Oh my, I have so
much to tell you about today… I think I need a larger tea pot to make enough
chai tea to keep me sipping while I write!
Where to start…
I’ll start with
the book sale, which I mentioned in a post last week. I went after work on Friday, but I was tired,
it was raining, I was on a schedule, and I knew I didn’t really need any more
books, so I managed to find only four titles that I thought would be
interesting. After all, I didn’t want to
come away with nothing. I picked up two
titles that I have read before, Zoë Heller’s What Was She Thinking: Notes on a Scandal, which I may put on
our book club list for next year, and S J Watson’s Before I Go To Sleep,
which I think has recently been made into a movie, but which is an awesome
book. Then I got two titles by authors
whose works I want to start reading or want to read more of: Richard Russo’s Empire Falls, and The
Collected Works of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (I’ll admit
that my interest in Sherlock Holmes came about because I have recently become a
devotee of the British series “Sherlock” with Benedict Cumberbach and Martin Freeman). I also picked up a paperback copy of Wilkie
Collins’ The Woman in White, which I wanted to have on hand in case I
felt like reading that early gothic novel.
As we were out on Saturday morning, I suggested to my husband that we
swing by the book sale again, since I knew that this would be the time when
they would have the “Fill your bag or box for $5.00” deal. Friday is the best time to go if you are
looking for particular books or authors, as the selection is greater, but
Saturday is best if you want to pick up titles by authors you
are curious about but don’t know whether you’ll like their writing, or if you
just want to try something new. I came
away with a few titles that I will pass on to a friend, since I think she will
like them. But I also got a number of
books for myself that I know nothing about:
Netherland by Joseph O’Neill, Suite Française by Irene
Nemirovsky, an early book by Orange Prize-winning author Andrea Levy, a novel
by Kate Christensen, one by Peter Hedges and Ha Jin, a mystery by Akë
Edwardson, a memoir by Maria Coletta McLean about living in Italy, and a book
of letters by Governor General award-winning non-fiction author Karen Connelly
(I didn’t know who she was when I picked up the book, but it had a great cover,
so I added it to my bag). I hope that I
will enjoy at least a couple of these “unknowns”, but if they don’t appeal to
me, I can always pass them on to others or donate them to a good cause. So that was great fun, and worth the brief diversion
from our Saturday schedule.
I also want to
mention that The Massey Murder by Charlotte Gray has been chosen as the
One Book, One Community selection for this year. This book is also on The OLA Evergreen 2014
list of nominees (https://www.accessola.org/OLAWEB/Forest_of_Reading/Awards_Nominees/Evergreen_Nominees.aspx),
and although I haven’t yet read it, I’m sure it is a good read. A brief summary: In February of 1915, a member of one of
Canada’s wealthiest families was shot and killed on the front porch of his home
in Toronto as he was returning from work.
Carrie Davies, an 18-year old domestic servant, quickly confessed to the
murder, but who was the real victim here, Charles Massey, a scion of a famous
family, or the frightened, perhaps mentally unstable, Carrie, a poor British
immigrant? Set against the backdrop of
the Great War, this sensation crime and trial is brought to life for the first
time by award-winning historian and biographer Gray. The link for the One Book, One Community site is on the right-hand side of this blog, under "Book-related sites", if you want more information about this title or this program.
I have finished
listening to Leonard Rosen’s second book, The Tenth Witness,
recently. This novel is the prequel to All
Cry Chaos, which I also recently enjoyed.
In this prequel, the main character, Henri Poincaré, is not yet working
for Interpol. He is a young man just
starting out in an engineering business with his friend Alex. It is 1978, and they have just been offered a
job by Lloyds of London to design a dock to be used for the retrieval of the
HMS Lutine, a Dutch ship that sank off the Dutch coast in 1799. The insurance company expects to find bars of gold, but what
Henri discovers instead, upon making the acquaintance of Liesel and Anselm
Kraus, is a complex and dangerous family history which leads him back to the
concentration camps of Nazi Germany, and the use of slave labour in the
production of steel for the Nazis by Kraus Steel. The closer he gets to members of the Kraus
family, the more he is drawn into this investigation and the six degrees of
separation that unite his recently deceased neighbour and friend, and the
powerful men who committed heinous war crimes and were offered opportunities to
seek refuge from the law and “disappear” into new identities in other parts of
the world after the war. This excellent novel is at
least as compelling as All Cry Chaos, which I really enjoyed. Be prepared to get caught up in the mystery,
and make sure you have plenty of reading time for this one – you don’t want to
read it in dribs and drabs, but will want to devour whole huge chunks of the
book in one sitting.
And last but not
least (well, maybe ‘least” is the right word), I finished a book that I read
for my committee, Somewhere In-Between by Donna Milner. This recently-published Canadian novel is set
in rural British Columbia, and tells the story of a couple, Julie and Ian O’Dale,
who have recently lost their 16-year old daughter Darla in a car accident. They each blame themselves, and are unable to
talk about their grief. Thinking that a
change of residence may help, former real estate agent Julie agrees to Ian’s
wish to purchase an isolated ranch with its own lake on the outskirts of the
town in which they currently live, a town that holds too many memories of
Darla. With the purchase of the ranch
comes the occupant of the trapper’s cabin near the lake, Virgil Blue, a Native
Indian who keeps the ranch running while keeping to himself. This mystery man, whose life holds many sorrows,
seems to be the one thing that Julie and Ian are able to talk about, as their
marriage disintegrates further over the first few months they spend at the
ranch. Only when another near-tragic
event occurs are they able to get past their grief and reach a stage of
acceptance and an ability to move on. With
spirit bears and dreamcatchers, voices from beyond the grave and sweat lodges,
this book offers insight into the myths and legends of Native Indians, while
also presenting one family’s struggles to deal with loss and grief. Unfortunately, this reader found that the novel
often felt heavy-handed and forced, instead of uplifting and spiritual. That is not to say that other readers would
not enjoy this book, just that I didn’t particularly like it. But I was compelled to read it to the end, to
find out how they found peace, and also to see what happened to Virgil, in my
opinion the most interesting character in the book.
That’s all for
now (I’ve run out of tea, and am ready for breakfast). Have a great day!
Bye for now…
Julie
Julie
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