaged and entertained from beginning to end.

Still Here: The Madcap, Nervy, Singular Life of Elaine Stritch
Alexandra Jacobs
4/5 stars
What an interesting life and story the author weaves around Elaine Stritch, an actress who performed on TV, stage and in the movies for years!

Ruddy Gore – Kerry Greenwood
3***

Book number seven in the delightful Phryne Fisher series of cozy mysteries set in 1920s Melbourne, Australia.

Phryne is attending the latest performance of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta Ruddigore, when the star actor collapses on stage. Her friend, and theater producer asks her to investigate. Seems it was not a heart attack, but rather, poison. To further compound matters, a ghost is terrifying the other performers and staff, and the theater is in trouble.

I like Phryne as a character. She is her own woman and quite modern in her thinking. She’s independent, curious, observant and can take care of herself. She’s also beautiful and wealthy. And she quite enjoys time in the bedroom with a gentleman. Brava, Phryne!

From the library: The Romanov Brides: A Novel of the Last Tsarina and Her Sisters by Clare McHugh
Story of the Hesse Princesses, Victoria, Ella, and Alix, the granddaughters of Queen Victoria. The novel opens in 1878.

First Gen – Alejandra Campoverdi
3***

Campoverdi’s memoir details her experiences and that of her family, particularly the women. From growing up poor in a single-parent household with her grandmother, three aunts, and mother, the author writes about her path from Los Angeles to Harvard to the White House.

She speaks about her anxiety and her feelings of not belonging, her struggles with debilitating panic attacks, and feeling like an imposter. She frames all this in what she calls being a “The First and Only.”

Her story is an interesting one, but I didn’t really identify with her experiences, and felt she was not fully identifying the causes of her feelings of inadequacy.

Were it not a book-club selection, I probably would not have picked it up.

This Time Together: Laughter and Reflection
Carol Burnett
4/5 stars
Not a complete autobiography but Burnett relates tales of her life on her show, the celebrities she encountered on her show and audiences she who motivated her. If you are a Carol Burnett fan, you would enjoy this book.

I am doing a reread of Plainsong by Kent Haruf it is a gem, he is a magical writer, his descriptions take you to the place and the persons.

The new thread is up over here.