Most of our core group of regular readers attended the October Book Lovers SIG: Michael, Doug, Jim, Cynthia, Peggy, and Beth. The only person missing was Linda as she was on travel.
Before the Books
You know, we’ve been meeting together for a few years now, but every now and again I learn something new. For example, Jim majored in Math/Computer Science while in school, with a minor in Russian. He was motivated to take Russian because his grandfather came over from the old country. He actually had a Russian version of Scrabble.
Well, it turns out that both Beth and Michael also took Russian! Michael remembered that the Russian word for German is немецкий (nemetskiy), which means dumb, as when they heard someone speaking German, they thought it was simply gibberish.
And speaking of languages, Peggy studied Japanese, which apparently has three different alphabets: Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji (plus Romaji for the Roman alphabet).
Beth just returned from an archeology conference in Cortez, near the Four Corners region, home of the Canyons of the Ancients National Monument. The Trump administration is destroying many archeological sites in the quest for oil and natural gas production, along with the border wall that Mexico is paying for.
We also talked about executions, Laugh-In, J.D. Vance’s attempt to rehabilitate Nixon, dancing, war stories, snowstorms, changing weather, the Rockies and Boulder, CO.
The full list of the 30 books reviewed/discussed can be found by clicking the following link. This is also a new monthly record.
https://www.mamensa.org/category/book-lovers-sig-book-talks/
Book Lovers SIG always meets on the second Sunday of each month; our next get together will be November 8. 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
How to Eat an Elephant: One Voter at a Time, by Sarah Longwell. A Never-Trump Republican tries to explain to Democrats how using focus groups to understand voters will improve their results. The book is both a strategic manual and motivational guide, blending Longwell’s personal story with practical advice for building a pro-democracy movement. Its central message is that systemic political change is achieved gradually, by engaging and persuading voters individually, rather than expecting immediate results from elections or ideological debates.
The Pirate Queen, by Ariel Lawhon. A historical adventure inspired by the life of Grace O’Malley, the legendary Irish folk heroine who risked everything to defend her people and whose lifespan matched that of Queen Eliabeth. Grace O’Malley was born to be a sea captain but despite her natural skill on the water, Grace learns early that her dreams of a life at the helm are not compatible with the expectations of her nobility. After marriage and children, Grace gets the opportunity to return to sea, finally leading clan O’Malley’s fleet. Just as she finds true independence, Queen Elizabeth’s incursions into Ireland grow bolder and Grace must fight to defend her homeland, her ships, and her people against the English.
The Lost City of the Monkey Gods, by Douglas Preston. This is about a search for archaeological sites in eastern Honduras. The title of the book derives from four expeditions launched in the 1930s in which Honduran informants described to explorers their stories of a lost city with a pyramid topped by a giant stone statue of a monkey god somewhere in the Mosquitia region. After a privately funded lidar survey revealed complex archaeological sites under the rainforest cover, Preston accompanied a joint Honduran American expedition to do ground truthing of the lidar results. They were able to confirm the presence of large, abandoned settlements and to document plazas and earthen structures including a pyramid and concentrations of artifacts. The official name of the principal archaeological site has been changed to the City of the Jaguar. Preston also documents the travails of several members of the expedition who contracted severe cases of leishmaniasis, a disease caused by parasites that are transmitted by the bites of (female) sand flies.
The Big Cats Dance Party (No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency #27), by Alexander McCall Smith. Another No.1 Ladies Detective Agency novel in which Precious, her partner and her husband investigate why someone is trashing the reputation of the animal rescue center, Elephant Havens. Assistant Charlie has to figure out why a car wash is reporting more revenue than they should be. He also gets caught up with a couple of smooth-talking musicians named Lion and Leopard. Pretty much the same as all the other novels in the series.
Live Laugh Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made, by Kristin Kobes DuMez. Her previous book, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, is about male Christian Nationalists. This one covers many familiar female characters: think Aimee Semple McPherson, Anita Bryant, Beth Moore, and Erika Kirk. Christian bookstores, multi-level marketing, and contemporary lifestyle brands are part of a consumer culture that elevated domesticity while exposing women to systems susceptible to manipulation and control.
The Museum of Lost Things: True Tales of Fabled Treasures, Legendary Cities, and Mythical Creatures that Vanished from History, by Sam Kean. Lost graves, cities, people, relics, bones, civilizations, knowledge, gold, art, loot, technology, and species. Think Genghis Khan, Richard III, Troy, Dead Sea Scrolls, Mayan script, the Rosetta Stone, the Mona Lisa theft, and the dodo.
Jim
11/22/63 – Stephen King
A time travel novel, where a man in 2011 goes back to 1958 to prepare to stop Lee Harvey Oswald from killing President Kennedy. There are lots of twists and turns!!! and a love story thrown in for good measure. Does he succeed? If so, what is the ‘new’ future like? This is one of those books you don’t want to put down for the night.
This Way Up: When Maps Go Wrong – the Map Men (Mark Coopen-Jones, Jay Foreman)
A compilation of stories of maps intentionally made wrong, and why they were done so. Including Christopher Columbus’ brother, Barthalomew, who tweaked a map from the super-secret map shop of Prince Henry the Navigator to ‘prove’ to Spain’s Ferdinand and Isabella that it was shorter to go West to China than to go around Africa. Including how the USSR had two different mapmaking shops who made different maps hiding things from each other and the world, because Germany used their earlier good maps to efficiently attack Russia in WWII. Or… using a map of Paris to find your way around London. Lots of fun and games!!!
The Circle of Knowledge: A Classified, Simplified, Visualized Book of Answers – Standard Publication Company (1926)
This is a comprehensive encyclopedia in one volume of the world as it was in 1926.
I marveled at how much has changed in the 100 years since. Even elements in the Periodic Table have changed names!!!
There was no World War I… it was The European War. There were 5 countries in Asia: China, UK, Japan, France, and the Dutch. Africa was similarly colonized by only a few countries.
The words receipt and recipe: “One properly says the receipt calls for three cupfuls of flour. Recipe being restricted to its use as a medical term.”
“Hero is a priestess of Venus in Sestos, beloved of Leander.” … Somehow since then, culture has adopted the notion that a hero is a masculine term, and that heroine is the feminine equivalent.
“The loadstone or natural magnet was first found at Magnesia in Lydia, Asia, whence derived the names.”
Note: This book is available for free from Project Gutenberg.
The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison
This has been on the banned book list forever. I wanted to learn why.
It is the story of a young Black girl, born ugly, never liked, and lived a tragic life, raised by parents with their own tragic lives. She thought that if she had blue eyes that she would be beautiful. Tragic beginning, tragic ending.
Why banned? Lots of mentions of sex: intercourse, prostitution, rape, mentions of the words sodomy, bestiality. I would agree that the book is not appropriate for school libraries, but it is certainly appropriate for public libraries.
The author uses lots of unique colorful phrases, like: “her joy was as short as the blade of a pocketknife.”
Overall, I was left satisfied that I had read the book but disturbed that people really live like this in the world. The author, in the forward, said that this was a slow psychological murder of nobody’s fault.
Michael
Recursion – Blake Crouch
A very well-written sci-fi novel in which FMS, or False Memory Syndrome, is disrupting the world and leading, possibly, to catastrophe for all mankind. It is caused by the creation of false memories which can be re-lived as reality instead of actual reality. The two main characters, Barry Sutton and Helena Smith, interact in their efforts to destroy the syndrome and return the world to its previous stable state. Very well-written, compelling and believable.
Lessons in Chemistry – Bonnie Garmus
Well-written and continually humorous tale of a highly educated and competent female chemist who battles with sexism and physical abuse to prove her worth. She becomes a widow and single mother and eventually succeeds after hosting an enormously popular TV cooking show based on the chemical processes involved in cooking.
The Pushcart Prize L: Best of the Small Presses 2026 Edition – Edited by Bill Henderson
The 50th anniversary edition of this honored anthology of the best essays, short stories and poetry from the countries many small presses. Always worth reading. This issue includes:
Hello from the Children of Planet Earth by M.H. Tse, is a harrowing investigation of how misleading the messages engraved on gold of the plates attached to Voyagers I and II are. They tell what we look like and that we are made of carbon and oxygen and hydrogen and give samples of our languages and music, but say nothing about the domestic predation of the planet’s wildlife, the parasitism, the 26 billion animals held captive at any given moment, the 100 billion animals killed each year for food, clothing, and medicine, etc., etc. Also included are Countdown by Anthony Marra, an account of the escape from Russia by a family; One of You Will Betray Me by Kathy Chao, an account of a group of Chinese Christian immigrants in a Bible group bewailing the gradual Americanization of the daughter of one of their number; and Sickled by Jane Kalu, a sad account of a girl who has sickle-cell anemia confronting her parents who married although both of them knew at the time that they carried the SD gene that would result in their child having the disease. The volume also contains a list of everything, and everyone who contributed to anything printed in previous editions of the book.
Cities of the Interior by Anaïs Nin
An anthology of her five inter-connected novels: Ladders to Fire, Children of the Albatross, The Four-Chambered Heart, A Spy in the House of Love, and Seduction of the Minotaur.
Cynthia
How the Light Gets In by Louise Penny is a mystery in the inspector Gamache series with what I thought was an unusual twist of using actual Canadian people as the source of the main character who gets killed. She references the history of the Dionne quintuplets by making the murder victim the youngest of a set of quints whose history reflects the actual history of the Dionnes.
Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump by Maggie Haberman and Johnathan Swan is a close look at the inner workings of the Trump presidency.
Hidden Depths by Anne Cleeves
Telling Tales by Anne Cleeves
The Crow Trap by Anne Cleeves. I find her books dispassionate, as though I’m reading dry procedural reports. So, these three books that I kept reading in the hope that I would begin to like her writing more was never what I would expect of a good novel.
Silent Voices by Anne Cleeves. This is the fourth in the Inspector Vera Stanhope series (and the first that I read). It is quite a different approach than in the inspector Gamache novels by Penny. There isn’t much emphasis on place or character development, more on character relationships with a wry sense of humor and a willingness to be quite judgmental.
Doug
Doug is on his third re-read of Narrative War: The Philosophy of Social Conflict.
Beth
Processes in Human Evolution: The journey from early hominins to Neanderthals and modern humans, Francisco J. Ayala and Camilo J. Cela-Conde. 2nd Edition 2017. This is a textbook that looks at the process of categorization of mammals, specifically Hominidae. Detailed yet accessible with a careful reading.
Silverview, John le Carre. There is a leak somewhere. There are a couple of spy families and some related characters. It is the end of an era, and one of the old spy masters is dying. As usual, nobody knows what’s happening, and it is critical that we find out.
Faithful Place (Dublin Murder Squad #3), Tana French. Frank gets called home because a suitcase is discovered that may have belonged to his girlfriend from his school days who disappeared. Things escalate from there, with secrets uncovered, and long-simmering family dysfunction erupts into the open. Life then must go on.
The Secret Place (Dublin Murder Squad #5), Tana French. Frank’s daughter is at boarding school. This is an exploration of what happens when you put a bunch of teenagers with raging hormones and phones in one spot. Delicious as always.
Brad (91/31172)
North Woods by Daniel Mason ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 320 p.
This is a story of a piece of land, a cabin that sits on it, and the people who occupy that space over a course of maybe 200 years, starting with the very earliest Puritan settlers in the region. Plus, there are ghosts. Basically, a collection of short stories, written sequentially, all with a common theme: land, the dwelling, and its occupants.
Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Readers’ Favorite Historical Fiction (2023)
The Faith of Beasts (The Captive’s War #2) by James S.A. Corey ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 436 p.
This is a really hard book to describe, especially since it has been a couple years since the first book in this series, The Mercy of Gods, came out. (Seems like longer.)
Intricately plotted, the book starts off after the aborted attempt of the humans to overthrow their slave master race the Carryx. They now live to fight another day.
The Carryx are a little like the Borg, in that they take over worlds and assimilate the population, at least those that they believe can benefit their empire. If they believe you can’t contribute, you die. So, it’s a real balancing act: passive resistance or contribute to their war machine. The book explores the details.
The only thing I didn’t like was the ending; there wasn’t one. It just stopped. Not really even a cliffhanger. So now we wait for the next book in the series.
The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession by Michael Finkel ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 242 p.
Bizarre but true story of a man and his girlfriend who obsessively steal art works from all across Europe. He doesn’t steal them to sell on the black market, but instead to display them in the attic of the house where he lives with his mother. You can’t make this stuff up.
Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Readers’ Favorite Nonfiction (2023)
Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality by Renee DiResta ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 425 p.
Deeply disturbing look at how social media has allowed an industry to develop in which people capitalize on lies to enrich themselves and attack our democracy.
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Translator) ⭐️⭐️⭐️ 275 p.
This is at its root a crime novel with a heavy dose of astrology thrown in.
An old Polish woman lives by herself in a very small village on the border near Czechoslovakia. People die. Important people. The police are baffled, while the old lady insists that the local animals, who have been hunted and killed by the same people who have been found dead, are responsible for those deaths. Classic misdirection.
I guess if you like astrology, this is the book for you. I found it to be distracting from the main story, however, which maybe was the point?
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