The Bones of Paradise

I had read The River Wife by Jonis Agee years ago and loved it, so I was happy to see that she had written another book.  Sadly for me, I wasn't nearly as enthusiastic with this book as I had been with The River Wife.  However, my reaction doesn't seem to appear to match the excellent reviews on the book, so maybe I just missed something.

The story takes place in the Sand Hills of Nebraska in the 1900's.  The Wounded Knee massacre had occurred ten years earlier not far from the Sand Hills.  The book opens with JB Bennett on his way to retrieve his son from JB's father, who has raised the boy as he felt he should be raised.  JB's wife, Dulcinea, had left him about ten years before after JB let his father take their son and she lived in a nearby town.  JB was raising their younger son by himself.  As JB was headed toward his father's place, he came across the dead body of a young Lakota Sioux woman (Star). As he studied the body, JB was shot and killed. And that set up the story.

Dulcinea returned to the ranch after JB's death and was left there to deal with her resentful two teen-aged sons, her father-in-law, Drum Bennett, and her best friend, Rose, who was Star's sister.  Not only was Dulcinea dealing with who killed her husband and Star, but also her conniving father-in-law who not only wanted her sons, but wanted her land.  Meanwhile, there is the issue of how the murders tied into the Wounded Knee massacre.

It's kind of a busy story, but good enough to keep my interest in finishing it.  Not good enough to keep the book, however.

That's my new standard, since we will be moving.  Is the book good enough to keep? Nope, not this one.

Days Without End

I read Days Without End by Sebastian Barry last year, but apparently forgot to include it in my blog.  It was chosen this year for our August book group, so I re-read it.  And I can easily say that I think this is the best book that I have read so far this year.  The writing is stunning and the characters are so very well developed.  I have been a fan of Barry for a long time, and this book is just amazing.  

The story is about two young boys who met around 1850. Thomas McNulty was an orphaned young boy who had come to America from Ireland by himself.  He met John Cole, a young boy from New England, in Missouri under a hedge escaping the rain when they were around fourteen or fifteen years old and quickly became the best of friends.  Once they left their covering, they came across a saloon looking for young boys to dress up as female dance partners for the miners who came in the saloon.  After Thomas and John got a little older, they had to leave that work and so they signed up for the army together, fighting in the Indian Wars.  It was during that time, that the boys became lovers.  During their time fighting, they found a nine year old Indian girl who they took care of and became their daughter.  Soon the Civil War began and the two boys/men signed up and left Winona with a trusted friend.  The Civil War fighting was as brutal as the Indian War.  The two were taken prisoners.  By the time they were freed, they learned that Winona's uncle wanted her back with the tribe.

In all, the story is about two boys who live through horrors and hard times, and love each other through it all.

"I almost wasn't able to say, my father died too.  I saw his body.  Hunger is  sort of fire, a furnace.  I loved my father when I was a human person formerly.  Then he died and I was hungry and then the ship.  Then nothing.  Then America.  Then John Cole.  John Cole was my love, all my love."

Slaughterhouse Five

I had never read anything by Kurt Vonnegut before.  I read a review of Slaughterhouse Five not long ago, and thought it sounded interesting, so got a copy of it.  While I did like the book, I probably am not inclined to read any other of his work.  A little too sci-fi for me.  That being said, I did like the book, so it was worth the read!

Slaughterhouse Five is considered to be an anti-war book, and I would agree with that completely.  The main character clearly suffers from PTSD from his time in Germany during World War II.   The book jumps from time period to time period, so that was a bit disconcerting at first, but ended up not being an issue for my reading.  It seemed to me that the point was that war will always be.  Suffering will always be.  Whenever someone dies in the book, he says "So it goes." in a very matter of fact way.

It's an interesting book.  It would make for good discussion!

The Keeper of Lost Things and Dark Matter

The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan was one of my book groups read for July.  We decided that it was a good "beach read".  Not heavy, just a kind of fun story.

The story is initially about Anthony Peardew, a writer, who was the keeper of people's lost things.  As he found items (a button, a glove, a piece of jigsaw puzzle, etc.), he would take them home and catalog them. They were kept in his locked study.  As he got older, he hired an assistant to help with his writing. Laura was a middle-aged divorced woman who was anxious to move away from her old life and so she applied for the job and was hired.

The book begins with a biscuit tin full of human ashes found on a train!  That was intriguing.

The book was a bit confusing, as it would go off into different stories, and it was rather hard to keep up with at first. Eventually, the stories all tied together and then it made sense.

Upon Anthony's death, Laura learned that he had left her the house and everything in it.  She was to return all of the lost items that Anthony had kept.
She started a website hoping to find the owners of the items.

There are a lot of characters in the book and, as I said, they do all end up tied together.  It was a fun, light read.

And the fifth book I read in July was Dark Matter by Blake Crouch.  Here's the funny story about this book.  I was perusing books at Barnes and Noble one day and a clerk came over to see if I needed help.  We began talking about books briefly, then he left.  A few minutes later, he returned with Dark Matter and told me that it was the best book he had read all year, said he had read it in two days non-stop, and then proceeded to describe it.  Needless to say, he was quite enthusiastic, and even though he said it was a bit science-fiction, I took a chance and bought it.  A couple of days later, our fifteen year old grandson came to visit for the week.  I told him about the book (I hadn't read it then), so he decided to read it, and finished it in less than 24 hours, and loved it.

A few days later I began reading it.  To a non-science-fiction-fan it was clearly science fiction, but I stuck with it.  Kind of an interesting premise about parallel universes.  A college physics professor living in Chicago with his wife, Jason decided to meet an old friend for a drink one evening and didn't return home.  He woke up elsewhere and eventually realized that there were alternate versions of himself living out different lives.  Vaguely reminiscent of It's a Wonderful Life, what would Jason's life had been like if....whatever.  So then Jason was frantic to return to his "regular" life. Etc., etc.

Just not my kind of book!  But if you are a sci-fi enthusiast, you may like it!!

Just Mercy

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson. I'll begin this by sharing what John Grisham wrote about this book:

“Not since Atticus Finch has a fearless and committed lawyer made such a difference in the American South. Though larger than life, Atticus exists only in fiction. Bryan Stevenson, however, is very much alive and doing God’s work fighting for the poor, the oppressed, the voiceless, the vulnerable, the outcast, and those with no hope. Just Mercy is his inspiring and powerful story.”—John Grisham

Bryan Stephenson went to Georgia while doing an internship while attending Harvard Law School. During that internship, he found his calling. He began working with death row prisoners who needed his representation. The book tells the story of Walter McMillan, a black man who was accused and convicted of killing a white woman in southern Alabama. Mr. McMillan had been at a barbecue with his family and friends at the time the murder took place, yet he was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder. As the legal team investigated the case, it became clear that Mr. McMillan was innocent and after many, many long hours of work, they were able to prove his case and he was set free-after spending six years on death row.

Over the years Mr. Stephenson's team has worked with children, domestic violence victims, the mentally ill, and others who seem to just be forgotten and lost in the judicial system.

This was a very interesting book.  I felt like it got bogged down at times, getting away from the main issue, but that may have been because I tend to focus on the people's stories, not background issues.  It was a good read.

Two of the Five Books I Read in July

I read five books in July.  Here are two of them (more to follow).

1) Redemption Road by John Hart.  Yes, I read this last December, but I re-read it for July since one of my book groups chose it for our July read.  I enjoyed it just as much the second time reading it as I did the first!  It is a mystery about the disappearances of several women over many years in a small town.  Several of the women were not even listed as missing.  A former police officer had been arrested and found guilty of the murder of one of the missing women and he had been sent to prison.  Years later, upon his release, it began again.  But did he do it?  There are lots of characters in the book and the reader is kept guessing through-out, wondering who is guilty.

2) Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty.  I have had this book for a couple of years  but had not read it. I presented it to one of my book groups for our August read.  It's a big book, but read fast.  It, too, is a mystery and is written in kind of a different way.  Right away, you know that someone died, but you don't learn who died under what circumstances until almost the very end of the book.  I was put off by the writing at first, but stuck with it, and ended up enjoying the story.

The story takes place in a small coastal town in California and is about several women, their lives, their relationships, their children and their secrets.  It begins six months before the parent's fundraiser night for the local elementary school. The book follows the escapades/stories of several of the kindergarten moms. There are definite groups, actually more like high school cliques, among the moms, and they have their differences between themselves. The story actually seems like a dark comedy, with  numerous funny episodes.  It was a fun, light read.

And for June...

Four books read in June.  That seems like a low number to me, but then, that is one book per week, so maybe it is a lot to have been read! Only one book of the four was disappointing to me, so that's not a bad average. Here's what I read:

1) Lilac Girls by Martha Hall Kelly: I really wish that I had paid attention to what was written on the back of the book (softcover).  I'll tell you why-I didn't realize that the book was based on real people's lives.  That would have made the book even more interesting.

This is the story of three women before, during and after World War II.  One of the women was a former actress and socialite Caroline Ferriday.  Before and during the war she worked as a liaison for the French consulate, trying to bring people to the US.  Meanwhile in Poland, teenager Kasia was working in the resistance as a courier.  And in Germany, Herta was a doctor.

The book is about the Rabbits-people who were part of Mengele's experiments in Ravensbruck, which is where Kasia and Herta met, Kasia as a prisoner and Herta as a doctor in the camp.  Kasia was one of the Rabbits.

It is a hard book to read, as is any book about the concentration camp experiences. It is very well-written and thought-provoking, revealing secrets long hidden about the camps.

 "...a lilac only blossoms after a harsh winter."

2) the light we lost by Jill Santopolo.  This book has been hailed as one of the best of 2017.  I was disappointed.  The premise sounded good, but fell flat for me.

Lucy and Gabe met on 9/11 while in college in New York City and while watching the towers fall and the subsequent news that day, they became aware of a strong attraction to each other.  But the attraction didn't go anywhere, and they both moved on, finishing college and pursuing careers.  A year after college, they ran into each other and the passion was burning. However, after six months, Gabe left to pursue a job in Iraq as a photographer.  Lucy was devastated, but eventually moved on with her friend Darren.  They married and built a life together.  But every once in awhile either Gabe or Lucy would call or text each other, so they never quite lost touch.  The contact was always just enough to stir up old feelings and for Lucy to wonder about how her life would have been if she and Gabe had stayed together. And after thirteen years of not being with Gabe, she is faced with a decision....

Long lost love, right and wrong, etc.

3) Exit West by Mohsin Hamid.  This was a book group read and I really had no interest in reading it, but since it was for book group, I read it.  And that is why I love book group-the books chosen to read are often not what I would pick up and so I am forced to read out of my comfort zone, so to speak. And it is always a good thing for me to have to do. In this case, I read the book and loved it!

The book began in an un-named Middle Eastern country where Saeed and Nadia met.  They began seeing each other, and soon Saeed convinced Nadia to move in with him and his father after his mother died.  However, the city was under lots of violent conflict and the couple learned of a "door" that for the right price would take them to another country. They had to travel that way several times as violence would escalate through-out different cities.  Saeed's father refused to go with them when they left:

"...but that is the way of things, for when we migrate, we murder from our lives those we leave behind."

The writing in this story is incredible. I highly recommend this book.

4) and the last book read in June was Mischling by Affinity Konar.  Oddly, it is also a book about the concentration camps, this time taking place in Auschwitz, and Dr. Mengele. The story is about his experiments with twins.  It is horrifying, and gripping.

Pearl and Sasha were taken to Auschwitz with their mother and their grandfather.  Because they were twins, they were separated from their mother and grandfather and immediately taken to Dr. Mengele's "Zoo" where other twins were kept.

"And this is where I don't remember.  This is where I want to wander my mind back and under, past the smell, past the thump-bump of the boots and the suitcases, toward some semblance of a good-bye.  Because we should have seen our loves go missing, we should have been able to watch them leave us, should have known the precise moment of our loss." 

Horrible, horrible things were done at the Zoo as Mengele conducted his awful twin experiments.  He wanted to learn if it was possible to break the twin bond, the twin feeling for the other twin. The girls survived camp life with help from others until the winter when Pearl disappeared.  She is presumed to have been killed by Mengele, but Sasha would not believe she was gone.  After the camp was liberated, Sasha continued to search for Pearl.  The twin bond was never broken. Mengele failed.

This book is about so much...love, resistance, resilience, survival, family.  Great book.  By the way, Mischling is a term that was "used by the Third Reich to denote a person of mixed blood."

So, did you notice anything different in the blog?  Yes, I finally figured out how to put the images of the books on the blog!  It only took me 6 months and all of a sudden, I knew how to do it!