Becky's Books –

I’m reading this one for a strange challenge in the 4-Mystery Addicts (4-MA) reading group

The challenge is to read one book from the on-going Top 100 authors list the group has compiled by vote over the years. The book would preferably be by an author you haven’t read. I’ve read book #s 1-25, so here we are into #s 26-50.

Ghost Hero
by S. J. Rozan / 2011 
Read by: Emily Woo Zeller 8h 57m
Rating:  B+ / mystery-detective
(Lydia Chin/Bill Smith #11

This is a straight detective novel with a private investigator and a bit of a thriller thrown in. There’s very little violence or romance which is nice. 

 American-Born Chinese PI Lydia Chin is a New York City PI of Chinese heritage. She gets a visit from Jeff Dunbar, an art collector who wants to know if a certain rumor is true.  It seems that quite suddenly there are rumors of new art works on the market, art works by Chau Chin.  If the rumors is true and if the paintings can be found and if they’re are authentic this is tremendously important and worth a lot of money. If not … well … it wouldn’t be surprising because Chau Chin, aka Ghost Hero, supposedly died at the Tiananmen Square uprising back in 1989.   

But Jack Lee, another PI, is also looking to find out about the paintings, and Lee is working for someone else who wants to find the paintings, if they exist. Jack is a professor at NYU. 

There could be any one of several reasons for these paintings to suddenly appear decades after their author is supposed to have died: 1. someone has been keeping them, 2, they’re forgeries, or 3, the artist, Chau Chun, is alive somewhere. He’s not called the Ghost Hero for nothing. 

The main characters are nicely developed. Bill Smith, Lydia’s partner in business and detecting, is multi-talented, enthusiastic, and knows a lot of people. Lydia’s mother doesn’t like him but that’s okay – Bill and Lydia don’t seem to be personally involved. I had to get used to the wise-cracking style but it was fine when I did.

The main problem I had was the narrator. The accidents were distracting and she was unable to differentiate between the male and female voices.  The best part was the ending, I’m glad I read it.

In the Washington Post of May 3, 2022:  

Teens fight for the right to read with ‘banned-book clubs’ and lawsuits
By Hannah Natanson
https://tinyurl.com/u2tt5nha
(Washington Post)

If you don’t get past the paywall at WaPo the gist of the article is that at a public high school in Austin,Texas (Leander School District) some of the students are working to get to read these books in spite of the school ban.  

I think it was back 20-25 years ago when Banned Book Week first came to my attention. Or maybe it was 30 years. It was started in 1982 by the American Library Association and I supported it generally, but imho it was nonsense.  Yes.  My problem was with the meaning of the word “banned.”  I knew Ulysses had been banned but that was lifted in 1933 or so.  Ulysses was banned as being” a novel which… might cause American readers to harbor “impure and lustful thoughts.”  But the ban was lifted. So in today’s world, what does “banned” mean? These are the books which were/are banned by the US government: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_books_banned_by_governments#United_States

Considering the problems in US schools and some fresh thinking, I’ve kind of changed my mind. But this country has changed too. In my days as a teacher (1987-2011) a few books were “banned” or challenged for being socialist or communist but that was it (that I knew of).  

And I think I may have read a few books in my Kindergarten classroom which were or had been banned somewhere. Leo Lionni was said to be a communist – well no – but he was close. I read lots and lots of his books – no one EVER complained.  
https://tinyurl.com/34w5psue (Publisher’s Weekly)

I was taking the term “banned” to mean by the government or something. The Post Office used to be big on this and the military still does it but that might be a different story.  So the “banned book list” included To Kill A Mockingbird and Grapes of Wrath and so on. Who cares?  I should read them now, in 1998, and get some kind of vicarious thrill out of thinking I’m being brave or liberal or whatever – avant garde? LOL!

At that point I didn’t count schools in my thinking because the kids or their parents could still get the books in lots and lots of places.  These books weren’t “banned” in any sense of the term with which I was familiar,  especially not after the advent of the internet. The old sales heading of “Banned in Boston” just didn’t cut it anymore. (I know – I’m showing my early Boomer-ness.)

** Fwiw,  I banned “All In the Family” in my home – my kids at ages 4 and 6 were not old enough to have a clue what satire was about.  I could just see them calling their little friends at school and in the neighborhood (a very inclusive area in San Jose) “jungle bunny” or something – I mean – it gets a laugh on TV.  In fact, I did overhear one child calling another child “black” whereupon my daughter said,  “He’s not black, he’s polka-dot!” And I thought to myself that I was probably doing a fair job.  🙂  ** 

Now?  I think this school text banning has gone a bit too far, but otoh, if parents want these books for their kids I strongly encourage them to go get them – they’re right there at Amazon – probably every single one of them and more.  Maybe even at the public library, who knows?  Because the American Library certainly supports freedom to read.  (You know this is the 1st amendment.) And just as a “note from teacher,” it would be super-helpful if parents read and discussed stuff with their kids anyway (all ages!)  

*When I was in school there were no Nancy Drew books in the school library. I was annoyed but my mom thought this “omission” was a good idea because Nancy Drew was not literature. So I never got Nancy Drew as a gift, or any book for that matter – not as long as there was a public library in town.  But, yay, the public library had them and my mom didn’t interfere with what I actually read. If I could get my hands on it I could read it.  LOL!   

*When I was in school there were no Nancy Drew books in the school library. I was annoyed but my mom thought this “omission” (not “banning”!)  was a good idea because Nancy Drew was “not literature.” I never received a Nancy Drew book as a gift, or any book for that matter, not as long as there was a public library in town.  

But, yay, the public library had them and my mom didn’t interfere with what I actually read. If I could get my hands on it I could read it.  LOL!   

“Although the books outperformed any other long-running literature series, they were banned by librarians and educators throughout the United States for “debauching and vitiating” a child’s imagination.  Considering the public’s overall admiration for and enjoyment of the mystery stories, perhaps the bad reviews may also be contributed to Stratemeyer’s cutting edge creation of a brave female detective.”

https://www.literarytraveler.com/articles/nancy-drew-a-stratemeyer-family-enigma/

At this point I do NOT approve of some self-selected bunch of right-wing probably Christian idiots storming the school board meeting and screaming at them and forcing the issue their way. The school board members are simply grabbing books as named, not as they’ve read! I hope the general public sorts this one out at the polls.  

And what did my precious innocent little students see on the playground before and after school?  A couple of moms holding hands and bringing the kid to school – maybe having a bit of a kiss between the adults as they waited. But none of the kiddos ever asked even one single question. (I would have said, “That’s a family question – you need to ask your family.”).

I’m wondering if some sex-police are going to be hired by the school district to keep propriety on the campuses. And I wonder about the head of ??? who was transexual. He changed from man to woman, back to man and then again to woman! We were advised early on NEVER to mention it in his presence – I think the powers-that-be feared the omnipresent lawsuit.  

My point is that this is REAL LIFE, folks. Situations like this might never have even been thought of, much less occurred, back in the 1950s where you were growing up in those simpler times, but it certainly does today – “right here in River City.” (I lived in a small town in California, population 50,000.)

Sorry for the length of this.  No, I don’t entirely trust teachers who seduce their 15-year old students. But I do trust the American Library Association and the school can go by that or the state curriculum or some other approved source.  

Right now, thanks to ebooks and subscriptions to services, schools are being supplied by huge networks of educational book suppliers and it’s kind of crazy to check ALL the books in the suppliers’ catalogues and/or for the supplier to manage their requests.  LOL!  Imagine some supplier dealing with both the Berkeley school district and a rural Iowa school district – or some rural school district in Michigan and a liberal school district in Texas (like Plano Texas).  – (Not meaning to put geography in on this.) 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banned_Books_Week

This came out a few years ago but I dragged my feet so other books got in the way.  But it was available at the library the other day so I snatched it.  Yay me! I read and very much enjoyed this although I encountered some difficult parts.  It’s not a biography nor does it pretend to be.  O’Farrell did considerable research though and it was nominated for the 2021 Walter Scott award for historical fiction, among other prizes. 

Hamnet
by Maggie O’Farrell
2020 / (321 pages)
Read by Ell Potter 12h 42m
Rating 9 / historical fiction 

The tale is that of a family with 11-year old twins of which the boy dies during the time of the Black Plague in England. The whole title is, “Hamnet: A Novel of the Plague” and the Dedication reads “To Will.” Hamnet/Hamlet died in 1596.

In the 1580s a couple living in Stratford,  had 3 children including a set of twins.  The boy died in 1596 at age 11.  Four years later the father wrote a play called Hamlet which was staged by 1601. The names Hamnet and Hamlet were interchangeable in that day and place or so says Steven Greenblatt – renowned Shakespeare scholar (whose books I’ve actually read). Very little is known about Shakespeare and his family life, but his name does come up in the Stratford documents and that’s about all we really know.  O’Farrell pretty much invented the rest of the novel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shakespeare.
I’ve read very different inventions of Shakespeare’s life.  

This story has three (or more) separate timelines plus backstories so it’s easy to get confused. It all comes together about 2/3 of the book.  

Above all, this is a story of deep grief. A beloved boy is dead and how do those who loved him get over that? The characters are wonderfully well developed, the setting is bucolic if not particularly atmospheric, and the plot, although slow, is compelling. It’s the writing which stands out. The language and the cadence are pitch perfect.  The narrator does it all justice.  

I read the following this morning and agreed so much I had to repost. It’s from a blog I enjoy. I might just take to doing a few different things once in a great while. Maybe I’ll post a political comment, or a recipe or perhaps even a wee bit of personal gardening info. I do more stuff than read – (not a lot more but some wee bit more).

This book is way over my head.  To me it sounds like someone from a post-grad (or post-doc) psych class went to City Hall and gave them a little Saturday “workshop” on how they can learn to agree and have productive discussions through value integration and agreement technology.  LOL!   

Developmental Politics
How America Can Grow Into a Better Version of Itself
by Steve McIntosh
2020 / 248 pages
read by Josh Innerst
rating: 4 / Politics and Soc. Sciences
(both read and listened)

So after Chapter 1, I started over in an attempt to get my head sorted out starting with the vocabulary. I don’t think this is for newcomers to the work of McIntosh. I think he may mean something pretty specific when he uses words and phrases like Integral Philosophy.This book is outlining the political side of a spiritual issue which he developed in his 3 prior books. And McIntosh has a heavy background including creating a “think tank” with colleagues which is “dedicated to applying an emerging ‘developmental’ perspective to America’s political challenges.” (Loc 169 in Preface. (The think tank is called the Institute for Cultural Development and it’s at https://www.culturalevolution.org

After outlining the Institute’s brief history, McIntosh goes on to introduce the scope and sequence of the book. He’s very methodical -introduce, detail, conclude – so the book reads a bit like a textbook. The Chapters are divided into 2 main Parts – the first analyzes the current political culture and associated “worldviews” and “introducing a method for overcoming hyperpolarization.” He includes political philosophy and gives examples but he doesn’t get into specific issues because that “would only leave us bogged down in the stalemated duopoly we need to escape.” (oh.) So the prescription is to be beyond “left” or “right” or “center” and be “beyond.”

In Part II McIntire tells us that he is saying we need to “update our political philosophy to account for the radical social changes (of) the past fifty years.” and the ends the Preface with:

“As we will see, the evolution we require must include both the personal growth of a critical mass of our citizens, as well as the collective maturation of our culture as a whole. Fostering positive growth at both of these levels simultaneously is thus the mission of developmental politics.”

So that’s what he does. It reads like an earnest and masterfully well organized textbook. I had to start over again after Chapter 4 because I really wasn’t sure about some of the seemingly specialized terminology.

Bottom line, I certainly wish him and his group the very best of wishes. This book was written before Covid even came on the scene, much less the “stop the steal” conspiracies. Unfortunately, imo, those have been distractions and the polarization continues – maybe more fiercely. And climate disaster is looming. Lots of people will change their minds about Trump but they’ll all continues to be terrified of “liberals,” and will never (ever) vote for one. Where does that put Mr McIntosh’s ideas re “political development” and “evolution:” unless he puts the personal spiritual condition first and foremost (to get an “in”) in which case nothing will change. (That’s what the book sounded like to me.)

I could say a LOT more about this but I’ll hush.

On Juneteenth has been on my Wish List at Audible since it was published last year.  I read a lot of African American lit anyway so I figured since it’s Juneteenth right now, just do it. I’m glad I did.

On Juneteenth
by Annette Gordon Reed
2021 / 
Read by Karen Chilton 3h 44m
Rating: 8/ memoir-US history  

It was quite shocking when I first learned about the events of Juneteenth and I thought that with this book I was going to get more about the history.  I knew Galveston and the landing of the US ship. Nope – the book is not about the origin of the holiday. And I knew how slaves got to Texas in spite of slavery being against the law in Mexico which at that time included Texas. 

But Reed was after a different story. She’s a native Texan and she’s Black with a family history going back in Texas more than a couple generations, so this is a natural book for her. And a lot of it is a memoir of Reed’s childhood in a small East Texas town of Conroe where White Supremacy reigned.  The town is 7 miles west of Montgomery, Alabama.  Reed was the first to integrate her elementary school at age 6 but other than that and family stories there’s not a lot of memoir material.

There’s more about racial issues in Texas in general. Much of this is really interesting to me because the closest I ever came to living in a slave state was when I lived in Brownsville, Texas between 1978 and 1980. But in Texas, after Reconstruction, there were Jim Crow laws as well as “extra-legal violence.”  The city of Conroe was a particularly harsh town for Black people,

The book is a compilation of 6 essays which don’t have to be well joined. But they seem to wander around.be looking for meaningful substance. The writing is wonderful though and the subject matter is interesting so I’m very glad I read it.   

First – I finished the book at a reasonable time last night and then stayed awake until 3 am even with a couple of Tylenol PM at 11 pm – whatever –  I watched the interview (below) this morning.  

When We Cease to Understand
the World
by Benjamín Labatut
Translated by Adrian Nathan West
2020 – 
Rating – 10 – historical fiction
(read and listened)

First –  I LOVED THIS BOOK!!!!!  

“An extraordinary ‘non-fiction novel’ weaves a web of associations between the founders of quantum mechanics and the evils of two world wars.”
(From the publishers, but “non-fiction novel” was originally from John Banville in the Guardian  – the whole quote is found in several “reviews. And at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjam%C3%ADn_Labatut

And Labatut said “…it is a book made up by an essay (which is not chemically pure), two stories that try not to be stories, a short novel, and a semi-biographical prose piece.” 
(Ibid)

 I’ve never quite known what to think about “nonfiction novels” since I first heard that in connection with Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood” (1966) which I read when it came to my library’s Recently Released shelves. There are a quite a number of mixed genre books like  this though and Capote’s was by no means the first.   

Labatut addresses this seeming contradiction in a very educational and entertaining interview with Lawrence Weschler at: 
https://tinyurl.com/3atvpdat
( https://www.nyrb.com/products/when-we-cease-to-understand-the-world?variant=37890166784168 ) 
I think they used Zoom and the backgrounds for the two speakers are outstanding – each man is in his nest surrounded by books  

And it is a superb interview – one of the best I’ve ever seen.  Labatut is a hunk and they’re both pretty smart and funny. I was as glued as I get these days. 

Imo, about fiction/nonfiction, we have the former which is pretty much all imagined.  Then we have the latter which is either verifiable info via reliable sources or it’s some good critical thinking stuff.  In between we have “based on the real story” and “creative non-fiction” and finally the “non-fiction novel” in the order of how much imagination is involved.  I’ve read all those kinds plus memoirs which are often a blend and there are probably more – . 

So imo, “When We Cease To Understand The World” is indeed a non-fiction novel.
It’s a “novel” in that the stories are pretty much in chronological order from 1868 through today (2020) with some overlap. The work has integrity. It has balance. It has a story arc with increasing tension as you get further along in it.  

Also because although it’s indirect and over space and time, the characters do affect each other. And finally there is a plot – The overarching plot is the development of scientific/mathematical concepts from almost purely material, observable and measurable to almost purely abstract.  I’d say the main theme is “what happens when “We Cease to Understand the World.”  

The basics in the story line (and that’s probably 90-95% of the book) are all verifiable, but there are important parts which were imagined by Labatut. 

Story 1 PRUSSIAN BLUE involves Fritz Haber (1868-1934) who was involved in the extraction of nitrogen from the air and the mass production of artificial nitrogen and Zyklon B a pesticide used in the death camps of Germany). Also mentioned here are Johann Conrad Dipple (1673-1734), Carl Wilhelm Scheele (1742-1786) who used Prussic acid to accidentally discover/create cyanide (1782),  “Adi” (Adolf Hitler- 1889-1945) of Landsberg prison and 

Story 2 – SCHWARZSCHILD’S SINGULARITY is primarily about Karl Schwarzschild (1873-1916)  who polished Einstein’s theory of relativity with an exact solution to some questions. 

Story 3 THE HEART OF THE HEART is about the early math behind a lot of this – Shinichi Mochizuki plays a part but it’s mostly about Alexander Grothendiek (1928-2014), one of the most important mathematicians of the 20th century. He wanted to find and understand the foundations of mathematics. There’s a nice but abbreviated biography of him here. He followed mathematic abstraction as far as he could (near insanity) and then, after witnessing US bombing in Vietnam, believed scientists would destroy the earth so he forcefully turned to the environmental issues of our day living out his life as a very eccentric recluse. 

And WHEN WE CEASE TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD is the novella. The names here are Erwin Schrodinger (1887-1961) and Werner Karl Heisenberg (1901-1976). And now there was a battle in the quantum world. Were elementary particles  waves (Shrodinger) or  “something dark at the heart of things.” (Heisenberg).  Prince Louis-Victor Pierre Raymond and his elder brother, Maurice de Broglie, a physicist come into the picture. And this is where Einstein comes in for a minute and when he says his now famous words, “God does not play dice with the universe.”   He also brought along with 

And the last story, THE NIGHT GARDENER, skips up to today and the 1st person may be Labatut himself having his own experiences.  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjam%C3%ADn_Labatut

Oh my goodness, this is a heck of a good book. It’s great legal crime, international crime, thriller.  I’m going to have to take James Grippando’s Jack Swytek series a bit more seriously.  I see by my blog that I’ve read four of this series over the years with a high enjoyment level.  But because I spaced them far apart and wasn’t going in any order I forgot about them.  

The Girl in the Glass Box
by James Grippando
Read by Jonathan Davis 11h and 18m
Rating – A / thriller–legal
#15 in the Jack Swytek series 

But in reader reviews I saw that this is his best, and I figured I might not forget.  The problem, as I recognized close to the end, is there’s a bit of tension over-load so I couldn’t read another one right away – and so I’d forget.  

Anyway, in The Girl in the Glass Box, Miami attorney Jack Swyteck, the eponymous protagonist of the series, is presented with the case of an undocumented woman who fled El Salvador to protect her daughter and save herself from gangs and an abusive husband.   

Julia Rodriguez and her teenage daughter Beatriz manage to get to some family already in Miami and start making their own lives. Then the somewhat independent and hot-headed Julia rejects her boss’s unwanted sexual advances. He calls ICE.  Suddenly she is arrested, locked in the US detention system, and slated for deportation. The only option for Jack is to try to get her asylum, a horrendously difficult case to make these days.

Meanwhile an old enemy from San Salvador appears to be following them and someone dies. The legal aspects get hairy and the chase begins.

Too often in mysteries or thrillers these days it takes 3/4 of the book before “something happens” and you get hooked. I was curious at about 1/10th here, hooked at 1/4. And Grippando is a master of tension building. Legal crime is not so much courtroom drama anymore and the books are more often thrillers than they are courtroom drama. This is top notch thriller. And the wee bit of humor is just the right touch. The narration is brilliant except that the name Julia (Hulia) is often sounds like it’s Julio (Hulio).

Fun. The book is different and interesting. It opens with a Prologue in which Joan Lurie is buying a fairly luxurious (for her) apartment in New York City. But she almost seems more concerned with the security systems than with the laundry or the view. Then Chapter 1 backs up and we find out why she’s so concerned with security.  It seems she wrote an long investigative newspaper article about a powerful man involved in the serial sexual abuse of women, especially those in his employ. She names names.  (Definitely #MeToo – but with a lot of tension.) 

The Stranger Behind You 
by Carol Goodman 
2021 / 
Read by Samantha Desz 11h 9m
Rating: A- / crime-mystery 

The article hits the news stands and the next day she discovers that the powerful man she was reporting on has committed suicide.  Also, Joan gets an offer for a book deal from a publisher and she’s attacked in her home. Now she can afford a decent new apartment.  

We are then introduced to another woman. The upscale Melissa Osgood is suddenly widowed when her husband commits suicide – yes. As a result of Joan’s article she is not only widowed, she’s broke and needs a new home. Joan and Melissa are developed as 1st person narrators. 

 Joan becomes what might be a bit paranoid even in her new apartment where she meets a third woman, Lilian Day. Lilian is 96 and tells Joan that the new apartment was, at some time in the past, a “Magdalen Laundries” type of residence, for the rehabilitation prostitutes  – or at least keep them safe. They called it “The Refuge” but that’s not it’s real name today. It’s similar to the homes for “fallen women” in Ireland.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magdalene_Laundries_in_Ireland  

An interesting bit is that Joan buys a voice-activated little computer thing like Alexa, which she starts using and also just talking to. She names it Bot. This part was fun –  

None of the women is completely reliable. Joan gets paranoid. Melissa is a bit off-kilter what with her hubby’s death and financial ruin. Lillian is unreliable because of her age – she just doesn’t remember what she’s trying to tell Joan – or does she? 

The building Joan and Melissa choose is old and heavily remodeled. It has several security cameras and there are back doors and hallways. Melissa choosing it is very much related to Joan being there. Melissa badly wants revenge – she’s plotting it. Lillian is lonely and needs someone to talk to? The doorman is very accommodating.  

It’s a fun read but not cozy by any means. The main theme is sexual abuse and that’s quite clear, but there are no really graphic scenes.  

So here’s the book which got me curious enough to reread Pride and Prejudice which, as it turned out, was lovely. The Murder of Mr Wickham is definitely a who-done-it taking place at Donwell Abbey. the estate of George and Emma (Woodhouse) Knightly. The Knightly’s are having a large two-week house party with old friends and relatives of the area and Wickham (P&P) turns up. Wickham is decidedly unwelcome, so it’s not a good sign. But proprieties must be observed so he’s invited inside which puts almost everyone on edge.  (And “everyone” here includes a smattering of characters from Austen’s oeuvre.)

The Murder of Mr Wickham
By Claudia Gray 
2022 / (387 pgs) 
Read by Billie Fulford-Brown 12h 3m
Rating:  B+ / a YA who-done-it spin on a classic

In the 20+ years since we saw them in Pride and Prejudice, Mr (George) Wickham (P&P) and his young wife Lydia (Bennett) had a daughter, Susanna, both of whom later died. Susanna had been beloved by the Darby family. But Wickham continued to get get into trouble of escalating magnitude with investment management. He now has many enemies but doesn’t really care. It would seem he actually enjoys the power. The man truly was and is a villain. 

Elizabeth (Bennett) and Frederick Darby are happily married with two children and living at Pemberley. Jane (Bennet) married Mr. Bingley and other names come up. Fanny and her husband Bertam (of Mansfield Park) are houseguests of the Knightly’s. This part is very nicely done.

So, in true Agatha Christie form, there are many suspects and a fairly twisted plot, clues to find and with lots of background to be dug up.

The awkward Jonathan Darcy (son of Elizabeth and Darby) is age 20 or so while and very bright Juliette Tilney (the daughter of Catherine and Henry Tilney from Northanger Abbey) is about 17. These two are the main characters who become partners in amateur sleuthery.

In the middle of the first night, Jonathan hears Juliette screaming and finds her in the gallery along with the dead body of Mr. Wickham. Jonathan checks the grounds. The Constable is called but becuase he seems to be very biased against the household help, Jonathan and Juliette continue to investigate. And it’s seriously improper for Regency Era young ladies so the two are quite circumspect.

This is definitely a young adult novel – I’d say 14 to 18-year old girls, most likely. But older fans of Jane Austen might enjoy it. I did, although toward the end I got a bit tired of it. I loved Nancy Drew at age 10 jumping to Agatha Christie at about age 17. The Murder of Mr Wickham might have been fun when I was 14. The history is more for the older crowd, but the romance is definitely in the 14-year old range. The “Crime/Who-Done-It” part is maybe for 12-year olds.

Oh my – I was looking at The Murder of Mr Wickhan and trying to think if I remembered P&P well enough to venture into something which was using the same characters for a new plot.  ??? –  

Pride and Prejudice
By Jane Austen – 1813
Read by Rosamund Pike
Rating –  10 / Classic literary romance 

So how is it this time? 2022? In the midst of tumultuous times with pandemics, wars, elementary school shootings and threats to democracy of all sorts?  It’s comforting to be able to simply chuckle and enjoy. I usually despise romance novels but there are a precious few which I appreciate – this is one.  

And I love rereading good books. I don’t have to be concerned with how it’s going to end because I already know that. So I can really relax and focus on the journey itself.  This book probably stands a third or fourth reading.  

A rich bachelor moves into the neighborhood where the Bennetts live in respectable middle-ness.  This is because their home really belongs to their father’s cousin, a minister, so when father dies the family will lose status. The Bennetts have five girls to get married because there is nothing else for women a station above abject poverty to do.  But fear not, there are several eligible bachelors hanging around.  

The story progresses through a riot of possible matches for the girls who are various ages up to 24 years which is essentially a spinster, a very sad thing to be.  Along with the possible matches for the Bennett girls there are several other single young ladies in their circles. Also, they can’t just marry any old single male, he has to be of a certain social standing. 

But this is a romantic comedy in many ways, so boy meets girl and girl gets boy right where he wants her. There are distinct themes though.  Pride is one – prejudice another (obviously) and they certainly stand out, but reading it in 2022 means that the differences in today’s ideas of love, family, economics, feminism (or the lack of freedom of any kind for women) come into play. This is an honest-to-god classic so it’s not written for 21st century readers. Readers of today are aghast at some of these 18th and 19th “manners” regulating so much of people’s lives.  And Austen satirizes many of them so it could be confusing for younger readers. (This is NOT the world of the earnest Little Women!)  

The book’s more universal themes are those of honesty, gossip, status climbing, hypocrisy, along with pride and prejudice. These are why people keep reading the book – people really haven’t changed that much.  And with very slight twists, they’re the same the world over – Europe, India, Mexico – much of this book plays out in all times and places.  

The language interests me –  we almost need translations.  “Condescending” isn’t an insult in literature of the  18th and 19th centuries, it’s meaning then was more like “down to earth.”  I understand that Austen’s publishers polished up a lot of her vocabulary and punctuation.  

https://nebo-lit.com/novel/pride-and-prejudice/Pride-and-Prejudice-Language.html

This novel is based on the true story of teenager Latasha Harlins who ,a few days after the Rodney King beating in March of 1991, went to the local liquor store in LA to buy some orange juice.  There Latisha was accused of shoplifting by the Korean-American store owner, Soon Ja Du.  After a scuffle Du shot Latisha in the back of her head. There were two young witnesses as well as a security camera.

Your House Will Pay
by Steph Cha – 2019
Read by Greta Jung Glenn Davis
Rating: 8.5 / 21st cent lit fiction- crime

Du was convicted of manslaughter but served no time in jail. This and the King beating contributed to the LA riots in 1992. (King’s assailants were found not guilty.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Latasha_Harlins
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Los_Angeles_riots

In the book the background story is the same with some main characters renamed.  Leticia Harlins becomes Ava Matthews (deceased) and her young brother, a witness, is Shawn Matthews. Soon Ja Du is also renamed as Mrs Parks and is the mother of Miriam and Grace Parks who are original to the book.  

Shawn’s cousin is just getting out of prison and Shawn, an ex-con himself, is trying to steer him correctly.    

When someone in a car shoots Mrs Parks in a parking lot Grace Parks sees and can identify the shooter, but she knows none of the background because she had not yet been born and no one talked about it. Her sister Miriam knows though, Miriam is estranged from their mom but Grace has never understood why.  Now she will and the plot builds.  The two families are entangled in ways no one could have anticipated. 

The rest of the book unfolds like a crime novel with a new revealing twist in every Section.  The chapters alternate between Grace’s view and Shawn’s view What makes it literary are the ideas developed into themes of race, family, identity, tensions, guilt, memory, vengeance, forgiveness and so on with many perspectives.  

The Rumpus – review

Just what I needed!  Yes!  Good fiction – really good literary-historical fiction and also quite funny as well. Also, this book is quite a ride.  The book is a mixture of fiction and nonfiction so, because it takes place in 1959-1960, I’d say it’s historical fiction or maybe creative historical fiction? Heh.   Cohen is only 42 years old so it can be historical fiction. (picky-picky)

The Netanyahus 
by Joshua Cohen
2021 / 
Read by David Duchovny, Ethan Herschenfeld 8h 31m
Rating: 9.5 / contemp lit fiction 
Pulitzer Prize in Fiction – 2022

The full title of this novel is, “The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family.” I’ve not read anything else by Cohen, but that may change. 

The Netanyahus is a heavily fictionalized account of the meeting between Benzion Netanyahu (father of Benjamin, Israel’s prime minister) and Harold Bloom (noted literary critic) which takes (took) place at Corbin College (Cornell University?) in upstate New York in the winter of 1959-’60.  Ruben Blum is the name of the protagonis.t but it’s actually a minimally disguised Harold Bloom (and Cohen actually did interview Bloom years ago).  Meanwhile, Benzion Netanyahu and his family are given their real names. Benzion is being interviewed for a job which the historical Netanyahu did get.   

The narrative starts out kind of funny and moves on to hilarious. That quality combined with literary-historical ideas is a rare combination these days, but there are Jewish authors like Henry Roth (Call It Sleep – not too funny), Meir Shalev (The Blue Mountain – very funny), Michael Chabon (The Yiddish Policeman’s Union – quite funny) Howard Jackson (The Finkler Question– hilarious), etc and many many more – all historical/humor.  So how fares Joshua Cohen and The Netanyahus? My eyes were wet from laughing toward the end.  I googled a lot.    

This book won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and it looked really good so I simply sampled and got it. It’s a book of ideas about Jewish life, college, history, family, etc.   

 The characters of Ruben Blum, “a Jewish historian who happens to be Jewish but does not study Jewish history” teaches at Corbin College in mid-state New York.  He finds himself on the committee to interview the candidates for the position of College Historian because the college is hiring a Jewish historian and therefore Blum would know, right?  Blum has to tell the committee if the candidate, Netanyahu, is appropriate and they really want him to be. 

Netanyahu is a kind of revisionist, “The only way out of Gentile history is through Zion.”  Yes, there are serious parts, but it’s still funny in so many ways.   

Netanyahu’s wife and three sons have come with him in an old battered car Benzion managed to borrow. And then Benzion, his wife and his teenage daughter (with her own problems) end up staying with the Blums.     

Interesting background and an excellent review:  

“The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family

There are lots of resources to check stuff out on the web. I like to see what parts of historical fiction are indeed historical (can be verified elsewhere) and what parts are fiction. I’m not judgmental about it. If the item happens to look true I think Good on the author’s research. If it’s not at all verifiable then it’s good on the author’s imagination. The range of historically accurate accounting historical fiction is amazing. It runs from a book sounding like a nonfiction biography to an entirely made-up story – see Arctic Summer by Damon Galgut.

I was so surprised when I read the James Patterson/Maxine Paetro book last Christmas and enjoyed it – it was a Christmas themed book entitled The 19th Christmas and part of the Women’s Mystery Club series. Okay. I thought, let’s do this and proceed with The 20th Victim. Nice – and back to #1 in the series, 1st to Die. Oh-oh. No. Paetro was not the co-author and the book was too violent for me. So instead I went to 21st Birthday and that was okay again.

22 Seconds 
by James Patterson / Maxine Paetro 
Read by January LaVoy 8h 16m
Rating: B+/ procedural thriller #22 in Women’s Murder Club series

This series may be getting a wee bit old. Either that or I just wasn’t as engrossed in this particular book for some reason.  I’ve read a total of 7 out of the 22 books in this series, 6 with Paetro as co-author.  Also, a bit of the action takes place outside of the US – that seems to happen more often in series with more books. Even the Murder She Wrote (by Monica Ferris), Dave Robicheaux (by James Lee Burke), Inspector Gamache (by Louise Penny), and Harry Bosch (by John Connelly) books go abroad at some point in their late teens or early 20s.

A new gun control law is being passed in San Francisco and there is some serious opposition. There is also an enormous supply of guns suddenly coming from Mexico.  People die, not always women. (In fact, this has less fem-jeop than most of this series although there certainly is some.)  Lindsay Boxer, a police sergeant, is front and center as usual, and her life is definitely threatened but then that’s Lindsay, she just kind of stands out as a target.  The other friends, Cindy, Claire, and Yuki have bit parts.

The narrator is perfect and the writing is terrific for a “procedural thriller.”  It’s the plot and the characters that are lacking. The story feels a bit canned and over-the-top at the same time. The story has are lots of threads going but everything gets tied up at the end.

 Overall, I’m certainly glad I read it and I’m sure I’ll grab the next one when it’s available, but I don’t think I’ll be going back into the old #s in the series – well, maybe … now that I know they’re at the library. 

My goodness! When this book was selected for the All-nonfiction Reading Group I had no idea it was basically about the mass murder in Ukraine, Poland, Belarus and other Baltic states between World Wars 1 and 2. The killers were both Stalin’s USSR and Hitler’s Nazi Germany.  I wonder if the person who nominated it knew the extent of the “bloodlands.”

Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin 
By Timothy Snyder 
2010 – 525 pages
Read by Ralph Cosham 19h 14m
Rating 10  / European history 
(Both read and listened)

***. NOTE: This isn’t important for the main narrative but the Kindle and the Audible versions aren’t the same. The Audio has an added section towards the end, like a lengthy Author’s Note (Chapter 15) which is essentially a response to criticism of the narrative. It’s excellent and thought provoking material dealing with the legitimacy of comparison and includes some material through 2021/22. 

Not since Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad (1998) have I read such an engrossing military history (and I read that about 20 years ago). It’s not the war itself that’s so fascinating – it was the word-smithery of Beevor and now of Timothy Snyder. The “war” gets horribly bloody.  

 I was totally appalled at the sheer scale of killing using so many horrendous methods. I’m going to have to reread parts of this next month because of the detail for page after page. If this were fiction I would be so appalled at what some people think up that I might throw the book out. It’s not fiction and it’s important to hear the truth. If people are telling truth to me – I should at least listen.  

About the book … 

“…won 12 awards including the Emerson Prize in the Humanities, a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Leipzig Award for European Understanding, and the Hannah Arendt Prize in Political Thought. It has been translated into more than 30 languages, was named to 12 book-of-the-year lists, and was a best seller in six countries.”  https://tinyurl.com/ykr2cvuy (Audible)

I’ve read two of Snyder’s prior books previously – On Tyranny and The Road to Unfreedom. Those were interesting, but they weren’t “Bloodlands.”

The Preface and Introduction are tremendously informative in themselves and I hadn’t thought of myself as being ignorant, but when it comes to details like the ones Snyder reports I’m amazed at what I had no clue about.  Snyder compares the realities of Nazism under Hitler to those of Communism under Stalin during the same time and place – Eastern Europe on both sides of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Line between 1930 and 1945.  I had never looked at the situation as closely or in the ways Snyder directs my attention. 

And that’s what the additional chapter is about, “How can the Holocaust be compared to anything?” the complaint of some readers. Well, Snyder explains why we have to.

Sad to say, Trump resembles either-and-or Hitler/Stalin in some of his approaches to power. 

Then comes Chapter 1 with the bloody “Soviet Famines.”  It’s tough to read about all this misery and at this same time realize we’ve got a war going on there now – again – this time it’s Putin – not Stalin.  And that’s just to start out.  

Because oh my goodness the mass murders which took place. By starvation, by shooting, by camp, by labor, by marching, by rape and torture – whatever. 

The book goes on through the chapters in exquisite and fully sourced detail. The chapters seem to alternate between on-the-ground brutality and more theoretical matters – plans and ideas.  For instance, it describes how kulaks were arrested en masse, interrogated, tortured and imprisoned, exiled, or executed. But it also describes the show trials of unfortunate unit heads. Much of this was done in secret and it’s ghastly to read about.  Snyder is very careful about sources. Molotov-Ribbentrop line

**

https://tinyurl.com/jxn42x4s
This is the Google Street View of a Ukraine bunker along the Molotov line.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov_Line#Molotov_line_bunkers_visible_in_Google_Street_View)

**

The source notes are totally excellent. (Well what else from a world class scholar, author and professor of European history from Yale who specializes in Central and Eastern Europe including the Holocaust. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_D._Snyder

I had this in my Wish List for some reason and then it went on sale. Sometimes things just don’t work out. After bouncing between thinking pretty good and not good, I really didn’t care for it – not overall.

The Tenant
by Katrine Engberg 
(Translated from the Danish byTara Chace) 
2020 / (368 pgs print)
Read by Graeme Malcolm 10h 21m
Rating: C- / gritty crime procedural
(Jeppe Kørner & Anette Werner series #1)

The Tenant is a bit over the top grit-wise even for Scandi-noir. Also, the narrator was difficult to get used to. After awhile the book was okay, then it got good for awhile and then a little over half way it got tedious. If it had been any less compelling I would have dropped it mid-way. In the end I think it was the narrator that kept me going because I got used to him.

Note that for the most part this is NOT a thriller. The pacing is steady and  deliberative and it works for awhile but then lags. It took me awhile to get into the groove and then I lost it again. I was glad when it finally finished up.