Tag: march

Gemini

gr4c5Leave a comment

Dunnett, Dorothy. Gemini. New York: Alfred a. Knopf, 2000.

Reason read: to finish the series started in August in honor of Dunnett’s birth month.

For me, Gemini was like that proverbial wall marathoners hit at mile twenty. I couldn’t imagine reading a single page more…just like runners can’t believe they still have 6.2 lousy miles to go. With its molasses-like plot I grew bored of Nicholas and his never-ending exploits. Gemini is all about heritage. Nicholas discovering his grandfather. Gelis uncovering deep dark secrets like the fact Nicholas is a surviving twin. None of it really appealed to me so I quit. I have more Dunnett on my challenge list so to continue the running theme, this is a DNF, a Did Not Finish. There will be other epic races to tackle.

Confessional: I am getting really tired of Nicholas…but you knew that.

Book trivia: the character list for Gemini is epic.

Nancy said: nothing specific about Gemini.

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

The Moor

gr4c5Leave a comment

King, Laurie R. The Moor. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998.

Reason read: to continue the series started in January in honor of Female Mystery Month.

The plot of The Moor centers around a Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes mystery, The Hound of the Baskervilles. In the swampy, foggy hills of Dartmoor residents complain of seeing a ghostly coach and a phantom dog with glowing red eyes. King introduces real life reverend Sabine Baring-Gould as a long time friend of Holmes’s who is convinced there is trouble on the moor, especially when there is an unexplained death. As the community grows more frightened Holmes calls his wife Mary away from her studies at Oxford to help him solve the mystery. In this third book of the series Mary steals the show and runs the investigation.

I had forgotten that each story is supposed to be a manuscript recovered from a trunk that was dropped on the narrator’s doorstep.

Confessional: when King mentioned the old ballad “Widdecombe Fair” I was hoping it was one Natalie might have hummed at one time or another during one of her shows. It’s not.

Author fact: King has another series set in San Francisco.

Book trivia: The Moor takes place four years after the first story, The Beekeeper’s Apprentice.

Nancy said: Pearl said in The Moor Mary became Holmes’s wife but in truth she married Sherlock at the end of The Monstrous Regiment of Women. When we catch up to the couple in The Moor they have been married for two and a half years already.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Ms. Mystery” (p 170).

Living with the Little Devil Man

gr4c5Leave a comment

Lisetta, Lina. Living with the Little Devil Man. London: Austin Macauley Publishers, 2018.

Even though this is a quick read (less than 300 pages) I took my time with this story. While it is written plainly, be forewarned it is a hard one to read. Just as I am sure it was just as hard for the author to write. In a nutshell, it is the tragic story of a young man who was pushed off the path of normalcy at an early age by abusive parents. At the age of five Sterling started seeing a little devil man; an ugly little devil who taunted and terrorized him. Unable to articulate his malicious hallucination he kept it to himself. As Sterling grew older the visions became stronger and more pronounced. To combat this torture he turned to drugs and alcohol. These mind altering vices held the little devil man at bay and gave Sterling some sense of sanity despite finally being diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. The rest of Sterling’s life was a precarious balance of normalcy and lunacy, sobriety and addiction, happiness and despair, violence and kindness, stability and unpredictability, caution and recklessness. Because no one ever knew what they would get people closest to Sterling had a hard time keeping him close. He experienced the push-pull of people wanting him near but ultimately needing him to leave. Even the author had breaking points. Prolonged stability in any part of Sterling’s life was nonexistent. There are no happy endings to Living with the Little Devil Man unless you consider the cautionary tale might save someone’s life.

As an aside, with respect to the author’s copyright wishes, I will not be quoting anything from this book as I am not intending this to be a critical review.

Reason read: Confessional – I read this for leisure. I work with Lina.

Flashback

gr4c5Leave a comment

Barr, Nevada. Flashback. Read by Joyce Bean. Grand Haven. MI: Brilliance Audio, 2003.

Reason read: Barr’s birth month is in March.

Anna Pigeon is back. This time as a park ranger on one of the islands of Dry Tortugas National Park off the coast of Florida. She’s there to fill in temporarily for another ranger who has fallen ill and run from a marriage proposal she doesn’t know what to do about. While there she takes to reading old Civil War era letters written by a great-great-aunt that play an integral part in a mystery surrounding a missing woman. When a mysterious boat explosion yields unidentified body parts Anna is in the thick of the crime; as usual getting herself into sticky situations. If you remember from earlier Pigeon mysteries, she is extremely claustrophobic. To give you an idea, the scene where she is diving under an engine to recover parts of a dead man…
In typical fashion Barr describes this national park in such a way you want to book a flight to it immediately. She captures the culture, the atmosphere with vivid detail.

Confessional: I don’t know that much about diving. I’ve only done the “snubing” version (half diving, half snorkeling where instead of wearing your air tank, it floats in a raft on the surface of the ocean). Having said that, I have to ask: is it possible to puke underwater? Can you remove your mouthpiece and spew, as a result giving the fish something new to feed on?

As an aside, I feel that Barr tries a little too hard to be funny. A reference to John Wayne Bobbit has the potential to be funny but only to a limit number of people.

Audio info: Joyce Bean’s accents are a little wonky to my untrained ear and don’t fast forward to the next track. Each track starts in mid-sentence. Really odd. The music at the end of the disc is nice, though.

Author fact: Barr also wrote Blind Descent (already read) and Hunting Season (next on my list).

Book trivia: Flashback is book number eleven in the Anna Pigeon series. I read Blind Descent (number six in the series) way back in 2011.

Nancy said: Pearl listed Flashback as one of her favorite occupation-centric mysteries.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “I Love a Mystery” (p 118).

Topper

gr4c5Leave a comment

Smith, Thorne. Topper: a Ribald Adventure. New York: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers, 1926.

Reason read: Thorne Smith’s birth month was in March.

Cosmo Topper is an odd duck and his story is an even goofier one. After hearing about a young couple tragically killed in a car accident he sets out to buy their automobile from a mechanic. He has never driven a car and so obviously he doesn’t have a license. Despite all that, something prompts him to hide the purchase of the car from Mrs. Topper as well as keep secret the subsequent driving lessons he needs in order to operate the motor vehicle. But the trouble really begins when the ghosts of George and Marion Kirby, the couple killed in the accident, start haunting Mr. Topper and their old vehicle. For lack of a better word they are troublemakers, materializing at will and causing general mayhem. Things turn scandalous when Mr. Kirby leaves his wife. Vixen Marion is left to haunt Mr. Topper by her playful self.

Quotes I actually smiled at: “Mr. topper could excuse nature and the Republican Party, but not man” (p 9), “Nearing forty and acquiring flesh” (p 17), and “Mrs. Kirby’s smile had caused Mr. Topper to feel much less married” (p 25).

Confessional: is it terrible that my favorite character was Scollops, the cat?

Author fact: Thorne lived from 1893 to 1934 and died at age forty one years of age.

Book trivia: Topper was made into a movie.

Nancy said: Pearl said “not to miss out on discovering or reacquainting yourself with Topper.” (Book Lust p 101). She then goes on to explain the plot.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Ghost Stories” (p 99).

White Sky, Black Ice

gr4c5Leave a comment

Jones, Stan. White Sky, Black Ice. New York: Soho Press, 1999.

Reason read: Alaska’s Seward Day takes place in March.

The first book in Stan Jones’s Nathan Active series has the task of painting a picture of who Nathan Active is. The character development is slow in regards to Active’s personality. Jones spends a lot of time building the backstory of Active’s adoption after his fifteen year old Inupiat mother gave him up. He was raised by a white couple in Anchorage and grew up to be a state trooper. Here’s the rub: he has been posted back in his little birth village of Chukchi where he feels torn between the cultures of his upbringing and the traditions in his blood. He’s an obvious outsider, being raised in the big city. But when atypical suicides start happening one right after the other Active decides to listen to his ancestral roots and dig in.

Confessional: because White Sky, Black Ice takes an environmental spin I kept thinking of Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver. She also tackles the theory that our planet is going to hell.

Author fact: Stan Jones launched the Kotzubue newspaper. He was also an editor for a couple of other newspapers.

Book trivia: White Sky, Black Ice is the first in the Nathan Active series.

Nancy said: Pear said nothing specific except to say White Sky, Black Ice is the first in a series.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the interesting chapter “All Set For Alaska” (p 14).

Calypso

gr4c5Leave a comment

Sedaris, David. Calypso. Read by David Sedaris. New York: Hatchett Audio, 2018.

Reason read: I am participating in the Portland Public Library Reading Challenge again this year. One of the categories is “A book nominated for an award” and Calypso by David Sedaris was nominated for an Audie Award for Audiobook of the Year for 2019.

If you are not familiar with David Sedaris’s writing, please do me a favor and stop reading this review. Do yourself a favor and run out and buy yourself a copy of any one of his books. Really. Any book Sedaris has written would be good. It really doesn’t matter with which one you start your introduction.
But probably the best way to experience Sedaris is to hear him read his own work. He has a comedic timing that is impeccably smart. Coupled this with his sarcastic wit and he will have you laughing and crying at the same time. I don’t know how he makes feeding a defrosted human tumor (his own) to a snapping turtle funny, or his mother’s alcoholism, or his sister’s suicide but really truly, he does. You find yourself in awe of how he chooses to see each situation. That viewpoint translates into a keen sense of the bigger picture and the world around him. From fashion from Japan to trash picking in England, Sedaris invites you to never see life the same way again.

Line I wish I had written, “…We stayed until our fingerprints were on everything” (from The Perfect Fit).

Monkey’s Raincoat

gr4c5Leave a comment

Crais, Robert. The Monkey’s Raincoat. New York: Perfect Crime Book, 1987.

Reason read: I needed another category for March and decided to throw this one in the mix because March is a rainy month. Get it? Sigh.

It’s really too bad I don’t have a lot more of Robert Crais on my reading list. I fell in love with wisecracking private investigator, Elvis Cole, immediately. (My only other Crais is a Joe Pike mystery.) But, back to Elvis Cole. With Cole’s affinity for Disney characters, yoga, and a cat named nothing, he is a bundle of personality and then some. He’s thirty five years old, former military and security, likes to look at the ladies and isn’t above saying something outrageous just to see someone’s reaction. What’s not to love? I took to his sarcastic kindness right away.
When we first meet Elvis, he is about to launch into a new investigation involving a weepy woman’s missing husband and son. All clues lead to Mr. Missing taking off with a sexy young girlfriend until he is found shot to death in the Hollywood Hills. What starts off as a simple missing case has now evolved into a murderous mystery involving high stakes drug deals gone wrong and bad ass thugs who will stop at nothing to regain the upper hand. It is up to Elvis and his silent (in more ways than one) partner, Joe Pike, to find Ellen’s missing son and bring him back, dead or alive. The details are a little dated (these are the days of calling from street corner payphones and Wang Chung hits), but still a good read.
Mousy mom Ellen Lang was a mystery to me. She didn’t get Cole’s joke about the humor of paramedics (keeping one “in stitches”) yet she understood that two years at the “University of Southeast Asia” meant a stint in Vietnam. Throughout the entire book she wasn’t consistent to me. Someone who was consistent and I wanted more of was Joe Pike. The inside flap described him as an enigma and that just scratches the surface of Pike’s personality. Can’t wait to read more about him later.

Quote I liked, “Everything always goes wrong whent the cameras turned away” (p 27).

Author fact: If you ever get the chance to check out the author photo on the back of The Monkey’s Raincoat, please do. Robert Crais could not look any cooler in his over-sized sunglasses, Batman tee-shirt and glowing white kicks. The pose is pretty bad ass, too.

Book trivia: The Monkey’s Raincoat won the Anthony and Macavity Awards.

Nancy said: Pearl didn’t say anything specific about Monkey’s Raincoat except to include it in a list she called “private eye novels.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “I Love a Mystery” (p 116).

Blackout

gr4c5Leave a comment

Garcia-Roza, Luiz Alfredo. Blackout: an Inspector Espinosa Mystery. Translated by Benjamin Moser. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2008.

Reason read: to finish the series started in February in honor of Brazil’s Carnival.

When a crippled and seemingly homeless man is found shot to death in a cul-de-sac in a wealthy neighborhood Espinosa knew from childhood personal intrigue is added to his professional duty to find the killer. The secluded neighborhood is up a very steep hill so why would a vagrant man with only one leg be there, especially late at night in a torrential downpour? Espinosa likes two men for the crime. Both were collecting their cars in the same cul-de-sac after a dinner party. Both men initially lie to Espinosa but one man in particular holds his attention longer. There is something about Aldo. Espinosa and his team slowly turn up the pressure on their prime suspect, showing up at Aldo’s work, following him around town, and repeatedly interviewing his therapist wife. Such scrutiny finally reveals Aldo is having an affair with a coworker. Even after Aldo’s wife is found murdered Espinosa refuses to consider he has an open and shut case. He shows considerable restraint when he does not eagerly arrest the obvious suspect.
Character development is subtle and substantial all at once. The character of Camilla Bruno was intriguing. Was she seducing patients or not? I wish I had more Garcia-Rozas on my Challenge list. I would have liked to see how Espinoza’s personality evolves. His love of books, for example.
One of the best part’s of Garcia-Roza’s writing is his elegant descriptions of the Rio de Janeiro neighborhoods (Copacabana and Ipanema specifically). I found myself playing around with Google Earth just to see how close he came to matching the true landscapes.

As an aside, I just finished watching two documentaries about how an innocent man spent considerable time in prison for a crime he didn’t commit because the state wanted to close their high profile case. Police became fixed on the wrong man and made the evidence fit the guilt instead of looking at every viable suspect out there. Espinosa would have been good on both of these cases. He certainly wouldn’t have rushed to judgement.

Author fact: Garcia-Roza is an academic and has written at least five other books which are not on my Challenge list.

Book trivia: this is the sixth book in the Espinosa series.

Nancy said: Pearl said “mystery fans can rejoice in reading Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza’s complex novels” (Book Lust To Go p 45).

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the very simple chapter called “Brazil” (p 43).

New and Collected Poems

gr4c5Leave a comment

Milosz, Czeslaw. New and Collected Poems (1931 – 2001). New York: Harper Collins, 2001.

Reason read: March is National Poetry Month in some parts of the world. Stay tuned because April is also a poetry month…in some parts of the world.

Milosz’s poetry touches on a myriad of topics. There are echoes of childhood, listening to a mother softly climb the shadowy stairs or watching a father quietly read in the library. There are a series of poems that lovingly describe a house and its inhabitants. Linked poetry that are meant to be read hand in hand with the next.
Confessional: I did not get through the entire collection. I could have kept the book through April since April is also a month for poetry, but I opted not to.

Favorite quote, “Love is sand swallowed by parched lips” (from Hymn, page 13).

Author fact: Milosz was a Polish cultural attache in France. As an aside, whenever I think of a cultural attache I think of Robin Williams in the movie, The Birdcage. I can’t help it.

Book trivia: New and Collected Poems celebrates the career of Milosz, including the very first poem he wrote at age twenty. I think it would have been cool to include angst-ridden/written poetry from when Milosz was a teenager, because you know he must have written some!

Nancy said: Nancy said Milosz’s New and Collected Poems was a “splendid introduction to those who don’t know his work” (p 187).

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Polish Poetry and Prose” (p 187).

Witch World

gr4c5Leave a comment

Norton, Andre. Witch World. Boston: Gregg Press, 1963.

Reason read: Andre Norton died in March. Read in her honor.

I always root for the underdog and in Witch World the heroes are misfits. Simon Tregarth is ex-military, a colonel who has been framed. He is on the run and needs to disappear quickly. Enter Dr. Jorge Petronius who knows exactly where to hide out hero…in the witch world of Estcarp. Petronius has a special stone he calls the Siege Perilous that can judge a man’s worth and then send him to the world best suited for his soul. Simon was sent to a medieval land where its inhabitants are at battle; perfect for a military man. The action picks up from there.

Confessional: I was a little taken aback by Sandra Miesel’s description of the enemy in her introduction. She called them “alien Nazis” (p xiv).

Quote I liked the best, “She was a bleached thing, grown in the dark, but a vitality within her was as strong as the supple blade a wise swordsman chooses over the heavier hacking weapon of the inexperienced” (p 67).

Author fact: Norton wrote her first novel before the age of 21 years old.

Book trivia: Witch World is the first book in the Witch World Series. There are at least nine other books in the Escarp portion of the series, but I am only reading the one. Fro the High Hallack Cycle I am reading The Jargoon Pard and from the Turning I am reading The Warding of Witch World. Are you confused yet? I could be.

Nancy said: Witch World is included in the list of “critically acclaimed fantasy” (p 215).

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the long chapter called “Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror” (p 213).

Slide Rule

gr4c5Leave a comment

Shute, Nevil. Slide Rule: the Autobiography of an Engineer. New York: William Morrow & Company, 1954.

Reason read: William Oughtred, the inventor of the slide rule, was born in March. Read in his honor.
Confessional: my father, being a man in love with boats and the ocean and nautical charts, taught me how to use a slide rule for navigation when I was really young. It was such a long time ago I doubt I could plot a course these days, though.

This is supposed to be Nevil Shute’s autobiography but I would say it is more a memoir about his career in aviation. He doesn’t delve into his personal life too deeply. There is nothing about his childhood, his marriage, becoming a father, or much of his writing career, for example. You don’t know much about his family life/childhood, how he met his wife, when he had children, or even how he became a writer in the first place. Slide Rule is more about Shute’s life in aviation; how he became a calculator for the firm of DeHavilland when they were designing rigid airships. What’s fascinating is his company was in competition with the government to build airbuses. After an airbus disaster Shute founded the company Airspeed, Ltd and had lukewarm success being profitable building private planes. At the start of World War II the nature of the business changed and Shute slowly started to withdraw emotionally from Airspeed. The memoir ends with him leaving Airspeed after being voted out by the board. Meanwhile, his career as an author was just starting to take flight.

Quotes I liked, “The happily married man with a large family is the test
pilot for me” (p 67), and “A man’s own experiences determine his opinions, of necessity” (p 140).
Author fact: Nevil’s full name is Nevil Shute Norway. He explains his reasons for using his Christian names alone in Slide Rule.

Book trivia: Slide Rule has a small sections of photographs, including a couple of the author.

Nancy said: Shute thought of himself as more of an engineer than a writer, according to Pearl.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the obvious chapter called “Nevil Shute: Too Good To Miss” (p 198).

Coast of Incense

gr4c5Leave a comment

Stark, Freya. The Coast of Incense: Autobiography 1933 – 1939. London: John Murray, 1953.

Reason read: to finish the autobiography of Freya Stark, started in January in honor of her birth month.

Freya Stark was born to travel. Unafraid. Unconcerned with custom, tradition or the assumed proper behavior of the single woman, Stark was a woman who did as she pleased. Long fascinated with maps she set out to be a lady “traveller” in the middle east. She thought it fun to be “a speck on the map of Arabia” (p 58). The only reoccurring obstacle in her way was illness, whether it be dysentery or the measles, or her heart, she was frequently bed ridden. Never the less she traveled throughout the Hadhramout of South Arabia. As with her other autobiographies, Stark introduces each chapter with a present day impression followed by alternating letters from the time frame. She is careful to weave memory with retrospection to build a compelling portrait of her life.

Personally, I loved her descriptions of Himyar, her pet lizard the best.

Best quotes, “…for no iron curtain yet discovered will stand against the pressure and persistence of life, and I still hope to live long enough to write about an opening door” (preface, p xiii), “..and again astonished me with the strangeness of being rewarded for what one likes to do – although it is, perhaps the best thing to be rewarded for” (p 15), and “A young Yemeni teacher comes three hours a week and Arabic is pouring back into my brain” (p 40).

Author fact: Stark was one feisty woman. Take these quotes for example, “I spent a long time the night before wondering whether I should take our little revolver and shoot the Duce as he came by” (p 6). Then there is this: “Little details one would never think of, such as one’s hostess stopping in the middle of dinner to see if there is vaseline on your knife, as it has just come out of someone’s waistband” (p 72) and “…”but I walked on, stolid and angry, with an occasional remark, on the wickedness of robbing travellers, thrown behind me” (p 246).

Book trivia: The Coast of Incense has a great collection of photographs. There is one of Freya looking like a model in Athens that I just love.

Nancy said: nothing that hasn’t already been said somewhere else.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Lady Travellers” (p 142).

Two Plays and a Premise

gr4c5Leave a comment

Dennis, Nigel. Two Plays and a Premise: Cards of Identity and The Making of Moo. New York: The Vanguard Press, 1958.

Reason read: March is National Read month. I’m reading this just because.

The entire story centers around the Identity Club, a group of psychoanalysts who come together once a year to discuss phony identity cases which don’t involve real patients. At the same time, the local townspeople are being brainwashed into believing they are servants for the psychologists. They lose their identities in order to serve the whims of the shrinks. The end of the story, which I never got to, involves a Shakespearean play. For me, the plot disintegrated midway through the story and I gave up. It started off great. The slow brain washing was sinister in places. Miss Paradise’s brother goes missing and she doesn’t recognize him as the therapists’s servant. Or calling the doctor by different names in order to confuse him. Both scenarios were funny and evil and brilliant.

Confessional: I was supposed to read the full length novel of the same title but I ordered the play instead. By the time I noticed my mistake it was too late. I never would have been able to finish the 300+ page novel in time so I stuck with the play.

Line I liked, “Many a man’s life has been thrown away through the mumbling of his survivors” (p 61).

Author fact: Nigel wrote a smattering of other books but this is the only one I am supposed to read for the Challenge.

Book trivia: Card of Identity is both a novel and a play. For the latter it becomes a play within a play.

Nancy said: Nancy listed Cards of Identity as one of her faves (p 33).

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the odd chapter called “The Book Lust of Others” (p 33). Cards of Identity was discovered in Writer’s Choice: A Library of Rediscoveries compiled by Linda Sternberg Katz and Bill Katz.

The Good Son

gr4c5Leave a comment

Gruber, Michael. The Good Son. Read by Neil Shah. Blackstone Audio, 2010.

Reason read: The history of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan begins in March.

From the very beginning you cannot help but root for Theo. He is an ex-Delta soldier trying to be the sensitive tough guy while is mother is being held captive. But, he is only part of the story. Let’s talk about the mother, Sonia Laghari, for a moment. She, along with eight other members of a symposium on peace, have been kidnapped by armed terrorists. Being a deeply religious Jungian psychologist, Sonia becomes the leader of the abducted group. Using her knowledge of the kidnapper’s language and religion she uses her Jungian psychology to interpret their dreams if only to get in their heads. She wants to instill the premise that you can simultaneously hate the war but love the soldier. Despite her own life being in danger, she attempts to generate harmony to “protect” her fellow captives. A sort of reverse Stockholm syndrome. Meanwhile, in Washington there is a Vietnamese National Security translator listening in…The Good Son combines psychology, sociology, religion, and relationships into a thriller well worth the read.

Quotes to quote, “It is easier to tell the truth to the world than to people you love” (p 125) and “Hope and some slight relief from the worst are the best weapons of any tormentor; the torturer smiles and offers a a cigarette” (p 158).

Author fact: Gruber used to be a marine biologist, a restaurant cook and a federal government official. A man of many varying hats. He could be called one of the most interesting men in the world…

Narrator fact: Shah has appeared on the television series, Law & Order.

Book trivia: Due to the nature of Sonia’s character, be prepared for a few didactic moments as Sonia interprets the dreams of her captors and recites poetry.

Nancy said: Nancy called The Good Son a “riveting thriller” (p 214).

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