What are you reading the week of May 28, 2022?

I'm have sixty or seventy pages to go in Nothing is True, and Everything is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia by Peter Pomerantsev. Pomerantsev is a British television producer (the son of Russian immigrants) who worked on Russian reality TV shows for many years. The book is at times unpleasant but always enlightening.

Devil’s Peak – Deon Meyer
Digital audiobook performed by Simon Vance
4****

Book #1 in the Inspector Benny Geissel mystery series, starring the South African detective. There’s a serial killer on the loose; the reader knows it is Thobela Mpayipheli, a man torn by grief over the death of his son who has sworn vengeance by killing those who have harmed children. A second thread involves Christine Van Rooyen, a sex worker with a need to confess. And then there’s Benny and his alcoholism; at the outset he awakens to find his wife standing over him with a packed suitcase – she gives him six months to sober up, or get out of the family’s life forever.

Knowing who the serial killer is does nothing to lessen the tension and suspense in this novel. Benny is such a flawed character and watching him try to make sense of his life and keep away from the bottle while he tracks the serial killer and becomes ensnared in the mystery Christine weaves had me backtracking and re-reading sections to try to make sense of what was happening. Meyer does a great job of adding layers to an already complicated plot. And the final chapters are a wild ride!

The audio version is performed by Simon Vance. Need I say more?

I'm reading a fun music history: Good Rockin' Tonight: Sun Records and the Birth of Rock 'n' Roll by Colin Escott with Martin Hawkins.

Elizabeth Blackwell: Girl Doctor – Joanne Landers Henry
3.5***

This is part of a series for middle-school readers about the “Childhood of Famous Americans.”

Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman to attend medical school in the United States and she went on to found the New York Infirmary for Women and Children and then a medical school for women (the latter endeavor having to wait until after the Civil War was over before it could open).

This fictionalized biography focuses on her childhood in England and the United States, the incidents that piqued her interest in healing, and her constant goal to become a doctor and practice medicine. She was a pioneer in the field of hygiene, insisting that hospitals and clinics be kept spotlessly clean, and thereby limiting infection.

The book is both entertaining and informative, and possibly inspiring for young girls who read it.

It was my last week of school, so I barely got to read Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings by Christopher Moore. But now I'm on summer break so I will definitely be reading a new book by next Saturday.

Just finished the wonderful novel Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason. Read most of it today. Funny and heartbreaking. Highly recommended.

>5 PaperbackPirate: Enjoy your well deserved break!

I’m reading Bloomsbury Girls by Natalie Jenner. As with her Jane Austen Society, I’m enjoying it quite a bit!

The Little Girl Who Fought the Great Depression: Shirley Temple and 1930s America
John F. Kasson
Kasson relates the story Shirley Temple, one of the most popular child actress of her time period amidst the background and history of the Great Depression. He explores the films she was in, her popularity with the public who had sent her four thousand letters a week at the height of her fame and her parents who supported her but also spent most of her money, leaving her very little after her career was over. Highly recommended.

Still reading The Mirror Crack'd From Side to Side and All the Seas of the World.

>7 Copperskye: Thank you!

Firekeepers Daughter by Angeline Bouley, I'm excited to dig into this book by a Native American author.

Started this hoopla audio ~

No Nest for the Wicket (A Meg Langslow Mystery)
by Donna Andrews

It's a beautiful day today, and I shouldn't be indoors reading, but The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor by Tina Brown is so good that I am planning to read all day, in between loads of laundry. Brown's writing and turns of phrase are magnificent, and the scoop so well-sourced, that I am in raptures, and am just in time for Her Majesty's Platinum Jubilee. Note to self - buy outdoor chairs.

I have 4 hrs & 10 min remaining in Shantaram, the 43-hour audiobook, a fictionalized account of Gregory David Roberts's escape from an Australian maximum-security prison, and his flight to and residence in Mumbai, India. Roberts is currently fighting in the Afghan-Russian war, on the Afghani side, and all is not well.

I'm about to wash my hands of The Invention of International Order and am in striking distance of finishing Twice Forgotten. I've also started She Who Became the Sun.

Finished Just One Damned Thing After Another, and I won't be going back for any more in the series. It's being promoted as a "madcap comedy" featuring time trave. However, it was full of undying enmity, double-crossing, and people dying unpleasantly. For some reason, I did not find myself chuckling along.

Will finish up the month with Janes Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me, which should round out May's total at an even dozen reads.

The Handmaid’s Tale: The Graphic Novel – Renee Nault / Margaret Atwood
5*****

I’ve read and reviewed Atwood’s novel previously (See my review HERE), so I’ll confine this review to the adaptation.

Nault is a Canadian artist and illustrator and her interpretation of Atwood’s novel is marvelous.

Her imagery is even more vivid and memorable than some of the same scenes as described by Atwood. I’m thinking particularly of “the Ceremony” where the Commander tries to impregnate Offred each month, or the scenes of Offred walking past the wall where “traitors” are hung.

She uses just enough text to keep the story moving and to explain the images. Of course, I’d read the original (two or three times), but I don’t think I would have missed much had this been my only experience with Atwood’s story.

The final chapter, called “Historical Notes,” is perhaps too brief, but certainly conveys the relevant information, and is less likely to be skipped over than in Atwood’s original.

I do NOT recommend that readers skip the original work, but this would be a great introduction or supplement to the novel.

I finished Surveillance by Jonathan Raban and ended up very disappointed. It took a few turns I did not like and then the ending was horrible. I have started reading The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks and have no idea what to make of it.

Finished The Mirror Crack'd From Side to Side by Agatha Christie and started Poirot Investigates.

Bloomsbury Girls was a lot of fun. Now I’m reading Sarah Winman’s When God Was a Rabbit.

Enjoying this OverDrive audio ~

Yours Cheerfully: A Novel (The Emmy Lake Chronicles, #2)
by AJ Pearce

I finished the fun music history, Good Rockin' Tonight: Sun Records and the Birth of Rock 'n' Roll by Colin Escott with Martin Hawkins. I highly recommend this brisk, well-written narrative for anyone interested in the history of American popular music. I've put up a longer review on my 50-Book Challenge thread.

Next up for me will be Diary of a Lonely Girl, or The Battle Against Free Love by Miriam Karpilove. This is a novel written in Yiddish and first published in 1918, and only recently translated into English. I'm very much looking forward to it.

The House of Broken Angels – Luis Alberto Urrea
Digital audiobook performed by the author.
3.5****

A large Mexican-American family plans a get-together for the patriarch’s birthday. He’s dying of cancer and wants to gather everyone around him one more time. But as the big day approaches, Big Angel’s own mother dies (at nearly 100 years of age), so now there will be two celebrations in one weekend. One of the guests is Big Angel’s half-brother, known as Little Angel. As the weekend progresses, the brothers come to grips with how different their lives have been; while they shared a father, they did not share a life.

I have read two of Urrea’s novels previously, and am a fan of his writing. He peoples the work with a wide variety of characters – colorful, cautious, steadfast, reckless, proud, shy, angry, happy, broken or successful. He balances tender scenes against highly comic ones or anxiety-producing tragic occurrences.

I do wish I had had a family tree handy, however. Many of his characters go by more than one name, and the Mexican tradition of referring to every relative, no matter how distant, as “cousin” or “uncle” makes it even more challenging to keep the relationships straight.

I listened to the audio, which Urrea narrates himself. He is a wonderful performer of this work! But I think I will have to go back and read the text to fully immerse myself in this big, messy, loud, loving family.

The Last White Rose: A Novel of Elizabeth of York by Alison Weir
The 1st installment in "The Tudor Rose" series.

Circe – Madeline Miller
Audiobook performed by Perdita Weeks
5*****

In this marvelous work of literary fiction, Miller, tells us the story of Circe, daughter of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, and possibly best known for turning Odysseus’s men into swine.

I studied the classics in high school so was familiar with the basic story line, and some of the family connections, but Miller gives me so much more detail and really fleshes out these characters. With the possible exception of Scylla, no one is all good or all evil. Whether mere mortals, or exalted gods, they succumb to jealousy, ambition, greed, lust, and pride. They exhibit compassion, tenderness, loyalty and love.

This is the stuff of myths, so there are fantastical elements. I kept wondering where Circe got all her stores of provisions – seemingly endless supplies of wine, cheese, fruit, bread, not to mention the many herbs she used for her potions. But I can suspend disbelief with the best of them, and gave myself up to Miller’s excellent and gripping story-telling.

Miller’s writing wove a spell that completely enthralled me. I was so beguiled that a part of me wished the novel itself were immortal, and that I could keep reading forever.

I listened to the audiobook, marvelously performed by Perdita Weeks. She has many characters to handle and she has the skill to do it well.

I was glad to have a copy of the text handy, as well, because it includes a cast of characters which explains the various relationships between gods, mortals and monsters.

The new thread is up over here.