Feast or famine with book club. Last month we had one of our largest groups; this month just three people made it.
Peggy and Linda were the only readers that were there at the start. Sheila, Christina, and Jim let me know in advance that they wouldn’t be able to make it. Sheila, who joined us for the first time last month, is in the process of moving to Jacksonville, Florida. Christina had one her book clubs moved back a week because of the Labor Day holiday, so that was a conflict. And Jim said this was a busy travel month for him. Beth said she had an archeology survey scheduled but would try to join us later.
So, Peggy and Linda and myself spent a leisurely hour and a half talking about books and travel. Peggy has scheduled a Caribbean cruise, which curiously enough begins In Montreal. And Linda has a trip planned to visit Chile, then on to Easter Island. Such adventures!
Not three minutes after we signed off for the day Beth signed in. She had a wonderful day in Colorado on her archeology survey, joining over 20 other enthusiasts. We ended up talking for an hour and half, and never once mentioned books we had read <g>.
In all, 44 books were read/discussed/reviewed. The full list can be found here:
https://www.mamensa.org/category/book-lovers-sig-book-talks/
Book Lovers SIG always meets the second Sunday of each month; in this case October 13th. We meet online using Zoom, so it is easy to join in.
Folks generally start checking in around 2 p.m. for a bit of socialization. Book discussions begin around 2:30 p.m., more or less, or when Peggy says, “OK, Let’s talk about books!”.
To join us on Zoom, simply click on the link shown below:
https://tinyurl.com/BookLoversSIG
You can also open your Zoom app and use these parameters:
Meeting ID: 946 0436 4344
Passcode: 844358
Remember, Book Lovers is yet another way for members who do not live in large metropolitan areas or who can’t make it to local events to get more out of their Mensa membership. We don’t assign books; we just talk about what we’ve been reading lately. Even if you haven’t had time to read this month, join us anyway. Maybe you’ll hear about something that interests you; happens to me all the time!
*****
Linda
Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier. Someone picked this for my local book club. I read it in high school and have seen 2 movies but decided to read it again – had forgotten some details. ****
Trust, by Hernan Diaz. Interesting but somewhat frustrating structure. The first half, somewhat dry fictional biographies of men with more money than empathy. No dialog at all. Wasn’t till halfway through that I understood what the point was – and dialog now included. The “surprise” in the last section is a bit trite. And many questions left unanswered. **
The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club, by Helen Simonson. The title pretty much gives it away as chick lit, but I think it’s a cut above the usual. Ladies in 1920’s England get up to unusual activities. ****
Tripwire by Lee Child (Jack Reacher #3). Linda told us she loves just about anything Child has written for the Reacher series, and this was no exception. *****
Kitchens of the Great Midwest, by J. Ryan Stradal. Assorted families and friends and their enterprises in the world of food. ****
Two Old Women: An Alaskan Legend of Betrayal, Courage and Survival, by Velma Wallis. Old women are evicted from their tribe but manage to succeed on their own. ***
Peggy
To Turn the TIde, by S.M. Stirling. Time travel takes a professor of Ancient History (ex-military) and his 4 grad students from the near present to 165 AD Roman Empire. Luckily, a warehouse full of low-tech survival gear (plus antibiotics, coins and gems) comes along for the ride.
The Briar Club, by Kate Quinn. Washington, D.C., 1950. Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, a rundown boarding house. But when mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendship: English beauty Fliss; police officer’s daughter Nora, who is entangled with a gangster; frustrated baseball star Bea, whose career has ended along with the women’s baseball league; and gung-ho Arlene, who sees McCarthy’s Red Scare everywhere.
The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians, introduction by James Patterson. Booksellers (independent and chain) and librarians (public, school, special) talk about how they got into their jobs.
More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, by Satoshi Yagisawa. Takako’s uncle Satoru owns a used bookshop in a Tokyo neighborhood of booksellers. Everyday relationships are forged and grown through a shared love of books. An earlier novel won a Japanese literature prize.
The Murders in Great Diddling, by Katarina Bivald. An author with writer’s block moves to a small, run-down village in Cornwall. An explosion in the village’s grand manor kills a local man and the eccentric residents transform the death of a nasty man into a new beginning for the town. And the writer’s plotting abilities track nicely with figuring out the murderer. Light-hearted and laugh-out-loud funny, it’s a celebration of books and the people who love them.
Beth
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, by Susana Clarke. Power: its use, abuse, and unintended consequences. This time it is magic. There is an evil fairy, a selfish practitioner who wants it all for himself, one who is so lost in just studying it, and oblivious to everything else, and then all the little people, innocent and guilty. Not to mention the freeloading upper classes making war everywhere they go. The only people who seem to win in this story are the people who are humble, attentive, empathetic, and persistent. And the poor horses.
Autocracy Inc., by Anne Appelbaum. Anne reviews the state of the world through the lens of the rise of the autocrats. How they use the guise of democracy to hold elections (many sham elections) and then chip away at rights and freedoms with democratic sounding words that are code with the opposite meaning. She discusses how people have fought back over the years, and how the autocratic regimes have stayed up with them. Rather than mass incarcerations and deportations, autocrats single out a small number of people and arrest, torture, and kill people who they see as threats to the regime. She proposes new ways to resist by changing the dialog and the laws to cut down on money laundering and misinformation. A very heavy lift, but necessary.
All in the Family, by Fred Trump. Fred Trump III, son of Donald’s brother Fred who died young, opens up with his story. This focuses on the relationships of Fred and his sister Mary (the psychologist), their parents, and the rest of the family. It humanizes the other Trumps and explores what it meant to be an outsider still required/able to interact with the family or not. It is a different take on the shenanigans of Donald, along with sister (Judge) Maryanne, and Robert (the youngest child of Fred Senior) in changing the inheritance of Fred Sr. because Donald needed the money. It is a more in-depth look at Fred and his wife’s struggles and their focus on their son William, born with a developmental mutation and how it changed their whole story. It is not the usual Donald bashing and leaves you room to decide for yourself about this complicated family that just happens to have lived their lives in public, mostly through no fault of their own.
Ancillary Justice, by Anne Lecke. Back in the Radchaai universe, where humans killed and captured in war are frozen and then turned into ancillaries: a human body with an AI mind, connected to all the other minds (ancillaries) in its group (ship). Each ship is an AI with all its ancillaries, run by a human captain and human officers. There is one overlord AI, with multiple ancillary bodies. The Radchaai are “annexing” planets, and then things start to go wacky. It takes a while to figure out what is going on, but then it gets even more interesting. Two more books in this sequence.
The Bookstore Wedding, by Alice Hoffman. We are back on the little island in Maine with one of the two sisters from the bookstore. This is a novella about the sister who left to go to New York City and how she came back and what happened next. A sweetish story of loss, love, and family and the way fear dictates choices.
Standing in the Rainbow, by Fanny Flagg. Nothing like a good Fannie Flagg novel to get a reality check that there are good, bad, and ugly people in the world, and life is negotiating your social web without losing your soul to any of them. Wait, that is my story. She does give you a way to hold up your mirror to your own choices. Excellent read when the world has gotten you down.
Still the Sun, by Charlie Holmberg. This is a pure good and evil story. You just have to figure out who the bad guy is. Desert world village surrounded by an impenetrable mountain range, an unclimbable wall and desert in all directions. There’s a tower about 5 K out from the village that no one can get into and appears uninhabited. Basic subsistence life, and the first line of the book: “Something is missing.” Things don’t add up, and then things don’t add up, and then they do. Interesting story, and a mix of a scientific and religious explanation. Evil is defeated, at a cost. But evil is defeated.
The Old Women, by Velma Walls. This is a story about rejecting the choices that others make for you and just carrying on, especially when it gets hard. You can have community when everyone is respected, or you can have a mess. Sometimes you have to think outside the box. Two old women get left behind when food is scarce in the Yukon. They don’t lay down and die like they are supposed to but make a permanent change in their tribe’s ability to survive. Yea! Crusty old women!
Nevermore: The Trials of Morrigan Crow, by Jessica Townsend. We meet Morrigan Crow – the cursed girl – as she navigates her fate with help from a sponsor who saves her by taking her to Nevermore and the school for special kids, and then leaves out everything that would be good to know. Fun read for YA, with a shout out to all the other popular YA stories out there.
Wundersmith: The Calling of Morrigan Crow, by Jessica Townsend. Morrigan is in school, and still, no one is telling her what is going on. We cheer her on as she navigates this normal seemingly, but magic filled world. Everyone has their own agenda, and the adults are determined to solve the world’s problems without the help of their students.
HollowPox: The Hunt for Morrigan Crow, by Jessica Townsend. Things start to get serious when one group of magical beings starts going on rampages and then lapses into a coma. Morrigan has to make a choice about who to trust, and how she will learn to manage and grow into her powers.
True Places, by Sonja Yoerg. This is the story of a rich family breaking up because it just doesn’t work, and how they manage to survive by reaching out past their own bubble.
Brad
The Secrets We Kept, by Lara Prescott. Prescott’s first novel is a story based in the post-war years, when the cold war was turning hot. Alternating between East (Soviet Union) and West (United States), this is the story of the author of Dr. Zhigavo and the efforts of the CIA to smuggle the book, unpublished in the U.S.S.R., back into Russia in an attempt to use literature to capture the hearts and minds of average Soviet citizens.
The other half of the story is about two women who worked for the CIA in the very early days. One, a secretary whose mother was able to emigrate from the Soviet Union, but whose father was detained by the secret police just as they were about to leave, and the other the secretary’s mentor, who taught her how to be a spy. One became integral to the efforts to smuggle Dr. Zhigavo back into Russia, and the other who was essentially sold out by the CIA and eventually turned to spying for the Soviet Union.
The story is so far-fetched, I just shook my head. Until I read the epilogue, which explained that this is entirely based on real events. Literally unbelievable. ****
Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Best Debut Novel (2019).
Beverly Hills Spy: The Double-Agent War Hero Who Helped Japan Attack Pearl Harbor, by Ronald Drabkin. Kind of a schlocky title, but another true story. Frederick Rutland was a WWI hero in England, an early naval aviation pioneer. He was one of the first pilots to successfully land a plane on a ship. After the war his ideas and innovations led to the development of new planes and what would become aircraft carriers. After that war, in a time that Great Britain and Japan were still allies. He spent a lot of time in Japan training Japanese pilots and sharing the same expertise that allowed the Japanese to develop their own fleet of aircraft carriers. It was during this time that he became friends of many cadets of the Japanese naval academy, the same people that would rise in the ranks and become the admirals that planned the attack on Pearl Harbor.
After returning from Japan, he later settled in Los Angeles and worked as a consultant. Because of his hero status and widely recognized expertise, he was able to “talk shop” with many in the aerospace industry without rousing suspicion, all the while feeding information to his new Japanese friends. And at handsome sums. In fact, he was paid more than any Japanese admiral. MI-5 eventually became suspicious and alerted the FBI. However, neither side wanted to publicly arrest Rutland, afraid that would lead to bad publicity. But then Pearl Harbor happened.
Rutland was lured back to Britain on false pretenses and imprisoned. After the start of the war Parliament had passed a security [policy] that allowed any person to be arrested for pretty much any reason and be held without evidence for an unlimited period of time. Rutland was locked away for over two years before finally being released. He insisted the entire time that he was there to assist England in the war effort, as he knew the leadership in the Japanese navy in a way that no one else did. He knew the way they thought and the way they would behave. He was not taken up on his offer. He ended up isolating himself after the war and ended up taking his own life. At least that was what the press was told.
This is the second book I have read in the last year that contains information on how the FBI and Hoover were warned about the impending attack on Pearl Harbor but did not heed the warnings. In fact, Hoover went to great lengths to hide evidence of his knowledge, and to this day the FBI continues to redact any information that shows they were warned. ****
Left for Dead: A Young Man’s Search for Justice for the USS Indianapolis, by Pete Nelson and Hunter Scott.
Two stories here: one is of the 11-year-old Hunter Scott, who first hears about the USS Indianapolis while watching the movie Jaws with his father. He asked if it was true; his father replied yes, but that if he wanted to learn more, he should go to the library. And he did! What he found disturbed him greatly.
For those that don’t know, the USS Indianapolis was the ship that was tasked to deliver the atomic bomb. Needless to say, it was a top-secret mission. At least going there. But coming back was a completely different story. The Navy KNEW that there was a Japanese sub patrolling the route that the Indianapolis would return on. They NEVER informed the captain. And after the Indy was sunk, the survivors waited in the water for 5 days waiting for someone to rescue them. Horrifying doesn’t begin to describe what these men went through, out there, alone, in the middle of the ocean.
Even though were long overdue to arrive, the base expecting them felt it wasn’t their responsibility to notify anybody. Multiple communication breakdowns are documented in the book. Then to cap it off, the Navy needed a scapegoat, so they court-martialed the captain. Unbelievable.
Anyway, the kid learned about this and made it his mission to restore the captain’s good name. I’ll let you read the book and decide if he was successful.
Beyond anything else this is a story of perseverance and an example of how some people still have a moral compass.
It also provides an example of why so many people distrust our government today, given the Navy’s refusal to admit any mistakes committed by those high up in the chain of command that led to the sinking of the USS Indianapolis. Shame on them. ****
Ghost Town Living: Mining for Purpose and Chasing Dreams at the Edge of Death Valley, by Brent Underwood. This is one of those books that I have no idea why I put it on my reading list, but it finally came up, so I read it.
The author went in search of a life-changing challenge and found it in the ghost town of Cerro Gordo. Not many people would leave their cushy life and move to one of the most desolate places on earth, let alone attempt to bring a long-abandoned town back to life. This is his story of the problems he faced, the wonderful people he met and the supportive community that is helping him reach his goal.
Such a lovely read. Poetic, philosophical. Read this book just for the beauty of the writing. ****
Spear of Destiny (ARKANE #13), by J.F. Penn. ARKANE is a secret society that investigates mysterious phenomena associated with religion artifacts. Morgan, the main character in this series, is one of their investigators. In this case, they are hot on the trail of a relic said to hold tremendous power, either for good or evil, depending on who controls it. The spear in question was allegedly used to impale Jesus in the side while he was hanging from the cross. The rumor, passed down through the centuries, is that the blood of Christ imbued the spear with these fantastical powers. So far, so good. The problem is a bad guy wants the spear to do bad things. He is a general, but also a politician running for president. Think of a cross between Donald Trump and Alexander Haig. His secret plan is to get the spear, then utilize these powers to make the U.S. Army invincible and literally take over the world, united under one religion, under his sole control. Not good.
Well, it turns out that many years ago the spear was divided into four pieces. So now the race is on between the good guys and the bad guys to gather the pieces together. Who will win?
For that you will have to read the book.
What I like about this series is the depths of the research the author goes to describe the history and places that are featured in the book. ***
Christina
Non-Fiction
Think Hips! The Five Minute Hip Flexor Stretch Solution by J.W. Bentley. A brief sampling of some stretching exercises that the author found personally useful. She is very clear that she is not a medical professional and that readers should consult their doctors before proceeding. Most of these are not useful to me with my particular situation, but there are some that align well with my physical therapy, so this might be a good starting point for somebody in conversation with their doctor or PT.
Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman by Lindy West. According to Goodreads, the original subtitle was “Women Are Funny, It’s Okay to Be Fat, and Feminists Don’t Have to Be Nice.” That’s a pretty good summary of this essay collection, and I loved it. Read for the Ketchupathon (to catch up on BotM books). (I don’t actually subscribe to Book of the Month, but I seem to come home from the FotL book sales with a lot of them.)
Beyond Magenta: Transgender Teens Speak Out by Susan Kuklin. I listened to the audiobook, so I didn’t know until reading reviews that the print version has pre-transition photos in addition to the liberal use of deadnames that was already bothering me. I rated this higher than many reviewers because I did find the teens’ stories interesting and informative as well as displaying a range of trans and nonbinary identities. But I had a lot of problems with how Kuklin went about this project, and I was disappointed in the superficiality of the result.
Behind the K-Pop Mania: Unveiling the Global Sensation by Nathan Venture, D. I seriously think this was AI-generated. “Nathan Venture, D” has supposedly authored a bunch of nonfiction books on wildly varying topics, but I find nothing supporting the idea that this is a real person. Even ghostwriters are real people. And I think most of them would recognize that “Nathan Venture, D” is not a valid name. (Even Goodreads didn’t know what to do with it.) But this highly repetitive work read like somebody told an LLM to take Google’s AI Overview and expand it to 158 pages. Read for the Popsugar reading challenge.
Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden by Camille T. Dungy. I kinda sorta know the author, as we move in some of the same local literary circles. I’m more familiar with her poetry, so I was pleased to see that she included some here. This is a memoir of her moving her family to Fort Collins to take a job at the university, and she frames it with the design and nurturing of her garden, but it is much more than that. The pandemic plays a large part in her story, as do her struggles to raise a Black child in an extremely white town in a time of racial tension and violence. The physical book is a thing of beauty, but I recommend the audiobook to hear Camille’s voice. Read for the Harmony Library Book Club.
Living Lagom: A Swedish Guide to a Balanced Life by Maya Thoresen. This is essentially a very light version of Linnea Dunne’s Lagom: The Swedish Art of Balanced Living. It’s fine for what it is. Just don’t ask much of it.
Fiction
The Call of the Wild by Jack London. I had to read “To Build a Fire” in high school, and that put me off reading any more Jack London for decades. But this Audible freebie narrated by Pablo Schreiber has been sitting in my account for years, so I finally broke down and read it. It’s brutal, and I can’t say I enjoyed it, but it’s a very compact tale and I can’t deny that the writing is vivid and evocative.
The Future Is Deadly by Foxglove Lee. A short story about a pair of supernatural sunglasses discovered by an estate liquidator. Mostly predictable and generally awkward, but the bones of a good story are here. I’d consider reading something else from this author after some practice and maturation.
Summer at the Cosy Cottage Cafe by Rachel Griffiths. This is a short, sweet, cosy romance story set in a picturesque English village. No big surprises and a blessedly brief Act III breakup. If this kind of thing is your jam, I highly recommend it.
Shark Heart by Emily Habeck. This book is seriously weird. Shortly after marrying, a young drama teacher starts experiencing some unusual symptoms and is advised that he is turning into a shark. Much of this book deals with his transformation and his wife’s efforts to maintain some stability in their life together, even after she has to let him go. And then we get her backstory, which is even weirder in some ways. It doesn’t have the world building to qualify as science fiction or fantasy, or even magical realism. It’s more of a fable. I expected to either love this or hate it, and I surprised myself by coming down firmly in the middle. Read for the High Tea Book Club.
Killingly by Katharine Beutner. This is historical fiction based on the real, unsolved 1897 disappearance of a Mount Holyoke student. I found it to be a compelling story, but after reading the notes about the actual events, I wish Beutner had simply written a nonfiction book.
How I Proposed to My Wife: An Alien Sex Story by John Scalzi. This is the first piece in a collection of Scalzi’s works published by Subterranean. A young journalist gets assigned to the alien sex beat and has to date a variety of aliens and report back. Much wackiness ensues. I look forward to reading more in the collection.
Horse by Geraldine Brooks. Another historical fiction novel based on a true story, this time in a triple-timeline format. I often enjoy historical “braids,” but this one felt unbalanced, with the 1954 segment appearing much later in the book and feeling a bit shoehorned in. I’m still confused about the painting and wondering if that was actually the intent. Still, an enjoyable and engaging read. Read for the LHR Society.
What Have You Done? by Shari Lapena. This is a murder mystery that is wrongly being marketed as a thriller. And a much better title would be Why We Choose the Bear. Because that is the overall theme, and that part I appreciated. I did overall like this book, but there was a lot of awkwardness in how it was structured, especially the ghost POV. Read for the Sleep When I’m Dead Book Club.
Vampire (Der Vampir) by Heinrich August Ossenfelder. For Vamptember, I tracked down the short poem that is thought to be the first literary vampire story (as opposed to accounts of real people suspected of vampirism). I read the English translation because my German is super sketchy, but it’s short enough that I may find it and muddle through.
