The Cue Card

Hi all. How’s your week been? Things are ramping up now with spring and the nice weather. I am in California for a long weekend for a celebration of my parents today. I’ve been walking around and biking. It’s nice to see people swimming in the Pacific even after 5 p.m. when this photo was taken, but so far I have not stuck my toes in yet. It’s too cold and the waves have been a little too rambunctious, lol. I am waiting for a warmer, calmer day.

In book news, you might have seen that Percival Everett’s novel James won again … this time for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction last week. I admired the novel last year when I read it, which also won the National Book Award in the fall. It’s one of the rare novels that have won both awards. Here are the eight other novels that have won both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award:

The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Rabbit is Rich by John Updike
The Fixer by Bernard Malamud
A Fable by William Faulkner
Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter

What do you think — have you read any of these? I have read The Shipping News and The Color Purple, which I admired quite a long time ago. I’m not sure why I never got to The Underground Railroad, but there’s still time to read others on this list. Meanwhile congrats to Percival Everett once again for his novel James.

And now I will leave you with a couple reviews of what I finished lately.

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy / Flatiron / 320 pages / 2025

4.0 stars. There’s plenty of drama, trauma, and eco-concerns amid the backdrop of a beautiful wild island in this novel set in the remote southwest Pacific Ocean. Dominic Salt and his three kids whose mother has died are caretakers on Shearwater Island that holds a seed vault to regrow plants in case of the apocalypse. A group of researchers used to be there too studying plants and creatures, but they’ve since left as the waters are rising and storms are wreaking havoc.

Soon Dominic and his family will be leaving as well after eight years or so … but before that happens an injured woman (Rowan) washes up from a shipwreck. Over time they become more attached to her and she to them, but both sides have secrets that they aren’t sharing about what’s up.

It crossed my mind that the plot seemed a bit contrived but I went along with it. It’s fairly entertaining and visual as you begin to latch on to Rowan and what her deal is coming to the island. Her husband Hank used to be a researcher there so it appears she’s trying to find out where he is or went. But there’s some graves on the island that need explaining among other things. I thought the story was alluring in its mysteriousness and the setting on the remote island with all the elements, and Dominic’s three kids too make for enticing characters you come to know, though the story turns a bit crazy towards the end and a late twist seems to stretch its believability.

I’ve finished all three of McConaghy’s novels (2 by audios, one in print) and have liked them for their eco-settings and concerns about the planet and wildlife and for being visual, adventure plots. Her books often have broken people as the main characters living in a world with more intense climate change, ones who’ve suffered hard traumas or much loss. And this one was no exception. Rowan and Dominic’s family have had their share of heartbreak and adversity. While sympathetic, I tire at times a bit of this aspect … so I thought the tale had some hits and misses for me. Still I was entertained enough traveling to Shearwater Island. Of McConaghy’s, I think I liked her first novel Migrations best … maybe because it was a bit new and potent back then. But they all share some similarities. I plan to keep reading her.

First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston / Pamela Dorman / 352 pages / 2024

3.75 stars. This author has written a clever plot line that features a sharp protagonist in Evie Porter, aka Lucca Marino and enough twists and turns to make for a topsy-turvy experience, but did I hang on for the ride? Just barely. I got lost a couple times — no fault of the audiobook, but I retraced my tracks to get back onboard. Lucca is doing illegal missions for her mysterious boss Mr. Smith in which she always gets a new identity and needs to assimilate into a new neighborhood. But then she gets introduced to a woman who has her own name and must figure out if her boss is setting her up, or if the woman is trying to expose her and why.

When something happens to the woman and Evie’s later arrested on an outstanding warrant for a mission that happened years ago, Evie has to decide whether to trust the boyfriend she’s taken up with whom she’s been investigating — along with her techie friend Devon to help her get out of the situation. It’s a bit convoluted, but I was mostly onboard with what Lucca has to unravel. Still I was thoroughly exhausted by the end. I know a lot love these cat-and mouse kinds of benders … but I think I’ll need to leave town if ever a Evie Porter or Lucca Marino moves to my neighborhood.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these and what did you think?

Hi all. I hope everyone has had a good week. I’m away this weekend reffing a tennis tournament of 14 and 18-year-olds a couple hours north of where we live. It’s pretty exhausting since it goes 10+ hours a day, so I won’t be home until Sunday evening.

Meanwhile my husband is home gardening with the dogs. Here is timid Willow in the wagon doing her part. But what is going on there? Lol. And where is Stella?

It’s hard to believe we’re at the very end of April now. Has spring sprung where you are? We might hit 70 degrees today, but it sure has been windy. I’m completely wind-blown. It’s true that you need so much chapstick in this part of the world, lol. 

Meanwhile  a bit earlier this month the shortlist for the Walter Scott Prize was announced and here above are the six novels that made the cut. The prize honors the best in historical fiction each year and is open to novels written in English that were first published in the UK, Ireland, or the Commonwealth during the preceding year (so it’s not American). Just briefly here are when/where the finalists are set:  The Heart in Winter — Butte, Montana in 1891; The Mare — during and after WWII; The Book of Days — during the reign of Henry VIII in 1546; Glorious Exploits — In 412 BC after Athens’s invasion of Syracuse; The Land in Winter — during the Great Freeze that was the winter of 1962-3 in rural England; and The Safekeep — rural Holland, fifteen years after the end of WWII. It seems The Safekeep has made various prize lists this year but will it win? Stay tuned for when the winner is announced on June 12. 

And now I’ll leave you with a couple reviews of novels I finished lately.

We Do Not Part by Han Kang / Hogarth / 272 pages / 2025

3.7 stars. Holy smokes this novel has a lot of pain in it … in the present and in the past and here, there, and everywhere. Is it in the top 10 of all time? It unloads a decimation. And maybe now was not a good time to listen to the audiobook of it after my own loss as I drove back and forth from the city. What was I thinking? I just didn’t want to lose my place in line to try the writing of this Nobel Prize Literature winner. And I thought it would be a story about a friendship. 

And it is a story of two friends Kyungha and Inseon who gets injured after accidentally cutting her hand and is in the hospital and asks Kyungha to go to her house on Jeju Island to find and save her pet bird. Both women are not doing well … Kyungha, who lives near Seoul, suffers from migraines and is having nightmares … and the first part of the novel is of her traveling to Jeju and getting in a snowstorm there and trying to save the bird. Some of it is hard to know what is real or part of a dream. And it’s a bit confusing, but snow images are nicely descriptive. 

Then the latter half of the novel is more about the brutal massacre that happened on Jeju Island by military forces in 1948-49 and how Inseon’s family was affected by that. It’s more straightforward in its telling than the first part and really lays down a whopper of the brutality … the executions, mass graves, and inability to find remains. The harshness and pain is certainly palpable. And it seems personal and very specific. 

I’m sure it’s good the author explores and excoriates this awful event in history, but it might not have been my time for it. Still the writing in areas is visceral and illuminating. I first read about the Jeju Island massacre in Lisa See’s novel The Island of the Sea Women, which is also quite intense with the trauma. I liked the story about the sea women. Have you read that one? 

Beartooth by Callan Wink / Spiegel & Grau / 256 pages / 2025 

3.5 stars. I know some were pretty high on this novel, but I was expecting more from this story about two brothers in their 20s who are living in a rundown house near the Beartooth Mountains of Montana. Their father died not long ago and they are still messed up about that, and their hippie-ish mother who left them early on has returned. The boys are pretty rough around the edges and are in need of more funds — they’re hunters and loggers looking for a way to make money due to the house having some debt.

Then they meet this dude called the Scott who’s with a girl he calls his daughter … apparently he wears a kilt and once killed a young thief pointblank — and he wants the brothers to do something illegal for him. He wants them to get a secret haul of elk antlers out of Yellowstone National Park, which they end up using a raft for to transport along the river. You’ll have to see what happens … it takes a turn of sorts. And late in the plot it introduces another element that seemed a bit odd or out of place. Maybe the story sort of petered out a bit for me. The momentum of the book goes a bit up and down, but my favorite parts were the action in Yellowstone.

That’s all for now. I think I will save chatting about Charlotte McConagh’s novel Wild Dark Shore, which I just finished, for next time. I’m still thinking it over and need to grab a breath of air after its ending.

What about you — have you read any of these books and if so, what did you think? 

Hi bookworms. I hope you are hanging in there. It’s becoming more spring-like here now though early in the week we had a frosty morning that formed a bit of hoarfrost on the trees, which often has a neat effect. And we had several sightings this week of bald eagles on our road. I took a picture of one, which I’ve posted below. He was a big bird — majestic — and he watched me and our dog Willow as we walked quietly past. I think the eagle sat there for an hour or so while he gathered his thoughts, rested, and looked around. We’ve also had a couple flyovers by eagles and their wingspan is quite fantastic. I will keep my eyes peeled for more. 

Meanwhile in disturbing book news this past week the U.S. president signed an executive order to eliminate “to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law” the federal agency (IMLS) that funds libraries and museums with grants and development with its budget of nearly $295 million. So apparently if this happens it will be “catastrophic” for libraries and museums across the country and will likely mean among other things that the availability of shared e-book collections and interlibrary loan services will be decimated. So if you depend on libraries for reading, things just got tougher. Make no mistake, libraries and books are under attack with funding cuts, book bans, and operational development and oversight.

By no coincidence, I received an email this past week from the Houston Public Library, where I reserve e-books and e-audiobooks as a paid nonresident library card holder, telling me they won’t be renewing nonresident memberships anymore due to “changes in library funding and operational needs.” Yikes all the rural users and people who don’t have access to a decent library will be out of luck. I’m beyond my city’s boundary and they don’t allow e-books or e-audiobooks to nonresidents here, so that’s why I sought out a nonresident card from Houston’s library system and it was very helpful for a couple years before this new funding cut, which I plan to call my representative about the need to save IMLS funding. It’s a shame right — along with the banning of books. We need more books to get to people, not less. 

In more positive news, here is my library loot in hardback for the week. Though I’m not sure when I’ll have time to get to these since I’m reading three other books (not-pictured) currently. Still they look really good. Have you read any of these?

In other news I see that the National Book Critics Circle announced the winners of its 2024 book awards this past week, giving the top fiction prize to Hisham Matar’s novel My Friends and the top nonfiction prize to Adam Higginbotham’s book Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space. Also deceased Russian dissident Alexei Navalny won in the memoir category for his book Patriot. I’d like to read all three of these at some point and I know several of you have read and liked My Friends, which is about a Libyan exile living in London and his two friends who come together and apart over decades struggling with their loyalties to themselves and their homeland. I started it once and put it down but plan to pick it back up another time.

And now here are a couple reviews of what I finished lately — which were two good reads of historical fiction. 

The Riveter by Jack Wang / House of Anansi Press / 392 pages / 2025

3.75 stars. Chinese Canadian Josiah Chang is a strong character who meets Poppy Miller while working in a shipyard in Vancouver, B.C. in 1942. (He uses a rivet gun to put together the metal on cargo ships. Hence the book’s title.) Josiah and Poppy fall hard for one another but her father won’t give his consent for them to marry since Poppy will lose her citizenship if she marries a resident Chinese alien like himself. So after a fight with a guy in the shipyard, Josiah runs off to join the Canadian army thinking that fighting for freedom and against the Nazis might also help him obtain his citizenship and marry Poppy in his homeland. He opts to prove himself further by training with an elite unit as a paratrooper and landing in Normandy during D-Day. 

Josiah has some harrowing experiences with his regiment while fighting through France, Holland and Germany … as well as trying to stop a couple atrocities and crimes he sees from happening. And along the way, he becomes a veteran soldier all the while corresponding with Poppy in B.C. who worries for his safety as she continues work at the shipyard. 

In some sense The Riveter is much like a traditional WWII story but from a Chinese Canadian perspective where Josiah’s the only one of his race in his regiment, which apparently was historically the case. He endures flak for it but proves his worth and sacrifice time and again. By the time the war winds down, you need to stick with it to see if he survives and if Poppy and Josiah will stay together post-war after so much time apart. Will they even be able to be together? That is the question. There is a little twist near the end that I didn’t foresee and it threw a new hurdle into the mix. 

All in all, I learned a bit more about WWII and its paratroops from the Canadian side. The novel is fairly easy to read, but there is a density to the pages that took me a while to get through the book. By the end, it felt like I had journeyed far and wide with Josiah.

Crow Mary by Kathleen Grissom / Atria Books / 348 pages / 2023 

4 stars. This novel, which I listened to on audio, enlightened me about a real life indigenous girl (Goes First) who grew up in Montana with her Crow parents and tribe in the 1860s and ’70s and ends up marrying at age 16 a white fur trader (Abe Farwell) at a ceremony in Fort Benton, Montana. There, Mary (as her husband calls her) befriends a married Metis woman Jeannie who helps her deal with her new life and learn English. 

But then Abe and Mary set off on a long trip to his trading post in Saskatchewan, Canada, where in time they fall for one another. And all goes well there for a season, until they cross paths with a group of drunken traders and hunters who think some natives stole their horses. Abe tells them otherwise and tries to calm them down, but what results is the Cypress Hills Massacre of 1873, which is a brutal attack that kills a number of Nakota Indians. Crow Mary (as she calls herself), armed with two guns, puts herself on the line trying to save some native women from the marauders. 

Afterwards a trial arises over what happened that ends up having life-long consequences for Abe and Mary who are called to testify as witnesses. Along the way, the story unveils what life and marriage was like on the frontier for young Crow Mary, who was quite brave and competent handling horses and guns, surviving in the outback, and sleeping in a tepee. Her husband and her were quite close for years and had three children, but things after the trials begin to fray. Mary is one of those figures in history who becomes caught between the native and white worlds, struggling with the collision between the two. I was glad to learn of her life story and this real historical tragic event that she was involved in. I thought the author did a great job putting the reader in her shoes.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these books and what did you think? 

Hi Bookworms, I hope you’re doing well. You might wonder why I still have a winter header up above. Well we still have some snowflakes here and there so I will keep it up for a while longer. It’s been a busy week of doing taxes (ugh) and swapping out my old laptop for a new one and having things transferred over. Wow it’s been over a decade. This new one is shiny and clean, which I’ll try to maintain. The photo is from one of our walks near here, where we take the dogs up a hill and this was coming back down. The fields give me some solace.

And since it was another brutal news week, my husband and I started and finished another 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle. This one called Greetings From Canada is a bit similar to the last one we did in that it spotlights the various Canadian provinces and what they’re about. It’s put out by Cobble Hill puzzle Co. for those interested. I was a bit blown away that Rachel at the blog Waves of Fiction actually found and did our last puzzle. She probably did it in her sleep as she seems a master “dissectologist” (puzzle aficionado). I had to look that word up, which seems a strange fit, don’t you think?

Lately at night we’ve been watching The White Lotus Season 3 set in Thailand. It’s pretty frivolous but all right for an escape. We finished the thriller series Prime Target starring British actor Leo Woodall as a mathematician who’s on the run from those trying to stop his work with prime numbers, which was okay. And we’ve been watching the series Pachinko, which has a dual timeline and is a pretty good drama, set in Asia during the ’30s and ’40s, and in New York in current times. I liked the 2017 book and still await Min Jin Lee’s next novel. 

Meanwhile, last week after I highlighted the Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist, Carmen reminded me of some other big literary prizes going on that look good and have their shortlists coming out in April. For translated lit fans, there’s the International Booker, which will announce its shortlist April 8. I’m trying to read more translated foreign fiction this year, so I’m eyeing this longlist (above). I only know about the novel Hunchback by Japanese author Saou Ichikawa so far, but I will look into the other books more. Apparently several on the list are very short books, for example Hunchback is just 112 pages. So here’s our chance to sample some shorter works of translated lit. 

Also similar to the Women’s Prize, the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction celebrates the excellence in women authors from Canada and the U.S. and will announce its shortlist on April 3. There’s several novels I recognize on the longlist (above), including All Fours, Creation Lake, Liars, Bear, and River East, River West. I’ve only read River, East, River West by Aube Rey Lescure, which is a good coming-of-age debut set mostly in Shanghai, but I still need to check out some of the others.

Next up is the Walter Scott Prize, which honors achievements in historical fiction and has its shortlist coming out April 15. I’ve read two on the longlist (above) so far — The Safekeep and Clear, which were both quite good. I might try to get to Kevin Barry’s novel The Heart in Winter which apparently is a rip-roaring western set in Butte, Montana. I’ve been reading quite a bit of historical fiction lately, but I don’t know some of the ones listed here. Do you? 

And lastly I would be remiss not to mention the Stella Prize, which celebrates Australian women writers and will announce its shortlist on April 8. I’m a newbie to this award now in its 13th year, but I like Aussie writers and look forward to trying a couple of these on the longlist. Apparently the longlist includes seven fiction, four nonfiction and one poetry collection. They mix the prize’s nominees of various formats together. Hmm … which must be tough a bit to judge. I’ve been eyeing The Burrow novel (above) with the rabbit on the cover.

So there you have it — enough book prize lists for a while. I’ll be keen to see which books make the shortlists when they come out next month. And now I’ll leave you with a review of what I finished lately.

Good Material by Dolly Alderton / Knopf / 336 pages / 2024

3.75 stars. This light-ish relationship kind of novel, which surprisingly made the New York Times 10 Best Books of 2024 list, is about a British couple that has recently broken up. Andy, a 35-year-old comedian, is having a terrible time coming to grips with why his girlfriend Jen broke up with him and especially right after they came home from a vacation in Greece. They had been together for over three and a half years and lived together, but Jen seems to have had enough of Andy and said she’d rather be alone. So poor Andy around and around he goes wallowing in the heartbreak and trying to figure it out for six months or so. 

It’s put him into a sad sap frame of mind and he starts drinking during the day and his comedy career hits the skids. He’s in a bad way, obsessing about Jen. But luckily there are some light amusing moments along the way … his attempts to live on a small leaky house boat and later with an odd 78-year-old roommate who corresponds with Julian Assange, oh my. Then Andy runs into Jen on a date with a man named Seb, and he starts seeing a 20-something model-ish woman named Sophie. But can the two really move on from one another? 

You have to wait to near the end to see what becomes of Jen and Andy, but the story’s narration changes hands from Andy to Jen near the end. Both characters are narrated well by actors Arthur Darvill and Vanessa Kirby for the audio, which I listened to driving back and forth from the city. All and all, I thought it was entertaining and heart-affirming despite the sad sack of both Andy and Jen who spy on one another after they’ve broken up. I didn’t get Jen’s side of the story as well as I did Andy’s … who came off more appealing to me. 

I’m new to British writer Dolly Alderton who’s a newspaper columnist in the U.K. and has also written a popular memoir, but she writes with such ease in a conversational and often witty way. Though I wondered at times if Andy’s narration seemed authentically how a guy would react to things along the way, but I gave it the benefit of the doubt. And I look forward to seeing what Alderton writes next. 

I was going to add another review, but I’ll post it next time as this has gone on long enough. So that’s all for now, what about you — have you read any of the books pictured above and if so, what did you think? 

Hi. I hope everyone is doing well. Here are the girls — Stella and Willow — looking a bit pensive out for a walk with my husband. They usually are pretty popular and bring goodwill, so they get put in posts fairly regularly. I’m posting them on a week that unfortunately saw the start of the U.S. tariffs on Canada and Mexico for no good reason, which could potentially cripple the Canadian economy and also raise prices in the U.S. Sigh. I don’t know what will happen, but I don’t think it will be anything good. 

And I just saw that in a sign of protest Canadian author Louise Penny has canceled her U.S. book tour for the fall launch of her next mystery The Black Wolf. She says her decision is not meant to punish Americans but to stand with fellow Canadians. She is hoping Americans will come to her Canadian events, especially one at the tour’s end at the Haskell Free Library that borders Quebec and Vermont. Hmm. You can see her full announcement on her website here and on Facebook. 

Anyways, I just put it out there. We’re all in this together. And we’ll struggle on. Meanwhile we’ll exchange book ideas and talk for free across borders wherever you are in the world! And now I have a few book lists to post and discuss.

The first is my book recap for this past January and February, pictured above. I finished five in January and six in February (top row). Four of them were about immigrant stories (Good Girl, Wandering Souls, Owner of a Lonely Heart and The Leavers) as I was on an immigrant binge for a while. Then three were nonfiction (The Stalin Affair, Owner of a Lonely Heart, The Friday Afternoon Club) and one was a classic novel (The Forbidden Notebook). I liked them all but my favorites were probably The Safekeep and Fifteen Wild Decembers about the life of Emily Bronte and her family, which is due out April 1. Look for it.

My next list pictured above is my library loot for this week. I started the novel My Father’s House set at the Vatican during WWII, but then my husband took it, so I moved onto reading The Riveter, which is also a WWII-set story about a Chinese-Canadian man who enlists and sees much action. I had started Ali Smith’s dystopian novel Gliff on audio, but I couldn’t really make much of it after nearly two hours so I set it down (not sure I’ll go back to the book). A couple of these books I’ve picked up from the library a couple separate times (The Frozen River and Creation Lake) but I still haven’t found time for them yet. I hope to! Confessions also looks good. It’s a debut novel by Catherine Airey that follows three generations of women from New York to rural Ireland and back again. I look forward to pouncing on it sometime. Yay! 

And lastly pictured above is the longlist of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, which was announced this past week. 16 books were picked and so far I’ve read three (The Safekeep, Tell Me Everything, and Good Girl). There’s others I already had on my library list (Nesting and Dream Count) and two others I know about (All Fours and The Ministry of Time), but the rest I’ll have to find out more about. I don’t know know them yet. Later the shortlist, which will consist of six books, will be announced on April 28. I wouldn’t be surprised if the first six I listed above make the cut. They seem pretty prominent. I will try to read the novels that make the shortlist once they’re selected. How about you — do you know these?

And now I’ll leave you with a review of what I finished lately.

The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden / Avid Reader / 272 pages / 2024

4.5 stars. This novel was shortlisted for last year’s Booker Prize seemingly for good reason. I liked how it is set in post-war 1961 Netherlands and starts with three siblings who gather for dinner — Isabel nearly 30, her gay younger brother, Hendrik, and their older sibling, Louis, who brings his latest girlfriend Eva. Then later when Louis leaves for work travel he asks if Eva can stay at Isabel’s — who lives in the old big house they grew up in with their parents who have since died.

Isabel is a cold, solitary girl (except for a guy Johan who likes her and a maid who cleans the house) and having lively inquisitive Eva come is definitely not to her liking. This development brings all sorts to light … including secrets, which may or may not come as a surprise, and changes too. I would rather not say too much more, though many seem to already know what the story entails. 

The novel might not be for everyone, but I thought it was really well done, the feeling of the grim post-war, the grief over their parents, and the relations that ignite the plot. Though I wonder a bit if the ending would’ve been better if it had been a bit less tidily tied up. I thought it had finished a bit earlier, but then it came back around to end it with more resolved. With some novels I like an ending with a tidy resolution and other times (like this) it seems better a bit more muddied. It just depends I think on the book. What do you think about endings?

I was thinking of posting another review, but I think I’ll shorten this and wait for next time.

So that’s all for now. What about you — have you read any of these books mentioned above and what did you think? Happy reading. And for most of you: don’t forget to set your clocks ahead tonight, whoa it’s that time again.