The May’s book club always lands on Mother’s Day, so I was expecting a smaller group. Which was true, except for the no-shows were Jim and Michael! Both had higher priorities (Mother’s Day festivities), so that was understandable. I’m sure we’ll see them next month. And we missed Christina, who was enjoying a nice, peaceful nap. Who doesn’t like naps!
However, the regulars did join in: Cynthia, Peggy, Beth and Linda. Moms and mothers were the non-book topics du jour. I stayed out of that discussion <g>.
The full list of the 36 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 June 14. We meet online using Zoom, so it is easy to join us. 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
Dear Edward, by Ann Napolitano. A 12-year-old boy is the sole survivor of a commercial flight from New York to LA. He loses his parents and (more importantly) his older brother. As he tries to negotiate life with the aunt and uncle, he is asked to attend hearings, respond to letters from family members of other survivors. The author says the book was influenced by watching the instant bond with her two boys.
The Star from Calcutta, by Sujata Massey. India, 1922: Perveen Mistry, the only female lawyer in Bombay, has secured her biggest client yet, Champa Films, a movie studio run by director Subhas Ghoshal and his wife, Rochana, the biggest names in Indian cinema. Rochana needs Perveen’s legal help to extricate Champa Films from the impending controversy. But a movie censurer is murdered and Rochana disappears. The fifth book in the series, but I fear it is running out of steam.
Family of Spies: A World War II Story of Nazi Espionage, Betrayal, and the Secret History Behind Pearl Harbor, by Christine Kuehn. A German family was full of good Nazis, but then the stepdaughter has an affair with Goebbels who was half-Jewish. To save the family, they accepted an assignment to go to Hawaii to spy for the Japanese. The father wasn’t a very good spy and was picked up after (the attack on) Pearl Harbor. The author is the granddaughter (her father stayed in the U.S. and served in the military when everyone else went back to Germany). He had not told her the story but after a researcher contacted her, she started 30 years of research into her family.
Remarkably Bright Creatures, by Shelby Van Pelt. The book, soon to be a movie with Sally Fields, follows Tova Sullivan, a widowed night cleaner at a small-town aquarium, whose routine shifts when she befriends Marcellus, a sharp-minded giant Pacific octopus. As their bond deepens, his observations bring her closer to long-buried truths about her missing son.
The Girl Who Baptized Herself, by Meggan Watterson. Near Ephesus in Turkey is a cave with a fresco of the Apostle Paul and Thecla, a young woman who is a convert (maybe to get out of marrying her fiancé). The Acts of Paul and Thecla is an apocryphal gospel which the author, a feminist theologian, views through a decidedly feminist lens.
A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles. I’m re-reading this for my building book club and enjoying it just as much the second time around. The story begins in 1922 when Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat and sentenced to lifelong house arrest in the Hotel Metropole. Rostov navigates his new life with wit and grace, forming relationships with the hotel staff and guests, including a curious young girl named Nina. Over the next 32 years, he experiences the changes in Russian society from inside the hotel which is a microcosm of the outside world.
Cynthia
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
An engrossing melding of her Native American wisdom with her scientific knowledge.
Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera
Just a fun whodunnit novel told from the points of view of the suspected murderer and a podcaster who decides to investigate the murder.
Beth
Nobody’s Girl (posthumously published memoir), Virginia Roberts Giuffre. This is the story of a hero. A person who stands up to do what is hard, to learn over and over again, new skills, new ways of thinking, reevaluating her moral compass and putting it on the line. Virginia Giuffre spent the first half of her life, as a child being abused; forced to function as an adult when she was a child, starting at age 7, with none of the tools or stature of an adult. The adults around her failed and failed. Yet she found support and light where she could. She spent the second half of her short life not just recovering from that trauma but fighting back on a global stage. There is a wall of privilege and protection that comes with wealth, and she kept battering at it until she died. And it made a difference. Along with all the women who came forward, are coming forward, the sand under the Epstein class is being washed away. See Eric Swalwell. Gone in a week after the first woman came forward. This is a must read.
Kin, Tayari Jones. Following two women that were cradle friends through their journey to find their people. This is about finding your family. Who are they, what makes a family. The primal, instinctive need for mothering and the dizzying real world of actual people. Very powerful.
Without Precedent, Lisa Graves. John Roberts is not as he presents himself. This is a deep dive into the path that John Roberts has trod as he made his way from newly minted lawyer to Chief Justice of the SCOTUS. This is a different perspective, and it is not kind. It is not the best written political tract, but the information is quite disturbing, nonetheless.
Fall, or Dodge in Hell, Neal Stephenson. Is gaming taking over the world? Let’s take a really deep dive. Dodge is back, and then he’s gone. But not really gone, just into a different world, a world building game that people can get to by having their brains/bodies scanned after death and be reborn into a game situation. The more things change, the more they stay the same. This exploration of what would you do if you could start over: what would you be? Would you change or would you just carry on? The premise was interesting, and the outcome was the eternal story of trying to change reality. It was good to start, and then just went on and on and on…
The Real Minerva, Mary Saharratt. How do you make a life when you are a woman in the 1920s? This is a look at the power of society to constrain behavior and who gets hurt. And how they respond. We’ve come a long way, but in some ways, society has not moved at all. Babies — what are you going to do about the babies, and the lust? What are you going to do about lust, because the rules don’t work, they just push things underground.
Platform Decay, Martha Wells. Murderbot is on a mission with Three to rescue some people. It takes a while for this to unwind about who we are rescuing and why it is so hard. We are introduced to some new characters; some who are very interesting. I want to hear more about Mensah’s family, which is much larger than we knew before. This feels like a set up for a story that expands on what comes after what happened on this mission. Things get really broken and new relationships are revealed. I want to know what Nanna’s back story is. “We promised we wouldn’t let Nanna have a gun again,” but is this really the peaceful Preservation? Hmmm.
The Quitter’s Club, Jessica Strawser. Four friends who have been together since their days at Ohio University are celebrating their 40th birthdays. Life is not all good, but they put on brave faces, until one person breaks the dam. They agree to stop doing things that make them unhappy. This leads to all sorts of unforeseen consequences but ends well after the bad is over. Some interesting insights; and it’s a quick read.
Linda
Gone Before Goodbye, by Reese Witherspoon & Harlan Coben 3*
Intrigue involving surgeons, organ transplants, medical innovations, a Russian oligarch and murders.
The Secret Book Society, by Madeline Martin 4*
In an age when women are strongly discouraged from reading books, a club forms to read them in secret. The members of the club all have their own melodramas at home. Very chick-lit, but I liked it.
Kiss Her Goodbye, by Lisa Gardner 4*
Set in Tucson, AZ, this is the story of a young Afghan refugee woman who disappears. Our central character is Frankie Elkin, who works at finding missing people as an unpaid job. A lot of information about the journeys of Afghan refugees through horrible camps and to the US where they struggle to adjust. The plot has a lot of twists and turns and very little of it is as it seems.
A Long Petal of the Sea, by Isabel Allende 3*
A saga of a family who escapes the Spanish Civil War and settles in Chile.
The Wasp Trap, by Mark Edwards 4*
“Six friends reunite in London to celebrate the life of their recently deceased ex-employer, a professor that brought them together in 1999 to help build a dating website based on psychological testing.” (Goodreads quote)
There is, of course, a murder. Any of the group could have done it. And more murders happen as a manipulative member of the group forces the others to confess a long-buried secret.
Atmosphere, by Taylor Jenkins Reid 3*
Primarily a lesbian love story, the characters just happen to be early astronauts, assigned to some of the early shuttle missions. Too many melodramas and not enough science, for my taste. And only one fleeting mention of Sally Ride!
Enshittification, by Cory Doctorow 5*
An extremely disturbing book about how Big Tech has become corrupt, with the collusion of the government which no longer enforces antitrust laws.
Murder at Mallowan Hall, by Colleen Cambridge 3*
A Trace of Poison 3*
Murder by Invitation Only 3*
Murder Takes the Stage 4*
Two Truths and a Murder 4*
A series of cozy mysteries with Agatha Christie as a character, not the author. Murders ensue at her country manor, and both guests and staffers are suspects. The main mystery-solver is the housekeeper, who seems to have some secrets of her own. These are pretty light-weight, but I liked the characters and somehow got hooked – I read all 5 in a few days.
Paper Girl (Nonfiction), by Beth Macy 4*
A journalist returns periodically to observe the changes in her small-town Ohio home. The town has turned MAGA, people are scorning education and no longer have a sense of their own community.
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (memoir), by Omar El Akkad 4*
Mostly about the Gaza situation. About toleration of atrocities.
National Book Award for Nonfiction
Brad (43/14947)
Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron. **** 305p.
Dewey was a tiny kitten stuffed into a book return slot in the dead of winter at the library in Spencer, Iowa. His paws were so frostbitten he could hardly walk. The staff and the head librarian nursed him back to health, and he became the library’s mascot, welcoming visitors to the library. He was especially popular with children.
This is a book about small towns, the people that live in them, and the difference one cat can make in so many people’s lives.
Surely You Can’t Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane! by David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker. ***** 346 p.
This was just an amazing story about a movie that never should have been made, by three buddies who had never directed a movie in their life. It starts out with how they came together, putting together a small improv theatre, their successes and their failures, and their move to California. They just didn’t know enough that none of this should have been possible.
Chock full of anecdotes, this is one of those rare books where I would literally bust out laughing, reading some of their comments. That is pretty rare, in my experience.
Life and Death in Shanghai by Nien Cheng. **** 562 p.
Man. I knew a little bit about the Cultural Revolution, but this is the story of one woman who lived through it. Declared an enemy of the state because she had been educated overseas and worked for Shell Oil in Shanghai, she ended up spending six years in solitary confinement, undergoing so many interrogations, all the time refusing to confess to her crimes or name names. Kind of ironic we saw the same thing during the McCarthy/Nixon era here in the states.
Somehow Cheng survived it all, then spent additional years after she was released from prison attempting to clear her name and obtain an ‘official’ apology. I can’t think of many people with this kind of determination and willpower. The irony for me is, she continued to live in her country, despite the way she was treated.
Lightning Strike (Cork O’Conner #18) by William Kent Krueger. ***** 400 p.
Nice change of pace for Krueger, as this is an origins story, focused on a 12-year-old Cork and his father the Sherrif. Kind of laying out the path of who Cork would grow up to be.
Cuba: An American History by Ada Ferrer. ***** 566 p.
Great story of the history of Cuba going all the way back to its earliest known recorded history of Christopher Columbus and his explorations.
Slavery played such a huge role in the development of the country as did the desire for freedom from a long line of oppressors. What I didn’t know was that the United States wanted to annex Cuba and bring it in as a slave state to help solidify the southern majority in Congress. The U.S. has done some terrible things in the world, most of which we were never taught about in school, and this is one of them.
Cuba went through several revolutions in their fight for self-determination, and you thought they had finally succeeded when Fidel Castro threw over the U.S.-controlled Bautista, but as the old saying goes: Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
And now of course today the same pattern is repeating itself, with the U.S. enacting an illegal blockage to bring the country to its knees. Nothing ever changes for the Cuban people.
2022 Pulitzer Prize Winner in History
A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea: One Refugee’s Incredible Story of Love, Loss, and Survival by Melissa Fleming. **** 305 p.
Man. Another story of repression by a ruthless, autocratic dictator.
This is the story of a young woman growing up in a quiet neighborhood in a quiet town in Syria. Everything changed when a handful of young boys spray-painted graffiti on a school wall denigrating Assad. The boys were arrested and held for months. Upon release the public learned how they had been tortured, infuriating the people. Thus began the demonstrations, which grew bigger, and then were met with an increasingly violent response from the military. It is this backdrop that the story takes place, with Doaa and her family making the difficult decision to leave her homeland, then her difficult decision to leave the relative safety of Egypt in the hopes of reaching Europe and a new life.
This is a tragedy and should be read by all people who hate refugees and want to see them sent back to their countries of origin.
The Final Score by Don Winslow. ***** 302 p.
The Final Score is a collection of six stories (maybe, novellas?), all written in the style of a modern-day Raymond Chandler: hard-boiled, tough, unsentimental, focusing on the dark side of crime, the criminals, and their victims. Highly recommended.
I feel bad that I have never heard of Winslow; he is one hell of a writer. And now I have to see if my library has any of his actual novels available.
