Book Talk – December 8th, 2024

What a great Book Lovers SIG we had this month; three new members joined us!  Cynthia and Tammy from Wichita, plus Tim from Garden Grove, CA.  Welcome to all!

Cynthia also passed on some good end-of-year book recommendations:

The Best Books of 2024 | Smithsonian

Foreign Affairs: The Best of Books 2024

Peggy rejoined us from her three-week cruise, and of course stalwarts Beth, Linda and Christina were there as well.  Jim wasn’t able to join us but wished Happy Holidays to all!

In all, 64 books were read/discussed/reviewed.  The full list can be found here:

https://mamensa.org/category/book-lovers-sig-book-talks/

Book Lovers SIG always meets the second Sunday of each month; in this case January 12.  We meet online using Zoom, so it is easy to join in.  Folks generally start checking in around 2 p.m. for a bit of socialization.  Book discussions begin around 2:30 p.m., more or less, or when Peggy says, “OK, Let’s talk about books!”

To join us on Zoom, simply click on the link shown below:

https://tinyurl.com/BookLoversSIG

You can also open your Zoom app and use these parameters:

Meeting ID: 946 0436 4344
Passcode: 844358

*****

Tim

A Theory of Everyone by Michael Muthukrishna.
The Reluctant Tuscan: How I Discovered My Inner Italian by Phil Doran.
Tangled Up in Blue: Policing the American City by Rosa Brooks.
The Secret Lives of Codebreakers: The Men and Women Who Cracked the Enigma Code at Bletchley Park by Sinclair McKay.
Dune by Frank Herbert.

Tammy – No report.

Cynthia

Insatiable City: Food and Race in New Orleans by Theresa McCulla.

Linda

Trunk Music (Harry Bosch #5) by Michael Connelly.  ****
Angels Flight (Harry Bosch #6) by Michael Connelly.  ****
A Darkness More Than Night (Harry Bosch #7) by Michael Connelly.  ****
Heartburn by Nora Efron.  A bittersweet, funny novel about a marriage breakup.  Fiction but based on Efron’s marriage to Carl Bernstein. ***
After That Night (Will Trent #11) by Karin Slaughter.  ****
This is Why We Lied (Will Trent #12) by Karin Slaughter.  *****
The Women by Kristin Hannah.  A novel of nurses in Vietnam.  If you lived through that era, it’s especially moving.  *****
Goodreads Choice Award Winner for Readers’ Favorite Historical Fiction (2024)

Wake (PI Lane Holland #1) by Shelley Burr.  Disappearance of a young girl 20 years ago is investigated by a P.I. who needs the reward money, and who might have a family connection to the crime.  ****

Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation by Brenda Wineapple.  Non-fiction about the infamous “monkey trial” that put evolution — and science in general — on trial a hundred years before it’s now happening again.  ****

Beth

The Naturalist Society by Carrie Vaghn.  This is a book about birding, misogyny, and magic.  A young birder/naturalist watches her husband die of an infection in 1880s New York.  He is a famed member of the prestigious Naturalist Society, a men’s (by default) scientific society of explorers and scientists.  There is a twist: people with the talent can absorb the power and capabilities of the animals that they can describe (better if it is a new species).  No one is quite sure how this works, but it surely is something only men can do.  Turns out that our dead famous naturalist is something of a fraud and has been passing his wife’s work as his own.  No one questions this because he’s a man and she’s a woman.  Now that he’s dead, everyone wants his (her) specimens and notes.  She has money from her husband, and this holds off the inevitable for a while, but only for a while.  Put into the mix a LOT of sexual fluidity and this ends up being a good story, once I got past the outrageous misogyny.

The Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Patricia A. McKillip.  A book about extraordinary power and regular power and how when wielding it, one must be careful of the cost.  Our protagonist is able to call animals and people to her, and then uses their skills, power, and love to fulfill her own needs.  Turns out, that others do exactly the same, using their power to get others to do things that gets them what they want.  Regardless of the cost.

Boy of Chaotic Making by Charlie Holmberg.  Book 3 of 4 in the Whimbrel House Series.  Our witches and their released boy (now in the body of a dog) are going to London to see if an offer by the magic and Royal Family can move Owein’s soul from his dog body to a human body.  The problem is, the human body needs to be dead.  It took me all year to read this, but it turns out OK in the end.  There is a lot of soul searching and false starts in this process as people come to terms with their powers, and the wants and needs of others, and their own wants and needs.

Breathless by David Quammen.  David Quammen does it again with a detailed (as of October 22) look at how the Covid pandemic could have started, and how it did spread, and all the variants, and why taking a good deep look at all these things is important to understand.  He does not say lab leak or spillover is the answer, but my takeaway is that this pandemic started long before December 2019 and may not even have started in China, it just bloomed there before spreading everywhere.  This is well researched and clearly written.   At times it reads more like a thriller than anything else.  It does bring back all the uncertainty and the fear and anger that were constantly with us for three years.

The Devil’s Dance by Alexander Duman trans. Lawrence Ellsworth.  This is book 7 of the 3 Musketeers stories.  Our fearless friends are getting on with their life as Louis XIV takes on his power and everyone jockeys for position, fame, safety, and sex.  It was pretty boring for the first half of the book until D’Artegan comes back on the scene.

Drop Dead Sisters by Amelia Diane.  A family get-together for a vow renewal ceremony in a National Park in California.  This is your typical dysfunctional family, and all sorts of crazy behavior comes to play for the weekend.    An old ‘friend of the family’ who wasn’t really invited shows up and tries to rape one of the daughters, which sets off a series of moves that takes the measure of each of the family members.  Never let a good catastrophe go to waste.  Good escapist read.

The Hanging City by Charlie Holmberg.  On a desiccated world that might be Earth, a young woman is running because her special power literally scares people to death (or close).  Rejected in every one of the isolated towns she gets to, she ends up at the city of the trolls, which is built into a very deep canyon.  Trolls are blood enemies of humans, but she hopes to be accepted because her special power can be used to fight off the monsters that live in the canyon.  This is about how she navigates the society she finds herself in and the one she left.  It gets much better in the second half of the book.

The Witch of Tim Mountain by Paulette Kennedy.  This story follows three generations of witches in hill country in Arkansas from 1831-1983 as they try to survive a curse and powers that they don’t completely understand, and which the locals are afraid of.  I had to keep remembering that this is fiction, because the people in general, and the men in particular behave badly, but it was a good story.

Ember and the Ice Dragon by Heather Fawcett.  Ember is the daughter of two fire dragons that were killed by hunters for their Heartstones. a stone of great value to the treasure hunter market, but vital to the dragon’s spirit.  (Like elephant tusks, but much more important to the dragon).  She grows up and has all sorts of problems with starting fires in the wrong place.  She ends up with her aunt on an expedition in Antarctica, and that is where things start to go really sideways.  She meets dragons hunters and other barely explained people and tries to sabotage a hunting expedition.  Good adventure with magic and dragons.

Split by Alida Bremer.  A dead body dumped on the fishing nets on the dock.  Who is this person, why were they killed, and whodunit?  A mystery wrapped up in the life of Split, Croatia in the summer of 1936.  Normal people and the movers and shakers try to navigate the rapidly changing and confusing landscape of the growing Nazi threat, the ongoing communist threat, Mussolini, Spain’s civil war, and America’s immigration policies.  It does make you want to visit Split.  Having been there recently, it is a charming place perched at the foot of the mountains that fall into the sea.  It will make you rethink our received wisdom that WWII came out of nowhere.

An Echo in Time by Boo Walker.  Charli is a mess, and so is her whole family.  She works at a dead-end job, breaks up with her boyfriend just when it gets good, can’t let go of abusive Mom or distant Dad.  All childhood traumas; or are they?  She goes to a workshop to stop generational trauma, which leads her to England to find an ancestor with no history.  She uncovers an old murder (mystery) and finds her way.  The premise was interesting, but it got tedious watching this woman blow up her life.

The Star Father by Charlie Holmberg.  A god lands in a farmer’s field, and she falls in love with him, before she finds out he’s a god.  It’s a story of her quest to join him and the allies she finds on the way.

Peggy

The English Spy by Daniel Silva. Gabriel Allon is an Israeli intelligence agent and an art restorer, as people are.  Christopher Keller is an ex-British Army commando turned contract assassin who returns to Ireland looking for vengeance on someone who killed his girlfriend and a Princess Diana type.  Lots of dead bodies by the end of this one.  I read a dozen or so of this series in the last month while I was on my cruise, so I know a little bit more about a lot of things — Syrian wars and how to cover up a Rembrandt. The books tend to blur, particularly when you read them out of sequence.

Agnes Sharp and the Trip of a Lifetime by Leonie Swann. Follow-up to the Sunset Years of Agnes Sharp.  A crew of oldies living at the Sunset Hall home of Agnes Sharp win a stay in an exclusive coastal hotel in Cornwall.  Bodies start to pile up and a boa constrictor gets adopted.  Not as good as the first one.

The Mistletoe Mystery (Molly the Maid #2.5) by Nita Prose.  A Xmas short story that is even thinner than the two novels, and I am not just talking page length.

Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa.  This is the first book in the series, and I would recommend reading them in sequence.  This book tells how Takako’s uncle finds her in the depths of despair, moves her to his bookshop apartment and introduces her to his neighborhood of used bookstores.  Everyone is lovely.

Christina

Kid Lit

Belle and the Rose Riddle by Disney. I’m not familiar with much beyond the original La Belle et la Bête, and all I knew about the Disneyfication was that the Beast has an awesome library and Belle’s dress is all wrong for the period. This Audible story did bring me up to speed a little bit on that front, but it didn’t make it any less weird, and the mystery of scattered roses and damaged/missing items didn’t make much sense. Leave this to the kiddies already immersed in the Disney lore.

Kitten’s First Full Moon/La primera luna llena de Gatita by Kevin Henkes. I had an English copy of this picture book, and Hoopla had the Spanish audiobook version, so I had fun reading both at once. This is freakin’ adorable. A kitten sees the full moon for the first time and thinks it is a saucer of milk. Much wackiness ensues. Read for Bucket List-athon.

Waiting for the Great Pumpkin by Charles M. Schulz. A collection of all of the Great Pumpkin comic strips. I’m sure I’d already read them all at some time or another, but it was fun seeing them all at once.

The Intergalactic Collection of Knowledge and Records by Ashley Kruger. A cute little story about a human girl who mistakenly gets delivered to the Neptunian custodians of the ICoKaR. Too bad the narration was lackluster. Read for the 52 Book Club.

Swirl by Swirl: Spirals in Nature by Joyce Sidman. Gorgeous illustrations by Beth Krommes! This is a poetic celebration of the spiral and its myriad appearances in the natural world.

Short Stories

Crime of Fashion by Emma Rosenblum. A Bulgari necklace goes missing during a fashion shoot. And then it is found, and accusations fly. Not very complicated but probably entertaining for anybody interested in the fashion industry. Read for Bucket List-athon.

Smoke Signal by Marie Benedict & Kate Quinn. Benedict wrote a historical fiction novel featuring Agatha Christie, and Quinn wrote a historical fiction novel featuring the codebreakers of Bletchley Park. This is a bland and contrived attempt to join the two. Meh. Read for Historathon.

Meat Cute: The Hedgehog Incident by Gail Carriger. This is a fun prequel to the Parasol Protectorate books. I’d recommend starting with Soulless, the first novel in the series, then going back to read this one.

The Wife of the Kenite by Agatha Christie. It helps if you are familiar with the story of Deborah in the Book of Judges. (It’s a quick read.) This was published in an Australian magazine in 1922, shortly after Christie had spent some time in South Africa, and was rediscovered in recent years. Read for the Christie’s Missing readathon and the Dark December challenge.

Nonfiction November

Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe. One of the most banned books. It’s a graphic novel memoir about the author’s journey of self-discovery, and I really liked getting a first-person perspective on gender dysphoria and the process of defining one’s own identity. Read for Neurovember.

On Spice: Advice, Wisdom, and History with a Grain of Saltiness by Caitlin PenzeyMoog. Yes, of Penzeys fame. Caitlin grew up in the Spice House/Penzeys empire and here she shares some of the knowledge she accumulated over the years. It’s kinda rambling and full of reminiscences, but I loved it for that. I listened to the audiobook, but a PDF of recipes was included.

84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff. I kept hearing this described as a romance or a love story, but it’s neither, except maybe in a metaphorical sense about the love of books and the romance of a correspondence about a shared passion. A screenwriter in New York writes to a bookstore in London, and friendship blooms. It’s also an interesting look at life on both sides of the Pond in the decades after WWII. It’s a quick epistolary read, so just pick it up and read it if you haven’t already.

Love Is the Way: Holding on to Hope in Troubling Times by Michael B. Curry. I started reading this after the election, in hopes that I could recapture some of my Protestant indoctrination in service of a higher goal. I greatly appreciated Bishop Curry’s inspirational message here, but too much has changed in just the past few years. I don’t think I can find it within me to be compassionate towards or forgiving of those who choose to act in bad faith.

This Is Your Brain on Anxiety: What Happens and What Helps by Faith G. Harper. Harper has gained notoriety for peppering her work with lots of curse words, so either be prepared for that, or avoid it entirely. It doesn’t bother me, so I liked this book fine. It seemed like it might actually be useful, but it was hard to tell on audiobook, so I will probably seek out a hard copy. Read for Neurovember.

I Cracked the Autism Code: What We Didn’t Know About Autism and ADHD That Changes Everything by Roma Swanepoel. I don’t know that this is the groundbreaking work the title implies it is, but I enjoyed hearing about Swanepoel’s personal experience as an autistic woman. Contrary to the title, she makes it clear she is not speaking as an academic or researcher and is focusing on her own observations. Read for Neurovember.

Break Shot: My First 21 Years by James Taylor. Number 2 in Audible’s Words + Music series. I’ve been only vaguely aware of Taylor’s music, and I knew almost nothing about the man himself, so this was a fascinating look at his formative years. He escaped a bad family situation by spending much of his teens in a psychiatric hospital, and that obviously influenced his music. Read for Neurovember.

Tea and Crumpets by Margaret M. Johnson. This is a beautiful cookbook with some history of tea and the English tea tradition. I’ve made a few of the recipes and enjoyed them, but I’m sure I won’t attempt some of the more elaborate baking projects. Lovely to flip through, even if you don’t want to try anything out. Read for Bucket List-athon.

Novellas and Novels

Dead Company, Volume 1 by Yoshiki Tonogai. This manga was gruesome and deeply disturbing. The traumatized survivor of a battle royale is recruited by a video game company. Much violence and wackiness ensue. Read for the Read Harder challenge.

Circe by Madeline Miller. This retelling fleshes out the character of Circe, the witch who turned Odysseus’s men into pigs. I really appreciated Miller’s ability to make narrative sense of the chaos that is Greek mythology. Read for Bucket List-athon and Book Snobs.

Beartown by Fredrik Backman. This is the first book in the Beartown trilogy. It’s about a Swedish hockey town and how it deals with competition and adversity. It moves slowly and introduces you to pretty much everybody in the town, so Backman broke a lot of rules about pacing and casting. But he did so with intent and achieved what he set out to do. There is a huge amount of set-up and build-up, to the point you wonder if anything ever happens. But it does. And all that introductory material falls into place, much like a shattered window. (You may want to check content warnings for violence.) Read for the Ellenmade book club.

A Hardcover Homicide by Audrey Shine. First in a mystery series about an American woman who goes to a little English village to get away from her cheating husband, attends a book auction, and lands herself in the middle of a murder investigation. Editing is a little sloppy but I’ve read much worse cozies. This was my first experience with a virtual narrator. I’m opposed on principle, but this was tolerable, as long as I didn’t expect any change of voice or accent for any of the characters. (Though I noticed it did really well voicing cats and dogs!) I will continue to avoid virtual narration.

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. I already love Bradbury’s writing style, so I was glad to read this finally. If you are not a Bradbury fan, at least do yourself the favor of reading Usher II and/or There Will Come Soft Rains. Both of those are on their own worth the price of admission. Read for Bucket List-athon.

Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre by Max Brooks. This was a wild ride! It is mixed media, and the story revolves around a diary located in the abandoned ruins of a billionaire tech-bro’s fancy leisure commune in the aftermath of the eruption of Mount Rainier. I recommend the full-cast narration, which includes actual newscasters. Read for the Book Wyrm Club, Bucket List-athon, and Neurovember.

Binti by Nnedi Okorafor. This YA novella is the first in the Binti series. I plan to read the second book soon, so I decided to re-read this in preparation. It’s an entertaining story of a Himba teen’s interstellar trip to Oomza University. Warring alien races interrupt the voyage, and it’s up to Binti and her new friend to make sure they arrive safely at school. I enjoyed it, but I wanted more of the university setting. Ah, well, maybe in the second book. Read for Neurovember and Bucket List-athon.

Gathering Mist by Margaret Mizushima. This is the most recent release in the Timber Creek K-9 series, and you should definitely start at the beginning with Killing Trail. Maddie and Robo go to the Pacific Northwest to help search for a missing child in the rainforest. New terrain requires new skills, and someone seems intent on sabotaging the search teams. Read for the Sisters in Crime-Colorado book club and Bucket List-athon.

Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez. The summer fling trope in this romance novel is really just a backdrop for a moving story about two people each dealing with a really heavy family crisis. And that’s not including the lice infestation. Great writing, great characters, realistic conflicts, low smut content, and a good balance of humor and gravitas. Pretty much the perfect romance novel for me. (But you may want to check content warnings for mental health issues.) It is the third book in a series, but it stands alone well. I gather you’d recognize some characters if you’d read the other books first. Read for Neurovember and Bucket List-athon.

The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo. Romantasy set during Spain’s Golden Age. A scullion with Jewish ancestry is caught using little bits of magic to make her workload easier, and this winds up with her entered into a contest to become the King’s pet magician. Much wackiness ensues. And don’t forget the Spanish Inquisition! There is a dream-state quality to the prose that I felt fit the story well, but it seems most readers just think it’s slow and boring. This is my third Bardugo read, and I put it somewhere between Shadow and Bone (pretty standard YA fantasy adventure) and Ninth House (dark academia). Read for the Folger Shakespeare Library book club.

The Laws of the Skies by Grégoire Courtois. Translated by Rhonda Mullins. And back to gruesome and deeply disturbing. Twelve six-year-olds and their three adult minders set out on a camping trip in the French woods. Nobody survives. (That’s not a spoiler.) There were points when I was tempted to abandon it, but I’m glad I didn’t. It’s a fascinating exploration of the human condition in a novella package. (If you need to check ANY content warnings, just don’t pick up this book. It’s not for you.) Read for the F*cked-Up Book Club.

Brad (70/25982)

The Peacock and the Sparrow by I.S. Berry.  CIA spy on his last assignment in Bahrain, working undercover as a diplomat.  His goal is to stay out of trouble long enough to retire and get his pension.  Fat chance.

This takes place during the Arab Spring, with the United States government playing both sides:  the security state and those advocating for democracy.  Turns out nothing is as it seems.  LOTS of twists and turns, with a very surprising ending.  ****

The Trap (Alias Emma #3) by Ava Glass.  Successor to the Slough House series.  Emma (not her real name) works for a super-secret spy agency in Great Britain.  So secret they don’t even have a name.

The series started with Emma Makepeace entering the agency as a rookie.  She’s been bloodied since then, and her boss trusts her, which is a good thing, as it appears as though the Russians are getting ready to disrupt the upcoming G7 meeting in Edenborough.  And not in a trivial way.

Very tense, nail-biting story telling.  It seems like it takes forever for each new book to come out, but they are well worth the wait.  Highly recommended.  *****

Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights by Erwin Chemerinsky.  Dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law.  Chemerinsky has fought on behalf of civil rights for decades and has argued several cases before the Supreme Court.  He explains the history of the 4^th and 5^th Amendments, how they came about, how they were initially interpreted, and how they were finally given some teeth by the Warren Court.

Depressing read, especially in the climate we are in today, but a great summary of how these rights have been whittled away by the Burger, Renquist, and Roberts courts.  ****

The Humans by Matt Haig.  Classic fish-out-of-water story.  Alien is sent to Earth to take the place of a mathematician who has solved an impossible problem involving prime numbers, which the alien society believes will allow the humans to jump out into the cosmos, causing chaos.  His mission is to find out who knows about the discovery and eliminate them as well.  His problem?  He learns to drink wine, listen to music, and enjoy poetry.  In other words, he becomes human.

Such an enjoying, pleasurable read.  Highly recommended.  ****