October Books Read

 

I'm extra late posting for October, but I was gone for the last two weeks, so I am just catching up now! I read seven books in October and I guess traveling and sitting poolside in Mexico is conducive to reading!

1+2) I read the first two of William Kent Krueger's Cork O'Connor mystery series: Iron Lake and Boundary Waters. Cork O'Connor was a former sheriff in upper Minnesota, who was hired to solve crimes up in the area that he had previously worked. I found these first two mysteries to be quite compelling to read. This series began 20 years ago and the 18th book of the series is just out! I've decided to read one of the books each month, so I don't burn out on the series! His books Ordinary Grace and This Tender Land are among my favorite books. I love his writing and these books are as well written as his other books!

3) The Ambassador's Daughter by Pam Jenoff. This author's historical writing never fails to hit the mark. This book takes place in 1919.  Margot was the daughter of a German ambassador who accompanied her father to Paris and was quite happy there, despite having a fiance who had been badly wounded in the war, and was waiting at home for her. When a peace conference began outside of Paris, Margot had to go there with her father and found a job there to pass her time working for Georg. As Margot was there, she began to question her loyalties and had to work through what she thought was right and wrong.  It was a good story.

4) The Survivors by Jane Harper. As readers of the blog know, I recently became a big fan of Jane Harper's novels.  This newest one was as good as the others! In the novel, Kieran Elliot brought his wife and young baby back to his hometown for a visit.  They stayed with Keiran's parents and Keiran's brother's death was always present. When his brother died it had changed Keiran's life forever.  While Keiran was visiting, a young girl's body was found on the beach one morning and as the investigation went on, long ago secrets began to reveal themselves. It is a really well-written book.  I enjoyed it!

5) The Unwilling by John Hart. Yes, another mystery.  I don't know why. Jason French had just been released from prison after serving 27 months for violence and drugs.  He wanted to reconnect with his family, so he and his young brother Gibby spent a day together, and then, as the day was ending, a young woman in their car began taunting a busload of prisoners.  A few days later she was found dead and Jason was the prime suspect.  Gibby got involved trying to prove his brother's innocence and soon he was also a suspect after another girl was found dead. This is a complicated, compelling story! I highly recommend it!

6) Oh William by Elizabeth Strout. Oh Elizabeth, how much I loved this book! If you recall, Ms. Strout had written a book called My Name is Lucy Barton a few years ago.  In Oh William, Lucy is telling the story of her ex-husband William.  William discovered/unearthed some startling results when he began studying his genealogy. He asked Lucy to go with him on a trip to investigate what he had found.

This novel was an absolutely beautiful story and completely unexpected! I read it in a few hours. 

7) Where the Forest Meets the Stars by Glendy Vanderah. This was probably my least favorite of the books that I read, but it was still a decent story. Joanne Teale was doing some graduate research and was living in a cabin in southern Illinois for the summer. One day, a girl who called herself Ursa showed up at the cabin. She reported that she had come from the stars and needed to witness five miracles. Joanne could not get any information about who she was, nor where she was from. Joanne enlisted her neighbor Gabe to help her find out about the child.  As the summer went on, the three of them became close, but Ursa's past still remained unknown.  Why was no one looking for her or reporting her missing? It was kind of a feel-good type of book in the end.

Goodbye September!

 Where did September go?  My goodness, but time is going by fast! I had some good reads this month, two in particular:  The Exiles and The Tie That Binds -both by authors who I have enjoyed reading in the past.

1) All the Ugly and Wonderful by Bryn Greenwood: I found this book to be incredibly disturbing.  There was plenty of "ugly", but I really didn't find any "wonderful" in the story. 

A grown man falls in love with an eight-year-old girl and the relationship continues through adulthood. I finished the book because I kept waiting for "wonderful" to happen, but nothing wonderful happened as far as I was concerned. So that's my very brief review of that book!

2) Raven Black by Ann Cleeves was a delightful surprise to me.  I didn't have very high expectations for this mystery, but it turned out to be quite intriguing. 

A young girl was found murdered on the Shetland Islands and the crime appeared to be similar to an old unsolved murder in which an old, lonely man was always considered to be the prime person of interest. As he is with the recent murder. This is the first of a series and I will continue on with it! I never suspected who the murderer was

3) The Tie That Binds by Kent Haruf was a delight.  He is one of my favorite authors and I couldn't believe that I hadn't read this one! It was written in 1984, the first of his novels, and like his later novels, takes place in Colorado.  His characters in all of his books are so well-developed that I always feel as if I may know them! 

This novel is about eighty-year-old Edith Goodnough.  It began with Edith in the hospital recovering with a police officer guarding her.  She had been charged with murder. This sweet old lady who never married and gave up her own chance of happiness to care for the family and their farm, living with her abusive father for years, whilst her brother took off one day, leaving her alone with their father. The brother didn't return for years.  This story of Edith is so beautifully told by her neighbor.  A lovely read.

4) When We Believed in Mermaids by Barbara O'Neal was quite a disappointment to me.  It began being quite interesting, but the end was really lacking for me.  

Two sisters, Kit and Josie, who grew up in California had spent most of their lives surfing when they could. When they became adults, Kit became an ER doctor, while Josie continued to search for the perfect wave.  Until one day, Kit learned that Josie had been killed in Europe by a terrorist attack. Fifteen years later, Kit sees Josie on television. She was leaving a club in New Zealand that had caught on fire. It was unmistakably Josie, so Kit went to New Zealand to find her. While searching for Josie, Kit recalls long-ago memories of secrets and traumas that the family had lived through.  It was a good read until near the end when everything went "chick read".

5) The Exiles by Christina Baker Kline was a great read! I am sorry that I let it sit for so long on my TBR pile.

This novel is about women in the1840s who were convicted of a crime (or crimes) in England and were sentenced to a penal colony in Australia. One of the main characters in the book was Evangaline the daughter of a minister, who was left penniless when he died so a position was found for her as a governess for a wealthy family.  She fell in love with the older son, who seduced her and gave her a family heirloom, a ruby ring.  The son left on a trip and the ring was discovered in Evangeline's room.  When the family learned that she was also pregnant, Evangeline was charged with theft and taken to prison.  A few months later she was sentenced to Australia. The women were put on an old slave ship and there Evangaline met others who she would be with for seven to fourteen years, depending on their sentence. The women helped each other, including when Evangeline gave birth to her daughter.

There were many notable characters in the book, including Hazel, a young girl who was also a midwife. Hazel had street smarts and helped Evangeline navigate Australia. And there was Mathinna, the daughter of a chief, who was taken by a wealthy English family to be raised as an example of what could be done with the heathens.

It's a long book, based on true events.  I learned a lot about the history of how women were treated (as slaves).  I enjoyed this book very much!

6) Another book by Kent Haruf that I had not read: Where You Once Belonged. It is interesting to me that I didn't like this book the way I have liked his others.  I wasn't satisfied with the ending, but I can't quite figure out why. I think I wanted more clarity, but I also think that is what the author intended!

The book began with a big red Cadillac coming into Holt, Colorado, and just parking in the spot where all the town could see. The driver never got out, just sat in the car.  Eventually, people in town learned that it was Jack Burnett.  Jack had left town eight years before, leaving his wife and children and many debts. No one had ever heard from him since that time.

This small novel described who Jack was growing up and all that he had going for him.  Until that one day when he left town. It is a good character study of a man who has it all and then his life goes bad. 

August reads

I read six books in August, with one of them being one of my very favorite reads of the year!

1) The Last Mrs. Parrish by Liv Constantine: Amber was discontent with her life and decided that she deserved to be a rich and powerful woman like socialite Daphne Parrish.  Amber arranged for them to literally run into each other where Amber conveniently dropped a magazine that was about cystic fibrous. Daphne questioned her about having the magazine and Amber told her that she had a younger sister who had died from it. Which was a lie, but Amber had done her research and knew that Daphne's younger sister died of it.  So that's how Amber began their friendship. She quickly insinuated herself into Daphne's life.  And eventually into Daphne's husband Jackson's life.

I'll say no more, other than it was a good story with some nice twists to it!  It would be a good book club read!

2) Beneath A Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan: This was on my radar for a long time, and I finally picked it up.  I'm very glad that I did.  It is a novel based on a true story from Italy during World War II.

Pino Lella was a young, carefree teenager until his home in Milan was destroyed by Allie bombs.  He began working for the resistance, helping to lead Jews to Switzerland.  His parents feared for his life doing this work and made him join the German Army hoping that he would be safe during the war. However, Pino was injured and at the age of eighteen was recruited to be a driver for General Hans Leyers, Hitler's leader in Italy.

This afforded Pino the opportunity to spy on the Nazi occupation and pass information on to the resistance.

This is certainly the short version of this long book! The novel is very readable and gripping.  The author became friends with the real Pino and his son who helped him with important details for writing the book. It's a great read!

3) I needed something light after reading the above book, so I picked up On The Island by Tracey Garvis Graves: This was a rather interesting read. Thirty-year-old Anna was hired to tutor sixteen-year-old TJ at the family's summer home on a tropical island. The two of them boarded a private plane to meet TJ's family at the island when their pilot had a heart attack and the plane landed in the ocean.  The pilot was dead, but Anna and TJ were able to make it to shore, but quickly found that no one lived on the island that they were on.  They had to learn survival on their own. 

It was a quick, but interesting read.

4) This is another book that had been on my radar for a long time and I finally dug into it.  The novel is The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne.

The novel began with a young sixteen-year-old girl living in a small Irish village being shamed at Mass by her parish priest, and sent away on a bus by her parents, told to never return.  Her sin? She was pregnant. She boarded a bus to Dublin, wondering what she do, where she would live. 

After she had the baby, she gave him to the nuns to place for adoption.  His parents were Charles and Maud Avery, and Cyril grew up being constantly reminded that he was not a "real Avery". His adopted parents were quite uninvolved with the young boy as he grew.  He met a young man at boarding school.  JulianWoodbead had been to Cyril's home once when they were young and  Cyril never forgot him. They quickly became best friends all through school until they were a bit older and Cyril unexpectedly left Ireland and over the years learned who he really was as a man.

This is a huge book that covers from the 1940s to today. And I loved it.  I haven't read such an interesting and well-written book since I read A Little Life. It will certainly be in my top five favorite reads for 2021.  Maybe my favorite!

5) I finished The Inner Voice of Love by Henri Nouwen.  It seems that I have been reading it forever because I would only read one "Spiritual Imperative" per day for my spiritual reading. This book is called Fr. Nouwen's "secret journal" that he kept when he was going through dark times after the loss of a beloved friendship.  I found it mostly quite helpful with my journey.  Sometimes one of the Imperatives didn't seem to reach me, but most did.  I would recommend this book for those who want to go deeper into their journey.

6) Lastly, I re-read The Book of Lost Names by Kristen Harmel.  I just read it last winter, so the only reason I read it again so soon was that it is the chosen book for the library's book club that meets here. The book club is tomorrow, but I don't have much expectation that anyone will be there.  There was another book club that met at a different time and day at the library and I went to that, and no one came, other than the librarian monitor of the club. She said that since  COVID began, people began to quit coming to that one, but the one scheduled for tomorrow has had people coming sporadically, so I am giving it a try.  I blogged about this book on the 5th of December 2020 if you want to read my review.  It's a good book!

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!