Reading

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

/ Mystery-Suspense, Reading

★★★★☆ | Mystery-Suspense | Digital | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads

I finally got around to reading this classic, one I thought I had read but hadn’t.  The book was soaked with atmosphere.  You felt you were with the unnamed narrator, over your head in some grand english manor.  Her uncertainties and fears became your own in a stream-of-consciousness flutter of internal dialogue.  There were some good twists along the way, and Mrs. Danvers was certainly creepy.  And yeah, so it was largely set in the library of a grand old house.

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Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley

/ ★★★★★, Literary Fiction, Reading

★★★★★ | Literary Fiction | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads

What a delightful little book.  I read this 36 years ago, so parts of it were vaguely familiar.

When you sell a man a book you don’t sell him just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue-you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night-there’s all heaven and earth in a book, a real book I mean. 

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Trust the Plan by Will Sommer

/ History, Reading

★★★☆☆ | History | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads

The book describes how QAnon and other conspiracy theories emerged to be a major forces in politics.  I am reading this to better understand the beliefs of a family member.  The writing here is not great.  The author repeats himself and does a poor job of relating stories.  But at least I have a better understanding of this bizarre cult.

Dead Calm by Charles Williams

/ Mystery-Suspense, Reading

★★★★☆ | Mystery-Suspense | Print | Own | Goodreads

Fun suspense yarn set at sea. Interesting writing style: points of view change within chapters without warning; no flashbacks; everything revealed via dialogue. I enjoyed this one.

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

/ Reading, Science Fiction

★★★★☆ | Science Fiction | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads

This book won the Hugo award in 2020. Slow moving at first with a lot of world building jargon to pause over.  The plot picked up in the middle and became almost a page turner by the end.

I liked the eerie description of the Sunlit, a human/AI police force (we never really find out what they are). 

Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe; it gives life back to those who no longer exist.

A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut

/ Essays, Reading

★★★☆☆ | Essays | Audio | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads

A cranky, comical book of essays written in the last years of Vonnegut’s life.  He is depressed about the state of the world and our short-term minded treatment of it.  He reminds you that everyone, even those experts in power only just got here, like everyone else and no one really knows anything.

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At the Fights by George Kimball

/ Reading, Sports

★★★★☆ | Sports | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads

A great collection of essays and fight recaps over boxing’s storied history. Some of these I had read before (Shadow Box by George Plimpton, The Fight by Norman Mailer and Four Kings by George Kimball). Gene Tunney’s essay about fighting Jack Dempsey was amazing. 

I began to wish I had more time to think and read and talk to people, to stop writing so much and with such assurance. Columnists have to write with assurance because they are paid to raise The Truth.
— Robert Lipsyte

These Precious Days by Ann Patchett

/ Essays, Reading

★★★★☆ | Essays | Audio | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads

A wonderful collection of essays across a variety of topics.  I read her essay “Three Fathers” in the New Yorker a while back, but it’s so much more engaging to hear Ann read it aloud in her own voice.  Her writing reminds me of my own if I were better — and that it’s possible to write and essay and still be impactful.

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A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers

/ Reading, Science Fiction

★★★☆☆ | Science Fiction | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads

A comfort read with some interesting themes:

  • Human sustainability in a fragile ecosystem
  • Finding purpose and meaning in a godless, accidental universe
  • Finding joy in the face of mortality and eternal oblivion

I respect the neutral gender treatment in the novel, but it kept throwing me off during my reading.

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Mr Ives’ Christmas by Oscar Hijuelos

/ Literary Fiction, Reading

★★★★☆ | Literary Fiction | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads

A painful book for me to read — the story of a father losing his 17-year-old son. Mr. Ives – a religious and kind family man – spends the remainder of his life grieving.  He relationship with the love of his life withers, he takes no more joy is in existence, he loses faith in God.  Some 35 years after his son is murdered, he regains some of his faith through dreams, travel and forgiveness of his son’s killer.  It’s a dark, melancholy book. I worried for myself as I watched Mr. Ives grieve over the decades following the loss of his son.

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St John Mandel

/ Reading, Science Fiction

★★★★☆ | Science Fiction | Digital | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads

I enjoyed the writing of this story more than I expected to. I guess I have a weakness for time travel and Universe as Simulation books.

A key theme of the book was the powerful but morally corrupt Time Institute — a secret government agency that developed and used time travel technology to preserve itself without regard for the moral good it could do. The main protagonist joins the agency and uses time travel to safe a life which gets him in huge trouble.

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Grieving Dad by Mark Seidman

/ Psychology, Reading

★★★★☆ | Psychology, Grief and Loss | Digital | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads

A boating friend gifted me this book after he learned about Connor’s passing. The author’s 26-year-old son died in a climbing accident.  He wrote the book as therapy for himself and as a way to help other dads who have lost a child.

The most important takeaway is something I already knew but was good to be reminded: if Connor could somehow communicate with me from the other side, he would tell me to heal up and find a way to be happy again.  He would want me to miss him of course, but he wouldn’t want me to give up living.  I know that is true.

The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier

/ Fantasy, Reading

★★★★☆ | Fantasy | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads

An interesting book.  After you die, you go to a city where you live so long as someone remembers you from the living world.  At this city, life seems to go on as it did on Earth.  People work, go out to eat, read books, complain about “life”, and all the while seem not to be amazed at this life after death.

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Hidden Pictures by Jason Rekulak

/ Mystery-Suspense, Reading

★★★★☆ | Mystery-Suspense | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads

I can’t remember the last 300+ page book I read in nearly a single sitting. What a terrific story, so well told.  So many tie ins to my life: Mallory the protagonist, 18 months sober, the early death of her sister in a car accident.

Books like these remind me of the true joy that comes from reading a good story.  I’d give it five stars but for the zany, frumped up ending.  This story demanded a simpler, more elegant way to finish such a smooth, entrancing beginning and middle.

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

/ ★★★★★, Literary Fiction, Reading

★★★★★ | Literary Fiction | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads

I enjoyed this book so much more than I expected.  Perhaps it’s the grief I have been feeling that has opened up new emotional channels.  I found myself tearing up at multiple points in reading this book.  I really cared for the characters: Lily, August, May, Rosaleen, these beautiful, wise women.

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Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

/ Mystery-Suspense, Reading

★★★☆☆ | Mystery-Suspense | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads

A ghost story with two sets of twins and a few surprising twists that I didn’t see coming (but should have).  Niffenegger lost points with her depiction of Valentina’s parents (including Elspeth!) with their lack of grieving and too-easily-accepted death of their daughter.  Obviously she’s never dealt personally with the loss of a child.

Julia had never thought of death as something that would happen to her, or to people she knew. All those people in the cemetery were just stones, names, dates. Loving Mother. Devoted Husband. Elspeth was a parlour trick; she had never been really real to Julia. Valentina is in that box. It couldn’t be true. 

This Is What It Sounds Like by Susan Rogers

/ Psychology, Reading

★★★☆☆ | Psychology | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads

Susan worked with Prince as sound engineer — how cool is that? Probably the most insightful thing I learned from the book wasn’t about music, but art. She described how and why the surreal art movement came to exist: as photography was invented, artists were suddenly disrupted.  A photograph would always be more realistic than a painting.  Surreal art allows the perceiver to fill in the meaning of the art from their own subconscious, a whole different part of the brain.

Reading the book made me want to dive back into listening to albums again.

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