Book Talk – August 10th, 2025

Big crowd for the August Book Lovers SIG, the largest group we have had in a while.

While we were waiting for everyone to join in, we started talking about movies.  Movie Lovers SIG, anyone?

Cynthia recommended a film she recently watched on Netflix, Godzilla Minus One, which was released in 2023.   I hadn’t heard of it, but she says it is deeply moving, not your typical monster schlock.  98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.  It won Best Visual Effects at the 96th Academy Awards, along with eight awards (including Best Film) at the Japan Academy Film Prize and is the highest grossing Godzilla film of all time.

Cynthia also had an interesting proverb to share with us, which was originally directed at then- British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

“When a clown moves into a palace, he does not become a king. The palace becomes a circus.”

Which was a derivative of this Turkish proverb, “A bull does not become king just by entering the palace, but the palace becomes a barn.”  The journalist that published it was jailed for supposedly insulting Turkish President Erdoğan with the reference.

It was originally a Circassian proverb, which can be found with a variety of forms and choice of livestock.

See what you can learn when you join us at Book Lovers?!

A nice surprise was having Christy joining us after a long absence.  She has been very busy, and requested that this be shared with readers of the Mension:

“I just wanted to let the readers of the Mension know that I gathered all the details from the Mensa for Kids “Battle of the Books” March Madness-style bracket from last year and have been reading all 64 children’s lit (picture books and chapter books) and most of the 64 young adult lit (middle grades, YA literature, and “the classics”) so far. I am happy to share the list of 128 books in a Google Sheets spreadsheet so that others can add to their TBR list. I will also send them a copy of the “Books for the College-Bound” list that I gave my students when I taught eighth-grade English. All they need to do is send me an email with “Battle of the Books” in the subject line, made addressable to [email protected]. I will send them links to these two book lists which they can make a copy of and start to track whether they read it, viewed the film, or saw the play. They can also add to the list because their copy of the spreadsheet is for just them.”

Heidi joined us for the second month in a row, so it was swell to see her again.  Same goes for Jim.  And Christina was back after missing last month, so it was good to see her again as well.

Stalwarts Beth, Linda, Peggy and Cynthia rounded out our group.

I also heard from Nathan.  Family obligations and preparing for the new school year (he is a music teacher) prevented him from joining us, but he did provide a list of books he has been reading.  This year he’s only reading books along with other people.

We missed Tim for the second month in a row; maybe he is in France?  Michael has gone on walkabout as well, but hopefully we’ll see him next month.  He always has an interesting list of books.

In all, 77 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 on the second Sunday of each month; in this case September 14.  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

*****

Linda

Lost, by Michael Robotham.  4*

A detective wakes up covered in blood and can’t remember what happened.  And he is trying to solve an old missing-child case although a man has already been convicted of the child’s murder.

Moving the Mountain, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.  2* (grudgingly)

A very strange future-fiction book, prequel to Herland (which I don’t plan to read).

The Listeners, by Jordan Tannahill.  3*

A group of people start hearing a mysterious hum that no one else hears.  Trying to discover its cause leads them into cult-land.  I kept waiting for this to become an allegory.

War, by Bob Woodward.  4*

Discusses Trump, the Ukraine war, and the Gaza war with special attention to Biden’s presidency.  I learned some things.

Dream State, by Eric Puchner.  2*

Montana people get married, divorced, have kids, have affairs, get old, die.  Some parts are more interesting than others.

I Leave It Up to You, by Jinwoo Chong.  4*

A Korean family runs a sushi restaurant in New Jersey.  The son of the family has woken up after almost 2 years in a coma to find changes in his life and decisions to be made.  I learned a lot about sushi, but I still don’t like it!

Big Breath In, by John Straley.  2*

A retired Alaska investigator is dying of cancer and living in Seattle when she’s asked to help on a case of a man who is doing illegal adoptions.  A very confusing storyline.  Much too much info on whales.  No understanding of what would be possible for a woman in the last stages of pancreatic cancer.  Not sure why I even finished this.

Expect Great Things! How the Katharine Gibbs School Revolutionized the American Workplace for Women, by Vanda Krefft.  4*

Fascinating story of how this famous school made professional careers possible for women in the mid-20th century when most were not available to them.

All the Other Mothers Hate Me, by Sarah Harman.  4*

Combination whodunit and chick lit.  A mother investigates a missing child’s situation while afraid that her own child is guilty of misdeeds.  Some snarky humor about private-school mothers lightens it up.

Christina

June on the Range:

The Trail to Crazy Man by Louis L’Amour. Second book in the Summer Connections reading challenge. This Western starts on a ship but quickly relocates the main character to the desert Southwest. It’s a fairly typical but reasonably entertaining shoot-’em-up romance.

Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey. Sapphic post-apocalyptic Western adventure. A young woman runs away and joins the librarians. Much wackiness ensues.

More Summer Connections:

The Bookstore Wedding by Alice Hoffman. Second in a series of short stories about a bookstore on an island off the coast of Maine. It made this connection for me, and that’s all I cared about.

The Paris Widow by Kimberly Belle. A woman and her husband are in Paris. He forgets his sunglasses in a restaurant and goes back to get them. The restaurant explodes. Much predictable thriller wackiness ensues.

Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books by Kirsten Miller. This is the Fort Collins Reads selection for the year. I wasn’t expecting much, but it does a great job of handling heavy subjects with a light touch. The anti-censorship, anti-bigotry message is a bit heavy-handed, but these days, I’ll take it.

Sci-Fi Summer:

System Error #1 by Phil Chapman. Cute comic about a London tour guide robot who wakes up one day to discover the apocalypse has happened.

The Steam-Powered Word Processor by Arthur C. Clarke. All I can tell you is that my Goodreads review says only, “I think this was supposed to be funny?”

Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. Read for the Book Wyrm Book Club.This brutal look at a near-future prison program of gladiatorial death-sport is not for the faint of heart. There is an interesting story here, but sometimes it takes a lot of effort to wade through the gore to get to it.

Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite. Cool little puzzle involving replacement bodies and missing memory updates on a luxury spaceship. Not entirely satisfying, but I am not sure exactly why.

Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman. The current LitRPG darling. If you like MMORPGs, you have probably already read this. If you don’t know what an MMORPG is, you will probably hate this.

The Boys from Brazil by Ira Levin. Meh. Ridiculous melodrama. Maybe I’d feel differently if I’d read it in the ’70s, but this is no Stepford Wives.

Network Effect by Martha Wells. The only novel so far in the Murderbot Diaries series. Great, as always. I re-read this in preparation for System Collapse.

PI in July:

Black Mask 1 edited by Otto Penzler. Selected stories collected from the pulp magazine. Very mixed bag.

Arson Plus by Peter Collinson (Dashiell Hammett). The only actual PI story in Black Mask 1. This is the first Continental Op story, so I’m glad I stumbled upon it before starting Red Harvest.

Dark Divide by Carrie Vaughn. This is the first Cormac & Amelia story, spun off from the Kitty the Werewolf series. They investigate weird stuff, and somebody dying quickly of starvation at Donner Pass is definitely weird.

Rocket Summer:

The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster. I had not known that Forster wrote science fiction. This is actually kind of timely.

Aniara by Harry Martinson. Poetry in space. I liked some parts better than others, and it was pretty depressing, but overall I enjoyed the experience.

The Awakening by Arthur C. Clarke. I apparently find Clarke’s short fiction very forgettable.

A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Plenty of cringe to go around, and a lot of it was strangely boring, but I’m glad I finally read this.

Summerween:

Dracula’s Guest by Bram Stoker. This is the opening chapter of Dracula that was edited out before publication. Sets the tone nicely.

The Crystal Cup by Bram Stoker. Creepy story about an artisan in royal service.

The Silent Corner by Dean Koontz. Action-packed series starter. A young widow is just trying to protect her son, but the stakes are as high as they get.

Memoir:

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou. I don’t read books to be emotionally devastated, but this memoir was worth it. I definitely recommend the audiobook narrated by the author.

Hoopla Bonus Borrows:

Marie and Worrywart by Jenn Woodall. Good visual portrayal of anxiety disorders, along with a list of resources.

Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy. Not really my kind of read, but I appreciated the portrayal of ambition versus compassion.

Dark Shadows by Marilyn Ross. I was told there would be vampires. The genre tags included “Vampires.” There were zero vampires.

Novels:

Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker. Read for the Literally Dead Book Club. Intense pandemic lit. It starts off with a gruesome murder and gets weirder from there. It’s a tough but compelling read.

The Wedding People by Alison Espach. Read for the Wolverine Farm Book Club. Marketed as a comedy, and it does have plenty of comedic moments, but it actually delves deep into why people do what they do and act the way they do, especially when they are grieving. And everybody here is grieving something.

Written Off by E.J. Copperman. A mystery writer is asked to help solve a murder and a disappearance…by a character she created. Or is he? Much meta wackiness ensues.

Swordheart by T. Kingfisher. Read for Big Book Summer. A youngish widow inherits an estate when her late husband’s uncle dies, but there are obstacles to claiming it. One of them is a cousin with clammy hands who wants to wed her and then kill her to get the estate. She decides to skip to the dying part herself, but when she unsheathes the sword hanging on the wall of her room, it turns out to be a warrior now sworn to protect her. This is in the same world as the Clocktaur War books, and I recommend reading it before the Saint of Steel books.

Jade City by Fonda Lee. Read for Big Book Summer. First in the Green Bone Saga. The Godfather, but kung fu. Fascinating worldbuilding with intricate family and clan conflicts and alliances.

Novellas & Short Fiction:

Ring Shout by P. Djeli Clark. Intense supernatural take on fighting the Klan. I recommend reading alongside A Fever in the Heartland.

The Greenhollow Duology by Emily Tesh. Read for the Cosmic Dreamer book club. Henry Silver buys a large estate and goes looking for the Wild Man of the Woods. He finds him. Much wackiness ensues. The first book (Silver in the Wood) ends with a lot of unanswered questions, so I recommend proceeding directly to Drowned Country.

The Answer Is No by Fredrik Backman. Sort of a satirical fable about community life in this modern world. I occasionally found it amusing, but mostly this did not work for me.

Kid Stuff:

A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher. Cute YA fantasy adventure featuring a girl who needs to use her magical baking skills to fight evil.

The Sweet Touch by Lorna Balian. Cute picture book about a little girl who rubs a magic ring and gets a genie-in-training. Much wackiness ensues.

Jim

General Paul Tibbets – Reflections on Hiroshima (video interview from 1989).

https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/voices/oral-histories/general-paul-tibbets-reflections-hiroshima

Stories of Survivors

https://time.com/after-the-bomb/

Aristotle – Physics

Hard to read with long paragraphs and circular logic. The translator probably had to create all the punctuation and paragraph spacing because punctuation didn’t exist in his time…. Just run-on sentences. I’m glad that I read it because I now know what he actually said instead of people just paraphrasing him.

Sigmund Freud – The Interpretation of Dreams

As I reported, I was disappointed that the editor discarded a full 1/3 of the text to fit the format. Again, I am reading it to get the flavor of what he actually said, instead of just what people commonly reported about him.

Christy

Had to leave before she could tell us about what she has been reading.  But we did learn she has been watching a lot of movies!

Peggy

The View from Lake Como, by Adriana Trigiani.  The book starts in Lake Como, New Jersey, and ends in Italy so you know it’s a romcom.  Recently divorced Jess is back in her Italian American family’s basement and helping run the family marble business.  When it turns out her uncle was running a side business without paying taxes, she runs to Carrera, Italy, to remake her life.  The depiction of family life is the author’s strongest asset.

The Mother-in-Law, by Sally Hepworth.  Lucy and her mother-in-law Diana never really mesh.  So, when Diana is found dead of apparent suicide because of cancer, the case should be solved neatly.  But there is no cancer and poison and/or suffocation look like cause of death.  Was it Lucy?  Her husband?  A shady business partner?  Deep family secrets make this a page-turner.

A Murder for Miss Hortense, by Mel Pennant.  Retired nurse and amateur sleuth Miss Hortense emigrated from Jamaica to Birmingham, England, in 1960.  She helped start the Pardner network, a group of black investors, but got booted from the group after 10 years.  Now old mysteries are coming back.  Miss Hortense is a Miss Marple kind of detective, deceptively mild but knows where all the bodies are buried, figuratively and literally.  This is Pennant’s first novel, but is very well written, once you are accustomed to reading Jamaican patois dialogue, and a second mystery is on the way.

An Enemy in the Village, by Martin Walker.  Bruno, my favorite French chief of police, has a straightforward suicide to investigate, but why are so many people seemingly out to get him?  The Green Party doesn’t like his hunting, a general is trying to protect his corrupt nephew, Bruno intervened in a marital dispute.  Whose case is the behind the attacks on him?  And there is a new girlfriend, who I suspect will disappear in the next book.

Two books from Michael’s list last month:

The Moth 50 True Stories, edited by Catherine Burns.  A very entertaining collection of stories, from working on a suicide helpline to giving birth as a teenager.

Queen B, by Juno Dawson.  In 1536, Anne Boleyn is executed and her ladies in waiting, aka her coven of witches, are trying to figure out their next move: leave England, throw their lot in with Jane Seymour (the next Queen), or use “glamour” to make a new life.

And I started the Hamlet book but quit when the tech-bro declared he wanted to live forever.

Cynthia

The Clan of One-Breasted Women, by Terry Tempest Williams, is a recounting of the devastating effect of nuclear fallout on people based on the experiences of people living in Utah who are affected by the Nevada nuclear blasts.

Mutinous Women: How French Convicts Became Founding Mothers of the Gulf Coast, by Joan DeJean.  DeJean reconstructs an accurate picture of the first women who were taken out of prison in France and placed in chains on a ship to the French colony of Louisiana.  Of the 132 women on that ship 62 survived.  Those 62 changed history for the colony.  DeJean redeems the historical picture of these women by investigating and discussing their lives and the real reasons they were in prison.

New Orleans Then and Now, by Lester Sullivan, is a book of pictures comparing particular scenes in New Orleans from the 1800s and early 1900s to current times.  Each picture has a brief description accompanying it.  It’s a nostalgic walk through New Orleans.

Brad (42/16,487)

Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American, by Wajahat Ali.  Semi-humorous experiences of a man born in the United States to immigrant parents.  Apparently Ali is famous (?), known as a comedian and podcaster.  I have never heard of him, but this is well written and accurately describes the anti-immigrant sentiment that has grown since 9/11.  *****

Tangled Up in Blue: Policing the Nation’s Capital, by Rosa Brooks.  A tenured law professor at Georgetown University, Brooks decided to become a reserve in the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, against the protestations of her mother, the author of Nickled and Dimed.  She describes the training she went through, followed by her experiences on patrol in one of the most crime-ridden sections of the nation’s capital.  A very revealing look from both the view of the police on the streets and the people that are arrested.  Relevant read in light of President Trump’s decision to occupy the capital with the National Guard.  *****

Boone: A Biography, by Robert Morgan.  I learned a couple of things reading this book.  One, Boone lived in a much earlier time than I realized.  Much of the book covers his life in the mid- to late 1700’s, about a century earlier than when I thought he lived.  The second thing I learned is what a terrible businessman he was.  He was constantly being sued for debts he owed, so much so that he was constantly moving his family.

Boone was only truly at home in the wilderness, where he could hunt and trap as he pleased.  It was the abundance of wildlife that drew him to the wilderness, but it was his killing of literally thousands of beavers, deer, elk, buffalo and bear that led to the disappearance of the game he so loved, forcing him further and further west.

There is no original research in this book.  Morgan merely compiles what has been reported in many other biographies, going back 200 years.  Because so many of them report different stories, tell different tales, one doesn’t really know what to believe, and neither does Morgan.  Not recommended.  ***

Beloved, by Toni Morrison.  I really did not like this book.  The basic story of a woman escaping slavery was itself interesting, but the introduction of spirits, hauntings and reincarnation turned me off.  If you like that kind of stuff, this is for you.  It wasn’t for me.  Great writing though.  **

The Woman in Cabin 10, by Ruth Ware.  This was just bad.  Bad story, bad writing.  Not a believable word in it.  Not recommended.  **

Northwest Angle (Cork O’Connor #11), by William Kent Krueger.  Cork takes his extended family on a houseboat vacation, but they are hit by a big storm.  Three groups of the family are separated, Cork and his youngest daughter being one of them.  And of course, in the aftermath of the story they discover a body of a young woman, along with the baby she had hidden away.  Who can Cork trust to help him solve this murder?  And can he protect his family?  And what will happen to the baby?

Another good story, but in the last two novels Krueger is introducing more and more Christian dogma into the story lines, which I don’t really care for.  ****

The Women, by Kristin Hannah.  Fictional story of a young woman who enlisted as a nurse to serve in Vietnam following the death of her brother, shortly after he volunteered to serve in the war, in the hopes of making her father proud, who celebrates military service.

This book is divided into two parts.  The first is her experience in country, the second after she leaves Nam and how she tried to cope with what she saw and experienced during the war.

So much of part one reminded me of watching MAS*H re-runs.  The stories were all the same.  It is part two where the story really takes off, though it can be difficult to read about her struggles at times.

This is going to be one of my favorite reads of the year.  Highly recommended.  *****

Nathan

The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, by J.R.R. Tolkien.  (read for a book club)
The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare, by G.K. Chesterton (read aloud to Adam and Os, my #3 and #4)
Inferno, by Dante Alighier.  Also reading Purgatorio now, enjoying the Sinclair prose translation.
My Life among the Deathworks: Illustrations of the Aesthetics of Authority, by Philip Rieff.
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke. (a re-read of my favorite book with some friends)
The Religious Affections, by Jonathan Edwards.
The Fellowship of the Ring, by J.R.R. Tolkien.  (read aloud to Abel)