We had another new reader join us this month, Anita from Colorado. She recently rejoined Mensa after raising a family and is glad we now have Zoom to connect with fellow members. Anita is an artist and has been a quilter since 1976. She has somewhere between nine thousand and ten thousand books in her home (but who’s counting?!). It makes me look like a piker.
The core of Jim, Michael, Peggy, Linda and Beth reported on the books they’ve read. Cynthia was traveling to Texas and was unable to join us, but hopefully we’ll see her next month. Whenever we have someone new join us, we go around and introduce ourselves. Even though many in our group have been attending for years, I always seem to learn something new.
Non-book topics included watching television, roger pen (had to look this one up – it is a wireless microphone designed for hearing aid and cochlear implant users), and the 1421 Foundation, which explores how the Chinese were actual the first ones to “discover” America. Who knew?!
The full list of the 52 books reviewed/discussed can be found here:
https://www.mamensa.org/category/book-lovers-sig-book-talks/
Book Lovers SIG always meets on the second Sunday of each month; in this case May 10. 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
*****
Peggy
Heart the Lover by Lily King. A college student has a first love; she breaks his heart; her second love breaks hers. Later, when she has married and had children, the early love comes back into her life. The second half of the book is much better.
Dirty Book Murder by Thomas Shawver. It’s fun to read a book set in my neighborhood but this feels like something written 50 years ago. Japanese erotica and Hemingway rare books don’t make up for this.
Jigsaw by Jonathan Kellerman. Book 41 in the Alex Delaware (psychologist) and Milo Sturgis (LA homicide detective) series. Three deaths that seem unrelated eventually link up. As always, the murderer is the most interesting but demented character.
This is Not About Us by Allegra Goodman. A middle class Northeastern Jewish family goes off the rails when one of three sisters dies and the other two feud about something trivial. Their children and grandchildren go off the rails for other reasons.
Pride and Pleasure: The Schulyer Sisters in an Age of Revolution by Amanda Vaill. If you know Hamilton, you know Angelica, Eliza and Peggy. The author was told there weren’t enough documents to write this book, so she wrote 600 pages, which was too much! Angelica, who flirted with her brother-in-law Hamilton and Jefferson, married a con man. Eliza outlived her husband by 50 years. Peggy was an invalid.
Beth
The People’s Library, Victoria Henry. AI has come and taken society over, and many people don’t have jobs, but live on UBI. Our protagonist is a librarian in a paper book library, who is forced to work in an AI library. This library has no books, but “AI constructs” (people) that you can interact with. She gets too attached to one of these ‘constructs’ and starts digging into how to make this more real. Turns out, someone has a deeper agenda.
Hide Me Among the Graves, Tim Powers. Malevolent spirits hang on, and hang on, and hang on. Set in 1845, two sisters are teased by their father into burying a talisman, which they do, with serious consequences that don’t show up for years. The talisman is much more than it appears. It is inhabited by a ghost that can take over a person in order to “live”. Turns out there is more than one of these ghosts out there. The goal of the protagonists is to have a person cross all the way over when they die, and not get stuck as a ghost, and become subject to all kinds of nastiness. This is a story of people who come together to try to rid themselves of a couple of really nasty ghosts, including one of Boudica, queen of Britain.
Slough House, Mick Herron. Privatization comes to Slough House and the Service. Of course, that money comes from somewhere, which is a problem. The serious fighting starts now between and among all those who would be on the top of the heap.
Bad Actors, Mick Herron. Now we are into the real spy stuff, along with all the politics. Russians, Russians, Russians, and which way are they going? Double agents, triple agents? Meanwhile, the infighting goes on, along with truly evil people.
Clown Town, Mick Herron. The infighting is taken to a whole new level, as the alphas vie for the top spot.
Standing by the Wall, Mick Herron. This book tells some of the back stories of some of the characters in other novels. Includes some backstory on Jackson Lamb, although he remains an enigma.
Silverborn, Jessica Townsend. Morrigan meets her family of origin. She is also apprenticed to the last Wundersmith. Things do not go well. This is a story about the values of your family of origin, and the values of your chosen family.
Voyager in Night, C.J. Cherryh. Set in the Alliance universe, a ship belonging to a rich woman is hijacked into subspace. They can’t get out. And there is someone else here.
A Time for Mercy, John Grisham. Back in Clanton, MS. With Jake Brigance. Jake gets stuck being a lawyer for an indigent client accused of killing a cop. There are other layers of things going on, and compelling circumstances. Sympathetic characters, and justifiable rage.
The Last Labyrinth, Gwendolyn Womack. My algorithm was acting up and this month it is giving me Arthurian legends. A book, that turns out to be a diary, surfaces and weaves its way through time to reach the right person to create the tools to right the balance and elevate the good. Time travel, magic, music, and valuing women. The Arthurian part: Merlin’s sister.
The Faerie Morgana, Louisa Morgan. Morgana from a different viewpoint. This is power applied with values vs. revenge. This starts on the Isle of Apples, or Avalon, with Morgana’s arrival as a child. Her protection of Arthur and how she comes into and accepts her power. Merlin looks a lot different, as does Mordred.
The Coral Thief, Rebecca Stott. This is Paris in 1815. Napoleon is on his way to St. Helena. A young doctor is on his way to Paris to work with Cuvier. In the proximity of Lamark. He carries an important manuscript translation and some very interesting fossils. He speaks with a woman with a child on the stagecoach to Paris and wakes up without all his important possessions. Still has some money, but not the treasures he was bringing to Cuvier, which will secure his job. As he tries to get them back, he finds an entirely different world than the one he thought he was going to. Lots of science and different views of what was happening and why, as the vultures descend on Paris, and suppressed voices rise or at least figure out how to survive.
Antihero, Gregg Hurwitz. In the latest Orphan X story, Gregg Hurwitz takes on sex trafficking, online porn, and the powers that impose this on society. He looks at many facets of sexual (and regular) violence as power, and the power of unleashed information to harm. There are no fuzzy lines here, just right and wrong, and how everyone can use the power they have to make the world better or worse. Orphan X is delivering consequences, but so are other people. Place your bets, make your choices, and prepare for karma. Sometimes in small doses, and sometimes in really large doses. Not much explicit sex and violence, but rather tempering forces are at work here, and that is the underlying storyline.
The Way of Excellence, Brad Stulberg. This is the usual self-help on excellence, but with values thrown in. The author’s premise is that without values, excellence is meaningless and mostly bullying.
Linda
Gone Before Goodbye, by Reese Witherspoon & Harlan Coben. 3* Intrigue involving surgeons, organ transplants, medical innovations, a Russian oligarch and murders.
Nobody’s Fool, by Harlan Coben. 4* A young man meets a woman in Spain and falls for her – till he thinks he’s killed her. Twenty-five years later she shows up in his life, and he’s hired to find out where she’s been for 11 years since she disappeared at age 18. Coben-esque twists and turns ensue.
Audition, by Katie Kitamura. 3* (more like 2.5) More style than substance. Two different plots with the same characters.
Exiles, by Mason Coile. 3* Three people land on Mars, to inhabit a residence and lab prepared for them by robots. What they find is the lab destroyed and one of the robots missing. The remaining robots have assigned themselves names and genders. Who or what has attacked the installation and what is to be done? In general, this is a mystery, but with some hallucinatory elements that I didn’t love.
The Shattering Peace, by John Scalzi. 4* Would have given it 5*, but the ending confused me a little.
Antihero, by Gregg Hurwitz. 5* Orphan X number 11. Some too-florid prose, especially in the first few chapters, almost put me off. But I’m still an Orphan fan. He meets a person with a very different worldview from his own and reexamines his approach to violence a little. Also rethinks some of his relationships. Time (and no. 12) will tell whether this is permanent.
There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America, by Brian Goldstone. 4* Fiction, but probably a pretty accurate portrayal of the various experiences of unhoused people.
Class Clown, by Dave Barry. 4* Memoir of a very funny writer and how he got started.
Michael
The Best of Connie Willis by Connie Willis.
“A Letter from the Clerys” – Post-apocalyptic survivors find long-lost letters.
“At the Rialto” – Quantum Mechanics and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle upset a conference of academic physics professors in Hollywood.
“Death on the Nile” – Time and distance are displaced in a group of possibly dead tourists.
“The Soul Selects Her Own Society” – Emily Dickinson defeats invading Martians in a parody of an academic dissertation. (Ref: The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien, footnotes by de Selby.)
“Fire Watch” – During the Blitz in London, two volunteers try to keep St. Paul from being burnt down by Nazi bombs while suspecting other volunteers of being spies. (Ref: Bodleian Library, Blackwell’s bookstore.)
“Inside Job” – The ghost of H.L. Mencken interrupts a fake medium’s séances.
“Even the Queen” – A family meets to discuss the refusal by one of their girls to get a shunt, a device which would painlessly cancel all her periods.
“The Winds of Marble Arch” –Winds caused by traumatic events that took place in the London Underground continue to circulate in the vast network for years.
“All Seated in the Ground” – Humanity desperately tries to communicate with a group of visiting aliens who seem to respond only to the sound of Christmas carols.
“The Last of the Winnebagos” – In a future where dogs are extinct, a Nazi-like Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to animals tries to find out who ran down a jackal found on a busy highway.
****
An Episode of Sparrows by Rumer Godden. A very well-written English novel about an independent-minded and streetwise young girl who steals and connives in order to create a private Italian garden in a hidden section of bombed out church property. Connie Willis said she read this book in her youth, and it made her want to be a writer.
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn. A novel about sibling rivalry in a family of traveling carnival freaks. Arty has flippers instead of arms and legs, Iphigenia and Electra are beautiful Siamese twins, Olimpia is a bald, hunchback, albino dwarf and Fortunado is a normal-looking kid with vast telekinetic powers. Al and Diamond Lil are the parents, and Olimpia is the narrator of the story. A cult develops around Arty in which members rise in assumed enlightenment by amputating body parts, starting with fingers and toes. As sensational as all this sounds, the book is actually about family relationships, sibling rivalry, crowd psychology, and human relations, admittedly intensified by the unusual members of the family. The book is very well written. The author, who died in 2016, also published three novels, several short stories published in literary magazines and articles about boxing published in high-end magazines like The New Yorker.
Near Flesh by Katherine Dunn. A posthumously published book of short stories by the author of the cult favorite Geek Love. Dunn’s boxing stories were covered in many high-end magazines and she died in 2016. The stories are much more complex than the following descriptions may suggest.
“Pieces” – Morgues have drawers full of amputated pieces to be interred with the dead bodies of their owners when they eventually pass.
“I Had the Baby on My Left Hip” – A woman and her baby are caught in an explosion.
“Fanno Creek” – A girl investigates the mental effect of sitting in a cold stream.
“The Flautist” – A taxi driver entertains his passengers by playing his flute.
“The Allies” – A young girl’s coming of age and UFOs.
“The Education of Mrs. R” – A girl and 50 roosters and an ax.
“The Well” – A woman falls into a water tank and is rescued by her small daughter.
“The Blowtorch” – The tests of faith required by an Arkansas church.
“The Transit” – A disliked high school student turns out to be a world-travelling sailor.
“The Housecall” – A woman deals with an ailing husband.
“Rhonda Discovers Art” – A young girl competes with classmates to shock each other.
“Screaming Angel” – Water-cooler talk as police outside investigate a suicide’s body.
“Process” – A painter repaints the same canvas over and over to achieve perfection.
“Sweeney, or The Madness of Suibhne” – A ninth-century Irish saga.
“Near Flesh” – A businesswoman decides to add to her collection of sex-robots.
“The Resident Poet” – A student spends a naughty weekend with her poetry professor.
“The Novitiate” – A woman re-organizes her life after her husband leaves her.
“A Revelation of Mrs. Andes” – A woman learns the intimate details of a neighbor’s life.
Toad by Katherine Dunn. Dunn’s third novel was published 20 years after her first two. The roughly autobiographical novel covers Dunn’s time as a student at Reed College in Portland. The heroine, Sally Gunnar, is an intelligent but aimless young woman and her story is full of details that will be familiar to many former college students… begging, borrowing or stealing money to pay bills, deciding to go to or not go to certain classes, deciding to sleep with or not sleep with certain friends, etc., etc. Some chapters are lengthy thoughts on self-confidence, suicide, personal worth, and beauty, etc. One chapter is on the death of a friend couple’s very young baby. Well-written, life-of-the-author-as-a-student story.
Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks.
Jim
The Quran – Muhammad
This was given by Allah (God) as dictated to Muhammad. I won’t comment on the content, but I will comment on the style. Each chapter (Sura) was dictated in essentially random order, and Muhammad later told his followers what order to put them in. He was likely illiterate and his followers remembered and re-recited the suras to maintain them until they could be written down by scribes. There is lots of repetition within each sura and little consistency. They do not look like chapters of a story which proceed from point A to B to C. Muhammad gets his point across through repetition.
1421 – Gavin Menzies
This nonfictional story tells the tale of a treasure fleet of thousands of ships launched from Beijing at the beginning of the Ming dynasty in 1421, to return thousands of dignitaries from around the world who had come to witness the dedication of the Forbidden Palace, and then to explore the unknown worlds and bring them into the Chinese tribute system through trade. Some ships were 500 feet long. They circumnavigated Australia, South America, Africa, Greenland, explored the East and West coasts of Nort America from Oregon to California and Florida to Massachusetts, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Venezuela. They brought maize from Central America to the Philippines, China and Africa. They brought coconuts from Indonesia to the Caribbean, Africa, India, and other places. Bartholomew Columbus made 3 specific forgeries on a map to help Christopher Columbus convince Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain that the route to China was shorter going West than to the East (which the Portuguese maps, obtained from China, clearly showed was a shorter route).
This is a fascinating story of historical reverse engineering!!! There is no lack of references and logic!!!
Five Weeks in a Balloon – Jules Verne
A wonderful adventure story, told in the first person, about discovering the source of the Nile River. An odd fact… About a month after publication, the source of the River Nile was discovered! It’s interesting that the author, a Frenchman, wrote about three Englishmen embarking on the trip, with all their English quirks, and from their English streets and neighborhoods, eating English foods, and speaking the English language.
They go through many trials and tribulations. One passenger is lost and then is found. Lots of ups and downs of emotions. Cliff hangers. You’ll be clinging to your seat till the last page!
Journey to the Center of the Earth – Jules Verne
Another adventure novel, told in the first person. This crew is all German, this time, with German customs and name… written by a Frenchman. An old journal was discovered with a cryptogram. Once decrypted, it tells us that in Iceland, entering the Sneffels one of the volcano craters in late June, we can be led into the center of the earth. Of course, the main character is a geology professor who MUST follow! A group of 3 people enter the crater and have their adventures. They even witness a fight between an ichthyosaur and a plesiosaur in a subterranean ocean many miles below the surface of the Earth. I won’t spoil your fun reading this book; however, you can look forward to lots of amazing things happening!!!
Brad (36/12161)
Beyond the Big Lie: The Epidemic of Political Lying, Why Republicans Do It More, and How It Could Burn Down Our Democracy by Bill Adair. **** 291 p.
My Last Name by Eric M. Schumacher. ***** 41 p.
The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson. ***** 738 p.
I Am Not Your Enemy: A Memoir by Reality Winner. **** 336 p.
Fateful Hours: The Collapse of the Weimar Republic by Volker Ullrich. ***** 384 p.
Ethel Rosenberg: An American Tragedy by Anne Sebba. **** 320 p.
Seven Years in Tibet by Heinrich Harrer. ***** 363 p.
Antihero (Orphan X #11) by Gregg Hurwitz. ***** 406 p.
Desolation Mountain (Cork O’Connor #17) by William Kent Krueger. ***** 334 p.
The World’s Worst Assistant by Sona Movsesian. *** 222 p.
The World According to Bob: The Further Adventures of One Man and His Street-Wise Cat (Bob the Cat #2) by James Bowen. ***** 305 p.
The Ministry of Fear by Graham Greene. *** 260 p.
Mr. Wilder & Me by Jonathan Coe. ***** 246 p.
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson. ***** 556 p.
‘Tis Herself: A Memoir by Maureen O’Hara. ***** 335 p.
