What are you reading the week of June 8, 2024?

I didn't have any time for reading this week. *sigh* I'll be retiring in two years. I'm looking forward to the day.

Trust me, retirement is a great help in making a dent in various TBR lists!

Right now I'm going back and forth between Brokers of Empire and Arado Ar 234 Blitz: The World's First Jet Bomber. Peoples of the Inland Sea will follow those.

Moving right along, I'm starting Cascade Failure.

This week I read a lot of Gone with the Wind. It's magnificent and I love it.

I am helping a high school girl write her final English paper so I needed to read the book in question. I did not enjoy When I was the Greatest by Jason Reynolds.

The Fortunes of Jaded Women – Carolyn Hyunh
Digital audiobook read by Vyvy Nguyen
3***

From the book jacket: Everyone in Orange County’s Little Saigon knew that the Durong sisters were cursed. It started with their ancestor Oanh, who left her marriage for love. So, a witch cursed Oanh and her descendants so that they would never know love or happiness, and the Duong women would give birth to daughters, never sons. Oanh’s descendant Mai Nguyen knows the curse well. Her three adult daughters – Priscilla, Thuy and Thao – have found success in their careers but not in their love lives. Mai consults Auntie Hua, her trusted psychic in Hawaii, who delivers an unexpected prediction: this year, her family will witness a marriage, a funeral and the birth of a son.

My reactions:
Oh, what a tangled web of melodrama! I think part of the difficulty I had with this work was my fault. I chose to listen to the audiobook and the names were just not sufficiently familiar to my ear for me to clearly identify the many different females. It doesn’t help that Mai is one of three sisters, all of which have daughters. While the action focuses on Mai and her three daughters, the various aunties and cousins also come into play, and I was often confused about relationships.

In general, this is about family – especially an extended family whose members are always in each other’s business. They meddle, fight, make-up, mourn, and celebrate. Ultimately, they come together as a family, rising in unison, ready to conquer the world. And I have every confidence that these women WILL conquer.

Vyvy Nguyen does a very good job of voicing the audiobook. It was my own failure as a listener, and not her performance that caused my confusion at times.

>3 ahef1963: Rightly criticised for its perpetuation of the myth that slavery was a mutually beneficial system of reciprocal responsibilities, but of course Mitchell’s fairy tale vision of plantation life is just the setting for the story of a woman with a very complicated relationship to the norms of her society. I have read Gone with the Wind many times, mostly in my youth, but picked it up again recently and was still impressed by Mitchell’s story-telling ability.

I just finished a cross-U.S. drive with my wife and our German shepherd during which I did almost no reading. I've finally almost reach the 100-page point of the second book in Proust's In Search of Lost Time series, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower. It's a recent translation, and I'm enjoying the reading experience. Hopefully now that we're off the road I'll be able to read more pages at a time.

This Time Will Be Different– Misa Sigiura
Book on CD performed by Joy Osmanski
3.5***

CJ Katsuyama never seems to meet her Type-A mother’s expectations. She’s not super smart, or talented at music, art or sports. She’s not a leader at school. She does like helping her aunt Hannah at the family flower shop, though she doesn’t buy into Hannah’s “magic of flowers” theories. Still, she shows a knack for creative and distinctive arrangements. But then her mother decides to sell the shop to the descendant of the racist man who swindled her grandfather out of his property by taking advantage of the USA’s policy to intern Japanese Americans during WW2. Now CJ is fighting mad and determined to make a difference.

This is a charming YA novel about family, social justice, friendship and loyalty. There’s also a little romance thrown in.

CJ is a pretty mature teen. Although she frequently doubts herself, she usually follows her inner compass and makes solid decisions. Of course, this is a young adult novel, so there is bound to be some of the drama typical in teen life – prom-posals, mean girls, cliques, attractions based strictly on looks, best friends who maybe aren’t anymore. There’s also an LGBTQ relationship in the mix; I liked the way CJ handled this.

On the other hand, I was not thrilled with how the author handled CJ’s pregnancy. Not at all sure that needed to be part of the story.

Joy Osmanski does a fine job of narrating the audio version. Her diction is clear, and she sets a good pace. The only difficulty is that there are several flashbacks, and at first, I didn’t catch on and that confused me for several chapters until she went back to it. That isn’t the fault of the narrator, however. But I think I would have been less confused if I had been reading the text rather than listening.

Started this audio novel via Libby ~

He Should Have Told the Bees: (Women's Contemporary Fiction
about Sisters, Family, and Beekeeping)
by Amanda Cox

The White Queen by Philippa Gregory . I was in England in May and so decided to read some of the books I own.

>9 mnleona:, I recommend her 2011 non-fiction book The Women of the Cousins' War, co-written with David Baldwin and Michael Jones.

Rebel – Beverly Jenkins
3***

This bodice ripper is set in New Orleans during the reconstruction period after the Civil War. Valinda Lacy has come south to teach the newly emancipated freedmen and their children. But just as she is making headway her school is destroyed by thugs. As she runs for her life, she meets Captain Drake LeVeq, one of the sons of a wealthy Black family who made their money some generations back by piracy. Drake, however, is an architect and builder, intent on helping the freedmen survive and thrive.

It's a typical romance with heaving bosoms, knees made weak by kisses, demure women and strong men who are talented and generous lovers. Valinda and Drake make a nice couple, and his family (mother and three brothers) fills out the cast of characters quite well. Jenkins added some interesting tidbits of information regarding this period in American history.

The action is fast, even if the plot is fairly predictable. This novel even includes a minor subplot involving two gay men.

James Herriot's Dog Stories
James Herriot
4/5 stars
I think I have read most of Herriot's books and this one is still as good as all of his other books. He is one of my favorite authors! Non-Fiction

This week I finished Dial A for Aunties by Jesse Q. Sutanto. Pretty improbable but laugh out loud funny. I will definitely continue the series.

Now I'm reading Crows and Cards by Joseph Helgerson. I brought it with me on a trip to St. Louis because I had it on hand and it's set there in 1849. After spending the day at Gateway Arch National Park and reading about the history of the city it's been a fun little fictional trip into the past.

The new thread is up over here.