What are you reading the week of July 23, 2022?

I finished Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev. I have mixed feelings about this book. It's beautifully written, but I found the behavior of one of the characters to be unbelievable.

I also read Madam Maigret's Friend by George Simenon. Another excellent book in the series.

Now I've started Svetlana Alexievich's Secondhand Time. I started this a couple of years ago, but it was too depressing after reading her book on Chernobyl. This one is an oral history of the end of the Soviet Union from the perspective of unrepentant communists, the so-called sovoks.

I'm reading Djinn City by Saad Z. Hossain and Out of My Heart by Sharon M. Draper, the recently published sequel to Out of My Mind. I have a quiet weekend planned in the heat, so I'm looking forward to making progress in both over the next few days.

Just washed my hands of Jefferson Davis, Napoleonic France, and the Nature of Confederate Ideology, 1815-1870, which is a dreary exercise in academic make-work. For the rest of the month the agenda is to finish Central Asia: A New History..., Far from the Light of Heaven, and Sputnik.

Started this audio via hoopla ~
A Peculiar Combination: An Electra McDonnell Novel (Electra McDonnell Series, 1)
by Ashley Weaver
(England WWII)

Continuing to enjoy this OverDrive audio selection ~
A Sunlit Weapon: A Novel (Maisie Dobbs series, Book 17)
by Jacqueline Winspear
(England/Eleanor Roosevelt is included in this fictional WWII tale)

To Be Continued – Charmaine Gordon
Digital audiobook read by Rebecca Roberts
3***

From the book jacket: Elizabeth Malone wakes up the morning after an amazing night of passion with her husband of forty years to find a note: “Dear Lizzie, it’s not you, it’s me.” Abandoned by her husband, disappointed in daughter Susie’s casual attitude, Beth decides to re-establish herself as the winner she once was.

My reactions
I wasn’t expecting much from this coming-of-middle-age book, but I found it to be pretty entertaining. Oh, I did have some issues with the main character. Beth was once an ambitious woman with a promising career, but she took on the role of doctor’s wife to please her husband and seems to have left her brain power behind. I was pretty frustrated with her at the outset. But eventually she does find a good therapist, satisfying volunteer work, a strengthened relationship with her daughter, a new friend to boost her morale, a new attorney to get her what she deserves, and a new man who will support and encourage her endeavors as she starts her own business.

It was a fun, fast read.

Rebecca Roberts does a fine job on the audiobook. She sets a good pace and has clear diction.

House of Hollow
Krystal Sutherland
4/5 stars
In this dark YA novel, the author tells the tale of three unusual sisters who as children disappeared for a month and returned not knowing what happened and with changes in their appearances. This time their older sister, Grey goes missing and Iris Hollow and her sister Vivi take up the challenge of where their sister went and what really happened the first time they went missing! Compelling!

I'm about a third of the way through the marvelous The Family Moskat by Isaac Bashevis Singer. The novel takes us into the fracturing and ultimately doomed world of the Jews of Poland in the early decades of the 20th century.

Still reading Kismet and Into the Narrowdark.

I’m very much enjoying a reread of Plainsong. I may even like it more now than the first time I read it over 20 years ago.

My reading was interrupted by a trip to my old stomping grounds of Michigan, I finally finished The Soloist. It is a book written with four different story lines (the musicians past, his teaching of a your Korean, his relationship with a woman, and a trial of a Zen Buddhist, which the author pulls together at the end with partial success.

The Winds of War – Herman Wouk
5*****

Book # 1 in the Henry Family saga introduces us to Commander Victor Henry, his wife Rhoda, and their children: Warren, Byron and Madeline. Victor wants a battleship, but he’s been selected to serve as Naval attache in Berlin. It’s 1937 and he’ll have a front-row seat to history.

This is a larger than life story to tell, and Wouk could not manage to finish it in just one volume (even though this book is nearly 900 pages long in original hardcover). It ends just after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and the Henry family is facing not only a world war but considerable personal upheaval. Both sons are naval officers serving in the Pacific, while daughter Madeline remains at her job in New York (and the subject of a scandal that will surely ruin her reputation). Victor’s Jewish daughter-in-law remains trapped in Europe, having delayed her return to the US in deference to her aged (and improbably naïve) uncle. And both Pug and Rhoda are questioning whether they want to continue their marriage, or find more suitable partners.

The soap opera drama of the family’s story pulls the reader through, but Wouk includes much history. There are occasional interruptions in the family saga to report on the historical events, including examinations of each side’s military readiness and strategy.

I first read this book sometime in the mid to late 1970s; it was originally published in 1971. Recently my husband found a hardcover copy in our local Little Free Library. He’d never read it before and was so enthusiastic about it that I decided to re-read it. I’m glad I did. He has already read the sequel, War and Remembrance, but I think I’ll hold off on re-reading that one for a while.

I'm almost 200 pages into Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets now, and the book is just emotionally devastating. I just finished a long interview with a mother who's 14 year old son hanged himself after the fall of the Soviet Union. Svetlana Alexievich's books are like living, raw nerves pinned like butterflies to the page. I'm giving the book five stars only because I can't give it ten.

I just finished Less by Andrew Sean Greer for my book club. It was good, it won a Pulitzer, but I had a little challenge with the shifting time frames and point of views.

Next up is Granta 115: The F Word (Feminism) edited by John Freeman.

I finished Out of My Heart and abandoned Djinn City (just wasn't pulling me in, may have been a mood thing). Now I'm reading Remarkably Bright Creatures, and it's going swimmingly.

>14 bell7: I loved Remarkably Bright Creatures!

I finished my reread of Plainsong and it was wonderful! I had forgotten so much of it. Now I think I’m going to start Dear Mrs Bird by AJ Pearce.

A Fistful of Collars – Spencer Quinn
Audible audio performed by Jim Frangione
3***

Book # 5 in the Chet and Bernie mystery series, has Bernie Small hired to “babysit” a notorious bad-boy Hollywood actor who’s the star of a movie being shot on location in his area. Thad Perry needs tending, to stay off drugs, stay out of trouble, and stay on the job. But Bernie notices that stories aren’t lining up, and he’s suspicious that there’s more to this assignment that originally stated. And before you know it he’s investigating not one but two murders.

Of course, Bernie goes nowhere without his partner, Chet, who is a dog of indeterminate mixed heritage and also narrates the tale. I just love this series. I never get tired of Chet’s way of interpreting what he witnesses. Of course he’s frequently distracted by the smell of a dropped Cheetoh, or the sounds of a particular automobile engine, not to mention others of his kind in the “nation within a nation,” or the promise of a treat (it was a promise, wasn’t it .. well, it was mentioned). And I certainly concur with Chet’s opinion of crullers – Delicious!

Jim Frangione is marvelous narrating this series. I can’t imagine anyone else bringing Chet to life the way Frangione does.

>16 BookConcierge: My next door neighbor, a woman my wife and I both love to death, gave me the first book in this series to read. I was, to put it mildly, skeptical, though I wanted to make my friend happy by reading it. But, lo and behold! I really enjoyed the book. I haven't made the time to read further in the series, but I can appreciate your enthusiasm for it. Cheers!

The new thread is up over here.