What are you reading July 20, 2024?

Working on Rakesfall and The Life of Spice.

Knocked off Lyorn, working on Congress's Own.

Finally finished Gentleman Jurist yesterday. It didn't get any better from what I'd previously posted. If anything, it got worse & drier.

Starting another biography. This time, a classic: Scarisbrick's Henry VIII. Suspect it will be awhile before I can report that it is finished.

Mists and Moonbeams by Paul Michael Peters.

I'm on the last section of The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy: and the Path to a Shared American Future by Robert P. Jones.

I'm just about to finish American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West by Nate Blakeslee. It's quite a good book, though I do have a few reservations which I'll get into when I write my review.

I'm reading The Sixth Extinction as part of a LT book group and a few chapters at a time of The Niebelungenlied. Am also still making my way through The Burning of the Rose. I think I will head towards some sci fi or fantasy next.

One Of Us Is Lying – Karen M McManus
Book on CD performed by Kim Mai Guest, Shannon McManus, MacLeod Andrews, and Robbie Daymond
3.5***

Five high school students are found with cell phones in class, which is a violation of class rules. All claim the phones are not their own, but their teacher still requires them all to go to detention. While together in the room, but without the teacher present, one of the students dies. As it turns out there are significant questions about how this happened and the police are involved. Who did it?

This was a twisty mystery and the students surprised me with their insight and tenacity in trying to clear their names. Of course, there is the usual teenage drama as well: getting into college, sports, relationships, parents, bullying, social media, etc. There are also issues of dysfunctional families, and racism. Surprisingly I didn’t think all this teen drama distracted from the central plot. I certainly was kept guessing and didn’t figure out the culprit until the author chose to reveal the truth.

The audiobook is wonderfully performed by a quartet of talented voice artists. I’m not sure which artist performed which chapters, other than that the women voiced the teen girls and the men voiced the teen boys.

I just finished Nathaniel Philbrick's book "In the Hurricane's Eye" and just started Patrick K. O'Donnell's book "Washington's Immortals". All of Philbrick's book are well written and contain so much history that I wasn't taught in high school.

The Silence Between Us – Alison Gervais
Digital audiobook narrated by Chloe Dolandis
3.5***

When her family moves several states away just before she’s to start her senior year of high school, Maya, who is deaf, is mainstreamed into a hearing high school. When student body president Beau Watson begins to learn sign language so he can converse with her, Maya is suspicious of his motives.

This is a lovely young-adult romance with the added inclusion of one partner with a significant disability. Maya is smart and tenacious, but she just can’t believe that a hearing person and a deaf person can form a true relationship. In many ways the relationship between Beau and Maya is a typical teen romance, with missteps followed by genuine gestures that show caring, alongside all the usual teen drama of a senior year in high school. And that, I think, is the beauty of the novel. Maya’s deafness may set her apart, but in all other respects she is a typical teenager with the same kinds of dreams and questions and aspirations and missteps as every other teenager.

I listened to the audiobook, wonderfully performed by Chloe Dolandis. The irony of my listening to a book about a deaf student was not lost on me.

I finished The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy: and the Path to a Shared American Future by Robert P. Jones yesterday, and The Book of Delights by Ross Gay today.

Now I'm reading Something I Might Say by my friend, Stephanie Austin.

The Color Purple – Alice Walker
Book on CD read by the author
5***** and a ❤

Updated on 4th reading, 2024

Writing the book as a series of letters (or diary entries) really gives the reader the chance to hear Celie. There are moments of despair, of sorrow, and a very few of joy. Celie is an extraordinary woman and watching her grow from a scared girl to a confident, in-charge woman is fascinating and uplifting.

I've read it four times now, and each time I get something more from it. On my most recent re-reading I'm struck by the change in Mister - his realization of the mess he'd made of his life and his attempt at reformation.

My latest re-reading was inspired by my having seen the latest movie version (actually, a film based on the Broadway musical adaptation of this novel). I was not a great fan of this latest film and wanted to re-read the book to be sure I was remembering it correctly. I thought the original film, adapted by Steven Spielberg, was wonderful, and Whoopi Goldberg was stupendous, but the book is so much more than even that movie. I can't recommend it highly enough.

I first read this book back in the mid-1980s and recommended it as a good discussion book for one of my book groups (July 2001). I read it again in 2010, and another book club decided to discuss it in 2024, following the most recent movie version.

On my fourth reading, I listened to the audiobook version, narrated by the author. Walker has such a feeling for her characters that I cannot imagine that anyone else could have done a better job of the narration.

Hi everyone, I thought that I would drop by and let you know that I read The Torture Camp on Paradise Street by Stanislav Aseyev this last weekend. Aseyev is a journalist from Makiivka, a suburb of Donetsk, who was imprisoned in the notorious Isolation prison in Donetsk for a couple of years. His crime? He wrote a newspaper article in which he put The People's Republic of Donetsk in quotes. They felt this was disrespectful, so they arrested him, beat him, and subjected him to electric shocks. Then they locked him away in the Isolation prison for years before he was released in a prisoner exchange. It's a dark, grim book, but it's filled with meditations on the nature of freedom, suicide and Russian prison culture. It's an emotionally difficult book to read, but it's well written and compelling.

>2 blakelylaw: I read a library copy of Henry VIII by J.J.Scarisbrick (first name is Jack) in junior high/middle school! (The US copyright was 1969) The biography was reissued in paperback in 1997.

Just finished and adored Why Do Horses Run? by Australian author
Cameron Stewart, a debut novel.

The Oracle of Stamboul – Michael David Lukas
Digital audiobook performed by Mozhan Marno
4****

This work of historical fiction takes us to 19th-century Stamboul, seat of the Ottoman Empire (now, Istanbul, Turkey). When her mother dies as Eleanora Cohen is born, a flock of hoopoes suddenly appears. Two midwives appear mysteriously to deliver the child and begin caring for her; they claim to have “read the signs.” Raised by her father, a carpet merchant, she is indulged and cosseted. Clearly intelligent (she is reading advanced works at an early age), she manages to stowaway on his voyage to Stamboul. Eventually, Eleanora charms and intrigues the sultan himself, with her precocious intellect and astute observations.

I was completely enchanted by this tale. In many ways it reads like a fairy tale, with castles and secret passages, court intrigue and wicked stepmothers, and, of course, the mysterious flock of hoopoes which follow Eleanora wherever she goes.

The writing is atmospheric and mystical. There were times when I had to remind myself of the setting in the late 19th century.

There were a couple of threads that disappeared without a satisfying conclusion, and the ending is ambiguous. But, on the whole, I was greatly entertained by this novel.

Mozhan Marno does a wonderful job of performing the audiobook. He really brought the setting and the characters to life for me.

I finished American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West by Nate Blakeslee. American Wolf is a very well-written, informative and often fascinating work of narrative non-fiction about the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone National Park in 1995, including portrayals of the pro- and anti-wolf groups and portrayals of some of the representative individuals in those groups. But the book really centers around the close-up looks Blakeslee provides of the wolves themselves both as individuals and within their packs. It's a very good book, assuming that Blakeslee is accurate in his portrayals. You can find my longer review on 50-Book Challenge thread.

I have now begun The Estate by Isaac Bashevis Singer, as part of my twice-yearly read-through of Singer's novels in order of publication.

The Paris Novel
Ruth Reichl
4/5 stars
I love Ruth Reichl but I thought this was a non-fiction book. However, it was a fictional book about Stella who has inherited some money from her mother so she who heads off for Paris and has some wonderful adventures and meets some wonderful people. Highly recommended! Character Biography

The new thread is up: here