Olive is older than she was when we left her to her crotchety retirement in the small coastal town of Crosby, Maine where everyone seems to know her, the retired high school math teacher. That was in the book Olive Kitteridge. Now she’s also widowed and grieving. But there’s a guy named Jack who’s hanging around – with Olive’s blessing. Olive is an anachronism in her own life and she almost lives in the past – not quite.
******* Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout 2019 / 293 pages read by Kimberly Farr 12h 14m Rating: 9 / literary fiction *******
Crosby and it’s citizens have other things going on. There’s Kayley Callaghan a 15-year old who lives with her newly widowed mother is cleaning houses and makes some illicit money on the side. And there’s Suzanne who has lost her parents and other things, too many other things. And there’s Bernie who hears people’s secrets, and does his lawyering. Even Bob and other Burgesses (The Burgess Boys) show up. The novel is about loss and secrets including infidelity and death and families and small towns. There are other spotlighted characters – they have personal problems and secrets which are, generally to an extent, shared as human problems and behavior, often troubling.
As with Olive Kitteridge the book is a series of vignettes or spotlights on this or that character, but Olive wanders through the lives of almost everybody while she has her own messy life going on – and opinions about everything
It’s mostly a gentle novel about gentle people dealing with very difficult personal subjects. It’s a wonderful book.
This book was on my wish list before it went on a very nice sale a few weeks ago and I jumped on it. It got multiple awards and rave reviews such as: “A compelling read… LikeWar…is not a warning about tomorrow’s war — it’s a map for those who don’t understand how the battlefield has already changed”—Washington Post.
******* Likewar: The Weaponization of Social Media By P.W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking 2018/ 421 pages read by George Guidall – 11h 21m Rating: 9.25 (both read and listened) ******
The book is crammed with a LOT of information dealing with all matters internet, from ISIS to Russian Trolls and the Ukraine, but the emphasis is political leading and how it’s like war – at this point parts of the internet are actually engaged and an additional weapon of war via all manner of internet activities from Facebook and Twitter to the dark web. What China is doing is also briefly covered.
One interesting thing is that there are 100 pages of notes which, for the most part, include hyper-links to online sources. Because the book was just released in 2018 most of them are probably still available.
The book could likely have used a different narrator but Guidall did okay.
Wow! Although I got in on the game a bit late, I’ve followed Harry Bosch series since Book 1. As usual I started in at Book 3 or 4 and skipped around until I decided to go back to Book 1. That was in about 1998 or so. It occasionally took a year or two to get to the next book, but I did it. I may be missing one or two, but I’ve got 20 Connellys in my Audible library plus the latest one on my wish list. That’s his total in the Harry Bosch series. That said, I have some books which are by Connelly, but not in the Harry Bosch series. (I know I’ve got at least a couple of the Mickey Haller series books.) I’d have to do some serious sorting to find the ones I’m missing from the Harry Bosch series.
I wasn’t too happy when Connelly added Rene Ballard to the series protagonists. She seemed awkward and clumsily developed at a first. But now in her third book this sharp, loner woman detective is great and with Bosch playing a retired cop doing part time work in the cop-shop, the series works just as well as ever.
******* Dark Sacred Night by Michael Connelly 2018 / 449 pages read by Christine Lakin, Titus Welliver Rating: A / crime procedural *******
Also, this book ties into the last two books in other ways related to the plot so it’s good to read them in order, although not really necessary. It just makes it more interesting to know a wee bit about the crime which was committed 9 years prior.
This book ties into the last two books in other ways related to the plot so it’s good to read them in order, although not really necessary. It just makes it more interesting to know a wee bit about the crime which was committed 9 years prior.
Yes, Harry is still investigating the brutal death of Daisy Clayton, a 15-year old runaway whose body was left naked in a trash dumpster. Her mother, Elizabeth Clayton, has been very much a presence in the last couple books.
Harry Bosch, the protagonist, is a dark kind of character, a loner cop who is divorced (and his ex- was murdered) with one child, Maddie, who is now away at college (Maddie has grown up in the last several books.) Rene Ballard is not quite as dark, but she’s alone too, except for a grandmother somewhere in the L.A. area. She has a dog and boyfriend of sorts and works out at the gym.
The tension is expertly drawn out and the actual graphic violence is there but not overly so. There are plenty of victims – mostly female. The focus in the Bosch novels is on the procedures. Bosch somehow doesn’t think they have to apply to him while Ballard is not as temperamental (hot-headed and proud) as Bosch, but does her own thing when she deems it necessary. They’re a good match.
I am so ready for a legal thriller and this book had been on my radar for a couple months. The preview sounded good and I took a chance.
It starts out suspenseful, very suspenseful. After chapter 1 nothing was safe for Kevin Moore, an ex-lawyer who is on probation and separated from his wife because he made some important life errors. He’s now recovering from cocaine addiction and working as the manager for a sandwich shop in addition to living at a friend’s house and showing up for the mandatory urine testing.
******* The Substitution Order by Martin Clark 2019/ 352 pages read by David Aaron Baker rating – A / legal thriller ******* I was hooked from the first pages and it kept me up – a page-turner – until it didn’t. Somewhere, imo, the tension slacked off.
The thing is that someone has picked up on his predicament with the law and is using it for his own benefit.
He’s visited by a guy who wants him to work on some big insurance fraud scam and there’s a threat behind his words. Kevin refuses. Later he’s busted for breaking his probation and it’s serious as well as a set-up. Trouble seems to follow Kevin and the reader wonders what is going on.
But he’s a bright boy and an excellent attorney. He’ll find a way.
I read Hämäläinen’s Comanche Empire back in about 2010 due to reading Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynn and wanting to know more about that tribe. It was fabulous and I wanted to know more so I read the Mandan book, “Encounters at the Heart of the World” by Elizabeth Fenn and that continued to increase my interest in Native American history. (I’ve read various books since Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and maybe prior.)
****** Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power by Pekka Hamalainen 2019 / 544 pages read by Joe Barrett 17h 34m *******
I don’t know what it was about Comanche Empire but I did enjoy it more. This one was just as good in terms of research, and writing but there seemed to be more information. In Lakota America the subject was such that it felt jumbled for awhile – unclear about who the Lakotas were exactly. That may be true to the history, though, what with nations, tribes, families-kin lines, smaller informal groups, allies and other groups.
The Lakotas were a huge tribe which was busily growing while the US was moving West. This was the tribe of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. Hamalainen covers their story from the first we know of them, through Custer and on to Russell Means at Wounded Knee and into the 21st Century with the pipeline project and Donald Trump.. 😦
Another thing which makes comprehension a bit more difficult, is to use the Lakota language for some names and places. It was done to make the Lakotas “unfamiliar,” There is a glossary but for instance, “Wasicus” is white people. It might be a good idea to find places mentioned via Google or something. (The maps and graphics are excellent but not always quite enough and there are not a lot of maps.)
For me, it was much better in the early chapters and the last half . The middle section seems to consist mostly of a lot of small battles mostly between Indian tribes for scarcer resources or, more toward the end, against the Americans for autonomy. and living space. .
There is a lot of information today that wasn’t around when I was in college and studying this stuff in the early 1970s. Actually, there’s been a growing amount of Native-centered material published since Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (1971) and the movie “Dances With Wolves” (1990). There have been many sources used other than the journals of US military men. Hamalainen uses them and the telling is in the copious Notes section.
I read this for the All-Nonfiction group and I wasn’t terribly impressed although parts were interesting It seems like this book is comprised of a lot of things I already knew on some level, but had never really thought about.
And the layout is rather different from most books, too. The first six chapters serve as the main material, the “text” so to speak, while the last eleven chapters that opening material is used on various subjects like Laughter, Art or Medicine, The authors actually encourage the reader to skip around in Part 2 and read what they’re more interested in.
******* The Elephant in the Brain by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson 2017 / 397 pages read by Jeffrey Kafer – 10h 26m rating: 5 (mixed) / psychology *******
I suppose it’s interesting to read about as written by a couple of guys who have researched it and given the subject of motives a lot of thought. Yes, it’s basically about motives in many ways they work with and without our knowledge.
I’m not sure what I expected – I think the next step, maybe, “Physician, heal thyself.” Or what an “examined” life looks like? Anyway, after that 6-chapter set-up, the book goes into the following topics listed by chapter. I read all of them with breaks in between:
7. Body Language 8. Laughter – X 9. Conversation – X 10 Consumption 11. Art 12. Charity X 13. Education 14. Medicine 15. Religion x 16. Politics (Those marked with an X were more interesting and I might not have completely finished a couple of the non-X’ed. )
*I’m going to start sticking the rating in the heading so you know first thing.*
*** Before reading this book I had a certain amount of respect for Edward Snowden without co-signing everything he did several years ago. I followed the story as it unfolded and read something by Glenn Greenwald, one of his journalist accomplices, for more about how Snowden left the US and got to Moscow. So I first eyed this newly released book with quite a lot of interest but it was laced with suspicion – What story is he trying to sell us about his adventures? How much does Russiaa have to do with this? How can we believe him now?
******* Permanent Record by Edward Snowden 2019 / 340 pages read by Holter Graham – 11h 31m rating: 9.5 / memoir ******
The first part was fascinating about how Snowden got involved with computers and the internet at a very young age He was born into an old American family of career civil servants. In 1983, when he was only 10, there was a computer in his home and the internet came along only 2 years later. His dad encouraged him and he was hooked and it cost him his high school diploma.
I remember this era of the 1990s fondly. I only caught the end of the computer/internet freedom – (I got online in 1996) so much of the reading pleasure was a kind of nostalgia (although I was considerably older than 12!) Snowden’s father was a very bright military man interested in technology and apparently assisted his engagement and learning quite a lot.
The title is multi-layered. First it’s from something told to him as a freshman in high school student. After a bit of trouble and too much honesty, a teacher warned him he was creating a “permanent record.” Another source for the title is what the internet can be said to create – a “permanent record.”
The thing about this book is that it’s a memoir first, so it’s his side of the story as he chooses to tell it. There don’t seem to be any glaring missing pieces, but you never can tell. After reading it I feel like I know Snowden a lot better and like him, even though I don’t necessarily agree with his views which seem to be a bit paranoid and libertarian with his insistence that privacy is a basic human right. (Russia is more where he “landed” than anywhere he wanted to go.)
He never approaches the questions of How much privacy are we entitled to and when? What is privacy when you’re walking down a public street? – (Snowden is a bit of a fanatic, but I get annoyed when Amazon/GoodReads sends me a notice that I’ve finished my Kindle book so what’s next? Maybe I should buy paper books only from brick and mortar stores without cameras and use cash only?).
It was Arab Spring which energized Snowden. He was 27 years old and now having epileptic seizures (as did his mother) and on the verge of a nervous breakdown due in part to the stress of his awareness and ideas.
It was a kick to read about his girlfriend-now-wife, Lindsay Mills. They’d been together 7 or 8 years prior to these events. I hadn’t known that at all. Thanks to the media, I’d bought into a very negative idea about her. She seems to have been very supportive even if she didn’t know exactly what he was up to.
I understand why he released the information about the US government collecting data on virtually all US citizens (via a variety of technologies, methods and sources), I have a problem with why he released the military secrets although the extent of public scrutiny may have been seen as a military secret – I’m surer it was.
Bottom line I’m very glad I read it and I recommend it if you’re interested in Snowden. The book is very nicely written with an excellent structural tension, and it’s well read by Holter Graham.
I haven’t kept up with everything John Grisham has written but I truly loved his early books and over the years have sampled enough to know what he’s doing and how. He was a bit uneven there for awhile and did a variety of styles and genres, to the dismay of many readers, but seems to have come up in excellent shape – “Terrific!” (Washington Posts)
******* The Guardians by John Grisham 2019 / 371 pages (Kindle) Read by Michael Beck – 11h 50m rating A++ / legal thriller *******
This is classic Grisham legal crime with a major theme being the wrongfulness of the death penalty, especially considering the deep and rampant corruption often involved in the prosecution. The characters are, perhaps, a bit formulaic but the plot is fresh and exciting and there are
plenty of interesting twists and expertly developed tension, especially toward the end. Also, this time Grisham gets more gritty than I remember.
The plot involves a black man named Quincy Miller who, a couple decades earlier, was convicted of killing his divorce lawyer, Keith Russo, and has spent two full decades behind bars. Miller has protested his innocence from the start, but only now has real legal assistance in the form of Cullen Post, an ex-defense attorney and Episcopal priest turned “innocence lawyer” with a very small non-profit legal group called The Guardians dedicated But the plot mostly follows Cullen as he unwinds the real story – this is a multi-faceted gem.
Okay – starting in one of the for-fun-only books I bought at the recent Audible sale. These are like brain candy, but fun in their own way (although not nearly the pleasure of No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency books). I listen to unwind and relax.
******* Dry Bones by Craig Johnson 2015 / 425 pages (in print) read by George Guidall / 8h 16m rating – B- / western crime ******
It’s not one of my favorite series but with George Guidall narrating the books are easy to listen to while playing mahjong. Some folks love Walt Longmire, Sheriff of Durant County in rural Wyoming and he is well developed (this is the 11th novel) and the plots are very nicely done.
I’ll let the Publisher’s Summary outline it:
When Jen, the largest, most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton ever found, surfaces in Sherriff Walt Longmire’s jurisdiction, it appears to be a windfall for the High Plains Dinosaur Museum – until Danny Lone Elk, the Cheyenne rancher on whose property the remains were discovered, turns up dead, floating face down in a turtle pond. With millions of dollars at stake, a number of groups step forward to claim her, including Danny’s family, the tribe, and the federal government.
As Wyoming’s acting deputy attorney and a cadre of FBI officers descend on the town, Walt is determined to find out who would benefit from Danny’s death, enlisting old friends Lucian Connolly and Omar Rhoades – along with Dog and best friend Henry Standing Bear – to trawl the vast Lone Elk ranch, looking for answers to a 65-million-year-old cold case that’s heating up fast.
I must be getting old – older anyway. . This book was, for the most part, just too tense and violent for my tastes. It made the Booker Short List but it’s basically a brutal historical adventure story the themes of which are slavery and racism along with. beauty and love on a level in keeping with modern sensibilities. Had it not been a Booker Group reading selection I likely would have given up and it would have been my loss because the best part is the last part and the brutality is woven into the themes – contributes to them in the end.
All that said, there was something compelling about it. “What will happen next?” and “Will Wash survive?” With his fresh intelligent innocence the young eponymous first person is a large part of the draw.
******* Washington Black by Esi Edogyan 2018 / 340 pages read by Don Graham – 12h 18m rating: 8.5 – / historical fiction *******
The cover art on the Kindle edition seems humorous but do NOT let it fool you, without any spoilers really, that’s similar to the way Wash escapes the Barba-dos plantation where he is held as a slave. The story is what all happens next.
And quite a lot happens to bright and courageous (although often scarded to death) Wash who turns out to be a gifted artist with some scientific inclinations and a deep sense of loyalty. He has many opponents and enemies, but he finds protectors (he’s only 12 at the outset) and later friends. The book opens in 1830.
On the upside, the book is written nicely with appropriate language. interesting metaphors, and several complex characters. Some have suggested it strained the limits of believability but that part was not a problem for me although I did have to work around some things.
Oh what a delicious delight to have a new No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency book to read. This is the series that took the cozy mystery genre by storm back in 1998 (and got written up in Time Magazine for it) and continues until now, 21 years later and the 20th book. I’ve been hooked since the eponymously titled first book and followed along as they came out, first by hard cover, then by Kindle and for the last several books, by audio- the narrator is superb.
******* In the Land of Long Lost Friends by Alexander McCall Smith 2019 / 240 pages read by Lisette. Lecat – 9h 5m rating A+ (for the the fun of it!) # 20 in the series *******
The series takes place in Botswana where the lead character, Precicouos Ramatswe owns and operates a small detective agency. At this point in the series she has a “partner” (of sorts) and an assistant detective in addition to a family and large circle of friends.
The mysteries her agency solves are mostly minor, cheating husbands, fraud, old feuds ands so on. The characters and gentle wisdom of Mma Romatsswe make the story and the series. The social problems of Botswana are dealt with starting at about the 8th or 10th book, there’s AIDs and corruption and poverty and women’s issues plus old “traditional” ways vs the new modern ways.
If you enjoy cozy mysteries with wonderfully charming characters and interesting settings this might very well be for you, but I strongly suggest you start with book 1. And I am so hoping this is not the end of the series. It didn’t feel like it.
This came across my radar when I was perusing the local League of Women Voters schedule. I missed the author’s. talk to them, but certainly picked up on the book and put it on my wish list.
This is literary non-fiction concerning the area in which I live, the San Joaquin Valley in California. which has had water problems since Europeans and Americans started messing with it – or maybe before. What with gold and wheat and cotton and cattle and fruit and people and now nuts, everything needs water. But like all resources, water is limited and due to the human condition, greed is not.
******* The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California by Mark Arax 2019 / 523 pages read by Mark Arax – / 25h 32m rating: 9.5 – history *******
The book was highly informative and great fun to read because, having lived in this area for more than 50 years, I know almost all the places mentioned although not the individual people or really local history. I’m certainly familiar with big agriculture and water wars and most of the commodities and their struggle with the open land, a lot of which is vanishing. (I live in the Southeast part of the Valley, the Porterville, Exeter, Terra Bella part, up against the Sierra Nevada, where our naval oranges have been grown on mostly smaller farms for decades and made millionaires of the farmers around Exeter.) When you grow almonds on the desert it takes more water than is normally available so water is “mined” (yes) and shipped in and traded and used up – legally or not. And big money plays a big part in where it goes – that along with archaic and ambiguous water laws. .
Arax starts with the natives in their pre-colonial environments and moves along, not quite chronologically, through the final days of the last great drought which lasted from 2011 tot 2018. (The book was published in 2019 but there is an epilogue). There is so much covered – from the Natives and the early growers to the water-thirsty almonds and pomegranates of the recent years and from the floods to the droughts with all the legal and illegal shenanigans to gain water to accom-modate the growth of the Southland. Bits of memoir are included as Arax is from a family of Armenian immigrants in Fresno, the heart of the Valley, and has spent decades writing about the area and its issues for years in the LA Times.
The social mix and that problem is also addressed. Mexican labor, documented and undocumented, helps makes this area of the country rich as much as water and agriculture. Without the labor theses poor workers provide we have nothing. Many of the players in this history are immigrants from somewhere, Armenia, Germany, Sweden and other places. Arax is good.
I enjoyed reading this so much I postponed the new Alexander McCall Smith book until I’d finished. And I see there’s a new John Grisham book out now, too.
If you’re from the Central Valley this is a must read just to know how we got to this point – (its burning north hand south at the moment). If you’re from California at all it’s fascinating. If you’re from the US and interested it’s well worth it. Fwiw, this book will be in my list of top nonfiction books read all year and I’ve read some good ones. 🙂 Happy reading!
I picked this book to try to read while I was still recovering from surgery. I couldn’t concentrate, but it sounded fun and kind of light. I knew some about the subject matter but not a whole lot. I was right – it was fun and kind of light but there was a lot more meat than I expected and it included a British point of view which was different for me.
******* The Husband Hunters by Anne De Courcy 2018 / 311 pages rating: 8 / history *******
What is usually called the Gilded Age in the US lasted from then early 1870s until, by most accounts, 1900. During the time a LOT of things were happening in the US. Immigration from Europe and elsewhere was peaking, industry was booming, the West was being tamed and settled and mined. Millions of dollars were being made by some and social climbing was a way of life for a few at the top. But after you’ve conquered (or been defeated by) the ultra-rich New York social scene where was there to go? The US had no aristocracy per se so … it was off to Europe for an impoverished title to acquire by marriage.
De Courcy outlines the lives of more of these young women who were looking to buy titles than I knew. There are so many tales – Vanderbilts vs Astors of course but also the stories of women rich from western mines with dubious reputations who wanted in on the New York life and a title for their daughters. Some were brazen others shy and most got taken for a lot of money.
The American girls did have an impact on Europe, maybe mostly in England, but it wasn’t long-lived. Their moms too, did not live such a visibly “gilded” life for long either. It is an interesting book.
Hi all, I’ve been away so long but I’ve had some serious health issues and I was recovering from surgery on Sept 10. I’m almost recovered but it takes time and being able to read books (not just internet surf and tiny news stories) was challenging. I think my real focus only came back this past week and I’m almost finished with one book with two more in the queue. YAY!
I want to see if I can get back to my blog now before I totally forget the one book I read during this 6 week hiatus. I enjoy keeping it because otherwise I’d forget what all I’d read and when and my reactions. It’s handy that way; that’s why I started it and it worked – kind of like a reading journal which I tried several times but never kept going. With the blog I’ve been recording my reading for the better part of 20 years (under 3 different names/servers).
So – with that – onward to “The Husband Hunters” by Anne de Courcy.
This is an oldie by Meltzer but I hadn’t read it and it was available via the library. I rarely get anything from there because there’s usually a wait of more than 6 months for anything I want – or they don’t have it at all. But I keep my eye out and once in awhile something shows up. Voila… The Book of Lies
******* The Book of Lies by Greg Meltzer 2008 / 353 pages read by Scott Brick – 11h 24m Rating: B / crime thriller *******
This is an odd book and I had no idea when I picked it up. Much of it is true but much of it is fiction of the Dan Brown variety. I’m not really a fan but I don’t mind a book once in a great while.
This time the puzzle is from the Bible story of when Cain killed his brother Abel in Genesis. The problem which is never resolved in the Bible was what weapon did Cain use? And the problem in today’s world is who killed Mitchell Siegel, the father of Jerry Siegel, the creator of Clark Kent, aka Superman.
In today’s time frame Cal Harper meets his own long-lost father who’s been shot by a gun which traces back to the gun which killed one Mitchell Siegel but that goes back further than reality.
The various threads all connect up and it’s satisfying but complicated.
I tried to enjoy this book – I really did. The blurbs made it sound like it Wass right ups my alley and a line from Salmam Rushdie? Oh my! Sad too say that a although the book started out being quite fun, that petered out after the Grandmothers’ section and the next two or more generations were a mess.
The Old Drift by Namwali Serpelll 2019 / 566 pages read by Adjoa Andoh and 2 others Rating: 6 / general fiction (read and listened)
The history that binds this all together goes from Stanley and Livingstone through colonial times to the corrupt military regimes to post-colonial days and finally the protests of today. There was just too much going on for me to follow.
The history is kind of interesting, but imo there was too much foolish sex.
I got this on sale and it turned out to be better than I thought it would. I suppose I got it because of my interest in the case of our current president, but it really goes much deeper into the legal aspects and opinions of what the Constitution actually says and why, as well as briefly framing the historical context. It’s so worth thinking about and I enjoyed it immensely.
******* Impeachment: A Citizen’s Guide by Cass R. Sunstein 2019 / 286 pages read by Joe Barrett – 4 h 33m rating – 8 / US history / law both read and listened *******
The thrust of the narrative as a whole, is not whether or not Donald Trump should be impeached, but to show various aspects of other impeachments like those of Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton and some presidents who were not actually impeached by the House of Representatives. What constitutes an impeachable offense? That’s more complicated than it sounds.
Relatedly, what does “high crimes and misdemeanors” mean? Yes, there is a reason those words were used. And what about the phrase, “unable to discharge the powers and duties” phrase in the Twenty-Fifth Amendment. This book answers lots of questions but not whether or not Mr Trump should be impeached.
For such a slim volume, only 286 pages, it’s well researched, highly informative, nicely readable. And it’s neither “about Trump” nor boring and grimly told.
“With insight, wisdom, affection, and concern, Sunstein has written the story of impeachment every citizen needs to know. This is a remarkable, essential book.”—Doris Kearns Goodwin
“Sunstein’s goal was to lay out a legal and historical framework for thinking about impeachment, independent of any specific president. I’ve been thinking about the topic a lot since finishing the book, and I want to recommend [it]… [It’s a] careful history of impeachment—of when the founders believed it was appropriate and necessary.”—David Leonhardt, The New York Times
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