Three books, one post...

It’s Friday afternoon and I’m quite tired out.  Not only did I have a fair bit of running around to do this morning, it’s also warm and muggy, which I find draining.  But I’ve got a tall, cool glass of water and a bowl of fresh local fruit to re-energize me as I write this rather brief post.

Since my last post, I read a book that was recommended to me by my super-reader friend.  The Villa, the Lake, the Meeting:  Wannsee and the Final Solution by Mark Roseman details the evolution of the treatment of Jews by Hitler and the Nazis before and during WWII, with a focus on the activities that led up to the meeting at Wannsee in January 1942.  This meeting, held in a posh Berlin suburb, was chaired by Reinhard Heydrich and was attended by representatives from all the major Nazi agencies, where together they hashed out the details of what would become known as “the Final Solution”.  Prior to this meeting, there were mass shootings of prisoners and random killings of citizens for no apparent reason, but until this meeting, which, by the way, was not attended by Hilter, there were no actual plans to systematically round Jews up and transport them to concentration camps for extermination. This was very interesting, and it was also, thankfully, brief.  After The Zookeeper’s Wife, this was almost "SS overload".  I had to get this from the library as an inter-library loan, so it might be difficult to access if you are interested in reading it.  Not being a fan of non-fiction, it says something about the quality of the information and the writing that I stuck with it and read it in about five days, so if you are interested in reading more about this subject, this would be a good choice.

Then I read Matters of Hart by Montreal author Marianne Ackerman.  I don’t know how this novel came to be sitting on my personal bookshelves, but I was going through some books that I thought I could give away and this one was in the pile. When I opened it up, I was drawn in immediately and had to keep reading.  Hart Granger is celebrating his fiftieth birthday at a surprise party planned by his ex-wife Sandrine.  She has invited fifty guests from various points in Hart’s life, so not everyone knows everyone else, leading to some awkwardness.  But his sister Amanda is there, along with his mother, Kitty, so things are rolling along fairly well until there is a knock at the door and in walks Neil, the half-brother who was given up for adoption as a baby.  This throws a wrench in the plans and things, for Hart anyway, begin to spiral downward at an increasingly rapid rate.  What follows is a display of adult sibling rivalry taken to the extreme.  At times hilarious, at others heart-wrenching, this novel was what I would call an “undiscovered gem” hidden away on my shelves.  I’m so glad I didn’t just give it away sight unseen, or I would never have discovered this amazing writer.  I’ll definitely check out other books by Ackerman.

And I read a Young Adult book from my school library collection, Monster by Walter Dean Myers.  This novel, told almost exclusively in the form of a screenplay, interspersed with jottings in a notebook, is a courtroom drama that follows the trial of Steve Harmon, a sixteen-year-old African American boy charged with participating in the plan to rob a neighbourhood drugstore, a robbery which resulted in the shooting death of the owner.  Since Steve is writing the screenplay in his own head, a mechanism he is using to cope with his incarceration, readers are treated to his own thoughts and feelings, his perspective on the trial as well as the words and actions of the others in the courtroom.  This was a book that sucked me right in, one I finished in just two days.  It was powerful and thought-provoking, not obviously tackling the theme of racism in the way that The Hate U Give did, yet that theme is always there, lying just below the surface.  It was a very interesting read, one I will recommend to my Grade Eight teacher as a possible read-aloud.  

That’s all for today.  Stay cool, keep reading and enjoy the last days of August!  

Bye for now…
Julie

It's been a while...

It’s been almost three weeks since my last post, and I have three books to tell you about today as I sip my steeped chai and eat a bowl of delicious fresh Ontario fruit.  But this is going to be Speed Blogging, a bit like Speed Dating, as I have my friend (and biggest blog fan!) coming over for a visit in just over an hour.  So here goes…

The first book I read since my last post was The Stranger in the Mirror by Liv Constantine.  This book tells the story of Addison, a young photographer who is about to get married to a wonderful man, but she’s not as happy as she should be.  A few years ago, she was found bleeding by the side of the road and was taken in by a wonderful couple who helped her get back on her feet, but since then, she’s suffered from severe amnesia and can’t remember who she was before her rescue.  Julian is a psychiatrist who has been searching for his wife for over two years.  He has been telling his daughter daily that mommy will come home soon, but how will he find her? And who, of all the people in her life, can Addison trust?  A page-turner for sure, but not nearly as good as it could have been.  If you are looking for a thriller with this type of plot, I would recommend Before I Go To Sleep by S J Watson, a truly fantastic read.

Next I read Unsettled Ground by Irish author Claire Fuller, which was short-listed for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction.  It focuses on twins Jeanie and Julius, fifty-one years old, both single and still living with their mother, Dot, in a run-down cottage on the fringes of a small village.  When their mother dies suddenly, they are left to their own devices and must try to make their way through life together using whatever skills they have.  As if this wasn’t frightening enough, as they try to forge a life from what they know, day by day this knowledge is shattered, and everything they have believed their whole lives is called into question.  This literary masterpiece was also a page-turner, but one that demanded attention to language and character development.  It was a fabulous book, tackling serious issues gracefully and with compassion.  I would highly recommend it and will seek out other novels by this author.

And last but not least, I read The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman.  This non-fiction title was the selection for my Volunteer Book Club, which met on Saturday morning.  This book details the lives of Jan and Antonina Zabinska, keepers of the Warsaw Zoo before and during WWII.  The lives they saved, the adventures they had, the creative ways they hid “Guests”, both legitimate and not, and the way they handled tricky situation made a serious impression on all the members of the group.  We thought Jan was “fearless, brave and clever”.  We were amazed at the complexity of the Underground.  We thought that, at that time, everyone had to make choices, and those choices were often between life and death.  We were horrified by the “cruel (psychological) games” some of the Nazis engaged in.  We thought it had so much detail and so many people that it was hard to keep track of everything and everyone, but that it was a worthwhile read if only to offer a “window into the Underground, the Resistance”.  We felt that it was called The Zookeeper’s Wife because up until recently, war stories have mainly focused on the actions of men, and the many and varied roles of women have been largely forgotten or ignored.  We all agreed that we would never survive in a similar situation, that we would be caught out in a lie almost immediately because we wouldn’t be able to keep track of what we told and to whom.  Thankfully the only battle we are facing right now is against COVID-19!

That’s all for today.  Stay cool and keep reading!

Bye for now…
Julie

Two weeks, two books...

I know it’s been a while since I’ve written a post, but I’ve decided that, until I go back to work/school in September, I will write one post for every two books that I read.  I know I’ve got the whole summer off, but it’s amazing how busy things get - I’m actually blogging to the sound of windows being replaced right now! 

I’ve read two books since my last post.  The first is Hostage by Clare Mackintosh, a thriller set on a plane making the very first non-stop flight from London to Sidney, where one of the flight attendants is ordered to assist the hijackers or her daughter will be harmed.  Should she save one life at the expense of more than 300 others?   What would you do in the same situation?  I’ve listened to other books by this bestselling British author, and this one did not disappoint.  It was an interesting setting, perhaps the first thriller I’ve read taking place almost entirely during a flight.  The issues the main character experiences trying to bond with her adopted daughter seemed believable, as well as the issues her husband was facing on his own and in their relationship.  Mackintosh not my favourite author, but her books are consistently well-written and reliably “good enough” to keep me interested right to the last page, and this one has a really interesting ending.  I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys thrillers, but don’t read it if you experience aerophobia (fear of flying - I just learned a new word!).

The book I finished yesterday is one that we will be discussing next Monday for my Friends book club, and one I’ve read before, What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman.  I didn’t really suggest it as a selection for the group to read, I merely mentioned that I was interested in rereading it, but people thought it sounded good so that’s how we came to choose it.  Having reread it, I’m not so sure everyone will like it, but it’s too late to change now.  Here’s what I wrote about it in May, 2016: 

“I have a book and an audiobook I want to tell you about today.  The book I read is What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman.  This is a reread, and it’s a bit of an indulgence for me, as it’s not overly well-written, but it’s a twisty, turny rollercoaster ride through the past 30 years of a woman who claims to be one of the two sisters who were believed to have been abducted from a mall in Baltimore one Saturday afternoon in 1975.  The novel opens with a woman’s confused ramblings as she is driving down the highway.  Her confusion leads to an accident and she is taken to hospital where, having no ID with her, she reveals under questioning that she is one of the Bethany sisters, the younger sister Heather, then refuses to say anything more.  Enter Kevin Infante, a chauvinistic detective who becomes more and more frustrated as he struggles to come up with any leads that might help crack this case.  He consults his former partner, Nancy Porter, who after maternity leave, has joined the Cold Case squad, and together they try to get this woman to open up to them, to give them something, anything, that they can work with.  Unfortunately, all she seems to tell them are vague stories that include details that shift and change according to the situation.  There is also a social worker, Kay Somerville, who becomes involved in Heather’s case, and she approaches her lawyer friend Gloria Bustamante to take on this case and help this woman out.  There are multiple stories intertwined, as lengthy flashbacks fill in the details of the day of the crime, as well as what happened in the intervening years for both of the parents while their daughters were still missing and presumed dead.  It was very confusing, but it’s the kind of book I love to read every once in  awhile, a bit of a “trashy novel” filled with secrets and lies and mystery (I mean "trashy" in the best sense of the word, as in plot-driven as opposed to language- or character-driven).  I didn’t really remember exactly how it ended, but I had some idea, so I could pay attention to the minutiae of the story with that in mind and appreciate the complicated story Lippman created rather than just feeling lost and confused.  All in all, it was a good read, and a change from some of the more literary stuff I usually choose.  I’d give it an 8 out of 10, and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys books about family secrets and doesn’t mind multiple stories and many flashbacks.  As an aside, I loved this part near the beginning of the book, when we meet Kay for the first time.  She is talking about books, and how she prefers reading to engaging with others.  She joined a book group to give her a cover and validate her frequent choices of reading over talking.  But she says she doesn't really like being in a book group, because "talking about the characters in a book she had enjoyed felt like gossiping about friends".  I can relate to that!”

I would say that I feel exactly the same way about it this time around, and really enjoyed the portrayal of the various characters, Kay and Kevin and Nancy, but also the Bethany parents, Miriam and Dave.  I hope it will make for a good discussion.  As an aside, I didn’t realize that I’d read it twice before, so it must rank pretty high in my reading memory if I wanted to read it again for a third time.  All in all, you could do worse than this book, which was truly filled with family secrets.

That’s all for today.  The window people have gone for lunch and it’s finally quiet, but they’ll be back soon so I should take advantage of this stillness to get some reading done.  Enjoy the lovely day and keep reading!

Bye for now…
Julie

Two books, one post...

I think this is the first time I’ve missed a post, so rather than wait until next Sunday, I've decided to write about the last two books I’ve read this morning.  It’s cool and rainy, and I’ve got a steaming cup of chai and a delicious date bar, and it’s the first full week of summer holidays for me, so it’s the perfect time to write this post.

My book club met last Saturday to discuss the Young Adult novel Turtles All the Way Down by John Green.  I chose this book to add to our list because I usually have at least one YA novel, most often during the summer, and this was one a teacher at my school had read and really enjoyed.  This novel tells the story of sixteen-year-old Aza Holmes and her friends Daisy and Mychal, three young people who are determined to solve the mystery of a billionaire, Mr Pickett, who went missing in the wake of a fraud investigation and claim the reward money.  Aza suffers from OCD and is constantly worrying about contracting an infection, specifically C. diff.  She is also grieving the loss of her father, so when Daisy and Mychal drag her into this adventure, she reluctantly agrees to participate.  She and Pickett’s son, Davis, knew each other in elementary school, so they use this connection to their advantage.  Davis and his younger brother Noah are surrounded by people who work for their father, but no one who is truly family.  Add to this the fact that their father, upon his death, is planning to leave all his money to his tuatara, which he believes holds the key to increased longevity, and you’ve got two very confused and lonely boys. This motley group search for clues to help locate Pickett, but along the way they encounter other challenges, particularly related to relationships, friendships, and familial responsibility.  Everyone seemed to enjoy this book.  They felt that Green wrote from a female perspective convincingly, and wondered how he could understand Aza’s mental health issues unless he’s lived it (he has).  They thought Daisy was a foil, a bit of comic relief from the more serious explorations into mental health issues.  Green did a good job of including social media as a form of communication, one that is so prevalent with young people.  This book explored the topics of absentee parents, the not-always-great relationships between parents and children, and self-harm.  We discussed the relationship between Aza and her mom, and her mom’s own fears of “losing someone else”.  All in all, it was a great discussion.

And since I’m off for the summer, I have already finished reading Alex Michaelides’ second, much-anticipated novel, The Maidens.  I loved his first book, The Silent Patient, so I think I had unrealistic expectations for this one, and unfortunately I was somewhat disappointed, although clearly the book was gripping enough that I managed to finish it in three days.  Tara, a student at St Christopher’s College, Cambridge, goes missing, and Mariana, a psychotherapist specializing in group therapy, gets a distressing call from her niece, Zoe, who is also a student at St Christopher’s, as well as the missing girl’s best friend.  When Tara’s body is found, the victim of a seemingly frenzied attack, she leaves her busy practice in London and heads to Cambridge, where she reluctantly becomes involved in the investigation, despite the remonstrations of the lead investigator as well as the main suspect, Edward Fosca. Fosca is a Professor of Greek Literature who regularly meets with some of his most intelligent students, a group of young, beautiful women he calls “the maidens”, a cult-like reference to the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone.  Tara was part of this group, but the police don’t seem to be taking Mariana’s concerns seriously, so when another girl, also a “maiden”, is murdered, she is determined to stay in Cambridge and prove that Fosca is guilty.  Mariana, still grieving the loss of her husband Sebastian, has a tendency to run away and hide from the truth, but she finds new purpose in helping Zoe and decides that it is her duty to protect her.  Can she solve the mystery before Zoe becomes the next victim?  You’ll have to read it to find out.  There were plenty of potential suspects, plot twists and red herrings, and it was written well enough, so I don’t quite know why I was unable to really lose myself in this story.  I guess I couldn't really identify with Mariana, and some of her decisions were questionable at best. Still, you could certainly do worse than this thriller, so if I were to use Kirkus' rating system, I would say “Borrow it”, as opposed to “Buy it” or “Skip it”.  

That’s all for today.  Stay dry and pick up a good book.

Bye for now…
Julie

Last post for June...

It’s hard to believe that it’s already the end of June.  The time has certainly flown by, despite the relative tediousness of pandemic life.  But here we are once again, at what feels like the end of something, a certain melancholy for the end of the school year, but also the excitement of what seems like an endless stretch of lazy summer days… 

Speaking of the end of something, as of July 1, Feedburner, the platform Blogger uses to deliver new posts to subscribers’ email addresses, will be cancelled, so if you are a subscriber who follows by email, this is the last post that will be delivered to you.  I have been considering some options and would like to offer the following:  if you would like me to send a link for each new post to you personally, please email me at:  juliesreadingcorner@gmail.com and I will begin this service as of next week.  A friend also sent me this suggestion:  If you are an RSS/Atom feed reader, you can subscribe to this blog’s Atom feed at this link :  http://www.juliesreadingcorner.com/feeds/posts/default.  I hope you will continue to read my posts and hopefully find some interesting book suggestions, and I will do my best to provide options to make this transition easy and seamless.  Thank you to everyone who visits this blog - I appreciate it!

I read an interesting book last week, another techno-thriller, this one by Irish-Canadian author Ed O’Loughlin.  This Eden begins in Vancouver with two students who end up together due to circumstance and stay together seemingly out of convenience.  Alice is a computer genius who wants to change the world.  Michael just barely squeaked by the entrance exams to get into Engineering.  They meet one afternoon when a group of students are enjoying a rare snowy day, knowing that these weather conditions are brief and fleeting. They end up together for the rest of their time at university, until Alice drops out and says she wants to go and work for a big tech company in Silicon Valley, one she has for years professed to despise.  When the news of this company’s plan to introduce Omnicent, a cryptocurrency that will eventually wipe out the use of money, Alice knows something must be done or governments around the world will lose all power and will ultimately topple.  Then Alice disappears and Michael is at a loss for what to do next, how to go on living.  When he is recruited by this same tech company because of his relationship with Alice, he suspects that there is more going on than they are saying, but he has no proof.  Then he is reluctantly but forcibly drawn into an espionage plan by an Irish asset named Aoife and her elusive boss, Towse, and his boring life changes forever.  What follows is a rollercoaster ride of plot twists and turns through what I think of as “Around the world of horrors in 400 pages”.  I really enjoyed this novel, which pulled me along in the excitement of the chase every step of the way and every page of the book.  But it was so much more than a techno-thriller.  It was a literary exploration into the very things that make up our existence in the world, and asks us to consider who we are and how we define ourselves.  I have to say, though, that despite how gripping this novel was, after reaching the last page, I felt that I needed a break from reading about the darkest sides of humanity.  I would definitely recommend this well-written literary thriller to just about anyone.

That’s all for today.  Stay cool and keep reading!

Bye for now…
Julie

Post on a perfect Father's Day morning...

The sun is shining, the birds are singing, the breeze is blowing… this may be the most perfect morning of the year so far.  And I’ve got a steaming cup of chai, a delicious date bar and a yummy banana muffin to enjoy as I write this post, too, so it really is a perfect morning.

Last week I read a novel that was a bit outside my comfort zone, Version Zero by Young Adult author David Yoon.  Max is a shining star at Wren, the youngest person to ever hold his position at this large social media company.  When he is singled out to head up a new initiative called the Soul Project, he has his reservations:  this project is devoted to mining personal data of the “squishy” sort, sexual preferences, political leanings, etc., to create “emotional profiles” of its users.  When he discovers that this information is being sold to intelligence organizations, he confronts the CEO and is summarily dismissed and then blackballed across Silicon Valley.  He, along with his equally talented tech friend (and secret love of his life), Akiko, decide that the only way to stop what Wren and other big tech companies are doing to their users is to “reboot” the internet, to go back to “version zero”.  When assistance comes in an unexpected way, Max and Akiko, along with Akiko’s boyfriend, and Max’s long-time friend, Shane, jump at the opportunity, but soon realize that this offer comes at a cost.  Can Max save the world from systematic data mining or are internet users forever doomed to sell their souls for access to another free app?  I don’t know much about tech stuff, but this novel started off in such a hip, easy, conversational way that I was immediately hooked.  And I felt that I was learning, along with Max, about the dark side of big tech companies.  But around the mid-point, the plot took an unexpected turn and I kind of lost interest, but it was such a quick easy read that I stuck with it, and I’m glad I did because it had a decent ending that tied up all the loose ends.  I discovered that the author is the husband of another Young Adult author, Nicola Yoon, who wrote Everything, Everything, which I really enjoyed.  This was David Yoon's first novel for adults, and I'm now interested in checking out his YA books, as he clearly writes well and can create an intriguing story.

That’s all for today.  Get outside and enjoy the day, and do something special for your dad, or any other significant person in your life. 

Bye for now…
Julie

Tea and treats on a less hot Sunday morning...

It’s cooled off significantly over the past few days, and with more seasonal temperatures, the weather’s been positively delightful.  I’ve been out for a long walk already, my new routine to avoid the worst of the UV rays during mid-day, so I feel I've really earned my tea and treat.  I've got a big mug of very strong Pu-Erh Exotic tea and an especially yummy Date Bar to look forward to, and I know it’s going to be a great day!

I read an interesting book last week, Red Oblivion by Canadian author Leslie Shimotakahara.  Set in modern-day Hong Kong, this book explores one woman’s attempt to uncover distressing family secrets, despite her father's efforts to keep them hidden.  Jill and Celeste, both living in the Toronto area, return home to Hong Kong to care for their ninety-four year-old father (Ba) who has recently fallen ill and is in hospital.  Celeste, who harbours no feelings of nostalgia for her childhood, wants nothing to do with any of this, and can’t wait to get home to her husband and her life. Jill, on the other hand, is still blinkered to what her sister thinks of as their real past and does her best to keep alive her own version of a childhood in which her father was not neglectful, but, while not doting, was actually there for her, at least some of the time.  What Jill discovers as she tends to her father’s business demands while he is incapacitated, however, makes her reconsider all the stories her Ba told her over the years about his struggles to save his family during the Cultural Revolution and his efforts to make money and build a business out of nothing.  Who’s been mailing her Ba these strange items, and what do they mean?  Where did the money to start this business come from?  And who had to suffer for her Ba to get it?  I was hesitant to read this book because I know nothing about Mao and the Socialist Education Movement, China’s Cultural Revolution and the Red Guards, but Shimotakahara did a good job of explaining things in a very basic way that made it easy for this reader to understand and follow.  This book was as much about the relationship between a daughter and her father as it was about the fairly recent violent history of China, and one woman’s attempt to do the right thing.  The parallels to King Lear were none too subtle, with the dreams and the visions and the favourite daughter who loves her father best, but these actually helped to give a different context to the story, one that had nothing to do with the potentially violent means by which Jill’s father accrued his wealth, and the nasty historical events he somehow managed to survive.  I felt like I learned something about Chinese history, and the details of Jill’s experiences living in Hong Kong were vivid and interesting.  The story dragged at times, but overall it was a good book about an unpleasant subject, and Jill’s efforts to undo the wrongs of the past, if only on a small scale, are very timely indeed.

That’s all for today.  Get outside and enjoy the rest of the weekend!

Bye for now…
Julie