Pinky (or Clarissa if you prefer) is a curious sort of youngish woman. She’s a natural detective, so when Rick, her step-brother, offered her a job as an investigator for his law firm she jumps at it.  Pinky is 33 years old, bright, courageous, funny, bisexual and awkward all at e same time.

Suspect
By Scott Turow
2022 – 
Read by Helen Laser 
Rating:  A- / courtroom-thriller 
Kindle County series #12) 

The crime she was investigating was whether the chief of police is harassing (in a sexual way) the male officers under her supervision.  Yes, the female chief is quite guilty of sexual harassment. That case is now in a high profile trial and there’s some  good courtroom drama here. 

But with that case gone to trial, the curiosity of Pinky’s life at the moment is her neighbor in #2 which is what she calls him until they meet, “Two.”.  He’s kind of strange, older than she is, single and dorky. She follows him around town as he goes on his daily walks doing nothing much .She’s simply become curious about him so after a few weeks of this he confronts her and they meet and become friendly. Still, she continues to think he’s up to something. 

Nothing else much happens until about 1/2 way through the book when a body is found and the hunt and chase is on for reals.  These are scamming cops in lots of ways and there are some very twisty plots going on. 

Turow’s writing is masterful as usual and I’d like to see this become a series but …  My only complain is that the nicknames for everyone gets confusing. 

The narrator here is excellent.  

As the result of a dare with a journalist, Enzo MacLeod , a forensic specialist, is tackling a series of 7 unsolved crimes. In this, the 4th, we find him on a tiny island off the coast of Brittany where, 20 years prior, an elderly man was murdered while his son was temporarily out of the country. He leaves instructions with his daughter-in-law not to change anything in the study as his son would deal with it when he got home.  Unfortunately the son was killed in an accident.  The widow left the room totally unchanged for 20 years – and then Enzo arrives. 

 Freeze Frame 
By Peter May
 2010 (294 pages)
Read by Peter Forbes 9h 30m 
Rating: A- / mystery 

But there had bene a trial and a man against whom ether was good evidence was exonerated because the police botched the job.  There have been very bad feelings ever since.  
That’s where Enzo is. And that’s the crime he solves.

What are the clues in the study and who killed the old man 20 years ago?  

Excellent reading –

I’d been looking at this book anyway and it might have been on my crowded Wish List. (I keep about 200  books on my Wish Lists and I pare and add regularly.) Anyway – there is was one day on sale. Okay – fine.

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: 
The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need
By Bill Gates
2021 
Read by the author: 6 hours
Rating – 8 / non=fiction- climate change 

I generally try to follow major environmental news and there is a lot of changes a lot. There’s a lot of new technology as well as increasing  threats especially in the area of climate.   

 I expected a dry and nerdy book but nope, this is a very readable book. And where I’d intended to read a chapter a day, I got involved and listened to it almost straight through. What Gates has done is to write a progress report on how we’re coming along in dealing with climate change which is creeping up on us with increasing speed.  It’s a very big job if we’re going to avoid the disaster it will be if not addressed promptly. 

For such a big job, it’s very nicely organized and clearly written.   This book made #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list the week it was released.  Furthermore Gastes is a very competent reader and there’s a pdf file if you want the photos, charts and graphs (which I did).  

Table of Contents: 
• Introduction: 51 billion to zero 
• Why Zero? 
We have to get to zero greenhouse emissions because anything else will build up and we’ll never get rid of what we have which is way too much now. Much of the knowledge and technology will have to be developed, but quite a number of policies and regulations will have to be changed because although we have some – many are outdated and it’s VERY difficult to get energy policies changed.  (But this book is NOT a political tract.) This will be hard 

 • Five questions to ask in every climate conversation:
• How we plug in 
• How we make things 
• How we grow things 
• How we get around 
• How we keep cool and stay warm 
• Adapting to a warmer world 
• Why government policies matter 
• A plan for getting to zero 
• What each of us can do.

There are drawbacks to converting to “zero” emissions. The problem is extremely complex, and innovation takes decades so we need to get busy. We don’t have all the tools we need but we have do tools which should be used now  We need to drive the green premium down.  (Green products cost more.) What can we do help the world’s poorest who have the most to lose but did the least to create the problem. 

The wealthiest countries in the world are the ones who will have to go first in developing technologies for energy, transitioning to using them, and passing/enforcing effective regulations. These are the countries who are able to do that.  There are many pathways but no matter which one we take it will be hard.  But we can do it.  

And one by one Gates describes what has to be done to fight climate change effectively. He’s got a time-line. He’s includes spending, research and development of more risky ideas – this could be international like the Genome Project and the projects could be massive and funded for years in advance, match projects to needs and use early stage research and corporations. There are lots of ideas and some of them are veery specific and promising as well as being as cost effective as possible.    

Then there are the regulations which the governments need to coordinate and develop and enforce for electricity and electrofuels.  

This is not a political tract -he doesn’t espouse either government research and innovation or individual push in those directions. It’s very pragmatic – just like the US has pretty much always been.

This “cozy” is set in Three Pines which, after I read this somewhere, is NOT supposed to be a real or realistic place. It’s a fantasy place for a certain group of people/readers.  And with this book, A World of Curiosities,  it’s needed.  

A World of Curiosities
by Louise Penny
2023/
Read by Robert Bathurst 13h 15m
Rating: B+ / / Crime-horror

I don’t know why I keep reading these books.  I finish them, but that’s a barely finished.  I get them from the library because next time I just might not finish.  But so many people enjoy them and rave, from my friends to Book Group members and even my sister.  This one was better except for the horrendous subject-matter.  How in the world did Louise Penny get labeled “cozy” or am I imagining that? Or has she changed? 

Ten years ago now-retired Detective Armond Ganache faced a case of a murdered woman and her abused children.  Now those two children are grown and back in town with all their psychological baggage. Gamach is convinced the boy is a psychopath The novel mostly takes place in that distant past but the conclusion of the story is in today’s world and that has a lot of tangents as well.  And the book took off at about 40%.   

In spite of the graphic horrors, for the most part I enjoyed this addition to Penny’s series more than any of her prior novels. I think it was because of the “then and now” structure, the complexities of the characters and the twisty and twisted  plot itself.  I think over the years I’ve read about 7 or 8 of them.  I’ll not even bother going back to the Ralph Cosham books – there were 10 of them.  Now with Robert Bathurst there have been 9 more of which I’ve read 3 and I might, with time, read some more. We’ll see.  I might stick with reading as they come out. 

 The regular characters of Three Pines include (I don’t think they’re all in this book)
• Armand Gamache, top cop in the the provincial police forcez
• Reine-Marie,  his wife, a museum curator 
• Olivier, who owns the Bistro, and 
• Gabri, Olivie’s partner,who’s in charge of the B&B.
• Myrna, who runs the bookstore.
• Clara, an artist, and her husband, 
• Peter, Clara’s husband 
• Ruth, an elderly poet.

Many readers didn’t like this book so much because the subject matter is horrific and imo, Penny might be playing with the “horror” genre. It added a lot to the suspense, I will say that.  And the idyllic Three Pines was needed even more as a respite. 

The Paston Treasure –   
https://en.wikipedia.org/wikicThe_Paston_Treasure

Myrna, the Mammy: Louise Penny’s American Dream?
 https://gykendall1.medium.com/myrna-the-mammy-louise-pennys-american-dream-b12d8cee41d2

I’ll be reading more.

This one is pure entertainment, folks.  I needed a wee bit. It’s another case of elderly people becoming sleuths. This is a rather recent development in my reading,. but I’m older now, too.. Okay – I’m 75 and have been retired for 12 years.   I loved Nancy Drew when I was 11 so the idea of senior sleuths now is right on time.  I think it’s great to have enjoyable books with characters I at least semi-identify with.  Imo, the Boomers have had another impact –  lol.  

The Marlow Murder Club
by Robert Thorogood
2022 / 
Read by Nicolette McKenzie  
Rating:  A- / cozy crime 

It’s a fun book, the first in a series,  featuring senior citizen women as sleuths.  The main character is probably Judy Potts, age 77, a long-time widow with plenty of money.  Judy lives in a kind of mansion on the Thames and keeps herself busy by creating crossword puzzles for the local newspaper. 

Becks, the first to join Judy in sleuthing,  is a very proper vicar’s wife.  And there’s Susie Harris,  a long-time divorcé and a dog-walker.  These ladies didn’t know each other prior to Judy’s neighbor being murdere but become the main sleuths in this new cozy mystery by Robert Thorogood.  This is the first book in the series and I’ll be getting #2 when it comes out.  The main characters are nicely drawn, the plot was twisty and clever and there’s humor thrown in along with a small sense of theme in the idea of “puzzles.” 

I suppose NoViolelt Bulawayo’s new book, Glory, is a satire of sorts or perhaps an allegory. (It’s NOT Animal Farm). Glory starts out at a celebration for Old Horse, the “father of the nation,” who had, in 2017, ruled Bulawayo for almost 4 decades. The military who accompany him are known as the Defenders; they’re dogs.  Other characters are goats and chickens etc but I think that serves mostly to distance the reader from the events of the book rather than to give meaning. 

Glory
By Violet Bulawayo 2022
Read by Chipo Chung 16h 10m
Rating: 9.25 / political satire 
(I finished this back in January!)

Bulawayo was planning a nonfiction book about Zimbabwe and Robert Mugabe but found that political satire would suit her purposes better. As satire it sometimes works, but it’s very difficult to laugh at something so tragic -there are very funny bits but those are in the beginnings of the book.  

The story actually takes place very generally during the presidency of “Crocodile” of Zimbabwe from 2017 until today (2021) . Prior to Mnangagwa, Robert Mugabe was “President” with Mnangagwa as Vice President.  This lasted for almost 4 decades and then Old Horse seems to want “Dr. Sweet Mother” to be Vice President possibly to succeed him as President.  This results in a. Military coup and the return of “Crocodile.”  

The plot line in the book tells the story of Destiny, a writer who has returned to her home in Jidada because she knows it’s the time of revolution. Her family and friends catch her up on what has transpired. 

This is a heck of a good book. It’s brilliant actually, if you consider language and character development and themes etc.  Except for Unsheltered (2018). I’ve followed Barbara Kingsolver’s writing career from The Bean Trees in 1992.  Imo, until now, The Poisonwood Bible was the best of the lot.  

Demon Copperhead 
by Barbare Kingsolver
2022  (896 pages)
Reaed by Charlie Thurston 21h 3m
Rating: 9.5 / contemporary fiction

But Demon (real name Damon) Copperhead  is the better book – maybe – by a hair. It’s a Bildungsroman, a coming-of-age tale, of a red-haired boy growing up as the only child of a poverty-stricken teenage mother in a single-wide shack of a trailer in the back hills of western Virginia.  Demon is smart, funny, and insightful  and it’s his 1st person story told at a much later time than when he lives it; it’s from the point of view of an adult. 

Their borrowed trailer is on a little patch of land near friendly folks in far Lee County, Virginia.  Demon enjoys playing with the boy next door who might have some problems with his burgeoning gayness/ transexuality. David’s dad is deceased by several years and his mom is an addict who tries her best by finding herself a husband after which there’s abuse added to the misery. Mom dies and Demon is put into the state system of foster homes and his own cycle of poverty.  The old neighbors from when Mom was alive remain friends and keep in very close touch as Demon moves from situation to situation. That’s how he grows up, discovering that he has talents for drawing and football and that he likes girls.  Somehow Kingsolver is enough of a writer to make this story page-turning.  

But what’s happened is that Kingsolver has taken the story of David Copperfield (by Charles Dickens, 1850) and dressed him in the fashioning him into the Demon Copperhead of 21st century rural poverty and foster homes of Appalachia in the 21st century.  Specifically this is western Virgina where the opioid crisis is going full bore and has touched the lives of almost everyone.   

Kingsolver is known for her concern for social and human issues so has pointed the plots of her books in that direction. She’s written about colonialism in Africa, climate change in Virginia, poverty in Arizona, and the opioid crisis in the Appalachia.    

It’s long but the time flew by and I’m very glad I took the time to read this.   

This was on sale at Audible the other day and I just snatched it up because it was categorized as a “memoir” and “true crime,” I enjoy a good memoir, but I really appreciate a good “true crime”.book.  But first, before I get to the substance I wasn’t to state, right up front, there are trigger points.  There’s child abuse and spousal abuse and it’s both physical and sexual.  That said, it’s not overdone.  And it’s in the context of s variously dysfunctional family.  

Nowhere Girl: A Memoir of a Fugitive Childhood
by Cheryl Diamond 
2021 / 
Read by Eileen Stevens: 10h 27m
Rating:  7.5 / memoir 

Nowhere Girl is like Tara Westover’s Educated, where the completely controlling father and, to a lesser degree, raised their children on a very rural and somewhat remote farm with their own loose home-schooling and according to strict Mormon values based on what the father believe to be Biblical.  In “Nowhere Girl” there’s no religious justification.   

 In Nowhere Girl the family hides their identities and relocates frequently; they’re “on the run,”  apparently from the law.  In both cases the children are home-schooled,  but that’s pretty close to where the resemblance ends – unless you count the egotistical and completely controlling attitude of the fathers Chiara, age 16, and Frank, age 14, are the elder children in Nowhere Girl, with Harbhajon (called Bhajan by the family), is much younger. She’s the 1st person narrator, our memoirist. 

“Memoir” is one of those nonfiction categories where “truth” has pretty forgiving boundaries. Memoirs are written according to the author’s memories and it’s their story so they get to tell it.  With Diamond’s book I’m not sure how much I really believe happened as she tells it. I think there’s some less than forthcoming parts. But even with that,  I’m sure most of it is accurate or her point of view as indicated. But there are some emotional scenes toward the end which feel were simply nice to write.

Nowhere Girl is told in chronological order and paced at about a chapter or so a year from when Bhajan is about age 5 or 6 until she is 15 or 16. It’s hard to have friends when you move all the time, but what you learn is often transferable – if you aren’t too stressed. Bhajahn learned languages and gymnastics and the basic academics but she dropped out at about age 16.

Dad has extremely high expectations of everyone but himself and the family really isn’t up to that kind of perfection. And then his self-discipline starts to slip. 

Meanwhile, just like in Educated, Mom puts up with it and continues to be as loving as she can be. (They seem to be agreed on the need to move frequently and stay in hiding, but I won’t spoil things with the reason.) In school, two of the children, Bhajan and Frank are tremendous athletes competing in swimming and gymnastics. Chiara, the eldest seems to be mostly angry although they are all hurting.

The story is entirely from the point of view of “Alicia” or “Crystal” (Bhajan to her family) and other name. All three children become totally dependent on the parents for every single thing in modern life – like not knowing not to stand in the middle of a bike lane.  

There seems to be enough money although to avoid detection and they pay cash everywhere – the money may come from illegal sources, but they have criminal-type friends in various locations, too.  

There is abuse of all kinds. “This family functions on the edge of a precipice,” so Mom and Bhajan really try  to believe that “nothing has happened,” and that  “loyalty, dedication and believing in tomorrow” will hold them together.  – And I’ll still my fingers there.

I chose this book for a Reading Challenge because it was on my Wish List anyway and it just sounded good,  but I think I expected a good old-fashioned PI story set in the wilds of Alaska. As I got into it the plot and character Yamashita’s debut novel got better and better.  

City Under One Roof
by Iris Yamashita 
2023 / 
Read by Aspen Vincent, Shannon Tyo, Anna Caputo
8h 9m 
Rating: B / mystery 

I think I expected a good old-fashioned PI story, but what I got was way more than that. Mettier, Alaska is fictional but based on a small town called Whitter which is about 60 miles east of Anchorage. The town has one big living complex where a total of maybe 300 people live.  They get there via a tunnel through a mountain and there’s another tunnel to the school.  Check out the bottom of this book review: https://lesasbookcritiques.com/city-under-one-roof-by-iris-yamashita/

But unlike Whittier,  Point Mettier is like a clichéd book jacket blurb which reads “everyone has their secrets.”  LOL! – Very true here, why else would folks live in such a remote and inhospitable place?  

The fictional “city under one roof” is called Point Mettier in real life and it’s at the very northern part of Alaska,  up by Point Barrow.Closer to Anchorage there is a town called Whittier where most of the 300 residents live under the one roof of an old US Army Corps of Engineers building. That’s not this. 

AMY, a teenage girl, and her friends find a human hand and a man’s boot while they are hanging out together. The boot contained a severed foot. Detective Cara Kennedy arrives from Anchorage to help Police Chief Shipley and his cohort, Joe Bokowsky aka J.B. 

Cara starts right in rather abruptly asking questions.  There are some strange people in the town and they all know each other – or think they do.  They all value their privacy and don’t like folks asking too many questions – especially, it seems, police folks.  

Lonnie is a young woman who is somewhat retarded and enjoys walking her moose, Denny, around on a leash. Amy, who found the body parts, is a Chinese immigrant who lives with her mother, runs a Chinese restaurant and delivers Chinese food to the residents.  

  These folks are not really suspects they’re more like witnesses but some of them are more involved than they’d like to be.  There’s a rumor that Mrs Wright used to be a bank robber.  

And then comes the storm.  

This is the debut novel of Ray Naylor whose prize winning short stories have been regularly published in both magazines and anthologies for many years.   I’m so glad I discovered him and hope to see more thoughtful and imaginative work by him.  

The Mountain in the Sea
By Ray Nayler 
2022 – 
Read by Eunice Wong – 11h 5m
Rating:  A+ / science fiction  
(Both read and listened)

From the book (See? this is not the stuff of space opera). 
 “I was a nautical engineer, before all of this. This—” He gestured around them, to the darkened, sweat-stinking barracks lurching in the storm. “This world didn’t exist. It was a story in the news. A story I clicked past without reading. Autotrawlers crewed by slave crews. Another world, a degraded shadow of our own. How was I to know there was a hole in the world that I could fall through, like falling through an open manhole? That I could fall right through that story in the news, and end up on the other side, on a planet I don’t even recognize? And become a person I don’t recognize.”
P. 280

“What does it mean to be a self? I think, more than anything else, it means the ability to select between different possible outcomes in order to direct oneself toward a desired outcome: to be future-oriented. When every day is the same, when we are not presented with the necessity to choose between different possibilities, we say we don’t “feel alive”—and here I think we guess at what being alive actually is. It is the ability to choose. We live in choices” 
 p. 285 

****************

In the not-too-distant future the earth Ha Nguyen, a marine biologist specializing in octopuses, is sent to do some research and help out at an environmental refuge near the island of Con Dao, just off the coast of Vietnam. There were strange happenings there and a corporation called DIANIMA bought the island and animal refuge, evicted the residents and is now trying to harvest whatever is left via AI manned and controlled fishing vessels.  But as I said, strange things are happening and they’re not cute, like there are the mysterious attacks with dead bodies left on the beach. And there are shadowy shapes floating around.

Ha is to meet Evrim (male/female name which means evolution) who appears to be human, but is neither male nor female and it’s only “their” consciousness which is in question. All the Turing tests have been passed.  Evrim is a product of a research overseen by Dr. Arnkatla Mínervudóttir-Chan, who visits to see how her project is doing (actually Evrim has been relocated to this island permanently because the powers-that-be are nervous.)  

 Ha has agreed to study a rumored and hidden octopus colony for signs of conscious behavior or communication skills. Evrim is to help her in this endeavor as is Altantsetseg, a Mongolian war veteran who is to defend the island and the octopuses, but her tactics can be repugnant to Ha.  There are also three guys named Rustem, Eiko and Son who each have reasons for being there. And the “auto-monks” who provide an apparently spiritual presence are wonderful.   

The themes are inter-species communications, what constitutes “human” behavior (lots of things), and the ravaging of the planet by humans who seem to do it because they can.  

Naylor does an excellent job of defamiliarizing the setting and building a world so the reader is tossed pretty much right into the action. The characters are very nicely individualized and the story alternates between the points of view of two or three of them. (I loved Altantsetseg.) The writing is smooth and to the point with dialogue being a strength. And Nayler keeps the attention high by using unusual words to underscore that this is not a novel of everyday sensibilities. The words are not Biblical or techie stuff but just unusual ones like “bolus” as an descriptor noun for a coconut macaroon – “a small rounded mass of a substance, especially of chewed food at the moment of swallowing.” Or another odd word is “dugong” which is a species of sea-cow.

 This book is advertised as a thriller and I won’t argue, but there are many slower and more thoughtful parts where the themes are intelligently developed.  At the beginning of each chapter there’s an epigraph taken from the (fictitious) books of Dr Ha Nguyen and Dr. Arnkatla Mínervudóttir-Chan.

So I finished those two books about the Romantics of Jena, but between them I’d started Time of the Magicians by Wolfram Eilenberger which I purchased on sale a few months ago. After I finished Jena, 1800 I started the Eilenberger book from where I left off, but I was going to get very confused so I started over. And then I got involved at almost half way through. Those who read this blog will know it’s not unusual for me to start over with a book I’m enjoying but feel a bit lost in.  Yes – I did it again.  (It might be my age – I didn’t do this 10 years ago.) 

Time of the Magicians 
by Wolfram, Eilenberger
Translated by Shaun Whiteside
2020 / 431 pages  
Read by Rhett Samuel Price; 13h 
Rating – 9.5
(Both read and listened) 

Time of the Magicians is about the early 20th century philosophers Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, Ernst Cassirer and Walter Benjamin. Wittgenstein was originally from Vienna, Austria, but the others were distinctly German. I was familiar with Wittgenstein and Heidegger but not the other two. All four have a reputation for being difficult to read and understand. (My compre-hension went in and out, maybe equally.) 

The book is essentially a limited group biography of the above-named philosophers focusing on the years between 1919 and 1929. Wittgenstein and Heidegger were 30 years old in 1919, Benjamin was 29, and Cassirer, at 48, was the eldest. Wittgetstein and Cassirer were born into wealthy or well-to-do Jewish families and Benjamin was also from prosperous Jewish parents.  Heidegger, on the other hand, was born into a working class Catholic family and later joined the Nazi Party. He also became the lover of Hannah Arendt who was Jewish and is now renowned in her own right.  

 Although he was born Jewish and never actually converted, he said he accepted Christianity when he fought during WWI and he had a Catholic funeral. As a relatively young man he gave his entire estate to hie siblings when he wanted to be free of it.  Heidegger served as a meteorologist in WWI,  He Benjamin was found unfit for service due to illness and then feigned illness to stay out of the service. Cassirer worked as a civil servant in Berlin during WWI. 

The book starts out in 1919, WWI had just barely ended and what was philosophy to make of that? It seemed like the old systems really didn’t work in this shattered world. What was one to make of a war which should never have happened and when it did was to take about 6 weeks? What can we know, anyway? How should we live? What is philosophy? And it seemed like language was tangling it all up – , too. The four philosophers each had their own ideas but getting them down on paper proved to be quite a challenge.

Wittgenstein and Benjamin seem to have had mental difficulties along the way – Benjamin’s more severe than Wittgenstein’s.  Heidegger and  had other problems and Cassirer seemed pretty level- headed.  

The book is very well organized and nicely written. I really thoroughly enjoyed the first 3/4. But then things got complicated and the ideas sometimes escaped me – maybe I got tired.  Eillenberger is a good writer though – he’s clear and sticks to the point using a lot of material from the works of his subjects.  He uses short chapters which are spread out across 8 parts plus a Prologue and an Epilogue.  There is also the Notes section – mostly source notes as well as a Selected Bibliography and a section of black and white photos. 

My first evening with the book I really didn’t want to go to bed but … it’s not a quickie read.

I was still hungry for more info on these people who made up the Jena Set of early Romantics in Jena, Germany – as written up by Andrea Wulf in Magnificent Rebels (my review/this site).  I’d been confused for about half of Magnificent Rebels and then read it a second time loving it.  (I think I’d missed some the first time though.)  Anyway – I’d seen this book available and went over to Audible and after listening to about a chapter or two of it I got the Kindle version to go with it.  

Jena 1800: The Republic of Free Spirits
By Peter Neumann 2021 
Translator – Shelly Frisch
251 pages 
Read by Christa Lewis 
Rating – 9.5 – / European History 
(both read and listened)

Given that both books are basically about the same small group of people writing at the same place and time, Wulf and Neumann focus on different things.  They feel quite different and both books are great – both 9.5/10  –  but where Neumann’s is much shorter, it’s denser. (Fwiw,  there are 868 pages, with 461 pages of text, in Wulf compared  to 250 pages and about 200 pages of text in Neumann.). Wulf’s notes are basically source notes and Neumann’s notes are more comprehensive. 

I’m really glad I read Magnificent Rebels first because I was confused enough as it was with all those names. I was familiar with the van Humboldts and Novalis plus a bit of Goethe and Hegel.  I read Wulf’s excellent book about Alexander von Humboldt, The Invention of Nature in 2021. All the other names I’d only come across in my reading. That’s it; I didn’t know Schlegel from Fichte, much less their wives. I kind of knew the French Revolution – LOL.

Some reviewer gave Jena 1800 a very lukewarm review,  but I don’t agree at all. Neumann IS a poet and a philosopher with several prior books to his credit although this is the first one translated. There is more information on history and philosophy and less on the tangled domestic issues of the characters.  I think there must be a wealth of information out there in letters and other documents about the Jena Set (as Wulf calls them) during this time.  But imo, it seems Neumann knows better how to explain the philosophy.

A joy to read. 

This is the first of the long running Kate Shugak series which continues into 2023. That’s pretty much what I’ve been looking for – something to keep me going (as though I don’t have enough to read)! – lol.    https://www.fantasticfiction.com/s/dana-stabenow/kate-shugak

A Cold Day for Murder 
by Dana Stabenow 
1992 –  
Read by Marguerite Gavin 5h 27m
Rating:  C / crime  
#1 in Kate Shugak series

A couple chapters in I was really having some second thoughts, but then Stabenow threw some genuinely funny lines in there and things picked up for awhile.

Kate Shugak has moved to her family home in a remote national park in the Alaskan wilderness to be a ranger there. At the moment her job is to find two men who disappeared in the winter cold – one is anther ranger, the others is a man sent to find him. Kate has to interview whomever she meets, hunters, bar patrons, family, tourists, pipe-liners, lovers of the outdoors to see if anyone has seen them.

But nothing seems to be happening, in part because we’re being introduced to some of the regulars for the series, My enthusiasm waned. The coarseness and humor in the dialogue was over the top.The book is only 5 hours long but still, it got old.

In asking around Kate finds out that her cousin Xenia was “seeing” Miller, the missing ranger. This is very upsetting to both Xenia’s brother and Kate’s grandmother who is a real eccentric. And Xenia is very upset aw well because of some gossip. There’s no shortage of suspects.

But first, is Miller even dead?  He’s been completely missing for 6 weeks. In itself, that doesn’t mean he’s dead but, where’s the other guy?  

I was terribly disappointed with this one so if you’ve been considering it, don’t bother. The plot was mediocre and although the characters were interesting the dialogue was trying way too hard for stand-up comic routine. The ending was satisfactory.  

I’m not big on classic science fiction, but I believe this was first recommended by someone whose tastes I trust, (but who was that???) so I checked it out and sure enough, it was re-issued this year (2023) and the New York Times did a very nice review of it. According to Wikipedia, it’s not Sherriff’s best selling nor most acclaimed work, but it’s great fun and, as the Times said, it’s timely.  

The Hopkins Manuscript 
by R.C. Sherriff 
Read by Nicholas Boulton, Lameese Isaaq  
11h 39m 
originally published in 1939
Rating; A /  classic dystopian fiction

Wikipedia, see above, identifies it as “a social-political dystopian novel” and goes on to report the book’s publishing history – it’s not been kept secret.

Whatever – after a brief Forward relating how, far in the future, the manuscript was found, and a chapter of how the narrative came to be written, the story is revealed. It’s the compelling self-told tale of one Edgar Hopkins, a retired 40-something school teacher who lives alone near a small town in rural England. Hopkins is a smug little man who thinks quite highly of himself and that can be quite humorous at times.

The year is indefinite but, except for the Forward, it takes place in  the near future for when it was written – maybe 1946 or so. The rather pretentious Hopkins keeps busy with raising prize-winning chickens for breeding and is a member of the London Lunar Club.  One evening the club members are told in confidence that a disaster is coming. It seems the moon has gone just slightly off course and will collide with the earth in a few year’s time.  The members of the Club should obviously be informed – because they’ll likely notice on their own, but they are sworn to secrecy. That’s quite difficult for Hopkins, but he manages to keep the secret.   

Several months later the general public is informed of the reality of their situation, but there is no panic as was feared. First, there was no real comprehension and then … well … no spoilers but things get exciting while staying funny for some time.  Hopkins meets his. young neighbors, a brother and sister who live with their aunt and uncle and the three become close as the catastrophe looms nearer, precautions are taken, and then … well …

This is a really interesting and well-written story and cautionary tale of sorts. The narration is wonderful.  I’m so glad it was re-issued as it is an excellent book for our times – for any times.  

https://web.archive.org/web/20081214213240/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,761815,00.html

I wrote a blog entry about this book but it’s pretty sketchy because as I was reading it for the second time I realized I hadn’t even finished it the first time. As far as I can figure, I fell asleep and lost my placed, and finished a bit more and decided to wait. Then I thought I’d actually finished and wrote what I was capable of. LOL!

Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics
and the Invention of Self
by Andrea Wulf 
2022: 868 pages 
read by Julie Teal: 15h 1m
Rating: 9.5 / 18th century European history 
(Both read and listened)

But because it’s for a reading group I did intend to read it a 2nd time. So when I picked it up a few days ago and really got into it again I discovered, after awhile, that some of this was new! I checked the highlights in the back of the Kindle and sure enough – there were several chapters without a single highlight. That means something to me – LOL!

Okay -it’s a good book. I’m not going to give it a 10 because it’s not THAT good but it’s better than I thought it was. The latter chapters get better and better – especially the last Part of the Epilogue.

The characters are drawn well enough they almost feel like family. The settings could be better handled. I was more interested in the philosophies and the poetry than I was in the gossipy antics of the Set but some of that was kind of fun. It was the ending that connected the pieces for me.