What are you reading: September 21, 2024.

Wrapping up Punk, Post-Punk, New Wave (not hard since it's mostly a photo collection). Battle for the Castle and Matriarch will be next in line.

Having decided to read Proust's The Guermantes Way in quarters, and having reached the 1/4 point, I've set it aside and have started Dear Mrs. Bird by A.J. Pearce, a breezy novel about a young woman trying to make her way in London during the blitz.

I'm currently reading my Early Reviewer Broke Heart Blues by Joyce Carol Oates.
I will also be rereading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: The Illustrated Edition by J. K. Rowling for Banned Books Week, although this will be my first time reading the illustrated edition.
Happy Banned Books Week!

I finished reading 1Q84 early this morning. I stayed up until 3:00 a.m. to do so. It was a brilliant, tremendous read, and I loved it.

It's a hard act to follow. I've tentatively decided to read Americanah next, but I'm not entirely sure.

In the world of audiobooks I'm listening to The Most Dangerous Animal of All, which has an interesting premise. It's non-fiction. The author goes looking for his birth father, and is shaken to find that his dad may well be the Zodiac Killer.

I’m reading The Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn and Without Exception: Reclaiming Abortion, Personhood, and Freedom by Pam Houston

The Queen of Sugar Hill – ReShonda Tate
Book on CD performed by Lynnette R Freeman
3.5***

Subtitle: A Novel of Hattie McDaniel

Of course, I knew Hattie McDaniel as the actor who portrayed “Mammy” in the movie of Gone With the Wind. Tate’s novel begins with the Oscar ceremony when McDaniel won for best supporting actress, beating her co-star and fellow nominee, Olivia de Haviland (who played Melanie Hamilton Wilkes). But Hattie McDaniel was so much more than just her portrayal of Mammy, and Tate gives us all of her.

The reader learns about the struggles specific to Black actors to be seen and to avoid stereotypes. The subtle ways McDaniel and other Black actors tried to provide the characters they portrayed with more complexity and dignity, despite the restrictions imposed by general prejudice and Jim Crow laws, as well as the studio contracts typical of the era. They were vilified by the more strident leaders of the NAACP as being traitors to their race. But what were they to do? Refuse to work?

McDaniel wasn’t having it. She worked hard and smart to keep her star shining bright in the Hollywood firmament. And she refused to apologize for the roles she took. She had friendships with Bette Davis and Clark Gable. She was an accomplished singer and radio personality. And she had a strong bond with her best friends and fellow performers: Ruby Berkley Goodwin, Lillian Randolph, and Louise Beavers.

She successfully fought the restrictive real estate covenants, allowing many other minority families to purchase homes in more desirable neighborhoods. She threw lavish parties. And she did what she could to help new rising stars such as Dorothy Dandridge and Lena Horne. Still, she had to take what she could get in terms of roles, and frequently saw her best scenes edited out and thrown on the cutting room floor.

Having read this book, I have a new appreciation for the trailblazing McDaniel and other Black actors of her generation did.

Lynnette R Freeman does a fine job of performing the audiobook. She is not a mimic, however, so the voices she used for some of the more famous personalities really missed the mark.

I'm making some good headway on The White Ship and plan to finish reading The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store this week. Also reading a few more chapters in Les Misérables, Vol. II on a quiet weekend afternoon.

I've finished Thomas Rid's Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare. It was an eye opening book. The last couple of chapters clarify so much of recent history.

I've started Strategic Bombing by the United States in World War II: The Myths and the Facts by Stewart Halsey Ross, and I really wish I had researched this guy before buying his book. I'm barely 30 pages into it, and I want to throw the book at the author's head. It's short, so I'll finish reading it. It is more of a diatribe than a history. It's certainly not an objective history. There is a lot to criticize about the Allied bombing campaign in WWII, but this guy misses the mark. I'm embarrassed to admit that I bought this book. *sigh*

>6 BookConcierge: I did not know she could sing, I loved her in Gone With the Wind. I will check on the book.

Reading Worn, A People's History of Clothing by Sofi Thanhauser and On the Royle Range by William W Johnstone.

>6 BookConcierge: Yes, that looks really fascinating. Do you have any idea how closely the novel hewed to the real story? I would love to see a straight biography of McDaniel.

>11 rocketjk: I don't know how closely it follows her real life. But it's a fascinating work of historical fiction.

The Tunnels – Michelle Gagnon
3***

Book One in the mystery series starring FBI agent Kelly Jones.

A serial killer is targeting women on a New England college campus. The campus is crisscrossed by a series of tunnels that date back a century or more. Some students use them to avoid bad weather when traversing campus, but mostly they use them as make-out places. One girl gets lost in the darkness when her “friends” get ahead of her. The next day she’s found brutally murdered, and a second body is also found.

This is a brutal, graphic murder mystery. It involves ancient pagan religions, and one deranged person’s attempt to appease those gods with ritualistic sacrifices. But, of course, no one knows that at the outset.

Jones is a tough lady with some history on this campus, as well as personal trauma in her background which fuels her desire to find the perpetrator.

The pace is fast, the lead character is likeable, and the story line held my attention, but I’m not sure I’d bother to read another in the series. I felt a bit as though the grotesque brutality and graphic descriptions were overkill. And I was disappointed that Gagnon resorted to the “big strong man” coming to Jones’ rescue, rather than letting this strong woman get the best of the killer on her own.

56: Joe DiMaggio and the Last Magic Number in Sports
Kostya Kennedy
3/5 stars
Interesting sports book on Joe DiMaggio and his winning streak in the summer of 1941. Sports

A Long Petal of the Sea: A Novel by Isabel Allende

In the late 1930s, civil war gripped Spain. When General Franco and his Fascists succeed in overthrowing the government, hundreds of thousands are forced to flee in a treacherous journey over the mountains to the French border. Among them is Roser, a pregnant young widow, who finds her life irreversibly intertwined with that of Victor Dalmau, an army doctor and the brother of her deceased love. In order to survive, the two must unite in a marriage neither of them wants, and together are sponsored by poet Pablo Neruda to embark on the SS Winnipeg along with 2,200 other refugees in search of a new life.

The new thread is up over here.

deleted by author