I set myself a goal of reading 12 books from the summer reading list I created. True to form, I did not read all the books on the list, but I read some other good books in addition. Here’s my reading report.
I did well on the fiction side and read seven of the nine titles. They were as follows:
Fiction
Many Rivers to Cross by Peter Robinson(this instead of the listed mystery I discovered I’d already read)
Hang the Moon by Jeannette Walls(excellent!)
Hello Beautifulby Ann Napolitano(4 stars)
HorsebyGeraldine Brooks (5 stars)
Trespasses by Louise Kennedy(3 stars)
Trust by Hernan Diaz(appreciated it after I finished it)
The White Ladyby Jacqueline Winspear(Winspear is back on her game!)
Note that I still plan to read This Other Edenand Three.
Nonfiction
As for nonfiction, I still have The Grimkes and The Lobster Coast on my stack. I read a long Atlantic excerpt of The Best Minds and so decided to skip reading the entire book.
(wired.com)
OTHER NOTEWORTHY READS
Fiction
The Majorityby Elizabeth Silver(Supreme Court justice loosely based on RBG, a fast read)
Tom Lakeby Ann Patchett(coming in a future post)
The English Teacherby Lily King
Think of Horses by Mary Clearman Blew
Nonfiction
Left on Tenth by Delia Ephron (memoir of illness & love, coming in a future post)
Giving Up the Ghostby Hilary Mantel (memoir)
The Codebreakerby Walter Isaacson(biography of Jennifer Doudna & history of gene editing; reading currently)
Note: Header image of row of readers is courtesy of lifeisthisway.com
When Hurricane Idalia came barreling toward the Florida Gulf Coast, we watched, worried, and wondered from Maine. Had we been home, we would have once again landed on the doorstep of our good friend in Venice where we sheltered last year during Ian.
Our little island was a lucky place. Idalia left only storm debris and extra water here and there, but no damage to our building or others. Anna Maria Island and downtown Bradenton, however, had significant flooding. A big sigh of relief here and a cautious hope that Florida escapes further big storms this season.
As summer waned, I dove into several more books, and the Chief Penguin and I found some entertaining and some serious viewing. Next week I’ll share an overview of my summer reading.
JUST BECAUSE FICTION
I call this group “just because” fiction, because they are books that I came across or picked up that I might not otherwise have read. But did read. Summer is a time to do something different, read more widely, read remaindered titles, or just dabble with an unfamiliar author. Did I love all these works? No, I didn’t. Did I finish them? Yes, even if in one case, I skimmed a lot. So, proceed with caution.
The English Teacher by Lily King
I got this on deep discount at Sherman’s in Boothbay Harbor because I’m a fan of King’s more recent novels. Published in 2005, The English Teacher is a story of adolescence and of a new marriage. Peter is a high school sophomore with a new set of stepsiblings whom he desperately wants to like and to have like him. His mother, Vida, never a wife until now, is the English teacher and her class is studying Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles.
Vida is struggling in the marriage and her life. Peter gets assigned to her class and discussions there bring to a head Vida’s unresolved issues. King’s writing acutely portrays the anguish of both son and mother. It’s an emotional book and one I found painful at points.
Margreete’s Harbor by Eleanor Morse (2021)
Appropriately for my summer, this is a novel set on the Maine coast from 1955 to 1967. I did not know Eleanor Morse, but she has written several other novels and lives on Peaks Island.
The character who catalyzes events is Margreete, a 70ish woman who is becoming forgetful and showing signs of early dementia. This character alone may be enough for some of a certain age to set the novel aside.
Liddie, Margreete’s daughter, and her husband Harry and their children Eva and Bernie, move from Michigan to start a new life with Margreete. Liddie is a professional cellist and Harry a high school history teacher who holds strong views about the Vietnam War.
This is a domestic novel in the truest sense capturing the small details of daily life as seen from the individual perspective of each family member. I liked parts of it, but found it overly detailed and wished that it had been shorter.
Think of Horses by Mary Clearman Blew
Author Blew (inland360.com)
As a memento of our June trip to Montana, I purchased this novel in Big Fork. Blew is the author of other books and nonfiction. Think of Horses, published in 2022 by the University of Nebraska Press, is the last book in her Montana quartet and set in the present. The other three take place in 1925, 1975, and 2012.
Tam Bowen, a successful romance novelist, has returned to her home county for the summer. An unwed mother at 17, now age 50, she has had no recent contact with her adult son, Rob. Tam relates easily to horses as her deceased father was a consummate horse-breaker, and he trained her. Through horses, she makes the acquaintance of James, a neighbor, and his half brother teenage Calvin.
Tam’s early life story made her the subject of gossip and in some quarters, hatred. Returning to the area, she raises the ire and the violent tendencies of some of her neighbors. These four individuals, Tam, Calvin, James, and even Rob, are all fragile with heartbreak in their histories.
How they deal with each other, and both come together and disconnect, makes for a poignant story set midst the roughness and the beauty of the west. (~JWFarrington)
After all the crime shows, we’d been watching, we needed something lighter and humorous. Red, White & Royal Blue was just the thing, a political rom-com. I hadn’t laughed so much in a long time.
Alex Claremont-Diaz is the son of the U. S. President while Prince Henry of the U.K. is the spare. The two don’t hit if off initially and cause an embarrassing display at a wedding. When they do become involved romantically, they must keep it a secret. With a female president, a Hispanic first son, and a gay couple, this is contemporary comedy. It’s great fun. Highly recommended for relief from everything serious!
Charly, Greta, Wilhelm & Friedhelm (The Telegraph)
Generation War is a German series aired in 2013 that follows five young Berliners as they serve and suffer in the Second World War from 1941 to 1945. When first aired in Germany, it was watched by millions, but also the focus of much public debate.
Greta is a bartender who aspires to become a popular singer; Viktor, a Jew, is her tailor boyfriend; Charlotte (Charly) is enthused about the prospect of nursing at the front, while brothers Wilhelm and Friedhelm are an army officer and an enlisted soldier respectively.
As presented on American TV, the production is in three parts, each about 90 minutes long. Narrated by Wilhelm and told from the German perspective, it contains some of the most brutal and almost physically punishing scenes of war I’ve ever seen.
These 20-year-olds are initially full of idealism for a quick victory and, except for Viktor, accepting of the goals set out by Hitler. They compromise their values, they see and do things that are horrible, and they are rendered emotionally numb by the machinery of war.
This is strong stuff. It’s an excellent series, but one that requires fortitude on the part of the viewer. Highly recommended! For another perspective, here is a review from NPR that appeared in 2014.
Like many people, the Chief Penguin and I have fond memories of visiting Maui over the years and being treated to insider tours with good friends. It is wrenching to see the wildfire destruction of so much of historic Lahaina and its residential neighborhoods.
On those earlier trips, we enjoyed meandering Front Street, checking out the small shops, and then tucking into a tasty lunch at the fun and funky Lahaina Yacht Club, now completely gone.
Other club pennants on display in Lahaina
Our hearts and thoughts are with those who have lost loved ones and their homes. (Our friends were fortunate that their property was not affected.)
RECENT READING
A WOMAN WITH AN INTRIGUING PAST
The White Ladyby Jacqueline Winspear
Author Winspear (Mystery Scene)
This latest novel by Winspear is a standalone one. I’ve owned it for several months but put off reading it. Now I wonder why as I found it fascinating, engaging, and occasionally suspenseful. Elinor DeWitt, also known as Elinor White, was a practically a child during the First World War I when she and her sister were recruited to help the Resistance effort in Belgium. Their assignments completed, not without danger or continuing mental anguish, they and their mother were taken safely to London, their mother’s early home.
Elinor completed her education and embarked on a career as a language teacher before being importuned to assist the war effort, this time against the Nazis. The book goes back and forth in time between the war years, and the present London setting in 1947. Elinor finds herself drawn to investigate a neighbor family’s business dealings. This leads to re-connections with former colleagues and reflections on her wartime experiences.
I found Winspear’s more recent Maisie Dobbs’ mysteries a bit tired. Thus, I was pleased that Elinor White is a complex and intriguing character. I stayed involved wondering what her fate and that of others would be. Recommended! (~JWFarrington)
CREATIVITY OUT OF MISERY
Giving Up the Ghost by Hilary Mantel (Published in 2003)
Author Mantel in 2000 (ew.com)
It was an interesting pairing to read Winspear’s novel right after Hilary Mantel’s haunting, graphic, and sharp-edged memoir. Mantel was born in 1952 in a Britain still suffering the shortages and exigencies of the Second World War. Much of her childhood was spent in a politically provincial village outside Manchester. The tensions between Protestants and Catholics reigned supreme, and which you were governed your schools and your daily routine. Living near multiple sets of older relatives, Hilary received much in the way of family lore and readily accepted that there were ghosts, even recounts personally experiencing sightings. And to a great extent, she took the teachings and warnings of the family’s Catholicism to heart.
As a teenager, her mother moved her and her siblings to another town along with her live-in partner, Jack. A life that was already fraught (her father and Jack had both lived with the family before the move) continued to be so in the new setting as Hilary worked to stay under the radar and quiet, if not invisible. Plagued by illness which became severely painful in her late teens, she spent years being misdiagnosed, mistreated, patronized, and ultimately operated on.
Having lost the ability to have children, she turned to writing. For anyone who has read Wolf Hall or Bringing Up the Bodies, award-winning novels in Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell trilogy, it’s easy to see the seeds of those historical works here in her approach to life.
This is an unconventional and brilliantly written memoir. Those novels came much later. Hilary Mantel died in 2022 at the age of 70. Thanks to my friend Margaret for passing this book on to me. (~JWFarrington)
Rough Diamondsis a fascinating and gripping Belgian series set in the Diamond District in Antwerp in the present day. The Wolfson family, very orthodox Haredi Jews, have a diamond trading business that’s in trouble. Unbeknownst to Father Ezra, head of the company, the youngest son Yanki has made some questionable deals. Estranged son Noah who left the family and his religion some years before, returns from London to mourn a death.
As their father’s health diminishes, Noah, his sister Adina, and his ineffectual older brother Eli, unite to try to save the company midst a web of corruption, violence, and tainted goods. Meanwhile, prosecutor Jo Smets is investigating the Albanian mafia and stolen jewels.
It is hard at first, maybe even at the end, to interpret all the various strands of the plot. Why does Noah work for his mother-in-law at all? Are the bad guys the Albanians or some of the Wolfsons? Has the prosecutor Smets overreached in her investigative efforts with Eli?
With these elements swirling around, one of the most compelling aspects of this series is cultural. It’s the interlocking relationships among siblings and cousins, between spouses, and between the Wolfsons and the other Jews in their temple community. There are 8 episodes, and summaries online indicate there will be a Season 2. Suspenseful and recommended!
RECENT BOOKS
CRIME IN YORKSHIRE
Many Rivers to Crossby Peter Robinson
British crime writer Peter Robinson penned twenty-eight novels featuring Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks. The setting is a small town in Yorkshire. Over the years, I’ve read many of Robinson’s books, and I enjoyed the TV series, DCI Banks. based on several of them.
Many Rivers to Cross is near the end of the series and the second to feature the intriguing Zelda. Beautiful, from Moldova, trafficked as a teenager and sexually abused, she shows up in the U.K. as a pavement artist. Partner to the much older artist Raymond Cabbot, father of DI Annie Cabbot, Zelda and Raymond are friends of Banks.
The crime that opens the initial investigation is finding a young Arab boy’s body in a rubbish bin. Trying to identify the boy and how he came to be there leads to drug activity in the area, a second death, and examining the roles of various community members. The book begins slowly, almost meanderingly, and then picks up speed as links with Albanian mobsters appear, and players from Zelda’s past seem to be involved.
Part of the attraction of this series is the character of Alan Banks himself. He loves music of all types from classical to rock, and the reader is regularly treated to comments on what he is listening to. A fully drawn complex character, he has two grown children and several past amours, one of whom is still a colleague. He is compassionately thorough in his investigations, a decent man, with a good moral sense.
In his lifetime, Peter Robinson received many book awards and was noted for his literary bent (he earned a Ph.D. in English from York University). Sadly, he died late in 2022. Wanting to know more about him, I found this lovely tribute by his wife, Sheila Halladay. Be forewarned, there are a few spoilers about his last books. You can find it at Crime Reads.
ROM-COM FUN
The Bodyguard by Katherine Center
(CultureMap Houston)
For a complete change of pace, I recommend Katherine Center’s new novel, The Bodyguard. Written during the pandemic, It’s fun, humorous, and ultimately sweet, but not icky. I read in the “Watching” column about a new film on Netflix, Happiness for Beginners, based on one of Center’s books. I haven’t watched the film yet, but that mention led me to this novel. Center grew up in Texas and the ranch she describes belongs to her grandparents.
Hannah Brooks is a highly trained personal protection agent or bodyguard. Stunned and grieved by the recent death of her mother, she is given a local assignment in Houston, rather than her preference for something far away. Her client is Jack Stapleton, a well-known movie star back home to spend time with his ill mother.
Prepared to provide protection, Hannah is initially incredulous when she is required to pose as Jack’s girlfriend in front of his family. That’s only the beginning of the antics when this skilled agent must try things she’s never encountered like riding a horse and trying to maintain professional distance in a close relationship.
Hannah and Jack each have some heavy baggage, but how their relationship evolves is both amusing and heartwarming. The book is written in the first person in Hannah’s voice. My only quibble is that I found the epilogue a bit overdone in terms of life lessons. It’s a fast read, perfect for a summer afternoon!
