This book was one of those that I liked, but I also didn’t much like it, or at least I didn’t really like or understand the characters in it. Yes, that’s it exactly. I didn’t understand a single one of the many characters in this book. And that’s not entirely my fault. In Commonwealth, one of the children of a blended family falls in love with a much older writer and ends up telling him stories about her childhood. And he ends up writing […]
Terrifically Beguiling
I picked this book up on a whim while at a local thrift store. I had never heard of the author, Colin Cotterill, and I had never heard of the series, featuring Dr. Siri Paiboun. But, pick it up I did, and, when I needed something to cheer me up after the slog that was the last book I read/reviewed, Half-Blood Blues, this book did the trick. The Merry Misogynist is a mystery set in Laos in 1978. It features Dr. Siri Paiboun, a seventy-three-year-old […]
Sid is a Jerk
As a person of mixed race (White mother, Black father) who loves the blues, I thought that a book like Half-Blood Blues (featuring several mixed race characters and blues) would be right up my alley. It was not. In fact, it took me nearly a week to read the first 50 pages and I was bored to death almost the whole time. On page 54 things finally (finally!) got interesting from a story standpoint, but I still had to contend with the writing, which never […]
Listen to the Heavens
Rules of Civility takes place in post-Depression, pre-WWI Manhattan, among New York’s elite, those who wish to be New York’s elite and the clubs, parties and restaurants they frequented. The majority of the novel takes place in 1938 and is told from the point of view of Katey (born Katya) Kontent, described by her friend, Eve, as “the hottest bookworm you’ll ever meet.” Katey is the well-read, orphaned daughter of Russian emigrants, Eve (born Evelyn) is the naturally blonde, (naturally?) ambitious transplant from Indiana, and Tinker […]
“Stop the logging, stop the lies. Save the monarch butterflies.”
For years (and years) my favorite Barbara Kingsolver book was The Poisonwood Bible, followed by Prodigal Summer. And then I read Flight Behavior and I believe that I have a new favorite. I have enjoyed everything I’ve ever read by Kingsolver, but there is a timeliness to Flight Behavior that makes it extra special. The story features Dellarobia Turnbow, a slight-statured, red-haired farmwife in rural, western Tennessee. Dellarobia has no family outside the family she’s made with her gentle giant of a husband, Cub, and […]
A Young Man, a Castle & a Very Deep Hole
Let me first just say that I am very much a fan of Patrick DeWitt. His previous book, The Sisters Brothers, delighted me with its quirky weirdness. And Undermajordomo Minor does the same. It’s definitely quirky, definitely weird and, like The Sisters Brothers, quite funny. Especially if you have a sort of weird sense of humor. Undermajordomo Minor tells the story of Lucien (Lucy) Minor who leaves his home village of Bury because he doesn’t feel he has any reason to stay. His father has passed away, […]
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