Category: Fiction

Niccolo Rising

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Dunnett, Dorothy. Niccolo Rising. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986.

Reason read: Dunnett’s birth month is in August.

When Dunnett finished the Francis Crawford of Lymond series she felt there was more to Francis Crawford’s story that needed to be detailed. By way of explanation she went back to the 15th century. Niccolo Rising is the first in the House of Niccolo series and features Nicholas de Fluery, three generations before Francis Crawford of Lymond’s birth. For reference, the 1459 Queen of Scots is thirteen years old.
Be prepared for high drama! Nicholas (or Niccolo or Nicholas vander Poele or Claes, as he is first called) only wants what every young man craves – acceptance, recognition, and love from his elders. When we first meet him, he is known as Claes, an eighteen year old dyer’s apprentice. Clumsy as a puppy and equally annoying, the people in his life spend most of their time babysitting his actions and cleaning up his messes. It is hard to imagine Claes’s transformation into a good-with-numbers, savvy businessman who capture the heart of one of the most prestigious women in the country. Much like 15th century Bruges’s commerce and trade, Claes undergoes a spiritual and intellectual growth. By the end of Niccolo Rising he is practically unrecognizable. And that’s when the fun starts…

As an aside, the list of characters, both real and fictional, is daunting. Read and reread this book extremely carefully. You might miss something if you don’t.

Author fact: Dunnett also wrote about Macbeth.

Book trivia: Niccolo Rising is the first book in the Niccolo House series and since they tie into the House of Lymond series Dunnett suggested reading them in the order they were written and not in chronological order. Yay! I’m actually reading them in the right order…for once.

Nancy said: Pearl said it would be a shame to miss out on the House of Niccolo series  (More Book Lust p 80).

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Digging up the Past Through Fiction” (p 79).

September Sorrows

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I don’t post a lot of personal stuff on this side of the writing. Not usually. Typically, I leave all that other blathering on JustCauseICan. I may write about the run or the island, a brief sentence here or there, but of little else…except for today. When you lose someone you adore it is hard to focus. That is precisely my problem today. I am shattered by grief and only put back together again by words. So, I must read. Here are the books planned for September. I hope they heal:

Fiction:

  • Babylon Rolling by Amanda Boyden – to remember Hurricane Ivan as it wreaked havoc on my 2004 September wedding.

Nonfiction:

  • The Most Offending Soul Alive: Tom Harrisson and His Remarkable Life by Judith M. Heinmann – in honor of Harrisson’s birth month being in September.
  • Life and Times of Miami Beach by Ann Armbruster – in honor of Hurricane Irma.
  • Workshop: Seven Decades of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop: 43 Stories, Recollections, and Essays on Iowa’s Place in Twentieth Century American Literature edited by Tom Grimes – in honor of Grimes’ birth month being in September.

 

Series Continuations:

  • Fuzz by Ed McBain – to end the series started in July in memory of McBain’s passing.
  • Case of the Man Who Died Laughing by Tarquin Hall – to end the series started in August in honor of Rajiv Ratna Ganghi, India’s youngest Prime Minister’s birth month.
  • Spring of the Ram by Dorothy Dunnett – to continue the series started in honor of Dunnett’s birth month (August).
  • Holding the Dream by Nora Roberts – to continue the series started in honor of August being Dream Month.
  • Tandia by Bryce Courtenay – to end the series started in August in honor of Courtenay’s birth month.

Early Review for LibraryThing:

Confessional: I am still reading Where Eagles Dare Not Perch by Peter Bridgford.

An August Attempt

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So. I’ve done a few short runs here and there. Nothing crazy, but at least I’m back in it somewhat. Spent more time with the books. Speaking of which, here they are:

Fiction:

  • Under the Snow by Kerstin Ekman (EB/print)
  • The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe
  • The Case of the Missing Servant by Tarquin Hall (AB)
  • Crazy Jack by Donna Jo Napoli (EB)
  • Power of One by Bryce Courtenay (EB)
  • Niccolo Rising by Dorothy Dunnett (EB/print)
  • Daring to Dream by Nora Roberts (EB)

Nonfiction:

  • A Season in Red: My Great Leap Forward into the New China by Kirsty Needham
  • A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella L. Bird
  • Eurydice Street by Sofka Zinovieff

Series continuation:

  • Arctic Chill by Arnuldur Indridason (EB/print) – which I forgot to mention when I was plotting the month. It’s the last book of the series -that I’m reading. (There are others.)
  • Big Bad City by Ed McBain

LibraryThing Early Review:

  • Where Eagles Dare Not Perch by Peter Bridgford (EB) – which came after I plotted the month of reading so it wasn’t mentioned before.

 

Big, Bad City

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McBain, Ed. Big Bad City. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999.

Reason read: to continue the series started in July in memory of McBain’s passing (2005). Confessional: I don’t know how I continue to do this, but I read Big Bad City out of order. Big Bad City was published in 1999.

As with Cop Hater, the locale in Big Bad City bears a strong resemblance to gritty real-life New York City. While McBain never writes the words “New” or “York” together readers can imagine a 1990s version of the Big Apple. The three different story lines weave around each other like a Celtic knot in The Big Bad City: first, a young nun with breast implants is discovered murdered on a park bench. Unbeknownst to Carella, the man who murdered his father has been stalking him, waiting for the right time to gun him down survival-of-the-fittest style; and speaking of guns, how did notorious Cookie Boy the burglar go from petty theft to two counts of murder in fell swoop? Precinct 87 has their hands full with these seemingly unrelated crimes.

Quotes I liked enough to mention here, “Do it. do it, but he had not done it, he had not killed the man who’d killed his father because he’d felt somewhere deep inside him that becoming a beast of prey was tantamount to having been that beast all along” (p 54), and “…and he drew his own nine at once, so there were three nines on this bright September morning, all facing each other with nowhere to go but murder” (p 270).

Author fact: Have you seen the number of things McBain has written? The list goes on and on and on. Most surprising was the screenplay for “The Birds.”

Book trivia: This was the first time I had seen COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) referenced in a mystery novel.

Nancy said: nothing specific about Big Bad City.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “I Love a Mystery” (p ).

Under the Snow

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Ekman, Kirsten. Under the Snow. Translated by Joan Tate. New York: Picador. 1999.

Reason read: August is Ekman’s birth month; read in her honor.

I love it when someone calls a book “moody.” It’s even better when I agree with them.
There are tensions in an isolated village near the Lapland border where everyone knows your name, wants your secrets, and suffers together through a winter that is “5,064 hours long” (p 4). Even Police Constable Torsson has an attitude when he learns he has to travel 25 miles over the ice and snow to investigate the death of a young teacher. When a man is found frozen to death in a snowbank and the entire community won’t talk about the details, for all appearances it looks like an accident. This much is true – after getting into a fight after a mah-jongg game Matti Olsen collapsed and died of exposure. Case closed. Or is it? A friend of Matti’s arrives the next summer and convinces Torsson it isn’t really over; the case deserves a second look. Is it connected to a woman with a piece of bloody rope in a backpack?
For most of the story it bounces from perspective to perspective as different characters share what they want you to know. Most effectively, Ekman reserves the first person narrative for the murderer’s detailed confession.

Quotes to quote even if they are a little abstract, “Waves of small talk were now lapping over the place where he had sunk” (p 12) and “The headwaiter decided not to love him, a delusion requiring no great spiritual struggle” (p 45).

Author fact: Ekman also wrote Black Water which is also on my Challenge list.

Book trivia: Under the Snow was first published in 1961. For some reason that took me by surprise. It wasn’t translated by Joan Tate until 1996.

Nancy said: Nancy didn’t say anything specific about Under the Snow.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the cute chapter called “Swede(n) Isn’t It?” (p 223).

Case of the Missing Servant

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Hall, Tarquin. The Case of the Missing Servant. Read by Sam Dastor. North Kingston, RI: BBC Audiobooks America, 2009.
Hall, Tarquin. The Case of the Missing Servant. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009.

Reason read: Rajir Ratna Ganghi, the youngest Indian Prime Minister was born in August.

Vish Puri is India’s Most Private Investigator. Confidentiality is his game. His bread and butter cases consist mostly of scoping out potential partners in a culture where prearranged marriages are the norm. Fathers consider the services Puri and his team provides a deeper background check of eligible mates for their daughters.  Then one day a servant girl goes missing. Rumor has it, her own employer (a wealthy lawyer) murdered her. All the evidence points to him so this should be an easy case…
Interesting tidbit – Puri doesn’t like being compared to Sherlock Holmes. “Sherlock is a fictional character” he sniffs.

As an aside, I loved the nicknames of Puri’s Most Private investigation team. Tubelight and Facecream were my favorites.

Book trivia: The Case of the Missing Servant is the first in a series featuring Vish Puri. But, as a reader you feel as though you were dropped in the middle of Vish’s life as he remembers other, earlier cases.

Author fact: The Case of the Missing Servant is Hall’s first book.

Nancy said: nothing specific about The Case of the Missing Servant.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Sojourns in South Asia: India” (p 212).

Best of Everything

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Jaffe, Rona. The Best of Everything. New York: Penguin Books, 1958.

Reason read: August is the best time to read Chick Lit.

The year is 1952 and women in the workplace are finding their collective ambitious voice. In The Best of Everything five young women seemingly only have the employment of a New York publishing company in common. Caroline wants to climb the corporate ladder; to go from typist to editor. April is as naive as they come but learns the timeless power of sex appeal. Gregg has the life of a jet setting actress, but secretly wants to settle down and be a housewife. Barbara is a single mother with a young daughter and Mary Agnes is mousy; too shy for words.

One central theme to The Best of Everything is the need women feel to protect themselves from predatory men. They are always defending themselves against the less than admirable advances of the amorous kind. There is a great deal of strategic purse shuffling and genius body blocking at parties and at the office. Yet, they all want to be married to respectable men.

A few quotes (out of hundred) to quote, “It’s like holding hands and jumping off the top of a building; did we think it was going to be any easier because we were holding hands?” (p 95), “It was like trying to categorize something in order to make it exist” (p 118), “The hard mechanical palm he had extended to her in his handshake had not been a unique phenomenon, it had simply been an uncovered part of the entire unyielding whole” (p 164), and probably the most tragic quote ever, “She leaned out the window and all of a sudden the mile long limousine with the two of them in it and the liveried chauffeur and the armful of rises and the soft music and the hip flask if bourbon wasn’t glamorous anymore; it was ridiculous; they were two frantic stupid people speeding through an ugly-smelling countryside to attend the murder of love” (p 194).

Author fact: In 2005 Jaffe wrote a foreword to The Best of Everything. In it she admitted her rise to success happened before she had even published the book. Who she knew helped a great deal.

Book trivia: The Best of Everything is Rona Jaffe’s first novel and it became a New York Times Best Seller and a movie.

Nancy said:  The Best of Everything is a given when thinking about the category of fiction that primarily explores the lives of young, single women.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Chick Lit” (p 53).

Arctic Chill

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Indridason, Arnaldur. Arctic Chill. Translated by Bernard Scudder and Victoria Cribb. New York: Minotaur Books, 2005.

Reason read: to finish the series started in honor of Iceland’s National Day in June.

Inspector Erlendur Sveinsson is back. This time to solve the mystery of a murdered a ten year old Thai boy found outside his apartment on a freezing cold day in January. As Erlender and his team dig deeper into the lives of the victim and his family they uncovers Iceland’s dirty secret of an intolerant and prejudiced community. Because the victim is the same age as Erlendur’s brother when he went missing the personal memories for Erlendur resurface.
One of the best things about an Arnaldur mystery is that while there is a thin plot line of commonality running through every story, it isn’t necessary to read one to understand the next. In this installment, Erlender is trying to solve a whole new crime. His last mystery, about the body in the lake, is mentioned but not central to the current plot. Converse to that, the building of each character happens gradually from book to book. I was disappointed to leave Erlender before he had solved his most personal cold case, the fate of his missing brother.

Best quote, “Life was a random mass of unforeseeable coincidences that governed man’s fates like a storm that strikes without warning, causing injury and death” (p 340).

Author fact: Indridason is an international best selling author.

Book trivia: Jar City was made into a movie. Arctic Chill could be a movie as well.

Nancy said: nothing specific about Arctic Chill except that hope is on the horizon.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the obvious chapter called “Iceland” (p 99).

Daring to Dream

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Roberts, Nora. Daring to Dream. New York: Berkeley Books, 2012.

Reason read: August is Beach Read month.

To understand Margo Sullivan you first have to meet the super wealthy Templeton family. Margo grew up living in the Templeton household because her mother has been the family’s housekeeper forever and the Templetons treat their help like family. I cannot mention family enough! But, even though the super perfect Templetons have always treated Margot like family, she never felt she belonged to them or with them. While every other member of the family stayed close to home, involved with the family’s multi-million dollar hotelier business, Margo always needed more, more, more. Like every character in a Nora Roberts novel, Margo sports a beyond beautiful face and impossibly perfect body. As a teenager she left her mother and the Templeton household in search of fame and fortune as an aspiring model. Jet setting around the world, Margo has been gone for years. She has been seen only in pictures as the face of a well known cosmetics company. At that time nothing could stop her, nothing until a scandal involving drugs, her manager and the bus he threw her under. Suddenly knocked her off her pedestal, Margot has to come crawling back to her mother…and the Templeton clan.
Every good N.R. romance has a beautiful someone fighting off his or her passionate urges towards a seemingly unwilling beautiful someone else. Daring to Dream is no different. When Margo arrives home with her tail between her legs, she alternates between hating and needing heir to the family business, Josh Templeton.

Author fact: Nora Roberts has written over 250 novels.

Book trivia: Daring to Dream is the first book in the “Dream” trilogy.

Nancy said: Daring to Dream is in the category of “contemporary” romance (Book Lust, p 204).

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Romance Novels: Our Love is Here to Stay” (p 203).

Crazy Jack

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Napoli, Donna Jo. Crazy Jack. New York: Random House, 1999.

Reason read: August is Fairy Tale month.

Everyone knows the traditional English story of Jack and the Beanstalk. Jack sells the family cow for some worthless beans. Said beans grow into a magical beanstalk that reaches up into the clouds. When Jack climbs the stalk he comes to find the home of an ugly and mean giant. Escaping the giant’s cannibalistic wrath, Jack is able to steal away with a goose that lays golden eggs, a pot of gold, and a magical singing harp.
However, Donna Jo Napoli’s version has more substance in that you meet Jack when he is nine years old and living on a farm with his mother and father. Next door is beautiful Flora and life is perfect. But, Jack’s dad, being a gambler, ends up losing the farm. Literally. In his guilt and shame he commits suicide and Jack goes crazy with grief. Over time Jack’s life is turned upside down. As he grows up, he and his mother become poorer and poorer until finally, they are down to their last cow. To make matters worse, lovely Flora announces her engagement to another (sane) man. True to the original telling, Jack sells the family cow for some seemingly worthless beans that end up growing into a huge beanstalk that reaches the heavens. And like the original story, Jack climbs the beanstalk and discovers that giant and his riches. But, Napoli adds a sex scene and in the end has a powerful message for her readers. Jack may be crazy but he also has a heart. His ending is a happily ever after despite the heartache.

Line I really liked, “I’ll share my bed with whatever dreams come” (p 60).

Author fact: Napoli dedicated Crazy Jack to Barry. I guess he “always stands by his crazy woman.” That made me laugh. She also thanked the librarians at Swathmore College. Napoli sounds like someone with whom I could hang out.

Book trivia: Crazy Jack is so short it can be read in a day, but I wouldn’t recommend that. Take your time with Jack and the Giant. You won’t regret it.

Nancy said: Napoli’s reinterpretations of classic tales are good for teenage girls (More Book Lust, p 94).

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Fractured Fairy Tales” (p 93).

Travels of August

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Since the Run for Nancy was only a few days ago I am still on a high from not only running four miles, but running four miles without pain. No pain whatsoever. The pain is so gone it’s as if I imagined the whole thing. Weird. Weird. Weird. As for books, since I don’t have any other running plans in the near future:

Fiction:

  • The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe – in honor of August being Chick Lit month.
  • The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay – in honor of Courtenay’s birth month being in August.
  • Daring to Dream by Nora Roberts – in honor of August being Dream Month (hey, I read it somewhere).
  • Niccolo Rising by Dorothy Dunnett – in honor of Dunnett’s birth month being in August.
  • The Case of the Missing Servant by Tarquin Hall – in honor of Rajir Ratna Gandhi’s birth in August.

Nonfiction:

  • A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella Bird – in honor of Colorado becoming a state in August.
  • Eurydice Street: a Place in Athens by Sofka Zinovieff – in honor of the Dormition of the Holy Virgin.
  • A Season in Red by Kirsty Needham – in honor of the Double Seven festival in China.

Series continuations:

  • The Big Bad City by Ed McBain – to continue the series started in July.

If there is time:

Fiction:

  • Under the Snow by Kerstin Ekman – in honor of Ekman’s birth month.
  • Crazy Jack by Donna Jo Napoli – in honor of Fairy Tale Month.

 

July’s Jam

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July was jamming. Guess what! I ran a few times this month. Even participated in a charity run for an aunt-in-law (is that a thing?). I am feeling much, much better! And. And! And, I was able to read a ton:

Fiction:

  • Jackie by Josie by Caroline Preston – in honor of Jacqueline O. Kennedy’s birth month.
  • Cop Hater by Ed McBain – in memory of McBain’s passing in the month of July.
  • Miss Lizzie by Walter Satterthwait – in honor of Lizzie Borden’s birth month.
  • Black Hearts in Battersea by Joan Aiken – in honor of July being Kids Month.
  • Gardens of Kyoko by Kate Walbert – in honor of Japan’s Tanabata Festival.
  • Animals by Alice Mattison – in honor of Mattison’s birth month.

Nonfiction:

  • The Coldest Day: America and the Korean War by David Halberstam – in honor of July being the month the Korean War ended.
  • The Book of Mediterranean Cooking by Elizabeth David – in honor of July being picnic month.
  • Den of Thieves by James Stewart – in honor of July being Job Fair month (odd choice, I know).

Series Continuation:

  • The Draining Lake by Arnaldur Indridason – to continue the series started in June.
  • Midnight in Ruby Bayou by Elizabeth Lowell – to continue the series started in April.

Early Review for LibraryThing:

  • Into the Storm: Two Ships, a Deadly Hurricane, and an Epic Battle for Survival by Tristam Koten.

 

Cop Hater

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McBain, Ed. Cop Hater. New York: Pocket Books, 1999.

Reason read: McBain died in the month of July; read Cop Hater in his memory.

Someone is going around killing cops. One right after another in quick succession, three plain-clothed detectives are gunned down. At first glance Joe Public assumes someone out there is a serious cop hater. That seems to be the only connection between the three victims. They are all law enforcement. So, someone must really hate the fuzz, right? The only other common denominator is the heat. It’s summertime and every day is blazing hot, hot, hot. Tempers are flaring but is it hot enough to drive someone to murder? That’s what protagonist Detective Steve Carella needs to find out.
What I loved about McBain’s style is how he drops clues along the way. Once you know “whodunit” you can go back and see the answers peeking out way before the individual crimes are solved. While the details are a little dated and police procedures are very different than they were in the 50s, Cop Hater is still an entertaining read.

I forgot to mention my favorite line, “The elevator crawled up the intestinal track of the building” (p 92). Great image!

Author fact: Ed McBain is actually Evan Hunter and Cop Hater is his first 87th Precinct book of the series.

Book trivia: Cop Hater was originally published in 1956 and made into a movie in 1958. The funny thing is, as I was reading it I thought it would make the perfect crime series for television. Turns out, McBain modeled Cop Hater after the television show, Dragnet.

Nancy said: Nancy said Cop Hater takes place in New York City. I am guessing she didn’t read McBain’s introduction because he makes a point of explaining the Eighty-seventh Precinct is based on a New York City precinct. Cop Hater actually takes place in the fictional city of Isola.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the huge chapter “I Love a Mystery” (p 120).

Animals

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Mattison, Alice. Animals. Cambridge, MA: Alice James Books, 1979.

Reason read: July is Mattison’s birth month.

A collection of thirty poems rich and pulsating with human life make up Animals by Alice Mattison. Women come alive to argue, have sex, give birth, seek memories, laugh out loud, fiercely love family, change identities, experience sickness, learn to rescue, and accept failure. There is courage and wit in Mattison’s vision. Each poem is heartbeats and breath, like a roar of vibrant life.

Lines I liked, “throwing echoes between eardrums” (from Husband, p 11) and “The wildlife grows shameless in spring: it’s like putting out your hand in the dark and feeling a penis” (from Creatures, p 26).

Author fact: Mattison began her writing career as a poet.

Book trivia: Animals is Alice Mattison’s first book.

Nancy said: Nancy didn’t say anything specific about Animals but she did say Alice Mattison is “a multitalented writer” (p 1).

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the very first chapter called “A…My Name is Alice” (p 1).

Gardens of Kyoto

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Walbert, Kate. The Gardens of Kyoto. Waterville, ME: Thorndike Press, 2001.

Reason read: in honor of the Japanese Tanabata Festival even though The Gardens of Kyoto have nothing to do with Japan or the Tanabata Festival.

What is a memory when it can be tainted or changed by the emotional upheaval of growing up? By grief? Ellen’s favorite cousin, killed in the final days of World War II, leaves a lasting impression on her young life and ultimately shapes her future world. Randall’s death is profound on multiple levels. He leaves Ellen his diary and a book called The Gardens of Kyoto, his most meaningful possessions. The parallel between the Gardens of Kyoto that fascinated Randall and Ellen’s present-day reality is in the illusion: of what is really there before your eyes. Ellen goes through life constantly questioning Randall’s influences.
There is a subtle resilience to Walbert’s writing; an understated strength and grace to her words.

Lines that lingered in my mind, “You will find that certain words stay with you” (p 38), “Exotic and smoky and entirely out of place across from cornfields” (p 66), and my favorite, “You have been mine since the day you were born” (p 273).

Confessional: I know what it is like to be close to a cousin; to have that special bond, only to lose him to death. Memories become profound and I often find myself sifting through them for all the hidden meanings of life.

Author fact: Walbert also wrote Our Kind (also on my Challenge list).

Book trivia: Gardens of Kyoto is Kate Walbert’s first book.

Nancy said: Nancy includes Gardens of Kyoto as a first novel she is “delighted to have read” (p 88).

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the simple chapter called “First Novels” (p 88).