July reads

 My reading seemed down a little in July, probably because we were so busy traveling for three weeks!  Hopefully, it will be picking back up!  I read three books this month, two I liked, one I was a bit disappointed in.  For regular readers of this blog, you may have noticed that I have switched to the Goodreads widget on the side of the blog to show what books I've read.

The Last House Guest by Megan Miranda is a pick for the library book club here for August.  This will be my first time attending, so I hope I like the group!

I did like the book! It was an easy read, kind of a good read for summer! The story took place in a small town in Maine, that was a vacation spot for the wealthy.  Avery had lived in the town all of her life, but Sadie was one of the summer people.  They had developed a friendship over the years and would be inseparable during the summers when Sadie was there.  But the last summer Sadie was there she died.  It was determined to be a suicide, but Avery was convinced that it wasn't. When Sadie's family returned the following year, Avery was determined to learn the truth.

The story was a good mystery and well-written!

I loved Mrs. Lincoln's Sisters by Jennifer Chiaverini!  The story is told in different time periods, going back to 1825 to 1882, but each chapter was well-labeled so I did not have any difficulty keeping up with the book. I didn't realize until I was done reading it that it was a sequel to Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker, so now I will have to read that sometime!

The story centers around Mary Todd Lincon and her sisters and begins in 1875, several years after the death of Mary's husband, Abraham Lincoln.  Mary had been declared insane and was in an institution. Her sisters had great concerns about her as did Robert Lincoln, her only living child.  In the story, the sisters all played a large part in Mary's story, and the book is quite good at describing all of the differences that were between Mary and her sisters as they grew. And how they tried to help Mary after the death of her husband.

I found the book to be fascinating.  I want to learn much more about Mary and about her sisters! 

I just finished City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert and was disappointed with it.  For one thing, it is a huge book! (I had found a hardback copy at the used bookstore and bought it, even though I always prefer paperbacks.) My disappointment was that on the second page of the book, we learn that there was a man involved with Vivian Morris, who was the love of her life.  It's not until page 400, that the reader learns who this man was. 

In-between pages 2-400, the life of Vivian is told.  And it is an interesting story, but way too long for me. She had been asked to leave Vassar after her first year, so her parents sent her to New York to stay with her Aunt Peg.  Aunt Peg owned a run-down theater where she and her staff put on plays for the neighborhood audience. Vivian became their costume designer and made all of the costumes. She was introduced to the nightlife of New York by the showgirls who worked for her Aunt Peg. 

It was all interesting, but I wanted to know more about the man she loved! Ms. Gilbert is certainly a talented author so I don't mean to disparage that.

"Love like that is a deep well, with steep sides.

       Once you fall in, that's it-you will love that person always. "

 

Two more June reads

 Just getting back to my blog after a three-week trip to visit family and friends.  Finished the three weeks away with a 4 day trip to Milwaukee with all of our kids and grandkids.  We had a great time, but it did take us a few days to rest up!  Anyway, all that to say that I didn't get to blogging about the rest of the books that I read in June.

1) Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann: This is a non-fiction

story that is now being made into a movie.  It is the story of the Osage Nation murders in Oklahoma in the early part of the 20th century and the beginning of the FBI.  The Osage Nation in Oklahoma in the 1920s were the richest people in the United States (per capita) because oil had been found under their land.  Then slowly, members of the Osage were being killed or dying under mysterious circumstances. Eventually, the FBI, a new government agency, was called in to investigate not only the deaths of the Osage people, but also the deaths of those who had been investigating the deaths.  It is a fascinating, but sad, story of how the Osage Nation was treated for so long, and how deeply the murders were covered up.

A great read

2) Lisey's Story by Stephen King: While sorting through her husband's papers after his death two years earlier, Lisey began to understand that dark place that Scott (her husband) would go to in his mind at times.  And as she began sorting through memories of their time together, she began to understand just what Scott experienced, and began experiencing it herself.

This has been made into a mini-series and I'm not sure how I feel about seeing it.  The story was interesting most of the time, but I just wasn't feeling the whole demon-like part of the story.  I think Mr. King is a great writer and I love how he develops and writes his characters, which is why I continue to read his books, but the "creepy" part of the books just leave me 'meh'.

When the Apricots Bloom and The Two Lives of Lydia Bird

 I recently read two more books: When the Apricots Bloom by Gina Wilkinson and The Two Lives of Lydia Bird by Josie Silver.  The first one I had never heard of and received for Mother's Day.  The second one I kept seeing recommended on Facebook book sites and decided to try it.

When the Apricots Bloom is a story of three women living in Iraq at the time that Saddam Hussein was their leader.  Two of the women, Huda and Rania, had been childhood friends and they are rather reluctantly reunited as they both face the fear of losing their children to the Iraq regime. Huda was working as a secretary at the Australian embassy and was ordered to befriend Ally, the deputy ambassador's wife, in order to learn any information against America. All three woman have their own secrets and have to trust each other in order to help each other.

This was a good story and I ended up quite liking it!

I really struggled with The Two Lives of Lydia Bird and about halfway through it I almost gave up on reading it, but I was waiting for another book to arrive in the mail, so I continued on with it and was very glad that I did!

This novel was about Lydia Bird, who was engaged to her love, Freddie Hunter. Sadly, on her birthday, Freddie was killed in a car accident on his way to meet her. Jonah, their best friend, was also in the car and he just had a minor injury. As Lydia struggled with her loss, she found that if she took one of the pills that the doctor had prescribed for her to help her sleep she would enter into an alternative universe (my words) where Freddie was still alive and she was with him. So she was really living in two worlds as she continued to grieve. 

It was here that the book started to get old to me.  But then, Lydia had to face some big challenges that she rose up to, and her life and her perspective began to change. In the end, the book was quite hopeful, but not in a sappy way.

"You don't get over losing someone you love in six months or two years or twenty, but you do have to find a way to carry on living without feeling as if everything that comes afterward is second best.  Some people walk up mountains, others throw themselves out of planes.  Everyone has to find their own way back, and if they're lucky they'll have people who love them to hold their hand."

Two Jane Harper novels

 As I wrote earlier, I had read The Dry by Jane Harper and loved it.  So now I have read two earlier books of hers and while they were good, The Dry definitely is my favorite. She has a new book out that I am waiting for in paperback that doesn't come out in paperback until January 2022.  Ugh. Also, did I mention before that The Dry is being made into a movie?

So, as I said, I have read two more:

1) Force of Nature by Jane Harper: you know those retreats that companies have that are supposed to be bonding experiences for the employees?  Well, this is about one of those where five women were taken to a lodge, then sent out with a map for a five-day journey into the Australian wilderness.  But only four of the women returned, and the four women had different stories about Alice, the missing woman. Alice was a whistleblower in a case Detective Aaron Falk was working on, so he was drawn into the search.

This book was a good read, and I liked how it was written.  The story was told from each of the five women's perspectives, which I thought added to the story.  It was a good mystery!

2) the second book I read was The Lost Man by Jane Harper: this is another good mystery that takes place in the Australian outback. Two brothers, Bub and Nathan who hadn't seen each other for a long time, came together after one of them found their third brother, Cameron, dead out in the outback. Bub had lived on Cameron's place, with Cameron's wife and children, so Nathan, and his son who was visiting at the time, went to stay at Cameron's home to help the family deal with their loss and, hopefully, find out what had happened to Cameron. There was also the issue that Cameron and his family lived in the old family home, so who inherits the land and the home?

  So right now it's 3 for 3 for Jane Harper's books!

The Dry

 I think that I have become a big fan of Jane Harper, the author of The Dry!  This book is a great, easy to read, and follow mystery! And now I learn that it was Ms. Harper's debut novel (published in 2016). 

The death of Aaron Falk's best friend Luke, Luke's wife and son brought Aaron back to his small hometown in Australia, where years before Aaron and his father left in shame. Luke's parents called Aaron, who was a Federal agent (working in forensic accounting) to unofficially help with the case.  It appeared that Luke had killed his wife and son, then killed himself, leaving his infant daughter alive and unharmed. As Luke began helping with the case, old secrets began coming to light bringing up another unsolved death-the one that Aaron and his father had fled from years ago.

This novel is one of the best-written mysteries I have read.  I couldn't stop reading it! I have already ordered more of her books!

 

The Orphan Collector

The Orphan Collector by Ellen Marie Wiseman sure hits home with a novel that takes place during the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. Interestingly, the author had written it before the recent Covid 19 pandemic.

The story centers around a thirteen-year-old girl, Pia, who lived with her German mother and twin infant brothers.  Her father (also German) was off fighting for the United States in World War I.  The family lived in Philadelphia in a poor neighborhood.  When Pia's mother contracted the flu, Pia was left in charge of everything.  Soon her mother died, and Pia had to leave the apartment to find food and supplies for her and the babies. She left the sleeping infants in a small cubbyhole, hoping to return before they woke up. Sadly, Pia was struck ill while out and was unconscious in the hospital for several days. When she returned to the apartment another family had already moved in and knew nothing about Pia's brothers. Pia was placed in an orphanage and was determined to leave there and find her brothers, while also hoping that her father had come home from the war and was looking for his family. 

A neighbor of Pia's (who she had never met or seen) had recently lost her baby and happened to see Pia leaving her apartment without the babies.  She decided to go to Pia's apartment to check on the twins and found them crying.  Without thinking she took the twins and immediately left the neighborhood, moving away from where she would not be found. Eventually, this neighbor decided to take babies or children from orphanages, and sell them to grieving parents.  This served two purposes: one to provide money to her, and to help rid the country of "foreign children" and help them to be "American children".

It took Pia a long time to learn the truth about the neighbor and begin the search for justice for everyone involved.

I enjoyed this story, although I sometimes felt that it dragged a bit at the beginning, but I stuck with it and ended up liking it a lot! 

April Reads in 2021

 I got a lot of reading done in April-not sure why since I was traveling for almost half the month and I don't read much when traveling!  Anyway, here's what I read:

1) Abide With Me by Elizabeth Strout: this was her second novel, published in 2007.  She's a favorite author of mine, so I was surprised that I hadn't read it.  It's a beautifully written, moving story about a young minister whose wife had died and he was left alone with his five-year-old daughter, in the small town that they had moved to earlier.  It's a good solid read that I liked very much.

2) The Searcher by Tanya French: I liked this story very much.  It is about a recently divorced man who retired from the Chicago Police Department and moved to Ireland for his retirement, hoping to find a nice quiet village to live in.  He found a place that was fairly remote and began to settle in fixing up his house. Soon he noticed a young kid watching him.  He learned that the young girl's older brother had disappeared and she had heard he was a cop and wanted his help.

3) Faith by Jennifer Haigh: this book takes place in Boston in 2002.  A number of Catholic priests were accused of sexual abuses, including Sheila's older brother Fr. Art. Sheila had long been estranged from her family but had remained close to her brother Art to help him in any way she could. As Sheila and Art became closer, old family secrets emerged.

4) American Baby: A Mother, a Child, and the Shadow of History of Adoption by Gabrielle Glaser: this was a fascinating, heart-breaking non-fiction read  The author investigated the seizure of young infants of three million young mothers happening in New York in the 1960s. She centered on one young teen girl and the baby she lost to adoption but never forgot. The book was written well, easy to read, and very interesting.

5) Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan: I only read half of this book and then decided it was a DNF-did not finish- and set it aside as I began reading a different book.  I just couldn't find interest in it.

6) The Hypnotist's Love Story by Liane Moriarty: this is what I consider a nice beach read-interesting, entertaining, and easy to read (but somewhat unbelievable for me). A woman was a professional hypnotist who met and fell in love with a man. He soon told her that he had a stalker, which she found rather interesting.  And so the story goes. Easy to read book.

7) When I Was Yours by Lizzie Page: this story took place in 1939 when a seven-year-old girl was evacuated to a home 100 miles away from her home in London, as the country was expecting London to be a target for bombings. She was placed in a home where there were no other children with a woman and her distant husband. They all must learn to live together and deal with loss and disappointment. Good read.

8) The Girls in the Stilt House by Kelly Mustian: this was also a good book. A teenage girl left her home with her abusive father in the swamp with her new love and lived in Baton Rouge with him for a year until he decided he was moving on.  The young girl, now pregnant, had nowhere to go but back to her father in the swamp. One night her father became very threatening with the girl while in a shed. Suddenly, another girl showed up and saved her.  The girl who saved her was a daughter of a sharecropper for the other side of the swamp. The two girls formed an alliance and decided to take care of each other.  Both girls had dreams of leaving the swamp for good.  

9) Dusk, Night, Dawn by Anne Lamott: this is Ms. Lamott's latest book and is as good, if not better, than the others. I find her essays so simple and so moving at times.  Profound wisdom put simply. "Why am I here? To love this dumb old day. Oh, if only I could remember this"

And lastly:

10) The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende: another interesting story that took place in 1939. A young girl living in Europe was sent to live with her aunt and uncle in San Franciso as the war began. There she met the son of the gardener and they became fast friends.  Many years later as the young girl (now an old woman) is near the end of her life, she moved to a retirement home and there she met a care worker. Soon, the woman asked the care worker to be her personal assistant. The assistant and the woman's grandson began helping the woman tell her life story and they found letters sent from the gardener's son over the past seventy years.  The book is a quite beautiful story, nothing exciting, just a old, old love story!