Another newcomer joined us this month, Bess, a Life Member from Torrington, Wyoming. She has been active in Mensa for many decades, including as LocSec and newsletter editor, but is now enjoying the peaceful, retired life. At age 85 I’d say she deserves it!
Amongst her many occupations, Bess used to work for TWA, which allowed her to travel all over the world, including all seven continents. She was also a volunteer EMT for 33 years. She is an avid reader, loves fact books, but also reads a lot of fiction. Like so many of us, she has accumulated a lot of books over the years, so now donates them to a local prison, where there are very grateful to receive them. What a wonderful idea! She also has a beautiful Maine Coon cat, whose name I will have to catch next month.
Doug joined early, after being on travel last month. We talked a lot about AI and the various companies he used to work for while waiting for other readers to join us. At one time he had accumulated over four million airline miles! Man, that is a lot of flying.
In addition to reading, Peggy has been reviewing documentaries for the upcoming Kansas City Film Festival, which is just a little over a month away.
Beth and Linda joined us as well. Linda just turned 80, so Happy Birthday, Linda! She also has two new adorable Siamese kittens, Daisy and Rosie.
And Joseph kind of joined us? He could hear us, but his microphone wasn’t working and he didn’t have a camera. According to his Chat comments, he was using a laptop from 2005. He also plans to publish a book soon, a non-fiction title: “Bury Freud Before He Buries You,” so we’ll have to be on the lookout for that.
Cynthia was feeling a bit under the weather, so wasn’t able to join us, and Joelle, who along with her husband Micah joined us for the first time last month, sent her regrets but instead accompanied her mother-in-law to go see the new movie Odyssey. Something apparently a lot of folks are doing these days.
We missed Jim and Michael for the second month in a row.
Non books discussion mainly focused on a couple of New York Times articles I sent out to our list, The 50 Best Thriller Books of the 21st Century and How DNF Became A-OK. Almost everyone agreed it was OK to set aside a book before finishing it. I am definitely an outlier in that respect, as I almost always go the distance, no matter how much I really don’t enjoy it. May once a year I’ll say, no mas.
The full list of the 44 books reviewed/discussed 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; our next get together will be September 13. 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
Bess
No Ordinary Bird – Author: Artis Henderson, published 2025
An emotional memoir of a girl and her father. Artis was 5 years old when she and her father Lamar went for a sightseeing flight. From a dirt-poor beginning, Lamar was a swashbuckling pilot who was on a financial roll. The sightseeing flight crashed. Lamar was killed. Artis woke up from a coma and learned that Lamar was one of the biggest drug smugglers in Miami in the 1970s. He was scheduled to testify in a trial that involved high ranking people from the Prime Minister of the Bahamas to the Columbian drug cartels, the USDA and others. The discovery of the real truth leads her to learn who the good and bad guys were. Well written and backed up by facts. My rating 5*****
1491 — Author: Charles C Mann, published 2005
Mann uses the Columbus sailing of 1492 as a demarcation of world history. He tackles the pre-Columbian new world history of the Americas in a way that makes history accessible and fascinating to every reader. He argues that pre-Columbian populations were far larger than previously believed, even greater than Europe’s in 1491. Mann dismantles many of the myths that have survived the millennia as written by Europeans and their descendants who believed they were superior. Who invented genetic engineering and cultivated corn? Andean natives cultivated tomatoes and potatoes to remove toxins to become the staples we know today. It was not aliens who built the great monuments of Central and South America. Mann’s work is a detailed and scientifically grounded work to tell the correct story. He doesn’t claim to change history, simply to set the record straight in a very readable style. My rating is 5 plus***** (I’d really give it a 10+. Should be required reading for everyone!)
1493 — Author: Charles C Mann, published 2012
Mann examines the profound ecological, economic and cultural transformations that followed the epic feats of 1492 by Columbus and crews. Mann focuses on the massive exchange of plants, animals, microbes, people and ideas between the old and new worlds. Europeans brought a new world of diseases that wiped out much of the new world populations. On the return voyages to Europe, Columbus and his men carried pathogens new to Europe. The Columbian Exchange enabled Europe to become a financial powerhouse and then spread the monetary largess to Mexico once the world financial center, then to the Philippines eventually to China. He gives a practical explanation to the African slave introduction to the Americas. Can you imagine French fries without potatoes? How about Italian cuisine without tomatoes? A planetary exchange of ideas, agriculture, cultural, economics, and more.
Mann bases his theories on well researched science and puts it into a narrative style of writing splashed with anecdotal stories of how it worked. I couldn’t put the book down. My rating is 5 plus ***** (Again really a 10+). Should be required reading.
Linda
The Dead Zone, by Stephen King 5*
I’m a longtime King fan but don’t think I had read this one before. You’ve probably seen the movie. As usual, he doesn’t disappoint. About a man who sometimes sees the future which often involves the death of others.
I see You’ve Called in Dead, by John Kenney 5*
An obituary writer accidentally posts his own obituary. And then starts attending the funerals of strangers. A death that I didn’t see coming but should have. A combination of comedy and pathos, I’ll be surprised if it doesn’t make you cry just a little.
The Last Time I Lied, by Riley Sager 3*
About girls disappearing from a summer camp. Is this a new genre?
Sag Harbor, by Colson Whitehead 3*
This purports to be fiction but reads very much like a memoir. About summers in the black neighborhoods of a small Long Island town. The neighborhoods are real and historical.
Antimatter Blues, by Edward Ashton 4*
Sequel to Mickey7. Mickey gets more involved with the locals.
Once Upon a River, by Diane Setterfield 4*
Set in the late 1800s in and around the Thames. A child appears after being apparently drowned in the river. Who would she be? A number of people claim her as their missing child.
Hero, by Patricia Wolf 4*
Number 5 in the DS Walker series of crime novels set in Australia. This one involves corruption in the world of professional cricket.
REREADS:
A Short History of a Small Place, by T.R. Pearson 4*
A re-read. Pearson is one of my favorite authors and I own all his books and have read them multiple times. This is one of his Southern novels, pretty much about minor events in a small town.
Prisoner of Trebekistan, by Bob Harris 2*
About his experiences on Jeopardy! including championship games.
Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande 5*
About aging and death, living arrangements in old age, etc. Lots to think about.
Dude, Where’s My Country? by Michael Moore 4*
Published in 2003, after 9/11 but before Great Recession and Trump World. Lots about former President George W. Bush and his family’s relationship with Saudi Arabia. Much to be angry about.
Back When We Were Grownups, by Anne Tyler 3*
About a woman in middle age who thinks her life has taken a wrong tack.
Deep South, by Nevada Barr 4*
Nevada’s latest assignment is on the Natchez Trace in Mississippi. The murder of a young girl involves her in local history.
Peggy
Before the Coffee Gets Cold, by Toshikazu Kawaguchi. The story of a café in Tokyo that allows its customers to travel back in time, as long as they return before their coffee gets cold (plus a bunch of other rules). Through the stories of its four characters, the author delivers a compelling message: the past cannot be altered, but the future remains open and full of possibilities. The story originally began as a play in 2010, before being adapted into a novel in 2015. Sequels are already out.
Hot Chocolate on Thursday, by Michiko Aoyama. A woman writes in a notebook, and a young waiter prepares her favorite hot drink. Both wonder about each other and about the other lives of the clientele who frequent a magical cafe behind the trees. Taking a walk along the river, ordering hot chocolate, forgetting to remove nail polish: these small, everyday acts offer unexpected encounters and ultimately change a life. The book connects twelve slice-of-life moments that open and close with a woman ordering her regular hot chocolate at the mysterious Marble Cafe.
Ransom, by Daniel Silva. The novel features Gabriel Allon, ex-Israeli spy and art restorer, navigating a complex kidnapping case that evolves into a high-stakes thriller involving Russian GRU operatives, NATO, and drones. Less art, less Venice (Italy), but as always, Putin ends up screwed.
Daughters of the Sun and Moon, by Lisa See. Set in post-Civil War Los Angeles, the novel follows three Chinese women from different backgrounds who arrive in a small, violent, and racially hostile city. Dove, the bound-footed daughter of a scholarly family, must marry an older merchant; Petal, a peasant girl, is sold into servitude and sex work; and Moon, married to a doctor of Chinese medicine, struggles with a limp from a failed foot binding. The details of the girls’ lives are fictional, but the setting (including riots and murders) is all very real.
The Fatal Unpleasantness at Netherfield: A Novel, by Claudia Gray. The fifth Mr. Darcy and Miss Tilney Mystery, featuring characters from Jane Austen’s novels. This time it’s Mr. Hurst from P&P who dies from arsenic in his morning tea. A house servant and Caroline Bingley’s younger sister also bite the dust. Miss Tilney is disowned by her grandfather for being framed for bad behavior and the autistic Mr. Darcy is trying to convince his parents the relationship should resume. The author does a good job of capturing the Austen voice.
Beth
To Ride a Rising Storm, Moniquill Blackgoose. Our indigenous dragonrider navigates the growing discontent and power struggle between the power classes and against all things lower and no class. The government is restricting travel and speech. Mobs are incited into violence. Dragonriders, the warrior/protector elite, is split and the fight is on. The book ends with the sides arrayed and the fighting has begun. This is the buildup to the final battle for power and control, presumably to be settled in the next book.
The Oxford Detective Society, Faith Martin. A ghost writer gets a commission to write the story of a rich young English woman who was married to the leader of an up-and-coming band in the 60s. This woman died 6 months after her husband died of a drug overdose, by drowning in her pond at her 23rd birthday party. The press was vicious and one of her relatives wants to set the record straight, sixty years on. Ulterior motives all around. It was an interesting story, but with a lot of loose ends and red herrings, and things that are just a little too pat.
Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson. This is the updated version of the 1992 story. America is a mess and a dangerous place. The metaverse is the platform of choice, real life and the metaverse intertwine, and everyone is a working a gig. The struggle for power continues. A religious cult has created a drug that works through the interface to target the programmers/hackers, who act as the free press/information brokers. An interesting and imaginative thriller.
Termination Shock, Neal Stephenson. Climate change and political nonsense have turned the world into a boiling mess. America is turned into a pariah, a reality unto itself. The story centers on stopping sea level rise and starts with a crazy American Oilman/con artist/Elon Musk archetype, and representatives of the low-lying countries: Netherlands, Singapore, Venice (Italy), and Saudi Arabia. The oilman has a way to inject sulfur into the atmosphere to lower the global temperature as fast as possible. Much mayhem ensues and it’s a good thriller.
Polostan, Neal Stephenson. Our protagonist is a daughter of the Communist party. Born in Russia, transported to America as a child, following her father (Mom is not in the picture, but her family is). It is a look at the politics and events in the between the wars period of the 1900s. The Chicago World’s Fair, the veterans’ march for relief in Washington, a cameo of Patton, and the industrialization of Russia. All in search of neutrinos and advantages. Our protagonist becomes a spy, but you are not sure what side she is going to be on. This is the first of two books. Sequel release is Oct 13, 2026.
The Searcher, Tana French. A former Chicago cop runs away from his former life to a very small village in Ireland. A kid shows up at his place and he gets dragged into the local issues, but he has no idea what is going on. It’s a good story about how to deal with bad situations that you really can’t walk away from or ignore.
A Psalm for the Wild Built, Becky Chambers. This is a delightful short novel set on a moon around a gas giant, with Earth adjacent environment, after the humans have created machine intelligence. When things went wrong, the world was split into two parts: the human part and the robot (Wild) part. Crossing into the other part is Just. Not. Done. The story follows a human who goes into the robot part of the world in search of crickets that may have survived the Transition. There is some very interesting philosophy that follows which gets you to look at your assumptions and then look at some basic questions. How to value things that are different, but share many functions.
Doug
The Brotherhood of War, a series of 8 books of fiction based on actual events of the U.S. Army from World War II to about 1986. The series follows a small set of characters through growing pains and the changes of the Army over that time. The pen name of the author is W.E.B. Griffin (William E Butterworth III), who died in 2019. The titles, which I group together with a **** rating, are:
- The Lieutenants
- The Captains
- The Majors
- The Colonels
- The Berets
- The Generals
- The New Breed
- The Aviators
I picked them up as a relaxing alternative to the technical material I had been reading, and found them to be an interesting and realistic narrative of Army life (although I personally did not run across any wealthy people in the Army) from the two books that covered my general time in the service. In some respects, I think these may be the male equivalent of romance novels (but I have never read a romance novel and so am not really qualified to make the comparison), except that these are probably a lot more realistic. The books not only develop the characters, but some of the day-to-day life in service families, modes of military operations, and interservice rivalry between the Army and the Air Force, namely the Key West Agreement (1948) and the Johnson-McConnell agreement (1966), and rivalry within the Army (1965 – 1977) between ground troops, airborne troops, and special operations, along with other tidbits normally only known by those who have served in combat arms.
These books are well-written, although sometimes the lexicon might be a little obscure for those people without some familiarity with the armed services. Adult language does pervade the books, as it does in the service.
Brad (75/25252)
Mal Goes to War by Edward Ashton ***** 287 p.
After finishing the Mickey7 two-part series, I went looking for other works by Ashton and found this one, which I believe was his next novel after that series.
Mal is an AI robot, caught in the middle of a war by augmented humans (think Six-Million-Dollar Man with built in computers) battling unaugmented humans, who think they are going to become enslaved, or in the worst case wiped out completely. Typical human paranoia. And frankly, Mal doesn’t care. He just wants his connection to the communications network (i.e., the internet).
But that doesn’t last long because the Humanists take down the grid, leaving Mal stranded in the body of a mercenary, who is responsible for guarding the life of a young girl. As they attempt to make their way out of the battle area, they gradually pick up other misfits along the way. Reminds me a bit of the Wizard of Oz.
Very good story. Ashton does a good job of writing believable character voices.
Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted: And all the Brilliant Minds Who Made the Mary Tyler Moore Show a Classic by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong ***-1/2 338 p.
I grew up watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show, so I thought I was interested in reading the behind-the-scenes making of the MTM Universe of television shows.
Armstrong goes into great detail into how the shows came about, the resistance they met with the network, the people that put the shows together. I especially enjoyed learning about the casting of the various actors and actresses. For example, Ted Knight once played a clown on a kids’ afternoon cartoon show and was desperate to have a real part.
I also didn’t realize how many women writers worked on the show, which apparently was unheard of at the time. Then these writers, who were GOOD, got experience and started working on other shows. A real ripple effect.
Lots of other tiny stories, such as how the opening scene came about, with Mary throwing her beret into the air, and how the theme song came about, written by a country-western performer.
So great research. Worth a read if you enjoyed the MTM Universe of shows.
Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor ** 248 p.
Inevitably, I can’t stand a book the critics love, and this was one of them. Terrible story, but good writing.
From Wikipedia:
“Wise Blood is the first novel by the American author Flannery O’Connor, published in 1952. The novel was assembled from disparate stories first published in Mademoiselle, The Sewanee Review and Partisan Review. The first chapter is an expanded version of a story from her master’s thesis, The Train, and other chapters are reworked versions of The Peeler, The Heart of the Park and Enoch and the Gorilla. The novel concerns a returning World War II veteran who, haunted [or, faced with] a life-long crisis of faith, resolves to form an anti-religious ministry in an eccentric, fictionalized city in the southern United States after finding his family homestead abandoned without a trace.”
I would point you to the plot summary here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wise_Blood
Bones of the Deep by J.F. Penn **** 218 p.
Penn is a British author who gives me an advanced copy of her books to generate reviews. I’ve given a bad review of a previous book, and we both agreed it shouldn’t go to print. This one was different.
This book is labeled as a thriller, but I found it more of a horror novel. When I think of a thriller, I think of someone racing against time to avert a catastrophe. This was just scary as could be. I had a hard time getting to sleep the first evening I started reading it. So, if that is your thing, you will really like this book.
The author does a great job establishing the characters, which ones are good, which ones are flawed. And the peril is identified right at the start, which then ramps up as the book goes along. You’ll find yourself saying, “Oh, no, Oh no,” over and over again. Excellent ending.
A Prayer for the Crown-Shy (Monk and Robot #2) by Becky Chambers ***** 152 p.
I loved the first book in this series so much (A Psalm for the Wild-Built). The follow-up did not disappoint.
The story continues with the tea monk Sibling Dex and her new companion, the sentient robot Mosscap, returning to civilization so that Mosscap can fulfill his mission of answering the question, “What do humans want?”
They visit many small villages, and Mosscap continues to be astonished and amazed by the humans he meets. Such a lovely story.
Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War by William Manchester **** 418 p.
Manchester was a renowned historian who served with the Marines in WWII. After suffering increasing nightmares, he decided to take a trip to all the areas he served, reawakening memories along the way. And those memories are brutal. So much blood, so many fellow Marines in his platoon killed.
Manchester makes no bones at how scared he was ALL THE TIME. Yet he was the sergeant of the platoon that referred to themselves as the Raggedy Ass Marines, basically a bunch of eggheads, almost all volunteers coming from Ivy League schools.
I’ve read quite a few histories of the Pacific and European theatres, but this one stands out for the way Manchester can make you feel you are right there.
When the Cranes Fly South by Lisa Ridzén (Alice Menzies – Translator) ***** 293 p.
BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD WINNER (Sweden)
This is the story of a frail man at the end of his life. His wife of many years was taken away from him and placed in a home because of her dementia. His only companion now is his dog, who he loves dearly. Except his rat bastard of a son who wants to take his dog away from him, because he thinks his dad can’t take care of it anymore. I won’t tell you the rest.
This is such a sad, depressing story, one based on the medical records of the author’s grandfather.
After the Fall by Edward Ashton ***** 275 p.
Another Ashton read while I was waiting for other books on my TBR list to become available. This one just came out this spring.
Another entirely creative book. Takes place on the future Earth where hybrid humans now serve an alien species that arrived after the planet had undergone a near-extinction event. I’m making this sound much darker than it really is, because at its core this is a book about companionship and friendship.
Ashton is a wonderful writer and I will continue to read anything he puts out.
The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War by Erik Larson ****1/2 559 p.
Larson wrote Devil in the White City, which I really enjoyed, as I wasn’t familiar with the story.
More familiar ground here, as Larson documents, the months leading up to the Battle of Fort Sumter at Charleston, South Carolina, which began the Civil War. He relies heavily on diaries and documents to flesh out the background and thinking of people who lived in the south.
Lots of emphasis on the South’s misguided sense of honor, and really drives home how much the war was entirely driven by slavery. What I didn’t know is that when Abraham Lincoln was campaigning, he repeatedly said he would not make any effort to change the status of slavery in the South, but a handful of what Larson terms firebreathers aroused the public to think otherwise.
All of this reminded Larson of the attack on the U.S. Capitol by people who were beginning to believe (and who maybe still believe) the so-called falsehoods and inaccuracies being told by then President Trump that the U.S. presidential election he had just won was stolen. Sad.
Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Readers’ Favorite History & Biography (2024)
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