Six Degrees of Separation - June, 2018

June's starting point is Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point.  The subtitle is "How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference."  










That made me think of some of my favorite "little" books, including Louisa May Alcott's classic, Little Women.  A story of four sisters, and yes, fiercely independent Jo was my favorite, too.  









The sisters in Little Women manage to maintain the bonds of sisterly affection (as I imagine they would put it).  Not so the sisters in Ian McEwan's Atonement.  This one has it all: misunderstandings, class differences, betrayal, guilt, war, and a love-it-or-hate-it ending.  It was made into a film (with a fabulous cast) in 2007. 



 

One of the stars of that film, Saoirse Ronan, was also in the film adaptation of Colm Toibin's novel, Brooklyn, a story about the personal growth of a young Irish immigrant to New York.  







A very different New York experience can be found in the non-fiction Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune by Bill Dedman.  It is the story of a 104 year old reclusive heiress, a great fortune, and the mystery of her life.  



An American heiress of a rather different type is the subject of Jeffrey Tobin's American Heiress:  The Wild Saga of the Kidnapping, Crimes, and Trial of Patty Hearst.  The subtitle says it all;  it was a series of strange events during a strange time in American history. 






 
The original Hearst fortune was a product of the American west  (so was the Clark fortune).  But the vast majority of those who went west hoping to find their own fortune were not so lucky.  One of those was the Ingalls family, well-known from Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" books.  But those books, while based on her story, were fictionalized.  For a more thorough picture of Laura's life and work and that of her daughter, Rose, who was more famous than her mother for a time, Caroline Fraser's excellent Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder is the book to read.  


From little things to little houses....there is this month's six degrees.  Thanks to Books are my Favourite and Best for the six degrees meme.  I'm looking forward to reading everyone else's chains!



 

A Confusion of Languages

Title:      A Confusion of Languages
Author:  Siobahn Fallon  
Edition:  G.P. Putnam & Sons, 2017
Setting:  Jordan
Genre:   Contemporary Literature

Blurb:  "A searing debut novel ... about jealousy, the unpredictable path of friendship, and the secrets kept in marriage, all set within the U.S. expat community of the Middle East during the rise of the Arab Spring."

Cassie, married to a soldier working at the US Embassy in Jordan has signed on to be a mentor to a new arrival, Margaret.  Also married to a soldier working at the Embassy, Margaret is a free-spirited young mother who doesn't doesn't seem to feel that the rules that Cassie tries to teach her, the rules that govern the lives of embassy employees and staff, apply to her.  

The novel begins with the husbands out of town and Cassie, Margaret, and her baby involved in a fender-bender on the streets of Amman.  Margaret is required to go to the police station to attend to paperwork (and a small bribe, says Cassie), while Cassie returns to Margaret's home to watch the baby.  When Margaret doesn't return, Cassie searches Margaret's home and finds her journal, and from there the story unfolds in flashback.   

This is a very interesting story about intentions, aspirations, struggles, friendships, marriage, cultural differences and the difficulty of communicating about all of those things.  That difficulty is the "confusion of languages" the title alludes to.  And there are so many languages!  Military jargon, the language of diplomacy and custom, body language, subtext, and literally the different languages spoken by the American and Jordanian characters.   

I liked the excellent writing, the very human characters with their questionable decisions, the theme of the difficult of comprehending and communicating with others, and the originality of the story.  This would be an excellent book club choice as there is much to debate and discuss in the story. 

Six Degrees of Separation - April 2018

This month we're starting with Arthur Golden's 1997 bestseller, Memoirs of a Geisha.  I read this novel many years ago as part of an "Around the World" book challenge: read a book set in or about a country in each of six continents: Asia, Europe, Africa, North America, South America, Australia/Oceania. The few books set in Antarctica tend to be about polar exploration or natural history, and there aren't a lot to choose from, so the challenge allowed us to either pick one of them or read a second book about a continent we particularly wanted to "explore."  For the Asia part of the challenge, I picked Memoirs of a Geisha since I think half the people I knew had read it and recommended it.  I enjoyed it, but I can't say that much of it stayed with me. Some of the other books that I read for that challenge have.

 
 
For Europe, I read The Siege, by Helen Dunmore.   Set in what was then Leningrad in the Soviet Union during the first winter of the city's besiegement by the Germans during World War II, this is a beautifully written story of physical and emotional survival and endurance.  It is sometimes harrowing, but the writing flawless, and the theme is lightened by the love and beauty the characters find, even in such circumstances. 

 
 


Another difficult but rewarding read was my choice for Africa, Half of a Yellow Sun, by  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.  What an excellent writer she is!  Five memorable characters in 1960s Nigeria discover which are the ties that bind - or don't.  Ties of family, ethnicity, politics, love, country, class - all of these come into play.  This is one of my "desert island" books.


One of the best things about this challenge was discovering writers who were new to me.  For Australia/Oceania, I was introduced to a wonderful writer, well-known to Australians, Tim Winton, author of Cloudstreet.  This saga is about two very different working-class families who live in a huge, old house called Cloudstreet in Perth and covers 20 years of joy, tragedy, marriage, birth, and death.  The writing is both earthy and spiritual (and there's a bit of magical realism involved).  Heartwarming and heartbreaking and highly recommended. 

 
My North American stop involved another new-to-me writer, Julia Alvarez, author of In the Time of the Butterflies.  This is a fictionalized story of the Mirabal sisters, four sisters who opposed the corrupt and murderous dictator of the Dominican Republic, Rafael Trujillo, in the 1950s.  The story is told in flashbacks with alternating points of view so that we come to know each of the sisters as individuals with virtues and flaws, and the reader sees how each came to find herself resisting the Trujillo regime.  Anyone who wants to read about strong, female characters will appreciate this novel. 

For South America, I chose a non-fiction book, Fordlandia, The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City, by Greg Grandin.  This is one of those forgotten history stories, that of a rather bizarre attempt to build Ford's vision of a small American town in the middle of the Amazon.  Fordlandia, as the town was called, was supposed to be the headquarters of a rubber plantation (tires for all those model Ts!).  If you're thinking that plunking a mid-western industrial plant and town in the jungle and expecting success isn't going to go well, you're right.  It turns into a fascinating and at times funny story of man vs. nature.  Spoiler alert: nature will always win.

My "reader's choice" and final stop was back in Asia: A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry.  Set in India during the government-declared State of Emergency in 1975, it tells of four people in an unnamed city (speculation is that the author had Mumbai in mind): a shrewd widow, a naive student, and two tailors from a small village, all of whom live in the widow's apartment.  The novelist has been compared to Dickens, and I think that's right in his scope and in his empathy for so many different characters in all kinds of situations.  This one really stayed with me; I can remember scenes from it as though I read it last week.  Wonderful.    

So there we are: around the world in 7 books!   As always, thanks to Books are My Favourite and Best for the Six Degrees meme.

One of the joys of reading is the ability to be an armchair traveler: to go any place, any time, to meet anyone.  What are your favorite armchair travel books?

The Girls in the Picture - The Beginning of Hollywood

Title:  The Girls in the Picture
Author:  Melanie Benjamin
Edition:  Delacorte Press, 2018
Setting:  Hollywood
Genre:  Historical Fiction

The blurb for this novel reads: "An intimate portrait of the close friendship and powerful creative partnership between two of Hollywood’s earliest female superstars: Frances Marion and Mary Pickford. An enchanting new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Swans of Fifth Avenue and The Aviator’s Wife."  

It doesn't do it justice.  It's more than that description, which sounds like a dusty piece of historical non-fiction.  Instead, this is a vibrant portrait, not only of two women (rare enough!), but of the beginning of an industry - Hollywood.  And by beginning, I mean starting in pre-WWI America, with "America's Sweetheart" Mary Pickford moving from theatre to being "the Biograph girl" to filming by the seat of the pants in very early Hollywood.  And who is Frances Marion, you ask?  Friend to Mary Pickford, screenwriter, director, author, and one of the most influential women in Hollywood in the days when women had a lot of influence in Hollywood.   

And this power and influence is one of the themes of this novel, as Mary and Frances take advantage of the fact that movies are a new industry, one without rules and customs that would keep them from having power and influence.  And how they use it!  Both become among the highest paid in their professions, Frances wins two Oscars, Mary is the driving force and one of the owners of United Artists Studio.  Beyond their professional lives, the book is also the story of their friendship and an honest depiction of both the power struggles within that friendship and the strong bonds that helped them make their way through life. 

Finally, it's the story of an industry alive with new ideas and innovations:  "These are the golden years, we assured each other, sometimes solemnly, sometimes with a giddy laugh, before one of us jumped up with an idea or a bit to add to a scene and then we were off and running, Mickey scrambling up a ladder behind the camera to shout out the new setup to the extras, while Mary got down on her kneed and tickled the children in the cast to get them to act more naturally around her, and I raced off to the prop department to retrieve the items required..."

Melanie Benjamin says in her author's note that she hopes people will think of Mary Pickford and Frances Marion as more than just names, but as innovators, artists, and friends.  I think she's written a book that will assure that. Highly recommended.

Six Degrees of Separation - March 2018

And we're off!


This month we're starting with Naomi Wolff's The Beauty Myth.





You know who was a beauty and mythical?  Helen of Troy, who appears in many great works, including Christopher Marlowe's The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus: "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships / And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?"  If you haven't seen this play, give it a try.  It's seriously great - Dr. Faustus, in deciding to sell his soul to the devil is possibly the first anti-hero.


 

The devil does love to make an appearance in literature, and in modern times, too.  Take Rosemary's Baby, by Ira Levin.  Far creepier than Faustus!  And set in the Bramford, which we all know is really the marvel of 19th century NYC architecture, The Dakota.  







And when speaking of great NYC architecture, Rockefeller Center -home of 30 Rock and Radio City Music Hall - will definitely be on that list.  To learn more about the politics and personalities behind its construction, read Pulitzer Prize finalist, Great Fortune, by Daniel Okrent. 


 


There are all kinds of theaters in NYC, from Radio City Music Hall to the low-rent, Second Avenue, Bowery location of the movie theater box office staffed by Saint Mazie - the "Queen of the Bowery" who sells tickets and takes care of the homeless during the Great Depression.  A wonderful novel by Jami Attenberg that is both funny and touching.

 
In The Boys in the Boat, by Daniel James Brown, on the other hand, the Great Depression is raw and real.  This is the story of young men who have already lived through the hardest of hard times, striving for something better.   A college education at the University of Washington, a gold medal at the 1936 Olympics, personal redemption, learning to trust.    

Set in Seattle 70 years later and a few miles away from where the boys practiced rowing, Where'd You Go, Bernadette, by Maria Semple is many miles away in tone!  It is a spot-on satire of life in Seattle, complete with tech nerds, virtual personal assistants (or are they?), competitive helicopter parents, unrelenting political correctness, coffee, and blackberries (Puget Sounders will laugh knowingly about the blackberries). 




So there we go - from serious to humorous in six steps!  Happy Reading!  


Six Degrees of Separation is courtesy of Books are My Favourite and Best










 

Library Loot

This week's loot!

Daughters of India, by Jill McGivering:   "Isabel, born into the British Raj, and Asha, a young Hindu girl, both consider India their home. Through mischance and accident their stories intersect and circumstances will bring them from the bustling city of Delhi to the shores of the Andaman Islands, from glittering colonial parties to the squalor and desperation of a notorious prison; and into the lives of men on opposing sides of the fight for self-government"

I'm always on the lookout for historical fiction set in places I've never been.  

At Least We Lived: the Unlikely Adventures of an English Couple in WWII China, by  Emma Oxford.  Pretty much what the subtitle says.  A young Englishwoman goes to China in 1943, meets and marries an Englishman who had escaped from Japanese-controlled Hong Kong. Written by their daughter.   






Library Loot is courtesy of The Captive Reader

Briefly Reviewed

Title: A Secret Gift: How One Man's Kindness and a Trove of Letters Revealed the Hidden History of the Great Depression
Author: Ted Gup
Edition: Penguin Press, 2010
Setting: USA, Great Depression
Genre:  Nonfiction

Just before Christmas in 1933, an pseudonymous benefactor placed an ad in a Canton, Ohio newspaper offering a small amount of money to families suffering because of the Great Depression.  The author is the grandson of that benefactor, Sam Stone, and this is both a family history and a history of life during hard times.  The hard times are indeed hard: breadwinners have been out of work for years, families are hungry, children go barefoot all year because shoes are a luxury their parents can't afford, people die for lack of medical care because they can't pay bills, businesses go bankrupt, renters are evicted and homeowners lose their homes, depositors lose their life savings in bank failures, parents surrender their children to orphanages because they can't feed them. The author uses the letters his grandfather received to illustrate just what ordinary people went through trying to survive the Great Depression.  These letters are sad, inspiring, moving, tear-jerking - sometimes all in the same letter.  They remind us of the difference a social safety net makes. 

The family history, oddly enough is somewhat less interesting, partly because it is spread throughout the book and loses the impact when told that way.  It is an interesting history, but the connection between Sam's generous act and his life history seems rather tenuous to me.  Still, a worthwhile book, and an important history lesson.


 
Title: Nurse in Blue
Author: Gladys Taber
Edition:  Triangle Books, 1944
Setting:  USA during WWII
Genre:   Women's Fiction

Gladys Taber was a prolific American mid-century writer who wrote a number of interesting books about her country home, Stillmeadow. She's best known for those books, but she also wrote novels, of which Nurse in Blue is one.  Written during World War II, its heroine, Janet, leaves her midwestern home, nursing job, and fiance, Philip, to become a Navy nurse in New York City.  Will Janet give up her dream of helping win the war with her nursing skills to go back to the midwest as Philip's (bored) wife?  Will she end up with the strong and silent type she meets in New York, Chris (oh, please - NO)?  Will she marry someone else?  The question of will she follow her skills, education, and abilities and have a career doesn't really arise - this was written in 1942-43, and that option is apparently well, not an option.  The writing is fresh and lively, the character of Janet and her friend Francesca, believable, the men less so.  The ending is unbelievably hurried.  But if you want to catch the flavor of what women were reading in the war years, this is probably a good example. 

Library Loot

I'm late with the loot this week!
 
A Secret Gift: How One Man's Kindness & a Trove of Letters Revealed the Hidden History of the Great Depression, by Ted Gup.  "An inspiring account of America at its worst-and Americans at their best-woven from the stories of Depression-era families who were helped by gifts from the author's generous and secretive grandfather."  I'd say it was thought-provoking more than inspiring.  A good history lesson. 



Library Loot is courtesy of: Silly Little Mischief 

The Girl From Simon's Bay

Title: The Girl From Simon's Bay
Author: Barbara Mutch
Edition: Allison & Busby, 2017
Setting: South Africa
Genre: Historical Fiction

"Simon’s Town is a vibrant and diverse community in a picturesque part of the Union of South Africa, with a Royal Navy port at the town’s heart. Louise Ahrendts, daughter of a shipbuilder, nurtures the dream of becoming a nurse and in a world of unwritten, unspoken rules about colour, she has the strength to make it a reality. As the port becomes a hub of activity following the outbreak of the Second World War, Louise crosses paths with a man she is determined to be with – despite all the obstacles life and conflict throw in their way. But when a new troubled moment of history dawns, can they find their way back to each other?"  

That blurb would lead you to think that this novel is a romance novel.   While there is a romance element to this story of star-crossed lovers in South Africa during World War II, it's really much more about Louise's attempt to live a better life than the society she lives in allows her.   And that story is far more interesting than the romance, which never really rang true to me (an Earl, really?  He couldn't just be, oh an accountant or teacher or something more ordinary and realistic?).  But Louise's journey from school girl to nurse and her struggle to make more of her life while remaining true to her family, friend Piet, and her community is engaging and well written.  Also well written are author's descriptions of her community and especially of the sea Louise loves, even as a small child:

"Infant waves curled towards me over the crystal sand.  Footsteps thundered from behind.  I reached out both hands to seize the oncoming water with its lace of bubbles and fell forward.  Cold, green liquid gurgled into my mouth, lapped at my forehead and just as it started to trickle into my ears, a pair of familiar hands grabbed me around the middle and pulled me clear."

Those hands belong to her father Solly.  Solly, Louise's mother Sheila, her friend Piet and her neighbors all live in the seaside town of Simon's Bay.  As "coloured" people, they have little money and the most difficult jobs, but they have carved out lives for themselves - quite literally out of the steep hillsides that threaten to slide their homes into the sea on occasion.  Louise, a bright child whose parents support her throughout the story, dreams of bigger opportunities than being a maid.  After many struggles she becomes a nurse in the British naval hospital in the town and that is where she meets the story's love interest.  As I said earlier, this part of the story didn't work as well for me (and I felt very sorry for her friend Piet, a boy who cares for her but has no parental support and nothing in the way of opportunity).  Still, it is a fine story with vivid writing, strong characterization, and without going into spoilers, emotionally stirring scenes, like the one in which Louise's family is forcibly moved: 

"The loaders became, if anything, more frenzied in their unpacking than in the packing.  The police had already abandoned our miserable procession at the limits of Simon's Town, so there was no one to watch or possible temper the loaders' attitude if they'd been open to persuasion.  But it was already late afternoon, and clocking off was upper most in their minds.  Our possessions were hurled off the vehicles with no care at all.  Furniture splintered, bags split, suitcases burst open.  The Gamiels, in the truck alongside, had used up all their anger at the start of the day and worked silently, gathering up the disarrayed possessions as best they could."

I'd read about such things in history books, but this is a case where fiction is better at showing the cruelty and harshness and unfairness.

If you're interested in historical fiction on a subject - and indeed, country - that seldom features in such books, or are looking for a novel with strong characters and some lyrical writing, you'll be glad you read The Girl From Simon's Bay.

Library Loot

This week's loot!

The Library at the Edge of the World, by Felicity Hayes-McCoy.  "A warm, feel-good novel about the importance of finding a place where you belong - perfect for fans of Maeve Binchy."  I don't know about the Maeve Binchy part, except that it is set in Ireland, but it's the story of a librarian and her daughter finding their places in small-town Ireland.  

The Winter Station, by Jody Shields.  "An aristocratic Russian doctor races to contain a deadly plague in an outpost city in Manchuria - before it spreads to the rest of the world."  There might be more than I really want to know about the plague here (especially during this flu season), but so far it's well-written.  







Library Loot is courtesy of:  The Captive Reader

Library Loot

This week's loot!

The Atomic City Girls, by Janet Beard.  The title is a bit deceiving because there are several major characters who are male.  It's set in the Manhattan Project's facility built in Oak Ridge Tennessee during World War II.  It wasn't just a facility; it was an instant city built for thousands of people who came from near and far to work there (even though most had no idea what they were actually working on).











Library Loot is courtesy of Silly Little Mischief

Six Degrees of Separation - February 2018

This month's starting point for Six Degrees is George Saunders's Lincoln in the Bardo, which is on my never-ending TBR.  And while I haven't read it, I know that the author's starting point for this story came from Abraham Lincoln's visits to the cemetery where his young son was buried.



Degree #1 - Also based on a real cemetery is Audrey Niffenegger's Her Fearful Symmetry, a work of contemporary fiction set in and next door to London's Highgate cemetery.  The exotic, slightly creepy nature of this famous Victorian cemetery is a fabulous setting.

Degree #2 - The Victorians did love their cemeteries!  I usually think of the Victorians as rather dull: repressed, dutiful, pious.  But of course, not all of them were any of those things.  Including Richard and Isabel Burton, the subjects of A Rage to Live: A Biography of Richard and Isabel Burton, by Mary S. Lovell.  They lived a life of adventure and their marriage - of two strong minded people - makes for fascinating reading.






Degree # 3 - How do you find your mate?  In The Marriage Bureau: The True Story of How Two Matchmakers Arranged Love in Wartime London, by Penrose Halson, gives us the (often quite amusing) story of the matchmaking business.




Degree # 4 - Set in London, this time in the aftermath of war - World War I - is The Paying Guests, by Sarah Waters.  A tale of social change, social class, and murder, all based on a real event, this is a fine work of historical and literary fiction.








Degree # 5 -  Murder?!  Why that makes me think of one of my favorite novels: The Secret History, By Donna Tartt.  If you haven't read it, you're in for a treat.  Written in mesmerizing prose, it is the story of students at an elite and eccentric college.  You know who the victim and perpetrators are from the beginning; it's the unraveling of the why that is so fascinating.

Degree # 6 - Universities make a fine setting for novels, and Moo, by Jane Smiley, is no different.  After cemeteries, war, and murder, I leave you with this very amusing story of academic life at a Midwestern agricultural college.  Enjoy!






Six Degrees is courtesy of Books are My Favourite and Best

January Round-up

This month's stats:

12 books
7 fiction
5 non-fiction


I read a lot of 3 star books - books that are perfectly fine but that I probably won't remember much about in a month or two.  One, Caroline: Little House Revisited, by Sarah Miller, made it into the "very good" category. I have higher hopes for this month!

Library Loot!

This week's loot:

 
Flat Broke with Two Goats, by Jennifer McGaha.  See review posted previously. 






The Jane Austen Project, by Kathleen A. Flynn.  Time-travel, anyone?









Library Loot is courtesy of :  The Captive Reader

Flat Broke with Two Goats - Now There's a Title!

A raise for whoever thought up that title!  It truly grabs the reader's attention.

I've often had mixed feeling when finishing the last chapter of a memoir.  When someone asks you what you thought of a particular memoir, how fair is it to give your opinion about what happens in the book (the "plot" if you will) and the people in it (the "characters").  I suppose you could take the stance that the author wrote, had published, and is reaping the financial benefit of the book and therefore has opened him or herself up for comment.  But often I find myself judging the people and their actions as I'm reading the memoir, and not always in a good way.  It's one thing to be critical of a fictional character, another to be critical of someone telling you their life story.  

That said, I'll be discussing the writing in Flat Broke with Two Goats: a Memoir of Appalachia, by Jennifer McGaha.   Goodreads' blurb reads: "A charming memoir of one woman’s unexpected journey from country chic to backwoods barnyard."  "Charming" is not the word I'd use.  Anything that involves domestic violence, foreclosure, marital separation, and oh yes, venomous copperhead snakes in the kitchen is not charming.  Eventful, definitely, but not charming.

There are really two parts to the memoir - before the foreclosure of Jennifer and her husband's home outside Asheville, NC, and after as they must both make decisions about what kind of lives they want to live.  Before involves a bad and violent first marriage, and a second marriage, and children, and it details the family's fall from affluence during the great recession of the 2000s.  Afterward, Jennifer briefly separates from her husband, unwilling to follow him to their new home, an old and decaying mountain cabin a mile from the main road without many of the comforts most of us take for granted.  She returns after a few months and they slowly work on repairing the house, the land, and their marriage.  That's where the goats come in.  If you ever wanted to know whether two people with no farming experience can successfully raise a herd of goats, this is the book for you!  

The author does do a fine job of writing about the beauty of the mountains and the deep-rooted family pull the Appalachians have on her. 

"There, in a mossy hollow, three springs emptied into a creek that gathered momentum as it flowed down the mountainside.  I loved knowing that - that the waterfall was higher than I had ever imagined, that it sprang from the earth in a place where the soil was rich and loamy, that the part I could see from my porch was just a small fraction of the whole.  Watching the sun dip behind the mountain and the moon rise high in the sky, I realized that the waterfall I saw in front of me was not the exact waterfall I would see tomorrow.  It was continually reborn, renewed, restored....what I did now know without a doubt was that I was not alone, that I had never been alone, that the people who came before me were still here, would always be here."

I wish that she had incorporated more of the story of her grandparents and other ancestors; we barely get to know about them, but they're quite interesting and there's definitely a story there (perhaps for her next book?). 

Library Loot

This week's loot!

Queen of Scots: the True Life of Mary Stuart, by John Guy. "A long-overdue and dramatic reinterpretation of the life of Mary, Queen of Scots by one of the leading historians at work today."  This book won the Whitbread award for biography in 2004.  My question when checking it out from the library was: Is it as good as Antonia Fraser's biography?  It's interesting (hard not to be with her scandal-ridden life), very readable, and detailed without being dull.  But.  The author wears his heart on his sleeve and gives Mary the benefit of every possible doubt.  Fraser's is a more even-handed portrayal, and remains the gold standard. 






Library Loot courtesy of The Silly Little Mischief Blog

Library Loot

 Loot from the last few weeks:


Kurinji Flowers, by Clare Flynn.  "Set in South India during World War II and India's struggle for independence, Kurinji Flowers traces a young woman’s journey through loss, loneliness, hope, and betrayal to unexpected love and self-discovery."   I can't say I cared for the last quarter of the the book, but the first 3/4ths were quite good.  Strong sense of place, strong plot. Terrible cover.







The Outcasts of Time, by Ian Mortimer.  "December 1348. With the country in the grip of the Black Death, brothers John and William fear that they will shortly die and go to Hell. But as the end draws near, they are given an unexpected choice: either to go home and spend their last six days in their familiar world, or to search for salvation across the forthcoming centuries – living each one of their remaining days ninety-nine years after the last."   Requires suspension of disbelief; an interesting idea that I didn't feel was really as well developed as it could have been.  Still, well-written and worth the time.  Gorgeous cover.





Library Loot courtesy of The Captive Reader

Six Degrees of Separation - January 2018

Today, I'm joining in Six Degrees of Separation starting with the first in the well loved series No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith with its wonderful character, Mma Ramatswe.

I didn't think I'd read many series of books with strong female protagonists, but it turns out I have, starting with A Killer in King's Cove by Iona Whishaw, the story of former British spy and current amateur sleuth Lane Winslow in post-WWII British Columbia, which leads to:

Black Roses by Jane Thynne, a series featuring Clara Vine, British actress and part-time spy living in pre-WWII Berlin, and on to:

A change from those darker series with The Lanvin Murders by Angela M. Sanders.  This series brings its readers to the world of vintage fashion in Portland, Oregon with heroine Joanna Hayworth.

Next we move to the historical fiction genre and Evelyn Anthony's oldie-but-goodie series about Russian Tsarinas, starting with Rebel Princess, the story of Catherine the Great.

A fine example of dystopian fiction/sci-fi from the brilliant Margaret Atwood is the MaddAdam trilogy: Oryx and Crake is the first in the series.

And finally, the bring this full circle, let's go back to Africa, South Africa this time with Sally Andrew's wonderful Tannie Maria mystery series Recipes for Love and Murder


Six Degrees is courtesy of:  Books are My Favorite and Best