Back to normal in October; the only person we were missing was Linda, who was on travel this month so couldn’t join us, but promises a double-helping of reading reports in November.

Both Jim and Michael made it back after a several-month absence.  Last month Jim was in Boston celebrating his 20th wedding anniversary, the highlight of which was attending in person the 34th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony.  Christina was also able to rejoin us; she continues to have many physical problems, so mainly has been listening to audio books.  Beth has been busy with her archeological society, and Peggy is getting ready to take a three-week-long cruise.  But believe it or not, every one had time to read!

In all, 51 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 November 10th.  We meet online using Zoom, so it is easy to join in.

Folks generally start checking in around 2 pm for a bit of socialization.  Book discussions begin around 2:30 pm, 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! ~ Brad Lucht

*****

Beth

A Theory of Everyone, by Michael Muthukrishna.  Energy is the key in this story and having it in sufficient excess that humans can innovate.  The thesis is that when there is excess energy (fire, steam, fossil fuels, abundant food) humans are not at the subsistence level and can turn their energy into more complex (higher) pursuits.  Democracy is taken as one of the achievements of these higher pursuits. When we start bumping up against our energy ceiling (nuclear energy to power AI, anyone?) we are going to have problems as people start fighting over dwindling resources that cannot sustain the population.  No answers, and tough questions.  This is the problem we have to solve.

Southern Man, by Greg Iles.  A relentless look at racism through a scenario we can easily imagine happening.  We are back in Natchez, MS, in the early fall of 2023.  A small concert is happening in Bienville (just north of Natchez) and there is a shooting, one person dead, the gunman plainly visible just below the stage.  It is the response of the sheriff’s department that sets off the rest of the events.  The 20 sheriffs’ deputies respond by letting off a barrage of hollow points that kill 23 people backstage behind a banner.  Most of them are black young people.  It escalates from there.  There are bad white people, and bad black people and unbounded rage and fear.  He follows the characters as they try to protect their own, some by any means necessary, some by measured responses.  Some people have lines they won’t cross, and others have no lines whatsoever.  Lots of psychopaths.  He alludes to the sovereign sheriff theory/movement, which is terrifying when you look at how quickly it can be abused.  This book asks the question of how do we solve our disputes: Are we the adults we imagine ourselves to be or are we lost and scared and waiting for big daddy (God) to come in with overwhelming force and fix it for us?  If we can’t solve our problems one on one, how can we expect some entity (government), made up of the same mix of good and bad actors, and a higher dose of psychopaths to solve them for us?  This book offers no answers, just searing questions, and inconvenient and ugly realities.

The Exchange, by John Grisham.  We are back with Mitch McDeere, years after The Firm.  He and his wife are living happily with their 8-year-old twin boys in NYC, having a good life.  Mitch gets pushed into doing a job that involves a bridge to nowhere in Gaddafi’s Libya.  Things go wrong immediately as one of the lawyers (daughter of a senior, but Italian partner) gets kidnapped in Libya on a trip to inspect said bridge.  This is the story of how they try to rescue her.  It’s a look at how messed up the world is.  There are no answers, and we don’t even know what the questions are.  After all, these are lawyers we are talking about.  It is not as tightly written as his earlier books, and maybe by design, because the world we are shown doesn’t follow the rules we say we live by, and the bad guys use all the same tools we use, plus violence.  Except that the Bendini firm from the original book used violence just as effectively.  Not a good prognosis.

The Lost Ledger, by C.J. Archer.  Sylvia and Gabe are still on the trail hunting for her family, and this one takes a detour to the racetrack in 1920s London looking for a murderer.  Fun read, and we still haven’t found her family, although we get closer.

The Cliffs, by J. Courtney Sullivan.  A museum specialist, with a drinking problem, lands back in her hometown in Maine.  As she tries to put her life back together, she explores the newly remodeled house that was abandoned when she was a girl.  The grounds hold special memories for her, but also mystery, because her grandmother insisted it was forbidden territory, with no explanation forthcoming.  There are many missteps, but gradually, some things poke through to reveal the recent history and the history from the first incursion of the Europeans onto these shores.  It is a very interesting look at Native American history, and how, by (literally) burying our mistakes, we just compound the problems.  Easy to see why this book was widely acclaimed.

Jim

The Idea of Prison Abolition, by Tommie Shelby.  The author is the Caldwell Titcomb Professor of African and African American Studies and of Philosophy at Harvard University.  The book is an academic analysis of the idea that all prisons should be abolished.  Angela Davis (Distinguished Professor Emerita of Feminist Studies and History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz) is the main proponent of that idea. The analysis looks at the arguments from many perspectives.  There are arguments for keeping the status quo, reform, and abolition.  There are so many ideas here, with hundreds of footnotes, that this would be a good starting point for further investigation.

Remarkable Creatures, by Tracy Chevalier.  This is an historical fiction account of the life and times of Many Anning.  She had a singular ability to spot fossils along the beaches of England and Wales.  This is the story of how she attained acknowledgment in the 19th century, despite being a woman. The gender roles and restrictions of her time are an interesting contract to our current times. The book keeps faithful to historical facts, and the main fictions are conversations between the players.

The Adventures of Silly Billy, by Tamara Kitt (story) and Jill Elgin (pictures).  This is a favorite from my own childhood.  I read it from time to time.  It has the moral that just because something/someone is strange, that doesn’t mean that they are wrong or not good.  My favorite part is where he solves the problems of his neighbors with unconventional means.  I love it!

Clive of India, by John Watney.  Another historical novel. Clive was a low-level functionary in the British East India Company.  He rose through the ranks and showed the experts that he had a brilliant military mind, despite not being one of the ‘trained’ soldiers.  His cunning and expertise were a key part of how the East India Company grew from a few outposts to ruling the whole of India.  At the end of his career in India, he was asked to lead troops to fight the rebellious Americans.  The Revolutionary War could have had a different outcome had he not chosen to retire.  This bit of history was fascinating!  And, I finally found out what the Black Hole of Calcutta really was.

The Promise of Space, by Arthur C. Clarke.  Written in 1968, Clarke gives a wonderful explanation of the history of mankind’s yearning for the stars, astronomy, and the space race.  He writes this after the Apollo 7 fire, but before Apollo 8 even circled the moon.  He gets some predictions right, and lots wrong (a permanent colony on the moon by the year 2000).  The book is wonderful for the history, and for the explanations of astrophysics in general…  and to see a great master miss the actual mark.

The Book of Nothing, by John D. Barrow.  This starts with the history of writing symbols for numbers.  This extensive, comparative look shows things that are not well known or even taught.  He goes on to describe the history of zero, voids, and vacuums and how regular people, philosophers, and religious dogma fought mightily against even the concept of ‘nothingness’. It proceeds to discuss quantum mechanics, relativity, black holes, black hole evaporation and more.  Before reading this, I thought I knew it all.  I was wrong!

Peggy

Death at the Sign of the Rook, by Kate Atkinson.  This is the sixth Jackson Brodie novel.  Brodie is a detective who is called in to investigate the case of a stolen painting.  He quickly finds more unsolved art thefts that lead him to Buron Makepeace, a once grand estate now converted to a hotel hosting Murder Mystery weekends. As guests, aristos, and others collide, the snow-covered grounds of the hotel become the setting for a mashup of crimes.  Lots of fun.

What’s Next, A Backstage Pass to the West Wing, by Melissa Fitzgerald (CJ’s assistant) and Mary McCormack (Kate Harper).  If you are a Wingnut like me, you can never have too much West Wing trivia — casting, favorite episodes, links between Hamilton and WW.  The hook for the book is identifying the service initiatives (All Rise, Everybody Dance LA, Wounded Warrior, Fair Fight Action, etc.) that matter to the former cast members.

The Dark Wives, by Ann Cleeves.  Another Vera Stanhope mystery involving a home for troubled teens, a dead staff member, and a missing resident.  Good mystery with a new investigative team member who is finding her way.

Pay Dirt, by Sara Paretsky.  Another V.I. Warshawshi mystery, set in Lawrence, KS. V.I. is running on empty after a tragic death in Chicago, but Lawrence has missing people, opioid distributors, local land-use battles with roots going back to the Civil War.  This series is getting darker and darker.

The Examiner: Six Students, One Murder. Can You Solve the Crime? by Janice Hallett.  The backstory to the disappearance/murder of one of the six participants in a fine arts course is presented as a series of assignments/essays/group chats, emails, etc.  Everybody is lying and everybody has their own agenda.  Her earlier book, The Twyford Code, has a similar structure.

James, by Percival Everett.  Huck Finn told from the slave Jim’s perspective.  I don’t like to read books written in dialect, but the hook here is that slaves only use dialect to hide their intelligence/education from their owners, and converse without dialect with one another.  A plot twist toward the end makes you rethink the original Huck’s story.

The Mercy of Gods, by James S. A. Corey.  The author(s) of The Expanse series have a new series, where the Carryx, part empire/part hive, take over the world of Anjiin, and the human population is enslaved.  The best and brightest are taken to a world with prisoners from a thousand other species and told to continue their research work.  Can you be a successful slave if you don’t understand what the master race wants or even how it thinks?  The book has a slow start but builds up steam by the end.

By Any Other Name, by Jodi Picoult.  Emilia Bassano was perhaps Shakespeare’s Dark Lady or was she Shakespeare herself.  That’s the historical part of the novel.  In the contemporary part, it’s still as hard for a woman playwright’s work to get performed.  I liked the historical section, but found the modern half too sappy.

Shakespeare was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature, by Elizabeth Winkler.  Winkler wrote an Atlantic article about Bassano and got huge blowback from the Stratfordians.  This book explores the alternative candidates to Shakespeare (Bacon, Oxford, Marlowe, a collective of upper-class writers) and the politics today of supporting the alternatives.  I like the Marlowe theory, but you have to figure out how he isn’t dead for the last half of Shakespeare’s career.

Michael

Voice of the Fire, by Alan Moore.  The history of Northampton, England, told in chapters each of which is based in a successive historical period, starting in 4000 BC and ending in 1960.

At Swim-Two-Birds, by Flann O’Brien.  Characters revolt against their author, plus Irish mythology, plus fairies.

The Third Policeman, by Flann O’Brien.  A murder mystery plus a mad scientist who believes night is caused by dark air.

The Best of Myles by Flann O’Brien.  The best of his columns from the Irish Times.

The Parable of the Sower, by Octavia E. Butler.  On the post-apocalyptic road, hunting for food and shelter and avoiding cannibals.

The Parable of the Talents, by Octavia E. Butler.  The above story continued.

There, There, by Tommy Orange.  Native American groups rendezvous at a national pow-wow.

Christina

Here’s my list. Spooky season starts early in my world, so most of these were read for one or more of the following readathons or challenges: Readers Imbibing Peril XIX, Vamptember, Something Wicked Fall, Survive the Night, Fright Fall, Halloween-A-Thon, TBR Harvest, Spookoplathon, Rainboween 3.0, and Occult Detective October.

As Fast As Her: Dream Big, Break Barriers, Achieve Success by Kendall Coyne. Despite having women friends who play hockey, one of whom already has her toddler daughters out on the ice, I didn’t know much about the history of women in the game. I enjoyed following Coyne’s journey to Olympic gold, which she shared with contagious enthusiasm for the sport and much gratitude for her opportunities. Of course, this is geared to the YA market, so each chapter ends with a “Golden Coyne” bit of advice about dreaming big, breaking barriers, and achieving success. Nothing groundbreaking there, but I guess some kids respond well to that kind of structured advice. Read for the 52 Book Club’s summer Olympics-themed readathon.

Off the Tracks: A Meditation on Train Journeys in a Time of No Travel by Pamela Mulloy. During COVID lockdown, Mulloy was missing travel, especially rail travel. So she wrote this meandering exploration of the topic, part memoir, part history. I was in just the mood for an unstructured look at the pleasures and perils of riding trains, so I had a good time with this.

The Art of Money Getting: Golden Rules for Making Money by P.T. Barnum. Much of the advice here is actually very sound and timeless, along the lines of avoiding debt, especially in pursuit of status symbols, and learning to distinguish thrift from value. But Barnum was a 19th-century capitalist, so the rest of the advice made for uneasy reading here in the end-stage capitalism of the 21st century. I kept thinking what an interesting textbook this would be for a modern business administration class to engage with these tenets as the global economy has shifted over time. Read for an Alphabet Soup mini-challenge.

Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett. This is a fun fantasy adventure romance that also has its fair share of mystery and fae horror. I can understand that some readers find such an ambitious mash-up off-putting, but I just dove in and had a whee of a time. I expect I will continue reading in the series. Read for the High Tea Book Club.

Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera. This thriller laced with dark humor alternates between the POVs of a cold case podcaster and the woman he’s investigating. She has long been assumed to have killed her best friend when they were in their 20s. She can’t remember, and therapy doesn’t seem to be helping much. Read for Sleep When I’m Dead Book Club.

Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes. It’s billed as Titanic meets The Shining, but it’s more From Below meets Bird Box. Plenty of The Shining comes through, though. A crew servicing a communications system in the hinterlands of the Solar System stumbles upon a decades-lost luxury space-liner on its maiden voyage. They quickly realize that something very, very bad happened before it disappeared, and they aren’t sure they will escape the same fate. Read for Sci September.

Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore. We follow Oona, starting the night before her 20th birthday. At the stroke of midnight, Oona suddenly finds herself in a much older body and learns that she will live the rest of her life out of order, a year at a time. If you can’t deal with the mechanism and/or reason for this never being explained, you probably won’t have a great time with this book, but I loved it. I thought the structure was really well thought-out, especially regarding the varying juxtapositions of physical and mental/emotional ages. There is also a good mix of fun Quantum Leap moments, character growth, and heavier topics like grief and infidelity. Read for the Harmony Library Book Club.

Standing Dead by Margaret Mizushima. The eighth book in the Timber Creek K-9 series. Mattie and Robo investigate some suspicious deaths and illness near a campground, and various series story arcs continue to weave in and out. You’ll definitely want to start at the beginning of the series, with Killing Trail. Read for the Sisters in Crime-Colorado Book Club.

Muse of Fire by John Scalzi. A short piece on ambition, obsession, lust, and the dangers of making the workplace a literal hellscape. Not my favorite Scalzi, but it’s also not much of a time investment. Read for Sci September.

An Election by John Scalzi. Scalzi’s newest novella is billed as a Third District story, so I decided to read this previous Third District story from 2010. Back before anybody had any idea that snacking on pets would be a hot topic in political debates. Yeah, this one didn’t age well. Not that I think that Scalzi was a secret Republican or anything. It just feels kinda lazy. Read for Sci September.

Pledged to the Dead by Seabury Quinn. Physician and occult detective Jules de Grandin is called upon to help a young man wriggle out of an accidental commitment he made to a ghost in New Orleans without being killed by the ghost’s snake-demon protector. This is one of many JdG short stories that appeared in Weird Tales Magazine in the early 20th century.

The Night Guest by Hildur Knutsdottir. A young, seemingly healthy woman is bewildered by her constant fatigue. She tries all of her doctor’s and friends’ recommendations, including a fitness watch to track steps, but her symptoms continue to worsen, and she wakes up with strange injuries. One night, she falls asleep wearing her watch, and it registers an improbable number of steps. Where is she going at night? What is she doing? And why do the neighborhood cats start avoiding her? (There is violence against animals in the book. Not on the page, but it’s clear what happened. Just so you know.) I liked the writing style and found the story very compelling until the very end, which I’m still trying to figure out. Read for Literally Dead Book Club.

The Three Monarchs by Anthony Horowitz. This short story is in Horowitz’s Sherlock Holmes series, and so far, I’d say Horowitz has done the best job I’ve seen of getting Doyle’s characters and style down. Part of the solution felt like a bit of a stretch to me, but I guess that’s part of the charm of Holmes to begin with.

Kid Stuff:

Bunnicula: A Rabbit-Tale of Mystery by James and Deborah Howe. A family adopts a stray bunny after watching Dracula at the cinema, and the family dog (Harold) and cat (Chester) are immediately wary. And rightfully so, as Bunnicula’s behavior is very strange and unbunnylike, and odd things keep happening to the vegetables. Super cute middle grade novel.

The Statue Walks at Night by Joan Lowery Nixon. Lots of Encyclopedia Brown vibes here. The son of a private investigator helps out with a case of items being stolen from the local museum, despite his fears regarding the Egyptian exhibit, where a statue is rumored to move at night. This book is a solid start to the Casebusters series.

Camp Tiger by Susan Choi. I listened to the audiobook of this children’s picture book. Judging by the cover illustration, the pictures are nice, but I gather from reviews that they don’t serve to explain anything about the story. If you understand it, please share?

The Mystery in Dracula’s Castle by Vic Crume. A 1970s novelization of a two-part TV movie. Two brothers are trying to film a vampire movie on their summer vacation and accidentally stumble onto a criminal enterprise. The story contains no actual vampires.

Brad (59/22569)

Maybe We’ll Have You Back: The Life of a Perennial TV Guest Star, by Fred Stoller with a Foreword by Ray Romano.  Stoller probably isn’t a name you would recognize, but you would certainly recognize his face.  Although he played characters in many sitcoms over the years (Friends, Everybody Loves Raymond, Scrubs, Hannah Montana, My Name is Earl), he was never was able to break through with his own series.  My favorite anecdote is when he went in for an audition in which the character was described as a “Fred Stoller type”, and he didn’t get the part.  Such has been his life.  This is a very honest look at the struggles he has gone through to try to make it in Hollywood.  Well written.  ****

The Hidden White House: Harry Truman and the Reconstruction of America’s Most Famous Residence, by Robert Klara.  Shortly after Truman was elected president, he was taking a bath upstairs in the private residence.  Meanwhile downstairs his wife Bess was hosting a tea party for the Daughters of the American Revolution.  Well, a beam nearly gave way and he always went through the floor!  A crack team of architects was called in to inspect the White House and discovered it was in much worse shape than anyone had imagined.  They insisted the first family immediately move out of the White House.  So across the street to Blair House they went.  For three years!  Lots of battles with Congress as to whether to renovate the White House, or to completely demolish it and start over from scratch (which sounds unthinkable of today).  This is the story of the complete renovation and all the political battles it entailed.  I really liked this book.  *****

Blood Hollow (Cork O’Connor #4), by William Kent Krueger.  A young girl disappears after a New Year’s Eve party, and a bad-boy member of the local tribe is suspected of murder.  O’Conner thinks he’s innocent and sets out to determine who the real killer is.  Another good story from Krueger.  ****

Worst Case Scenario, by T.J. Newman.  A pilot has a heart attack.  The plane pitches down into a dive as his body slumps against the yoke.  Unfortunately, the co-pilot has left the cockpit to take a restroom break and is knocked unconscious in the lavatory during the rapid descent.  To top it off, the plane crashes into a nuclear reactor in a small Minnesota town.  This is the story of how the town and the employees at the power plant react to prevent a complete meltdown.  Schlocky pulp fiction, but definitely grabs your attention.  ***

Never, by Ken Follett.  The title of this book should have been Worst Case Scenario.  When a military coup takes place in North Korea, several bases containing nuclear weapons are seized.   The president of South Korea sees an opportunity to unify Korea, so she sends her army into the north, which then triggers the Supreme Leader to launch a nuclear weapon against Seoul, which then prompts the President of the United States to launch an attack against the remaining military bases in North Korea, which then prompts the rogue North Korean general to launch more nuclear weapons against the south, which then prompts the U.S. to launch its nuclear weapons against the north, which then prompts the Chinese to launch a nuclear weapon against Honolulu, which then prompts the U.S. to launch a full-blown nuclear attack against China.  An all too plausible story of how a nuclear war could occur.  NOT a good bedtime story.  ****

Mercy Falls (Cork O’Connor #5), by William Kent Krueger.  This book finds O’Connor is once again Sheriff.  He and a deputy drive out to the rez to investigate a domestic violence call, but once they get there it turns out it is a trap.  The deputy is shot through the chest and O’Connor is grazed in the ear.  But who would do such a thing?  Great plot, but this time the book ends in a cliff hanger.  Like I needed an excuse to read the next one in the series.  ****

The Secret of Santa Vittoria, by Robert Crichton.  I loved the movie, which starred Anthony Quinn.  This is a much more detailed, darker version of the story, which apparently is based on the true events of the Italian town of Santa Vittoria, and the efforts they made to hide their cache of wine from the occupying German forces.  Published in 1966, it was on the New York Times bestseller list for 50 weeks — 18 weeks as #1 — and became an international bestseller.  Recommended.  *****