You know a book is really good when you keep thinking about it after you have read it, mulling over details, realizing details in the book are metaphors for more things than you realized before.

This is one of those books.

Even the title still resonates with me – there are so many ways to “disappear”…

The book is cleverly written.  There is the “official” story, about two sisters, young girls, who disappear one day, in Kamchatka, Russia. They seem to vanish without a trace.

But that is not the only story, or even (at least to me) THE story of the book, though it is certainly there and you do get your “whodunnit” satisfaction.

Using the framework of the case of the missing sisters the author introduces us to a variety of women. We peek into their personal lives – everything about them is so vivid I feel as if I had met them. Through these characters, Phillips gets across strong messages (and thought-provoking questions) about women, about their control or lack of control over their own life (control can vanish too…), about racism, corruption, nature, and more.

All this while moving the dramatic plot forward. I was not able to predict the final chapter at all, even though I’m often quite good at doing that!

I heard the audiobook version so I didn’t have the helpful character guide I later discovered was included in the book. It didn’t make much difference insofar as understanding what was going on but for a time I did wonder if the author would ever stop introducing characters!

They really do all connect!

In short, don’t read about the book, read the book, and let it speak for itself.

I had never heard of the book but it was available on Libby so I thought I would give it a chance.

So glad I did!

 

While my passport and suitcases may feel that I have completely forgotten about them,  I have been “traveling” around the world. As a matter of fact, I’ve even been “traveling” through time!

So where have my books taken me?

I’ll answer briefly even though my brevity isn’t doing justice to some of the books. I read much more than I can post about these days!

The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak – Istanbul,  (Arizona & San Fransisco too)

Many thanks to Ruth Sheffer for introducing me to this book.

I was so intrigued by the unusual style of storytelling in this book that I went on to listen to her excellent TED Talk “The Politics of Fiction”.  If you are wondering if you should give the book a try, listen to her talk (I haven’t heard the other talks yet) https://youtu.be/Zq7QPnqLoUk

The way I see it, this is a book about the buried secrets of the past affecting the present whether we unearth them or not. It’s a tale of two families, spanning generations, one Armenian and one Turkish, and their intertwining fate amid the backdrop of a historical tragedy one side tries to forget while the other never will.

The sounds, smells, and food in Istanbul play a prominent role in the book and the cast of characters (mainly women) is varied and beguiling. Ancient traditions coexist with the 21st century.  The people are so real that I can easily imagine a movie version of it.

I’m glad I read it!

“There was a woman” by Yael Neeman – Israel

I listened to this audiobook in Hebrew. I believe it hasn’t YET been translated into English. I haven’t read the one that has been translated yet.

This book pretends to be about one particular person but I would say that it is really about “the second generation” – the lives of children of Holocaust survivors.  This particular woman tried to erase any memory of her existence.  The book is constructed as an attempt to reconstruct the story of this woman’s life through a patchwork of interviews with people. Naturally, when each person strives to explain their connection to the woman who “erased herself” they tell about their own background.

While I found the book to be a bit too long, I enjoyed it.

“Conversations with Friends” by Sally Rooney – Dublin

I listened to this book as an audiobook. The narrator had a lovely Irish accent.

That’s the best thing I can say about the book.

I gave it a good chance before giving up on it.  I found it immensely boring. I know the author is hugely successful. Perhaps I’m too old for a book presenting every thought and minute action of a woman in her 20s and a few others. Lots of alcohol and cigarette smoking in the rain.

Nothing happens.

Not a book for me.

 

Today is October 31, 2020.

This book takes place over three days, October 31, November 1, and November 2.

But, obviously not in 2020.

The year is 1918, just before the end of the first World War. The setting is Ireland, mainly Dublin.

A year in which a pandemic is raging, ravaging the population.

The Spanish Flu.

Certainly a  “timely book”!

Frankly, I knew absolutely nothing about the book when I began reading it. During the first week of August, I noticed that our Libby library service had some new books, including this one. I added myself to the waiting list without bothering to see what this book was about or read reviews because of the author. I’ve enjoyed reading several of Donoghue’s previous books.

The audio version was well worth waiting for  (3 months!). The excellent reader is clearly Irish herself – not only does she read the book with the relevant accents, she sings the “ditties” that are heard and even moans along with the women in the  Maternity/Fever “ward”. You can feel the stress levels rising and ebbing along with the reader’s voice.

In the book, we see the world through the eyes of  Nurse Julia Powers, who has already recovered from the flu and works in a TINY makeshift hospital “ward” set up so as to distance the women who have caught the dreaded flu from the rest of the expectant mothers.

You may pause here and ask (what I asked myself when I realized the time and the setting of the plot) “why would I want to read about a pandemic when I’m already living in the time of one”?

Because…

The book is about SO MUCH MORE than illustrating the reality of that pandemic and making one feel grateful for all that we do have going for us in this wretched 2020!

It’s a book about not doing things the way they have always been done simply because they have always been done that way. It’s about the need to fight for a society that doesn’t just look after a  small percent of its members. It’s about strong women, lost children,  rules that don’t make sense, and more.

While this book is a work of fiction, “historical fiction”, one of the main characters, Doctor Kathleen Lynn, was a real person. The endnotes about her are very interesting.

A word of warning, particularly if you aren’t familiar with books by Donoghue – the book starts slowly, with many medical and procedural details given. The pace doesn’t stay slow.

I felt that the characters were so real (the audio version helps with that, I think!) that I now find that I miss the characters!

Final note:

Emma Donoghue wrote this book BEFORE she knew anything about the current pandemic, even though it was published after the pandemic had begun.

As I said, what timing!

Both of the following books were written by Italian authors and both are short books, printed in a small format – 162 pages / 203 pages.

Naturally, I assumed I would be reading each one quite quickly, especially as we’ve been on lockdown.

I was mistaken.

“Invisible Cities” by Calvino is a book that I had to read very slowly. In fact, I couldn’t read more than a few pages at a time. The book isn’t really a “book” in the usual sense, there’s no real story line – but rather a “procession” of very rich descriptions of more than 50 “invisible cities”. All these cities are considered to be the many faces of Venice.

After reading a description I had to stop and think – what did I just read? What was Calvino trying to say here?

Sometimes I was moved, and felt that a description was powerful, or lyrical. So many people live /work in a place and don’t really look at it – so much is being missed!

Sometimes I didn’t get the point of the description at all.

Sometimes I got annoyed that some descriptions were a bit repetitve.

I know it’s a strange thing to say, but I truly found the book to be too long.  I wished it had been a series of blog posts which would send me a description of one “invisible city” a week to ponder.  More than 50 such descriptions in short succession  had me losing the ability to focus properly on them all.

Ties by Starnone

It is interesting to note that in Hebrew this book is called “Shoelaces”.  I have no idea what the original title in Italian means but “ties” is a more of a “give- away” of a clever metaphor that the shoelaces represent in the book.

This is a book you don’t want to know too much about in advance as it has some surprising parts. It’s a story about a family in a crises, over years, and is told in different ways in the books several parts. I had the book pegged one way and then it became a little different.

One one hand, it held my interest and I read it (yes, much quicker than the previous one) all the way through gladly. On the other hand, I didn’t find the characters completely “convincing” and some of the story line didn’t make sense, or rather “ring true”.

Not sorry I read it though.

 

I loved it!

I couldn’t put it down.

I just wanted to read and read…

Everything seems so vivid in my mind (a week after completing the book!), the characters, the sights, sounds, and smells, that I feel as if I had seen a movie!

True, neither books nor movies convey smells, but it seems that the end of the 19th century (actually, 1893, I believe) in the Wild West, particularly the Arizona Territory, wasn’t a place that smelled washed and clean. Lack of water and drought certainly served as a powerful excuse, though that was certainly not the only source of smells in this book.

But clarifying THAT statement would be a big spoiler.

I am well aware that I don’t tend to write too much detail about the plot of a book in my posts and that some of you go off to read summaries of the book elsewhere. I strongly urge you not to read to much about it in advance. The book starts slowly,  but as the plot unfolds in surprising twists and turns the pace becomes quicker and quicker until the final, unexpected “showdown”.

You don’t want to ruin the experience.

A person needs to know that it is a Western, but not a traditional Western. There are strong, interesting female characters featuring prominently in the book, along with male characters you would expect to find in a Western and those you wouldn’t.

The book relates to actual, historically documented events that occurred, and feels well researched, down to the details, including the dialect and phrases of the period. However, at the same time, not everything in the book is grounded in reality…

Enough said.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Just what you need for a second lockdown…

 

 

I have some good excuses for the current backlog. The books here are only part of it – another post coming shortly!

In August I was either (happily) doing things away from my computer or madly trying to create a great deal of teaching material that would help me deal with going back to school “COVID Style”.

But let’s step away from all that now and talk “BOOKS”!

Pastoralia by George Saunders

Pastoralia is the name of the book and of the first short story in this short story collection.

It is the best one. It is engrossing, surprising, and gave me the same “punch” as reading another George, George Orwell. The tale is set in a weird theme park where modern people are supposed to live/act like cavemen for extended periods of time, in a desperate attempt to make a living. As the relationships and actions of the characters involved (the “cavemen”, the park directors, their family members) unfold and become dramatic,  we find ourselves staring at a picture of aspects of American modern society, absurd yet very real and familiar.

It’s not that the other stories aren’t good. I would have enjoyed them more if I had read each one month apart. The stories are different from each other, especially “Sea Oak” (full of surprises!) although   “The End of Firpo in the World” also deserves a proper mention. That one could be used for discussions in training educators, and in parenting sessions (Yeah, I’m a teacher. Where were you, school, with this kid?!).

The trouble with reading George Saunder’s stories one after another is that while the events from one story to the next are totally different, the main characters have a lot in common. I’ve also read (several years ago) Saunder’s “10th of December” which is a good collection, but I had the same problem.

I don’t think I read the last story in either collection…

Nonetheless, let me make it clear – I do recommend reading this book!

Origin by Dan Brown

Once you have read a book by Dan Brown you know what you are getting into when you choose to read another one, the structure is the same. It was an enjoyable audiobook to have for an August spent more at home than usual, though too long (over 19 hours!).  I enjoyed the first part more, especially the detailed descriptions of the Guggenheim Bilbao museum. At some point, Brown slows down the plot too much with his lengthy explanations. In addition, as someone who has taught Asimov’s story “True Love” many times, I was not surprised one bit by the ending.

Sometimes, a Dan Brown is what you need for your mood and you get what you expect to get.  That’s a good thing.

The Victory Garden by Rhys Bowen

Skip it.

Sweet is an understatement.  AN UNDERSTATEMENT.

I read it because I was in the mood for “sweet and comforting “(before going back to school) and it was a free Kindle book from Amazon.

So many other books worth reading out there!

 

 

Many thanks to Vicky Loras for recommending this book!

Let me begin this post by making one point crystal clear:

I really really enjoyed reading this book.

I’m still thinking about it.

I’m glad it isn’t a library book (I purchased it on sale on one of the Kindle deals) because it’s a book I can see myself wanting to read again.

That’s something I don’t often say about a work of fiction. However, this book is about more than the barebones of its plot.

Plot? Since I’ve mentioned the plot,  I’d like to emphasize that I’m going to share very little of the plot in this post. I was in the blessed situation of not remembering a thing about the book beyond the fact that Vicky Loras recommended it (I’ve enjoyed the various books from different genres she recommended in the past so that was meaningful) and so every detail was new to me.

This book is an epistolary novel. That’s a word I would probably not use in a conversation as I don’t like a term describing something I  enjoy, reading books in the form of letters, that sounds like the word pistol. I’m very interested in non-fiction collections of letters as well. I find that people who invest in letter writing, see writing as a way to work out their thoughts and feelings.  Writing can help define but also face things.  I believe writing also encourages mindfulness as the desire to make another person understand often leads to noticing little details.

This is the situation in the book. Two people (old enough to be grandparents) who seem to have absolutely nothing in common, strike up a correspondence. He is an introverted, conservative Danish archeologist at a museum and she is an energetic British woman playing a significant part in running the family farm. A woman with very little free time. As you can imagine, the correspondence becomes very meaningful to them both.

When I read the first letter I was concerned that the book would descend into “cuteness” (Kitch” or “Shmaltz”) but I didn’t find it to be that way at all.  Perhaps I found the age of the characters to be something I could relate to, as they thought about their adult children.

In short, it was a great read for me at a time when I’m on vacation, stressed about the pandemic situation and find reflecting, noticing the little details of life, to be something I’m pleased to think about.

Enjoy!

I’ve read so many books in the last month or so and each one actually deserves their own post, but that has become too large a task to handle. I actually even considered not writing about the books at all but I can’t do that – this blog is my memory aid! I’m the kind of person who remembers all kinds of details about a book but cannot remember the title of the book. Since my blog dates to Dec. 2010 I’ve often used the search function to check something about a book (like the answer to the question – which of Orhan Pamuk’s books with a name of a color in the title have I read?).

So here are super short comments about many books, in no particular order:

The Island of the Sea Women by Lisa See

I just finished the book last night. I read most of it in just a few days – it’s very hard to put down. I second what many of my friends have said – a fascinating book about strong women in an unusual social situation (men are unaccustomed to physical labor – women do EVERYTHING yet their status is still lower than men) living through turbulent times on an Island in Korea.  The women traditionally made a living by deep-sea diving without oxygen tanks or protective gear.  Frankly, I’m the kind of nerd who would have been fascinated by the story just with these aspects, and think the book would have been just as good with the two main characters remaining friends throughout the years and we learned of the change the new generations brought about – but I know that’s just me.

A GOOD BOOK!

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

For me this was a “companion book” to The Handmaid’s Tale, filling in missing gaps, but thankfully not delivering the same “punch to the gut” that the previous book did, as the vital information is already known. It explains things in more detail.

Atwood’s writing is, as always, a pleasure and I’m so glad the LIBBY library service had the audiobook! There are several different readers and Margaret Atwood herself reading little bits of it too! Having several readers adds to the experience.

A GOOD BOOK! Only to be read after The Handmaid’s Tale.

Peony by Pearl Buck

I haven’t read a book by Pearl Buck since I was a teenager! Back then I read both The Good Earth and Letter From Peking.  The pace is slow, unrushed, but I was interested in the details. The book is told from the point of view of Peony, a beautiful and intelligent Chinese bond-maid who belonged to a Jewish family in Kaifeng, China, in 1850. The impossible love story between Peony and David, (the family’s son)  is told on a backdrop of the family’s conflicted reactions to the gradual disappearance of the small Jewish community and its assimilation into the welcoming Chinese society.

The kIndle edition comes with a FASCINATING afterword written by a researcher who shows how cleverly Buck used the known facts about the community that was once there to bring the story to life. The researcher then adds information that was not available to Buck and presents surprising information about the descendants and research regarding the community from 1850 till the present day.

INTERESTING!

Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli

The truly unusual writing style and the skill in which the story is told kept me engrossed even though I found reading the book deeply upsetting. It’s all so visually clear and the punch is strong – the things that have happened to immigrant children traveling alone across the Mexican American Border is as tragic as I understood it to be from the media. The way in which the crises is related, the approach to it, is from such an expected angle and from unexpected points of view that reading the book is truly an experience, but a heart wrenching one.

I was glad I had read it but glad when I finished it too.

Stockholm by Noa Yedlin

I’m sure this book will be translated into English soon – the television adaption of the book has been very successful.

While at times the book can be too slow, it is mostly an enjoyable comic/drama with truly clever twists and great portrayals of people and their complex relationships.  The reader is introduced to five 70-year-old people who have been friends at least since their 20s.  When one of them suddenly passes away quietly at home, the others try to hide the fact for almost a week, since the newly deceased character was “shortlisted ” for a Nobel Prize in Economics. A person has to be alive when the prize is announced in order to get it (though not necessarily for the ceremony itself). As you can imagine (with a whole lot you might not be able to imagine on your own) hiding a dead body leads to unexpected complications… These situations naturally cause the characters to examine their relationship with the others in the group and look at themselves.

 

I know I have read a book worth reading when I’m still thinking about parts of it, several weeks and three books later.

Yes, I am way behind on my book postings again.

This is an excellent choice for an audiobook (courtesy of the WONDERFUL ) Libby library service.  A good reader and appropriate accents add a layer to the pleasure!

First of all, it’s a good story, well told with a plucky heroine.

The book takes place during The Depression Era, in isolated spots in  Kentucky but in many ways, this book could easily serve as a discussion for current affairs in the U.S.A.

The main character, an admirable young woman named Mary, is known as “Blue” because of a rare condition which causes her skin to be literally blue. This is true also of her parents and her “kin”, though precious few have remained alive in this impoverished place where life is harsh and racism is rampant. Being different can be a life-threatening condition.

Mary works as a “Packhorse Librarian”, traveling long distances every day to bring reading material to people who live in extremely remote places.  Not only remote, but some also live entirely off-the-grid. She actually traveled with a mule, not a horse, which is better suited to the difficult terrain. The parts I liked best were Mary’s (called Bookwoman by her patrons) conversations with people who were deeply suspicious of “book learning” – how she coaxed them to try and see for themselves how the information contained in them just might enrich their lives, perhaps even improve it. Sadly, it seems that the importance of a good education today needs defending among some people today.

The roving librarian job was just one of the jobs created as part of the government “New Deal” plans to help put food on people’s plates. Starvation was no figure of speech in that area – there were families counting the number of their children who died due to starvation (not to mention the stillborn children). Nonetheless, some preferred to accept their offspring’s deaths rather than cooperate with an interfering government who was offering a salary…

The author did leave me wondering what was the fate of the planned miner’s strikes. At the beginning of the book, there was much talk about the danger of attending a union meeting and the terrible working conditions (and short lives ) of the miners. But after the miner character passes away, we don’t follow that storyline anymore.

While I can be a bit “ornery” (to use a phrase from the book) and am perfectly able to criticize some things about the book, I am certainly glad I read it and recommend it too!

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

I believe that this book is very popular and is (or will soon be ) a mini-series available for online streaming.

However, this book goes into my personal “you lose some” bin.

I truly agree that a great deal of credit should be given to Ng for well-rounded characters and a clever storyline that builds up – I have no criticism of any of that.

It’s just that I totally do not want to read about a wealthy family who appears to be a perfect one,   a family who has it all, and then all the hidden dark sides come out.  I’m not interested in the “let me see the pleasures the rich have and show me how those pleasures don’t make them happy” type of tale. They all boil down to the same thing, as far as I’m concerned.

I also do not enjoy reading about women fighting to uncover other women’s hidden secrets and harm them, or rich kids taking advantage of others without a second thought. While reading I began feeling that all that was missing was mud for the battle…

After reading more than a third of the book I wanted nothing more to do with any of the characters in the book and quit.  I didn’t even read the end of the book or a synopsis online to see how it turned out, I don’t want to know.

Not my cup of tea.

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn

I began to suspect I had been mistaken in my choice of the audiobook by the end of the first chapter. Nonetheless, I didn’t give up on it for quite a few hours more (out of the more than 15 hours of narration) before returning it to the library.

I stopped reading this book not only because of the aspects of the book I really disliked but also because of the parts I actually did like.

I know that is a very odd statement to make but bear with me for a minute.

The book begins by portraying a young, rich, American woman arriving in London two years after World War Two. While the author states and restates that she is different from her family because she loves mathematics and doesn’t behave like a fashionable young lady (according to her ever so fashionable mother), the amount of detail devoted to the clothes worn, not worn, previously worn (or should have been worn) was driving me up the wall.  Clothes lead to detailed discussions of other “womanly” subjects that our poor clever girl was unhappy with. I will spare you the details as I was also unhappy with them.

The plot moves between two-time frames, moving between the past and the “present”.  The parts relating to a network of female spies in Occupied France during World War Two is interesting and is what kept me from returning the book to the library much earlier. How such spies were recruited and trained, what they were expected to do –  certainly women to be respected! However, I don’t need to tell you that horrible things happened during that war. There is no lack of foreshadowing to indicate that harrowing experiences await the brave spies.

I realized that the combination of “aggravating” and “harrowing”, narrated in such a vivid way, word-by-word,  did not make me look forward to listening/reading the rest of the book.

So I didn’t read the rest of the book.

But for this one, I did read a synopsis.  I was curious, I admit. Some of my guesses were spot on. A synopsis was all the detail I needed in this case.

Just for the record – I’ll be posting about two books I  enjoyed soon. I am enjoying my current reads as well!