“The Drowned Cities” by Paulo Bacigalupi

 A difficult read in parts but well worth it. Tool was an interesting war hybrid character. Too bad Mahlia had only 4 fingers left at the end.

“The Bullet that Missed” by Richard Osman

 This third book in The Thursday Murder Club series started slowly, but picked up and I ended up enjoying it quite a bit. Towards the end, I couldn’t put it down. And surprisingly, it wasn’t the human interactions but the mystery itself that intrigued me. The human interactions are very nice, but they are becoming a bit repetitive. Osman is quite clever in continuously introducing new characters. I do think that I will enjoy Victor, the former KGB chief and good friend of Elizabeth’s. I also like that the book ended by pointing out that in the end, it’s the people we know that matters in life.

“The Great Hunt” by Robert Jordan

 This is where I stop reading “The Wheel of Time” series. Robert Jordan is not a good writer, and his world building is ridiculously complex and convoluted. It does not shine clearly and true, unlike “Game of Thrones” or “Lord of the Rings”.

“The Red Haired Woman” by Orhan Pamuk

 When reading this book, I mostly thought it was a decently written but uninspiring story with the clear voice of a Turkish intellectual. But the final section, which shifted to the point of view of the red haired woman, makes this book a work of art. Its themes are fathers and sons murdering each other, Oedipus etc etc. And of course, the role of women.

“The Headmaster’s Wager” by Vincent Lam

 At the beginning I thought this book was excruciatingly slow. But I ended up liking it very much and indeed would even call it amazing. The complex life story of a Chinese English Headmaster/owner of an English school in Vietnam during Japanese occupation and then the Vietnam war felt so very real. Of course, my familial relationship to Vietnam added to my interest in the book.

“Sea of Tranquility” by Emily St. John Mandel

 This book is lightly related to the author’s previous book “Glass Hotel”. It dragged a bit in parts but overall I found it to be enjoyable.  It played with the concepts of time travel and simulated reality. The protagonist got a job with the Time Institute to investigate an apparent anomaly in reality that supported the concept of a simulation. It turned out that he triggered the anomaly.

“Origin A genetic history of the Americas” by Jennifer Raff

As usual, I did not retain much from this scholarly book. But I thoroughly enjoyed learning how the various disciplines, especially archaeology and genetics work together in interpreting the history of our earliest ancestors. In this case, the focus is on the various models for explaining how the Americas were populated. The author is very good at making a scene come alive. And she is opened my eyes to important ethical issues regarding taking genetic information from indigenous peoples, and of how they have been badly used in the past.

“A Tale for the Time Being” by Ruth Ozeki

 I enjoyed this book very much and found some parts riveting. The Japanese girl who wrote the diary was very wise and matter-of -fact, and her 104 year old Zen Buddhist nun great grandmother was an amazing influence on her. The book showed life in Japan and on a remote island in BC, with a smattering of Sunnyvale California as well. It also had a nice small touch of quantum/physics and entanglement science fiction. It was recommended to me by the Carleton retired professor who did a course on time in the LifeLong Learning program.

“Personal Librarian” by Maria Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray

 I enjoyed this book about JP Morgan’s personal librarian who acquired amazing and rare items for his library. The historical context of early 20th century America was particularly interesting to me.

“Secret Daughter” by Shilpi Somaya Gouda

This book is about a girl adopted from India to the US by an Indian father and American mother. It was very readable, and the nuance increased as the book progressed. I loved what it had to say about family, about different cultures, and about the strength of impoverished Indian mothers. The ending brought tears to my eyes… the Indian mother, on her deathbed, learned that the daughter she had secretly given up to save her from being killed had prospered, and had looked for her biological parents. The secret daughter had even left a letter at the orphanage for her parents. All the main characters in the novel grew as human beings.

“The Eye of the World” by Robert Jordan

This was an ok book and better than the tv series. However, the first part of it was very derivative of “The Lord of the Rings.” And I found the writing style irritating, because it tended to be wordy and unclear. It made me realize just now great a writer Tolkien was. Tolkien made it look simple, his writing style so amazingly precise and alive. Jordan’s book pales next to it, though I do like the way he handles the idea of there being a weaver, a pattern to the world.

“Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty” by Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe

 This was an interesting look at primarily the Gilded Age Vanderbilts and at Gloria Vanderbilt. It has the special touch of having been written by an insider.

“Fight Night” by Miriam Toews

This book is from the point of view of a 9 year old girl, who takes amazingly good care of her ill but very much alive grandmother. At first I found it to be disjointed and slightly confusing, but I swiftly adapted to the girl’s voice. The book ended beautifully. After visiting family in California and returning to Canada, the grandmother had a heart attack, and then her daughter went into labour in the same hospital. Grandmother died right after seeing her new grandchild.

“The Man Who Died Twice” by Richard Osman

 I enjoyed vol. 2 of the Thursday Murder Club Series very much. The author develops his characters well, there are lots of twists and turns and amusing parts, and it’s fun reading about intelligent seniors living a full life solving murders.

“His Master’s Voice” by Stanislaw Lem

To call this book dense is an understatement, and yet, I read the whole thing. I was attracted by the glimmers of new ideas it gave me about the difficulties of translating messages from other civilizations… including not even knowing if they are messages or natural phenomena. The narrator speaks at such a high intellectual level that initially I thought the book was satirizing intellectualism. By the end, I decided that the author had been entirely serious.

“Behind the Scenes at the Museum” by Kate Atkinson

This book describes a family… multiple generations of unhappy mothers and the patterns that they kept repeating. It is a dark book, but I enjoyed the black humour. 

“The Enchanted April” by Elizabeth Von Arnim

This was the most pleasant book I’ve read in awhile. Written in the early 20th century, it was soothingly old fashioned and clever. What better scenario than 4 women, strangers, getting to know each other and themselves in a rented Italian castle. Great new friendships were formed, and of course, husbands, men and love.

“Rabbit Foot Bill” by Helen Humphreys

This is a serious book about physical abuse, repressed memories and wartime trauma. And yet it was lightly done and had a good ending, that left me feeling good. I liked the way that Lenny’s growth into a successful adult was revealed in gradually evolving stages in the last chapter. And the nature of the love bond between him and Bill was amazing. As a character in the book states, after the war, Bill was smart enough to abandon his family and society. Lenny’s father stuck around and beat his family horrifically.

I also enjoyed the descriptions of the Canadian prairies and of Weyburn psychiatric hospital. What an unpleasant piece of medical history.

“And the Birds Rained Down” by Jocelyn Saucier

This is a beautiful book about love, friendship, tragedy, art. The writing style is deceptively simple. I loved the descriptions of the fire, the forest cabins and the people. I particularly liked the photographer, whose name we never learn, and the old woman from the asylum, who had a talent for interpreting Ted Boychuck’s paintings of the great Matheson fire.

One theme which didn’t interest me very much was the idea of killing yourself when you’re ready to die. Each of the old men in the forest had some strychnine in hand because they wanted to be free to choose their time.  I don’t think of that as freedom, but perhaps I’m still too young and healthy.

The ending of the book is somewhat up in the air, though you can guess at a happy ending for the photographer. I love the way she meets the man on the bench in the same place she has seen Angie Polson. And the image of the 2 old lovers watching cars go by from their home is touching. My favourite themes were that it’s never too late to live a life and that life and love can surprise you at any moment. 

“The Chessmen” by Peter May

This last book of the Lewis Trilogy was enjoyable, if rather dark, and the descriptions were beautiful as usual. However, I grow tired of the author’s writing style, which includes long descriptions and whole chapters about the past to explain the present. I just want the author to get on with the action. …(see last paragraph for contradiction to this thinking.) I skipped over many descriptions, regardless of how beautiful they were. I wanted to know who had murdered the person in the sunken plane, and was not very interested in the beauty of the landscape. 

It’s a pity that Fin’s close childhood friends, Whistler and Donald were murdererd, and that I’ll never know if Fin and Marsaili will rekindle their youthful love. One very nice thing about the book is the vividness with which it describes shared childhoods and former loves. It makes me feel the importance of human connection to a meaningful life.

“Rebel Angels” by Robertson Davies

 I reread this book to see if I still like Robertson Davies. I found some of the writing to be stodgy, but the underlying humour is very good. And of course, I love the Gypsy Mamusia.

“White is for Witching” by Helen Oyeyemi

 This is a dreamlike horror novel. You never quite know what’s going on. The female twin, Miriam, definitely has pica, and her mother, a photojournalist, definitely died in Haiti. Miriam spends time in a mental institution, and gets into university, but her brother, who applied before her and inspired her,  does not. The house is apparently evil and filled with female ghosts of past generations, and her brother has an unhealthy obsession with her. Miriam has a lesbian love affair but is sickening and dying because she’s not eating. Miriam disappears. Miriam’s father does his best. He’s a chef, who pressed his unwilling wife to turn her family home into a B&B.

Because this book is so dreamlike and focusses on supernatural impressions, it’s difficult to imagine the characters living in an ordinary world. And yet, they have ordinary friends and get accepted for jobs and university. It’s amazing, the bizarre inner life of some people. One thinks immediately of mental illness.

Oddly enough, because I didn’t like the uncertainty of the book’s reality, I would read another book by this author. She has an unusual perspective and that appeals to me.