Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Alice Wright is an Englishwoman in the 1930s. She feels
stifled and unhappy with her strict, conventional life. She is swept off her
feet by handsome American Bennett van Cleve, who is on a European tour with his
father. Alice and Bennett marry and return to his home in Kentucky. After a
whirlwind courtship, Alice is shocked to find that her marriage is loveless.
Bennett seems to care only about his father, a rich and selfish coal baron. She
hates living in the stuffy and stifling van Cleve family home.
Alice gets the chance to join the Kentucky Packhorse Library, a WPA project that brought books and other materials to isolated rural communities. Alice finds fulfillment in this project and develops deep and lasting friendships with the other librarians. She finds that she loves the Kentucky hill country and its tough but loving residents.
I rated The Giver of Stars four stars out of five for the strong female characters and interesting story. I took off one star for the lack of background and motivation of the male characters.
Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Since it’s a Stephen King book, you’d expect it to be full of supernatural horror, but you’d be wrong. There is a nice reference to the Overlook Hotel (of The Shining) but it’s there as a gimme to the fans, or Constant Readers as King has been known to call them (us). Otherwise, there isn’t one supernatural moment in the book. Mr. King can do a straight-up thriller as well as anybody, thank you.
After three tours in the sand, Billy is pretty sure that the only thing he’s good at is killing. His post-deployment profession is hired assassin. He got his Sniper badge in the Marines, oorah. He can put a man down at 1,200 yards or more, disappear like Houdini, and use one of his carefully-crafted identities to blend in with the rest of the world.
One of the most overused tropes in thriller-style fiction is “one last job.” Whether the “job” is a bank robbery, a grift, or a sniper attack, countless heroes and anti-heroes have said they’re coming clean after this one last time. King is up-front about the trope, even acknowledging it in the text.
“He’s thinking of all the movies he’s seen about robbers who are planning one last job. If noir is a genre, then “one last job” is a sub-genre. In those movies, the last job always goes bad.”
"You get along with people without buddying up to them. They smile when they see you coming. … Hoff tells me that a couple of food wagons stop at that building every day, and in nice weather people line up and sit outside on the benches to eat their lunches. You could be one of those people.”
Part of his cover story is that he is writing a book. So Billy, a man of a dozen identities, moves to Red Bluff in an unspecified Southern state to become a writer. He gets to know his neighbors at work and at home and feels terrible for lying to them about who he is. The assassination he’s contracted for happens seamlessly less than a third of the way through the novel. Billy does his Houdini act and this is starting to look like a short book.
Meanwhile, Billy discovers that he likes writing. Through the device of a book-within-the-book, we learn about Billy’s traumatic past. We follow him into the city streets of Fallujah, where he lost most of his unit in one raid. While he’s hiding out post-assassination, another person enters the story. This is what takes Billy Summers from a good book to a great book. Billy encounters a local woman in dire circumstances. The rest of the novel centers on exacting revenge for several betrayals.
I recommend Billy Summers to anyone who likes thrillers.
Rating / ⭐⭐⭐⭐ /
Considered to be a classic of science fiction and possibly
Bradbury’s finest work, Fahrenheit 451 presents a near-future dystopian
society. Books are illegal and must be burned. The protagonist is Guy Montag, a
“fireman,” who does not put out fires but starts them. He burns
books.
The novel serves as a cautionary tale on two levels. Obviously, book burning and book banning are shown to be bad for society. This is still meaningful as books continue to be banned in our society. Less obviously, the novel warns that anti-intellectualism threatens society. This is a common theme in dystopian fiction, such as Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. It is exemplified in Fahrenheit 451 by the “parlor walls,” wall-size interactive televisions which are chillingly like today’s huge TVs and mindless reality shows.
Montag’s supervisor, Captain Beatty, tells him
The opposite point of view comes from Professor Faber, whom Montag once met in a park.“And so when houses were finally fireproofed completely, all over the world (you were correct in your assumption the other night) there was no longer need of firemen for the old purposes. They were given the new job, as custodians of our peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior; official censors, judges, and executors. That’s you, Montag, and that’s me.”
“I don’t talk things, sir,” said Faber. “I talk the meaning of things. I sit here and know I’m alive.”
Rated 4 stars out of 5. It loses a star because Montag is such an idiot. He does such stupid things after his “a-ha” moment. For example, he spouts poetry to his wife’s clueless friends when they’d rather be watching and interacting with the parlor walls. Then he’s surprised when one of them rats him out. I can’t cheer for such a dumb “hero.”
/ Rating ⭐⭐ /
Not recommended.
/ Rating ✰ (zero stars) /
I'd rate this book minus 10 if I could. It was painful to read, and I deleted it after a couple of chapters.
Blind Faith by Ben Elton tries way too hard to be an absurdist take on society. In this world, 100 years from now, faith in some kind of God is everything. People must demonstrate their faith at every waking moment. They must document their every “feel” on social media.
Girls have it the worst - they must film and post their Cherry Pop (yikes), the birth of their babies, and their mandatory breast enlargement surgery. And on and on.
One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot is a book about life
and death. It is about endless love and failed relationships. Most of all, it
is about friendship.
We learn in the first few pages that Lenni is not expected
to live and that Margot is in her twilight years. The ending of this book is
not a surprise but it is surprising and beautiful. Prepare yourself for an ugly
cry. I have not been this moved by a book in years.
Margot, at the age of eighty-three, finds herself in Glasgow Princess Royal Hospital, awaiting cardiac surgery. Lenni, age seventeen, is also in this hospital in the “May Ward,” which is reserved for patients with “life-limiting” conditions. Lenni prefers to think of it using the old word, terminal, as in airport terminal, from which she might fly away.
Lenni first sees Margot, wearing her purple pajamas and purple slippers, furtively rummaging in the May Ward’s recycling bin. Lenni distracts the hospital personnel so Margot could keep digging. In this moment of silent communication, an unbreakable bond of friendship is formed. We don’t learn what Margot was looking for until very late in the book, and it becomes clear why it is so important to her and why she was away from her designated ward.
As fate would have it, the hospital turns an old IT storeroom into The Rose Room, the patient art center. Lenni and Margot wind up in the “eighty and over” art class, even after the hospital balked at Lenni attending the class with seniors. While getting to know one another, Lenni realizes that 17 plus 83 is one hundred. She proposes that they make a painting for each year of their lives.
What follows is the gradual recounting of each of their life stories. We learn much about each of them, about loss, longing, and disappointment. We learn about marriage and divorce and long-lost love.
And we stayed there, watching the stars.
“I find it so peaceful,” Margot told me after a while.
“Me too.”
“Do you know,” she said slowly, “that the stars that we see the clearest are already dead?”
“Well, that’s depressing.” I took my hand from hers.
“No,” she said gently, linking her arm through mine, “it’s not depressing, it’s beautiful. They’ve been gone for who knows how long, but we can still see them. They live on.”
They live on.
I read this book back when it first came out in 2015. I had a "meh" reaction at the time. I reread it recently because I've seen so many rave reviews. What I had missed on the first read?
The premise of this book is that a pandemic sweeps the world with incredible speed. The flu devastates the entire world and civilization collapses. In our current neverending-Covid world, Station 11 seems both more and less real. Maybe it's because our collapse is happening but in slow motion.
The characters in this book are all related somehow. It’s a six-degrees-of-separation thing, but each character is related to the others with only one or two things separating them. There are many, many characters to keep track of. For example, Kirsten is a young girl when the pandemic happens. She’s an extra in a stage production of King Lear. The lead actor, Arthur, has a heart attack and dies right on the stage. Arthur’s various family members become central to the plot. Sure, why not, 99% of the population dies, but everyone that has something to do with Arthur survives. Sounds legit.
It's an interesting device but feels contrived. No matter how I tried, I couldn't care much about any of them. Tyler, Arthur’s son, becomes incredibly important toward the end of the book. His character is (putting it kindly) emotionally disturbed. How did he go off the rails? We should know because we have a sketch of his childhood, but that's all. All righty then.
I can recommend this book to someone who can suspend disbelief regarding the unlikely circumstances in the book.
// One of the coolest things about the Libby app is that you can use many library cards to borrow books.
1. Home Library System
The first and easiest card to get is the one for your home
library system. What public library is near you? Most libraries are run by
counties, but larger cities may have their own, separate systems. Just do a Google
search for “[name] library card.” If you live in Jones county, search for
“Jones County library card.”
You can apply for a second library card for your home
library in your spouse’s name. If your spouse already has a library card, you
can add their card to your Libby account.
Since libraries may receive funding from the state, they MAY
offer library cards (or e-cards) to anyone who lives in the state. For example,
the Oakland Public Library will open an e-card account for any California
resident. Other libraries have a residency requirement or require you to pick
it up in person.
Believe it or not, certain libraries will extend
e-privileges to people who don’t even live in the state. Some are free, but
most will charge an annual fee.
3. Pick the best hold times. Hold periods can be long, up to several months for an extremely popular book. When you have several library cards, you can place your hold at the library that has the shortest hold time for your desired book. It's even possible that one library might have a long wait while another library has the e-book in stock for immediate borrowing.
/ Rating ⭐⭐⭐/
As I was reading it, I kept asking myself "Why am I
even reading this horrifying stuff?" Of course, the answer was the same as
Annie Wilkes' answer in Misery. I HAD to know what happened to these
people. Did the perpetrator(s) get brought to justice? Did the victims escape
the abuse? In the interest of remaining spoiler-free, I'm not saying what happened.
If the book affected me so profoundly, why did I only give it three stars? I
thought the writing was simplistic and repetitive. I wish there had been more
explanations of the psychology of the main perpetrator. How in the world did
someone get so fucked up?
If you like true crime, and you can handle horrific stories of abuse, you might
enjoy this book. I frequently revisit a book I've already read. I won't be
doing that with this one.
You can place holds for popular books in the Libby app. When you search for a book on Libby, the search results show you whether the book is immediately available or there is a wait.
Borrow
If you want to borrow this book, you can either click the word "Borrow" or click on the library card icon. Either will take you to the screen to borrow the book. Be sure to click the big "Borrow!" button.
The screen will tell you how many days your loan will be good for. It's usually three weeks, but this can vary depending on the library.
You'll be notified shortly before the end of the borrowing period. You can return the book early if you're done with it. If you don't return it or renew it, the book will automatically disappear when the term is up.
Place Hold
This is an example of a book that has a wait. The library card icon has a little clock, which means that there is a wait to borrow this book.
The icon even tells you roughly how long the wait is! Look carefully at the library card icon for this book and you'll see three dots. At this library, each dot represents about three weeks. This book shows three dots, so the estimated hold time is nine weeks.
If you want to get on the waiting list for this book, you can either click the words "Place Hold" or click on the library card icon. Either will take you to the screen to place your hold. Be sure to click on the big "Place Hold!" button.
/ Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐ /
And boy does Theo Decker have struggles. At the tender age of thirteen, Theo finds himself in minor trouble. He and a friend were misbehaving in school, and Theo and his mother were summoned to the Headmaster's office. They have some time to kill, so they duck into MOMA. A terrorist bomb explodes in this hallowed space and Theo's mother is killed. During the panic and confusion, Theo steals a priceless painting, presumably because his mother commented on it. The Goldfinch depicts a tiny bird chained to its perch. The painting becomes the driving force of Theo's life.
Theo is adrift. He finds his way to the tony apartment of his casual friend. Theo is miserable, blaming himself for his mother's death. His deadbeat dad appears and whisks him off to Las Vegas. Theo goes from miserable to lonely and miserable. He makes a new friend, Boris Pavlikovsky.
After skipping ahead eight years, the rest of the book chronicles the next few years of Theo's life. He spends much time at the antique furniture business of a man he encountered at MOMA. He is shown incredible kindness by the surviving art dealer, Hobie, and eventually becomes a partner in the business. Boris turns up again years later with devastating news. The two young men embark on a desperate quest to regain something that had been lost.
It didn’t occur to me then, though it certainly does now, that it was years since I’d roused myself from my stupor of misery and self-absorption; between anomie and trance, inertia and parenthesis and gnawing my own heart out, there were a lot of small, easy, everyday kindnesses I’d missed out on.
Theo has been stealing from Hobie's customers by selling
them faked antiques. Hobie find out and is bereft. Theo has completely wrecked
the one good thing that remains in his life. Meanwhile, Theo returns The
Goldfinch and collects the sizeable reward. He then uses the reward to make the
defrauded customers whole.
I recommend this book to anyone who likes long, detailed character studies. I rated this book four out of five stars. It loses a star because it drags in some parts.
Although Amazon has some free or reduced-price books, the best way to read for FREE is to use the public library. Now that e-readers are a big part of our lives, most libraries make e-books available just like paper books.
In my next blog post, I’ll tell you how to place a hold on a
library book.
Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Have you ever wondered what would happen if an AP Astrophysics textbook married Mission Impossible? This book would be the offspring.
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir is the saga of one Ryland Grace, a middle-school science teacher who somehow gets drafted into saving civilization. The story is told from Grace’s point of view and is written in the first person.
Grace is the perfect example of an unreliable narrator. As the
book begins, Grace awakens on a spaceship, apparently after a years-long coma.
At first, he can’t remember how he got where he is or even his name. The story
switches back and forth between the present time aboard the ship and Ryland’s
memories as they resurface.
Have you ever wondered what would happen if the X-Files and Fringe
had a crossover episode? That’s this book.
I read the Kindle edition in English. I’ve read several of Blake
Crouch’s books, including the Wayward Pines trilogy and Recursion. This book
reads like a dry run for Recursion, which was published immediately after.
The protagonist is Jason Dessen, a college physics
instructor who lives in Chicago. His wife is the lovely Daniela, who gave up
her budding art career to be a wife to Jason and mother to Charlie, now 15.
Jason and Daniela are happy, but not deliriously so because each wonders what
would have happened had they pursued the path they were on before marriage.
This book is a great example of a sci-fi thriller. Bizarrely
complicated concepts, such as quantum physics, are explained in relatively
simple language. The events of the book play out in unexpected ways but are always
consistent with the genre.
The characters in the book are top-notch. As the book
continues, we get to know Jason in all of his permutations. We learn that he
was once a top scientist on the verge of a major breakthrough. He wonders what
life would have been like had he pursued his scientific career instead of
settling down with his family. Similarly, Daniela was once a promising artist;
she also wonders what might have been.
The plot was propulsive and gripping. Jason enters a quantum
state, where he has access to infinite worlds at the present time. The book is
careful to explain that he is not time-traveling; he is exploring different
parallel worlds in the multiverse.
The theme of the book can best be described as “choices.”
Some of Jason’s choices are good, some are terrible. He gradually learns that
his place in the multiverse – his “homeworld” – is determined by the emotions
and motivations that lead to his choices at pivotal and not-so-pivotal moments
in his life.
Most astrophysicists believe that the force holding stars and galaxies together—the thing that makes our whole universe work—comes from a theoretical substance we can’t measure or observe directly. Something they call dark matter. And this dark matter makes up most of the known universe.
The pacing of the book is propulsive. It does drag a bit
when Jason first enters the multiverse but picks up again as he learns how to
navigate it. It’s the kind of book that is hard to put down.
The writing style is straightforward. Most of the book is
written from Jason’s point of view in the first person. Occasional chapters
switch to Daniela’s POV. The changing POV is easy to follow and appropriate considering the narrative.
The book is unusually affecting to the reader. Most sci-fi
thrillers are just roller-coaster rides but this one caused genuine
self-reflection. How would my life have been different if I had made different
choices? Would I have taken the opportunity to do this had it been presented to
me?
I rated this book four stars out of five. The rating lost a star because of the simple language; I like a book with rather erudite prose. I’d recommend this book to anyone who likes thrilling books.
