Books I have read so far in 2022, except the ones I've forgotten.

Right now: The Cabinet by Un-Su Kim (part of a Story Bundle The 2022 World SF Bundle - Curated by Lavie Tidhar   Fascinating! Well-translated (at least it reads well and makes sense)

Yesterday: The Madness of Crowds, Louise Penny,  (library ebook on Cloud)

Last week: Olive, Again by Elizabeth Stroud (library ebook on Cloud) for Book Club, the sequel to Olive Kitteridge, which I haven't read but did see a miniseries adaptation starring Frances McDormand.

Last week: The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien,  last month's Book Club, another war story in Paris, American focus, writing not great. (library ebook on cloud)

Project Charon 1, 2 and 3, by Patty Jansen, space opera, Australian author, KindleThe Wrong Man, by Christine Leblanc, Kindle, a romance mystery.

Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty (Australian descriptive mystery?) Liked it a lot. Paperback passed on from Linda C.

Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarity. I didn't like the miniseries, but found more to enjoy in the book, set in Australia, not California.

The Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson. Big paperback that I ordered from Amazon, based on a review/rec. Terrific. Trying to get Neil & others to read it!

More by Julia Huni: Waxing the Moon of Lewei, Luna City Limited, The Saha Declination (Colonial Explorer Corps book 3),  ebooks for beta review, using Kindle

The Saha Declination (Book 3 of the Colonial Explorer Corps) by Julia Huni

  

Julia Huni's stories about the Colonial Explorer Corps are getting better and better. The characters are complex and intriguing, and the settings amazing. We've been following a team of cadet explorers as they progress through training, meeting unexpected obstacles along the way. In The Saha Declination, they are on their final, real-life assignments before graduation, and encounter more villains, dangers and adventures than ever. They also forge some new alliances. And of course, Siti, Joss and the rest are accompanied by Liam, Siti's nearly magical and extremely useful pet.

Those books I said I'd be reviewing...

 Back in 2020, I said this:  Obviously, I read a lot, all the time; I just gave up writing book reviews. But Marg from my book club suggested we tell others what we have been reading, and I also was asked to write online reviews for authors I know. So, I will try to catch up on some of my most recent discoveries.

Expect to see reviews soon of The Testaments by Margaret Atwood (Audible), Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese (Audible), Driftwood by Tony Head (ebook), various books by Julia Huni (science fiction cozy mysteries and adventures, ebooks). A giant volume of Ursula K. LeGuin's Earthsea books, more mysteries, including Louise Penny's Inspector Gamache series.

So here we are in a new year and I have read all those books (or listened to them).

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood was the first audiobook I have really enjoyed listening to. That's probably because real actors were used, along with narration by Tantoo Cardinal!. Some were actors from the TV series of The Handmaid's Tale. And of course the tale was well told and well-paced. There was a mystery for the reader to uncover, and lots of social commentary along the way.

Indian Horse  by Richard Wagamese was another very well-done audiobook. It was bleak in parts, but also poetic, and sometimes funny. The narrator was excellent and the images conjured up by the author were vivid, not only places and weather, but the times and the characters involved. A Native boy named Saul Indian Horse goes through residential school but is chosen to play hockey on an outside team. There are trials and triumphs all the way. 

Driftwood by Tony Head takes us back to the early days of the tourist boom in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. That's a place I've been a few times, but I never did get to the Luna Blue hotel that Tony ran there. This is a fictionalized version of his life as an expat there, but it is based on his observations of the many characters who hung out there. 

Julia Huni is my new favourite author. I'm a beta reader for her, so I get the books before publication. Yay! I have been through her Space Janitor series, including the prequels and the short stories, and this is the (probably) first ex-space janitor novel, The Rings of Grissom. The characters are becoming more real with every book, and there is a lot of adventure, romance, science, and all that good stuff. It seems that Triana and Ty will be together for a long time, investigating plots and seeing the sights of the universe. 

The Earth Concurrence by Julia Huni

 

I was privileged to read this one just before its official publication, I think it is the best of her stories yet, and that is saying quite a bit!

Julia has several series going, and it was the Space Janitor collection that I discovered first. Those are funny, intriguing, and enjoyable: cozy mysteries in space, with a spunky young woman as heroine. 

The Earth Concurrence appears at first to be more of the same, situated in the same time and space, with a spunky young woman in the leading role. Like Triana, the nominal Space Janitor, Siti comes from a privileged background, and like Triana, she has only one parent.  But this story is more serious and more thoughtful. Of course, there are interesting characters and goofy situations, and some adventurous action.

This is the first part of a series, too, and I can hardly wait for more.

2020 Seven years since my last book post! I can't catch up on all I've read!

 Obviously, I read a lot, all the time; I just gave up writing book reviews. But Marg from my book club suggested we tell others what we have been reading, and I also was asked to write online reviews for authors I know. So, I will try to catch up on some of my most recent discoveries.

Expect to see reviews soon of The Testaments by Margaret Atwood (Audible), Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese (Audible), Driftwood by Tony Head (ebook), various books by Julia Huni (science fiction cosy mysteries and adventures, ebooks). A giant volume of Ursula K. LeGuin's Earthsea books, more mysteries, including Louise Penny's Inspector Gamache series.

Six weeks without a post... but not without a book or two or ten

 

Here are 4 books I read or started to read, captured by my phone. 

 

First, I read the Rod Stewart biography because of my brother. He does a Rod Stewart tribute act that impresses everyone who sees it. I think he's more fun than the real Rod would be. The book was quite good, with lots of facts and stories about his musical life and his love life. It is an old one, so only goes up to 1990 or so. I think a few things have happened to Rod since then.

 

 

I picked up the Barbara Kingsolver book, Prodigal Summer, in the condo my friends rented in Key West. This is a wonderful book, as so many of Barbara K's are. It was sensitive, sensual, ecological, historical, and full to the brim of interesting, attractive characters and good stories. I left it at the next stop, and hope someone else reads it and loves it.

 

When I dropped off Prodigal Summer at my motel's bookshelf, I was excited to find the Zadie Smith book called NW, but I soon put it back. It did not catch my interest at all, and I did not like any of the characters or their situations. I abandoned it after only a few chapters, which is unusual.

Six Months in Sudan by James Masakalyk was our Book Club choice for November. I wasn't sure I wanted to read any more war stories, but it was very good. A young Canadian emergency doctor goes to work in an isolated village in Sudan with MSF. It was horrifyingly real and gritty, but also touching, informative, and strangely optimistic.

Clara Callan!!!

Richard B. Wright's Clara Callan is an excellent book.
The story is told through diary entries and letters. We follow two sisters in 1930s mid-Ontario as they lead different lives. Just like those in Alice Munro's stories, these people are real and their society is one I have known forever, at least in part. I loved it!

Essays and such

I chose this book in the Paris airport, mostly because of the title. Who could resist Comment voyager avec un saumon?


Umberto Eco is a very talented writer and thinker, but I found only the middle third of the book suited my tastes.
The first part is a science-fiction-philosphoical satire. Those are always hard to read in French. (The book was written in Italian and the French translator worked closely with the author.) It was okay.

Most of the book is composed of essays written for newspapers and magazines. They are clever and often very funny.

The last part is philosophers' humour.... not mine.




For anyone who wants to read it in English, here is the cover.

Reading a book about BC in Paris....

I have enjoyed several of Jack Hodgins' books, and was impresed by the speech he gave at Kevin's graduation from UBC. The Honorary Patron, however, left me lukewarm. It is an early book (1987) and his skill has increased greatly with the years.

I left this book behind at the hotel in Paris when I finished it. Not special enough to carry it home, and I didn't think Neil would like it for the trip back.

Listening to Thinking in Numbers

So, I tried another audio book lately. This was was more cheerful, although a bit esoteric in parts. It was very interesting to hear the author himself reading: he has the strangest accent!
I did enjoy it, but I am not sure why I "read" it.  I thought it was on our Book Club list, but evidently, it is not. Still, I'm glad I listened. It was great to hear someone with such enthusiasm for numbers! Daniel Tammet once recited the digits of  pi for hours and hours, as a performance for charity.

Thinking in Numbers is not all about numbers; there are intersting excursions into history, sociology, writing....

Rereading can be rewarding

I found this one on the shelf at the cottage and thought it was unread. As I got into the introduction and stories, I realized I had read it some time ago. But they were such good stories, I didn't mind at all. It was an exceptional year for F&SF.
If I paid $2.50 for it, I got my money's worth--doubled!

Too much Britishness?

So, perhaps I should stop reading British books for a while. They are starting to annoy me.

I read Ian McEwan's Atonement, because I found it for $1 and another of his books (My Sweet Tooth) is on our book club list this year.  Someone has even made a movie of it. I wonder how.

The story is in three parts. The first part was very tedious to read and I kept waiting for some sign of plot or motivation. The second part was much more interesting, and did have some plot, but not much. The last part theoretically resolved the plot points, but then there was an epilogue that cast some resolutions into doubt. I did not like it. I feel that my dollar and my days were wasted.


Then I turned to some much older BritLit: G.B. Shaw's Plays Unpleasant, which consists of three plays and two long, long introductions (one of them is 30 pages long!).

I admire Shaw, but he can be tedious, too. I plowed my way through most of the Preface and the first play, Widowers' Houses, went along well, although the characters' names kept confusing me, the social conventions he was mocking are now obscure, and Shaw's special simplified spelling often attracted my editorial eye--not in a good way.
The second play, The Philanderer, had a one-page introduction (Prefatory Note) but the play itself was quite unreadable!


The third is the one I expected the most of, as it is the best known of the three, Mrs. Warren's Profession. After skimming the 30-page Preface, I plunged in. Here, only 2 characters had similar names, and there were not too many characters coming and going.
Apparently, it was scandalous when first presented, but time and shifting language have lessened its impact. And while the characters apparently believe they are being very clear about what Mrs. Warren's profession is (she's a high-class madam), really, Shaw does more suggesting than naming. For all the unsuspecting audience can deduce, she manages some international hotels!

 Really, I need to find something more entertaining and accessible!

A word-nerd's delight

I found this one in an eclectic bookstore in Stratford, Ont., near the Avon Theatre.  It is not a book to read straight though! 
It's best dipped into and digested in small doses.
Using the alphabet as a jumping-off point, the authors cover many, many aspects of Roman, pre-Roman and modern society, presented with a humorous twist. I learned a lot of interesting but nearly-useless facts and I had a good time doing so.

I include the store's bookmark for any book lovers passing through Stratford. 
I recommend it.

Treasure in a plain brown cover

This hardcover, plain brown with no fancy dust cover, turned out to be fascinating.
I've read some of Janice Kulyk Keefer's short stories and perhaps novels, and I know she has a reputation for good writing. The title, Thieves, gives no indication of what it might be about.
In fact, it is about the life--or biography--of Katherine Mansfield, novelist (of whom I was only distantly aware) and about the scholars who want to know more about her. There is a theft or two, and some kind of mystery, but the mystery is vague and the thefts minor.

What is wonderful about this book is the writing. The descriptions of landscape and emotions immerse the reader very directly. At least 80% of the book charmed me utterly, although towards the end, I was caught myself thinking, "so just die already", because we know she did, and her death is not a mystery.

This book cost me nothing, and gave me lots of food for thought. I think our book club should put it on the list.

Two more from the Science Fiction Bin

The first was a "classic" SF tale from 1979.  Philip José Farmer has written a lot of very popular SF, and I've read some of it.
Part space opera, part picaresque adventure and quest, lots of strange beasts and weird names and languages.The story went along pretty well, but the descriptions of the peculiar characters were too hard to follow, swallow and imagine. The green leafy centaur (half-plant) in the cover picture is rather like the description. The sentient rock, an alien, was too much for me. The human characters in the picture are too muscly for 15-year olds, but SF cover art has never been realistic.

I thought the story lacked internal logic in parts. I didn't like it much, really, but it was free and occupied a few hours.








The second was much better. Also free, but worth at least a few dollars. I've always been fond of "Year's Best" collections. Short stories suit my summer attention span, and there are so many different styles and ideas. This was the 2006 crop of stories, published in 2007, so really pretty recent. Some were better than others, but all were very good and thoughtfully entertaining.

Old (1973) Montréal

A little Québécois Canadiana: Marie-Claire Blais's Un Joualonais, sa Joualonie translated (byRalph Manheim) as St. Lawrence Blues.
I had never heard of this novel before, and, despite the long, learned, serious preface by Margaret Atwood, I don't think it made the top of anyone's lists. Apparently it is a satire--but in parts it could be a faithful contemporary portrait--of the poor and marginalized in Montréal in the era of revolution. The 1970s seem like such a long time ago!
I think the translation was adequate, but I'm not sure it was worth the bother.
 Interesting factoid: Mari-Claire Blais mostly lives in Key West.

A chilling mystery for a summer day

Giles Blunt-- how British! Well, not exactly. He was raised by Very British parents in North Bay, Ontario, and now lives in New York. He has changed the name of North Bay, but otherwise not changed much about a small city in our near north. The winter weather is a huge factor in the story, and nearly a character itself.
 Forty words for sorrow is structured as a typical police procedural murder mystery; it is a well-written one. This is the first of six novels with the same setting and characters, and I'm looking forward to reading more of them. Blunt's experience as a film and TV writer is evident in his descriptions of scenes. In fact, this mystery series is likely to become a TV series, with Blunt as one of the writers.

Finished an audio book!

One thing I've learned, while listening to (one and a half) audio books, is that I am a fast and impatient reader. I did listen to it while cooking, painting, driving and resting. But this story was not only long, it was gruesome and depressing most of the way. I read it because it's on our Book Club list. Its full title is: Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. It was written by Laura Hillenbrand and narrated by Edward Herrmann. The main character does survive and does find redemption, and lives into his 90s, apparently with a great deal of fame although I never had heard of him, but that was not enough to offset all the horror he went through as a Japanese POW. Not for the delicate!

Another day, another book!

Holidays at the cottage: in between bouts of yard work or painting, there's lots of time to read.  I had to pick up a new stock of books at the second-hand store in Perth. Even Neil has read 2 books.

 

b
Baltimore's Mansion is a memoir. I read Wayne Johnston's Navigator of New York and, a long time ago, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams. Those were excellent, history-based novels. This memoir is very good, although not quite as satisfying as the novels. All about Newfoundland and his family's history there, especially the Confederation year, 1949, and what a mark it made on people for many years after. The story is told from the points of view of three men: Wayne, his father Arthur, and grandfather Charlie. That took a little getting used to, as the voices were similar. Definitely recommended.

Vacation reading: thrillers and mysteries

Do you read books lying down when you're on vacation?  It seems these two want to lie down and I can't get them up again.  Just turn your head and I'll tell you about them.

 

Christopher Hyde, thriller writer, is the brother and sometimes a co-author with an old friend of mine, Anthony Hyde. So I felt there would be a good tale in this book, The House of Special Purpose. It is quite dense, with many characters and locations. It is set in the early days of World War II, with references back to events in the Russian Revolution. Historical, then? Quite! And it involves a number of non-fictional people, in roles they might have played, or perhaps did. It was a complex story, with some politics and violence, but in the end, I found it not very satisfying.

Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus mysteries are well-known, and I thought I had read one before, but it didn't seem all that familiar after all. The story was well told, as a police-procedural mystery, but the language, ah, the language. The story is set in Edinburgh and the Scottishness of the language can be quite mystifying. I suppose I learned some new words, which may be useful in Scrabble.  The motivation of some characters mystified me, too, but it was an interesting read.