Tag: book review

Blue Lightning

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Cleeves, Ann. Blue Lightning. New York: Minotaur Books, 2010.

Reason read: to finish the series started in January in honor of the Shetland Up Helly Aa festival.

In Blue Lightning Jimmy Perez, now engaged to Fran, the woman he met in Cleeves’s first book Raven Black, takes her home to meet his parents. He’s not looking forward to the trip because he doesn’t get along with his father and home is a smidgen of an island called Fair Isle. When Jimmy was younger he couldn’t wait to move away and escape the trappings of parental expectations. True to form, murder follows Jimmy & Fran (she found the murder victims in Raven Black). Thanks to terrible storms prohibiting people from coming to or leaving the island they are forced, along with Jimmy’s partner, Sandy, to solve the crime without help from the mainland. Things go from bad to worse when there is a second murder and shockingly, a third. This time the murders center around birds as the killer has woven bird feathers though the first victim’s hair & strewn feathers over the second victim’s body.

For the most part I enjoyed this fourth book in the Jimmy Perez series. It isn’t necessary to read the other three to understand or enjoy Blue Lightning. My only complaint? After the second death I knew when the third victim would die.

Book trivia: In the acknowledgments Cleeves makes reference to a crime scene saying, “probably the most awkward crime scene I’ve yet devised.” It made me curious to know if I would recognize the scene (spoiler alert: because in every Cleeves mystery so far multiple people have died, hence multiple crime scenes). What would make one particular crime scene awkward. Then, I got to it, recognized it & decided, yes it’s awkward.

Author fact:  I don’t have anything new to share about Ms. Cleeves except to say the series continues after Blue Lightning.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Sheltering in the Shetlands” (p 205).

Diplomatic Lover

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Lee, Elsie. The Diplomatic Lover. New York: Zebra Books, 1971.

Reason read: Elsie Lee’s birth month is in April.

Confessional: this genre is not my cup of tea. I would say it’s even less so than science fiction or fantasy. I definitely was not looking forward to reading this genre. In fact, I squirmed so much I read it over the weekend. 4/1/17 – 4/2/17

Nonny is an oddball character. Early in Diplomatic Lover she convinces her roommate’s foster brother to take her to bed. She’s a virgin and she simply must have “lessons” from York, the outrageously handsome actor. The deflowering scene is nothing short of cringe-worthy if you are not into bodice rippers. But, Nonny (“Bambi” to the boys) got what she wanted from York: she needed to go from Nonny-no to Nonny-yes. What’s more, she then needs a fourteen day sailing adventure with York to “get him out of her system.” Do you think she succeeds? Insert eye roll here. After the loss of virginity and the sailing adventure are both out of the way, Nonny returns to a scandal at the office. Someone is leaking inside trader information and smuggling political information. As a translator for the British Embassy in Washington D.C. Nonny is brilliant and the perfect person to solve the mystery. She speaks a multitude of languages, including finances. She often gives her roommates advice on investments. In addition, her father is a New York City lawyer and her grandfather is a banker in Zurich. She only has one problem: blackmail. Someone knows of her torrid affair at sea and wants to expose her (literally).

Cringe worthy quote, “He was taking it at her pace, sticking to the rules of seduction, not rape” (p 80). Whaaa?

Book trivia: my copy of The Diplomatic Lover had to be rebound. The library adhered just the paperback’s old front cover to the new hard copy. And what a front cover it is! It features two very prominent stargazer lilies in the forefront and a couple locked in an odd embrace. She looks like she is about to swoon and he is ready to bite her ear off.

Author fact: Elsie Lee was a member of Mensa.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the obvious chapter called “Romance Novels: Our Love is Here To Stay” (p 205).

Big Empty

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Randolph, Ladette and Nina Shevchuk-Murray. The Big Empty: Contemporary Nebraska Nonfiction Writers. University of Nebraska Press, 2007

Reason read: Nebraska became the 37th state in March of 1867.

Big Empty is comprised of 27 essays and excepts covering a variety of subjects but all centered around the geography of Nebraska. Ted Kooser will often quote the Bohemians and the proverbs while telling you about the land. Bob Ross will tell you how to mend fences to keep the cattle in. William Kloefkorn will have you smiling as he remembers an ill-fated trip down the river with a group of friends. Kenneth Lincoln will have you weepy-eyed as he remembers his coming of age. You get the point, this is Nebraska from every angle. Some of the stories will bring tears to your eyes. Some will make you laugh out loud. But most will educate you to the Nebraskan landscape.

My big takeaway from reading Big Empty: Nebraska means flat water. Just kidding. Nebraska has gone from a place I knew absolutely nothing about to something of intrigue. I am more than a little curious about the state now.

Confessional: I used to say I didn’t know anyone from Nebraska until someone told me my deceased uncle was from Nebraska. Then I discovered he was actually from Arkansas. So I still don’t know anyone from Nebraska.

Line I liked from the preface: “Instead of sleeping away the drive through, they are awake and taking notes” (p xi).
Other lines to mention, “My argument is this: if it floats and gets you there, it is a boat” (“This Death By Drowning” by William Kloefkorn, p 73), and “…and when the auctioneer hammered “Sold!” Vic had bought that mule for a price that even brought a smile to the mule’s face” (“Uncle Vic’s Mule” by Roger Welsch, p 84), and “Grandpa’s plate was where the talk stopped and the patriarchal authority started” (“Excerpts from Prairie Homeboys” by Kenneth Lincoln, p 151). There were many, many other lines I could quote but I’ll just let you read the book. You should.

Author Editor fact: Ladette Randolph is also a writer. She published Leaving the Pink House in 2014 (University of Iowa Press).
Nina Shevchuk-Murray was born in the Ukraine.

Book trivia: I know this is a collection of essays but I would have loved a few photographs as well.

Nancy said: Big Empty “offers a diverse look at people’s lives in the state at various times and under various conditions” (p 149).

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go from the chapter called “Nebraska: The Big Empty” (p 149). Gee, I wonder where she got that title from?

No Ordinary Time

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Goodwin, Doris Kearns. No Ordinary Time: Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II. Read by Edward Hermann. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.

Reason read: Franklin married his fifth cousin in March. I read this to celebrate their unique and extraordinary relationship.

This is a quick read. In  a nutshell, it’s a condensed biography of Franklin, Eleanor, their marriage, and life at home during World War II. The biographies of Franklin and Eleanor are not anything new. If you have read even one other biography of the couple you’ll find all the details worth mentioning are the same. Considering Eleanor destroyed most of her correspondences it would be difficult for a biographer to come up with anything astonishing and unheard of before. The biography of Franklin and Eleanor’s marriage is treated with respect and without judgment. We all know about the other women: Missy, Lorena, and Lucy. But it is the biography of World War II’s home front that makes No Ordinary Time a pleasure to read. I’ve always known women made sacrifices for the war effort; rationing and even going without certain materials. But, I admit I did not know about the girdle protest. Goodwin’s description of Eleanor protesting the inability to wear a girdle for “health” reasons was humorous and fascinating.

As an aside, the title of No Ordinary Time comes from a speech Eleanor Roosevelt made before the Democratic convention.

Author fact: Goodwin won the Pulitzer in history for No Ordinary Time.

Book trivia: No Ordinary Time is a combination of diaries, interviews and White House records.

Audio trivia: the introduction is read by the author. Very cool.

Narrator trivia: Edward Hermann’s list of accomplishments is long. He has acted in a bunch of movies including The Purple Rose of Cairo as well as television (The Practice and Gilmore Girls). I’ve never seen any of these productions and yet I recognize him. I guess he just has one of those faces voices.

Nancy said: Nancy includes this as an example of an outstanding one-volume biography.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Presidential Biographies” (p 195).

Endymion

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Simmons, Dan. Endymion. New York: Bantam Books, 1996.

Reason: I am a glutton for punishment. No, not really (even though I have admitted sci-fi is not my forte). The reason I am reading this is I am continuing the series started in January in honor of Science Fiction month. This is the third in the cantos and so far, my favorite.

Endymion takes place 274 years after The Fall of Hyperion and yet Martin Silenus is still alive, thanks to life extension treatments called Poulsens. In truth, I was kind of glad to see the old bastard. As soon as the nameless character started using profanity I knew the old poet was back! But, let me start from the beginning. Raul Endymion is the first character we meet in Endymion. He is a hunting guide framed for, and convicted of, the murder of a wealthy client. After a ridiculous trial he is ultimately sentenced (read: framed) to die. Only he does not die. He has been “saved” from execution in order to do Martin Silenus a favor. Well, more than a few favors:

  1. Save this one child, Aenea, from the Swiss Guard and the Pax
  2. Keep Aenea safe until she becomes old enough to be The One Who Teaches
  3. Find Earth and bring it back (back from where, I don’t know)
  4. Stop the TechnoCore from its activities
  5. Convince the Ousters to give Martin real immortality and not this life support crap
  6. Destroy the Pax and put an end to the Church’s power
  7. Stop the Shrike…ah, the Shrike is back!

At the same time Raul is attempting to complete his honeydew list, the resurrection of Father Captain de Soya is also playing out. His story isn’t half as interesting as Raul’s, but he’s also after the future One Who Teaches so their stories run parallel to one another and intersect from time to time. A real cat and mouse thriller, only it’s hard to determine who is the real mouse and who is the cat. And, if I thought all the dying and resurrection in Fall of Hyperion was crazy, that’s nothing compared to how many times Father Captain de Soya is “reborn.” Don’t worry. You get used to it.

Endymion reads much differently than the two previous books in the Cantos. There aren’t any crazy sex scenes (sorry, spoiler alert), and even though the Shrike makes an appearance, it isn’t half as scary as the wraiths or Nemes. I was half expecting a shrike/wraith battle but it didn’t happen, much like the sex.

As an aside, the description of A. Bettik makes him sound like  a member of the Blue Man Group. And. And! And, I know the Shrike is supposed to be the scariest thing in the universe but I was pretty unnerved by the description of the wraiths on the Sol Draconi System.

Line I liked, “I suppose one is surprised only when one awakens dead” (p 20). I would have to agree.

Best passage to sum up Endymion: “For years my life had been as calm and predictable as most people’s. This week I had accidentally killed a man, been condemned and executed and had awaken in Grandam’s favorite myth. Why stop there?” (p 45).

Author fact: to date I have told you Dan Simmons wrote five books which are on my Challenge list and he won the Locus Award for Fall of Hyperion. This time I learned he also wrote a book titled The Hollow Man. I won’t be reading it, though. It’s not on my list.

Book trivia: Endymion is the longest Simmons book to date. 578 pages to be exact.

BookLust Twist: again, from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Space Operas” (p 211).

Red Bones

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Cleeves, Ann. Red Bones. New York: Minotaur Press, 2009.

Reason read: I started the Cleeves series in January in honor of the Up Helly Aa festival. This is the third book in the series.

Detective Jimmy Perez has a new case. At first it is a simple open and shut accidental shooting involving his partner’s grandmother and a rabbit hunt gone wrong. Sandy’s grandmother has been found dead of a gunshot wound and Sandy’s own cousin, Ronald Clouston, confessed to hunting rabbits by moonlight. It was just a horrible mistake. Or was it? Weird coincidences start piling up. Just days before Mina’s death old pieces of a skeleton were found on her property. She had approved an archaeology dig just steps from her front door and a student, hoping to prove existence of an ancient estate on the property, discovered the bones. This same student later discovers ancient coins, proving her theory. She is elated. So, when she is found dead of an apparent suicide, supposedly despondent over Mina’s death, everyone is shocked. What is going on? It’s up to Jimmy to figure it out. While his love interest (Fran from the other Cleeves mysteries) is away in London, he has plenty of time.
A bonus to Red Bones is that Jimmy’s partner, Sandy, plays a bigger role in this mystery. Because it involves his family we get to see more of his character.

As an aside, I can see why Raven Black was everyone’s favorite. I found Red Bones a bit whiny for lack of a better term. Everyone seems really emotional, especially Sandy and not just because his grandmother died. And. And! And, why is it that Jimmy Perez is the only murder investigator in all of the Shetland Islands? He never seems to work with anyone else on a case.

Author fact: My first fact was about how Cleeves is the reader-in residence at a crime writing festival. My second fact was about the awards she either has been short listed for or has won. My third fact, taken from the dust jacket, is that she lives in Yorkshire, England (as of 2009).

Book trivia: this time there is a map of the Shetland Islands in the book (no need to go to Cleeves’ website this time).

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go again, in the chapter called “Sheltering in the Shetlands” (p 204).

Hall of a Thousand Columns

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Mackintosh-Smith, Tim. Hall of a Thousand Columns: Hindustan to Malabar with Ibn Battutah. London: John Murray, 2005.

Reason read: to continue the story started in February in honor of travel adventure.

Following in the footsteps of Ibn Battutah, the year was 1333 Battutah had now traveled to Delhi, India. Some 600+ years later and Tim Mackintosh-Smith is “hot” on his heels. Smith continues Hall of a Thousand Columns with the same wit and humor found in Travels with a Tangerine. For example here’s a line that made me giggle, “For a ship supposed to be leaving on her maiden voyage, she was being annoyingly coy about her virginity” (p 17).
Mackintosh-Smith titled his continuation of Tangerine Hall of a Thousand Columns because he felt that when IB came face to face with the hall he also came face to face with his destiny (p 31). As much as I liked Tangerine is wasn’t able to finish Hall.

More lines I liked, “Some things are meant to be found, not looked for, and this was one of them” (p 37).

Book trivia: The illustrations are great. Martin Yeoman was Smith’s companion for most of the travel.

Nancy said: Hall of a Thousand Columns was a “pleasure” (p 101).

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “In the Footsteps Of…” (p 100).

Falling Angels

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Gowdy, Barbara. Falling Angels. New York: Soho Press, 1990.

Reason read: On March 29th in 1848 Niagara Falls stopped flowing.

First and foremost I have to say this is a tragic book. I was not expecting it to be so violent, so scary or so very, very sad. The terrible thing is this: I realize there are probably hundreds of thousands of households just like the Fields out there. That thought alone makes the book all the scarier.
Second comment: Nancy included this in the chapter called “Niagara Falls” and yet Niagara Falls isn’t really in the book. It’s a memory and an end.
From the outside, the Fields family looks like your typical suburban household. Dad goes to work everyday. Mom stays home and looks after their three daughters, Sandy age eight, Lou age nine and Norma, ten. The children go to school and occasionally are seen around the neighborhood. No one questions when the family disappears for two weeks. What they don’t know is instead of going to Disney for a family vacation militant and World War III-expectant dad forces them to live in an underground bunker as training for a nuclear disaster. It is the post-war early 60s after all. No one seems to notice middle daughter, Lou, as she does all the grocery shopping for the family, or that the mother is rarely seen outside.
Go inside and the Fields household is even less of a pretty sight. Mom, practically comatose, drinks to erase a terrible memory (involving Niagara Falls). Dad has a violent temper and is prone to attack whomever is in reach when he’s in between girlfriends.
In the ten year span of the story the daughters get older and experience puberty and do so without a responsible parent to guide them. They are on their own. Each daughter copes in her own way. The end results are disastrous.

Scary line, “He was as unpredictable as a police dog”. For one, police dogs are not supposed to be unpredictable to anyone except a criminal.
Two more sad lines, “But his eyes are her eyes gone to hell” (p 105) and “Extreme happiness and terror have always felt the same to her” (p 150).

Author fact: Gowdy has her own website here.

Book trivia: Falling Angels was made into a movie in 2003 and why not? the book has sex, drugs, and death. All that’s missing is a good car chase.

Nancy said: absolutely nothing. But, as an aside: she could have included this in Book Lust in the chapter “Families in Trouble” (p 86).

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the short chapter “Niagara Falls” (p 156).

Breakfast at Tiffany’s

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Capote, Truman. Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Read by Michael C. Hall. Grand Haven MI: Brilliance Audion, 1986.

Reason read: Because I read Like Water for Chocolate in honor of March being the best time to visit Mexico instead of in honor of the Oscars I decided to chose Breakfast for the Oscars even though this year the awards were dished out in February.

Everyone loves Holiday Golightly. Holly, as she is known to her friends, seems to appeal to all kinds of men and a certain kind of woman. This sassy and shallow teenager makes her way through a Manhattan existence surviving as a society girl, an “American Geisha” as Capote called his creation. She is eye candy to dangle on the arm of a wealthy gentleman so that he might buy her dinners in fancy restaurants, expensive gifts, and maybe, breakfast or two at Tiffany’s. Holly Golightly wants to be taken seriously but she is seen as more of an unusual mystery than anything else.
Told from the point of view of her neighbor, a writer who befriends her and becomes enthralled with her (like everyone else), he wants to believe his relationship with her is different. He believes she isn’t using him because he has nothing to offer…until she has nothing to offer him.

As an aside, I am betting many more people have seen the movie than read the book.

Favorite line, “Certain shades of limelight wreck a girl’s complexion” (p 134).

Author fact: Truman Capote also wrote the short story A Christmas Memory which I make my staff watch every year because I love it so much.

Book trivia: this is actually a novella. Short. Short . Short. You can read it in one sitting.

Narrator trivia: Michael C. Hall is the same actor who played serial killer Dexter.

Nancy said: The curious thing about what Nancy said about BAT is this – she includes Breakfast at Tiffany’s in the “American Girls” chapter and then discredits the choice by saying, …all novels about female Americans abroad owe a debt to Henry James…Many of them owe at least a little something to Truman Capote’s greatest invention, Holly Golightly, heroine and heartbreaker of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, but that’s not my subject here” (p 18). Does Holly belong in this chapter or not?

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “American Girls” (p 18). See previous paragraph for my comment on this.

Treachery in the Yard

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Ibe, Adimchinma. Treachery in the Yard. New York: Minotaur Books, 2010.

Reason read: Nigeria’s new president was sworn into office March of 2005.

Meet Tamunoemi “Tammy” Peterside. If this was a television show or a movie, Tammy would be the barely playing by the rules, dripping with sarcasm, wise mouthed but good looking cop who goes rogue from time to time. He would play by his own rules but always for the best reasons, of course. He’d have a beautiful girlfriend he pretends to care nothing about but wear a fierce loyalty to his work on his sleeve. In Treachery in the Yard he is the creation of Adimchinma Ibe, designed to be around for awhile. In this first mystery Tammy needs to solve a bombing that has left several people dead and a politician wounded. Every time Tammy gets close to the truth another body finds its way to the morgue. When someone very close to him is the next murder victim, Tammy knows he has to wrap up the case and fast. The ending may seem a little predictable and Ibe makes too many references to the heat, but other than that this is a good read!

Lines I liked, “You have to spend a lot of time climbing over the bodies to get to the truth” (p 49) and “Nothing is tough if you have an Uzi” (p 143).

As an aside, for a such a short book Ibe mentions Nigeria’s poverty a lot (I already mentioned the heat). Many sentences contained the words “could not afford,” or “it was expensive,” or “no new [fill in the blank],” or “it is cheaper to [fill in the blank].” I counted nearly a dozen such phrases by page 66, not even halfway through the book. It was a little distracting.

Author fact: Adimchinma was born in 1977 which makes me older than him by a few years.

Book trivia: Treachery in the Yard is a super short novel or a longer short story. At only 146 pages one could read it in one sitting. I did.

Nancy said: Pearl said she is confident we will see more of Adimchinma Ibe “in years to come” (p 157). She was right. He has gone on to publish another Tammy Peterside mystery titled Cronies.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called simply, “Nigeria” (p 157).

Song of the Dodo

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Quammen, David. Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions. New York: Scribner, 1996.

Reason read: February is David Quammen’s birth month. Reading Song of the Dodo in his honor.

I had never fully understood the word “biogeography” until reading Quammen’s Song of the Dodo. According to Quammen on page 17 of Dodo, “Biogeography is the study of the facts and the patterns of species distribution.” More importantly, the distribution of specific species on islands does much to argue the point of origin and “survival of the fittest” and adversely, extinction.

Song of the Dodo is a scientific adventure. It will prompt you to ask questions. Here’s an example: I was particularly struck by the obvious/not-so-obvious Noah’s Ark conundrum: exactly how big was this vessel if every single species was welcomed aboard two by two? As Quammen pointed out, “Noah’s ark was getting too full” (p 34).
What about this question – who was responsible for the theory of natural selection? Quammen delves into the controversy surrounding the competition between Alfred Wallace and Charles Darwin. Again, to quote Quammen “Was Darwin guilty of scummy behavior, or wasn’t he?” (p 109).
All in all, the subject matter for Song of the Dodo could be considered dry but the writing is most definitely entertaining. Where else can you find such a scientific topic interspersed with words like crazybig, godawful, helluva, whonks, and my personal favorite, badass?

Quote I liked, “But the hapless iguana wasn’t dealing with some idle yahoo, some sadistic schoolboy with a short attention span; it was dealing with Charles Darwin” (p 232).

Author fact: Quammen has written for Rolling Stone but his two of his books, Monsters of God and The Soul of Viktor Tronko are on my list.

Book trivia: maps are by Kris Ellingsen. Also, I have to admit Quammen invoked the Saint Helena earwig so many times I had to look it up. Can’t say I’m glad I did.

Nancy said: “well written and always fascinating” (p 70).

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the long chapter called “Dewey Deconstructed: 500s” (p 70).

Fall of Hyperion

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Simmons, Dan. The Fall of Hyperion. New York: Bantam Books, 1991.

Reason read: to continue the series started in January in honor of science fiction month.

The Fall of Hyperion is a sequel to Hyperion. We return to the world of Hyperion where seven pilgrims and an infant are seeking an audience with the Shrike, a creature rumored to grant only one wish. In Hyperion the pilgrims and their life stories are laid out, allowing for the plot in The Fall of Hyperion to concentrate on the politics (the Time Tombs are opening; there is a war going on). Taking place in the 29th century and mostly in the Valley of the Tombs, each pilgrim encounters a personal struggle. We finally are introduced to the Tree of Pain where individuals are long suffering; impaled on thorns of steel and left writhing. Strange. No one is dead on the Tree of Pain. The point is they are supposed to suffer a fate worse than death. One pf the seven pilgrims end up here, but I haven’t given away his fate.
[To be honest, I had trouble knowing if and when someone actually died. I don’t think it’s a spoiler alert to say that “everyone” dies because most of them come back again, one way or another.]

As an aside – I don’t know why this matters to me, but it does. According to the written description of the Shrike the creature supposedly has four arms. Four. The Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion and even the Endymion covers show the Shrike looking more human with only two arms. What gives? Is the second set of arms retractable?

Disclaimer: I am still not a huge fan of sci-fi. I wanted to quit this one a few times over. The Fall of Hyperion wasn’t grabbing me like I thought it would. To make matters worse, judging by the awards, I read the best one first. The sequels aren’t as popular. I’m a little afraid of the next one, Endymion, because it’s even longer than The Fall of

The one quote I liked, “It was now my name but never my identity” (p 3).

Author fact: Simmons won the Locus Award for The Fall of the Hyperion.

Book trivia: Fall of Hyperion was heavily influenced by the works of John Keats (for whom the book was dedicated) and John Muir.

Nancy said: nada

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the obvious chapter called “Space Operas” (p 211).

Antarctic Destinies

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Barczewski, Stephanie. Antarctic Destinies: Scott, Shackleton and the Changing Face of Heroism. London: Hambledon Continuum, 2007.

Reason read: February is exploration month.

Stephanie Barczewski’s Antarctic Destinies is organized into thirteen different topics. She is careful to set the groundwork for Destinies with an overview of Antarctic exploration from its humble beginnings with the 1901 Discoveries expedition. She goes on to make comparisons between the 1940 Terra Nova expedition of Robert Scott and the 1914 Endurance expedition of Ernest Shackleton. The ever-present question is of heroism. Scott had a heroic death while Shackleton had a heroic survival. So what exactly is a hero? Of the two, who is more the hero? How does the public respond to failure as opposed to the perception of success? Barczewski analyzes the reputations of both before wrapping up Destinies with how each member of the different expeditions has been commemorated. She finishes with Where Are Our Heroes Now?

As an aside – someone wrote in the margins, “how does sheer luck get transmuted into survival?” They wrote a whole bunch of other gobbledygook, but I liked that question best.

On a personal note: my father was busy in the Antarctic when I was born. There is some debate as to what he was actually doing. As a member of the Coast Guard I recall he was on a Coast Guard cutter clearing ice for research vessels. Mom remembers he was actually on board the research vessel itself. But, doing what?

Author fact: a Google query brought me to a Clemson University faculty web page where a smiley Barczewski poses with Mickey Mouse.

Book trivia: Antarctic Destinies includes only nine black and white photographs.

Nancy said: nothing interesting.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “To the Ends of the Earth: North and South (Antarctic)” (p 235).

White Nights

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Cleeves, Ann. White Nights. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2008.

Reason read: to continue the series started with Raven Black in honor of Shetland’s Viking Fire Fest (Up Helly Aa) in January.

Jimmy Perez (from Raven Black) is back in White Nights. Even though this is a sequel it could be read on its own. A few characters are the same but the plot is not a continuation of the first. This time it’s  midsummer in the Shetland Islands, a time when the sun doesn’t set completely and there’s always a hint of light. It’s the time for insomnia and…murder. A stranger has come to the Shetland Islands to  disrupt the art opening of established artist, Bella Sinclair. Crying and creating a scene, he succeeds in ruining the party and then disappears into the night. When the same stranger is found wearing a clown mask and hanging from the rafters in an old fishing shed Jimmy Perez must untangle the mystery. Who was this masked man, why did he create such a disturbance at Bella’s party and why is he now dead? Jimmy is sure it’s murder. Each question leads Jimmy to clues that further confuse him. When another man is found dead, this time the nephew of Bella Sinclair, it seems obvious someone wants to hurt Bella…but why?

Author fact: last time the fact was Cleeves was the reader-in-residence for the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival & that’s still true. This time the fact is Cleeves was short listed twice for the CWA Gold Dagger Award before winning the Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award.

Book trivia: Fran (from the first book) finds the two bodies. This time Kenny finds the two bodies.

Nancy said: I think I’ll skip Nancy said part when it comes to series. Most of the time she isn’t going to say anything different about the second, third, or even fourth book.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Sheltering in the Shetlands” (p 204).

Travels with a Tangerine

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Mackintosh-Smith, Tim. Travels with a Tangerine: from Morocco to Turkey in the Footsteps of Islam’s Greatest Traveler. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2004.

Reason read: Admittedly, this is an oops read. I had Hall of a Thousand Columns on my list a few years back. At the time I didn’t realize you must read Travels before Hall so I vowed when the subject of “exploration” was to be honored again, I would circle back to Mackintosh-Smith and read Travels. The mistake lies in the fact I forgot to remove the other exploration book I had slated for 2017, Antarctic Destinies. As a result, I am reading them both.

Travels with a Tangerine takes us back to the year 1325 when the “greatest Islamic traveler” Ibn Battutah departed from Tangier on a pilgrimage to Mecca when he was 21 years old. There is nothing astonishing about someone wanting to take a pilgrimage to Mecca. What is so remarkable is where Ibn Battutah ended up. The trip took him almost thirty years and 75,000 miles. He spent his life on the road. At the same age, author Mackintosh-Smith sets out to follow in IB’s footsteps, admittedly taking short cuts because he doesn’t want to spend his entire life on this journey. But the result of this fascination is an interesting look back at the Arabic fourteenth century with eye an toward the future. Mackintosh-Smith’s humor makes it an easy read.

Quote to quote: “Then there were those reports of violence against Maghribi immigrants in Paris and Marseille, the deportations, the unimaginable shittiness of being an illegal alien” (p 31). Think about that sentence for a second. What has changed? Here’s another one, a little more lighthearted, “Defecation and ingestion of knowledge are such complementary activities” (p 105). So, that’s why men bring newspapers in the bathroom!

Author fact: Mackintosh-Smith is the winner of the Thomas Cook/Daily Telegraph Travel Book Award

Book trivia: Illustrations by Martin Yeoman. They are delightful. I especially liked the monkey on page 249.

BookLust Twist: Twisted twice – once from Book Lust in the chapter called “Here Be Dragons: the GReat Explorers and Expeditions” (p 110) and once in Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “In the Footsteps Of…” (p 100-101).