The Cue Card

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.

Hi all. I hope everyone had a nice Valentine’s Day last Friday. Don’t we all deserve it right about now? My husband gave me these nice flowers and we went out to dinner, so he seemed to be buttering up the host of the Cue Card. I got him a couple cards. Meanwhile we’re still in a deep cold patch here for the foreseeable future. Brrr. I’m looking forward to March. But despite the frigid temps, I’m trying to keep active, so lately I’ve been playing some indoor tennis, doing spin classes, and following exercise routines on YouTube. I also walk the dogs wearing astronaut-kind of layers. What are you doing for your workouts lately?

And for my sanity from the news and baseless tariff threats I started a puzzle, which my husband and I finished last week. It’s a Canadian one — you can see the various places and brands and things that Canada is known for. Of course, puzzles can be wonderfully cathartic, stress-reducing, and addicting. You might pass by a puzzle thinking you’ll do a piece or two but pretty soon you’re there for over an hour and can barely pry yourself away for dinner, lol. We finished this 1000-piece one in under a week. I’m sure we’ll need another one soon.

I also picked up some library loot. I’ve been on the wait lists for these and unfortunately they usually come in all at once, which makes getting to some pretty impossible. But I’ve started The Safekeep and I also want to pick up Mina’s Matchbox. Some of these others I’m going to have put back and maybe get back another time. Intermezzo is a bit long so that might go back on the list. Have you read any of these, or do you plan to?

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

The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir by Griffin Dunne / Penguin / 400 pages / 2024

3.75 stars. I had a hard time rating this one because I felt the first half was not that noteworthy and sort of immature with jokes and the author’s coming-of-age, but then the later second half was deeper and came on pretty strong. I’m not sure how many people these days know Griffin Dunne, but he was an up-and-coming actor in the 1980s (along with his sister) and was from a pretty well-known family — his father Dominick Dunne was a film producer, then a novelist and later a columnist for Vanity Fair, and his uncle John Dunne and aunt Joan Didion were famous writers.

I remember seeing Griffin Dunne in the movie American Werewolf in London in 1981, which I thought was scary and funny too — a terrific movie, and I liked him in After Hours (1985) too. His younger sister Dominque, who Spielberg told him was a real talent, was in Poltergeist in 1982, and he had a brother Alex who did some writing.

The three of them grew up in Hollywood and due to their parents and their parties knew various film stars around the hood. His mother divorced his father when he about 10, and Griffin was sent to a couple boarding schools for high school, where he was expelled for pot, but he came away with an interest in acting and moved to New York. There he became best friends with Carrie Fisher and was her roommate when she took the role for Star Wars in 1977. Still he struggled for years waiting tables and trying to get his break-through role.

Later in the book, things turn dicey for his family as his mother develops multiple sclerosis; his (closeted) father is fired as a producer and moves to Oregon to get sober; his brother struggles with mental illness; and his sister meets a controlling boyfriend who very tragically would be her demise. It turns pretty sad and moving. But Griffin writes pretty lovingly of his mother and his colorful father; trying to help his brother, and the memories of his beloved sister.

Good grief the family goes through more hell … when his sister’s killer is brought to trial in L.A. in August 1983. The cards are stacked against them with the judge and defense attorney and the fight for justice turns into a travesty. At the same time Griffin is filming the movie Johnny Dangerously with Michael Keaton, which gives him a small outlet. Personally, I don’t remember the trial at the time, but I would’ve been in SoCal getting ready to leave for college then. Hmm.

There’s only a few sprinklings of his aunt Joan Didion in this — I sort of thought there’d be more. But his uncle John Dunne comes off as pretty feisty in this (the two brothers Dominick and John didn’t get a long for many years and only reconciled later). And when the trial was going on, Joan Didion and John Dunne left for Paris, so that apparently their young daughter Quintana wouldn’t be called to testify, which didn’t sit well with Griffin and his family.

The memoir ends in 1990 when Griffin’s daughter with actress Carey Lowell is born. So I don’t know if he plans to write another book of his later life and career. But while this one touches on his family’s story and is in many ways a touching tribute to them, it still seems like Griffin’s story about his growing up years, sex life, and career in acting. There is some name-dropping along the way, but thankfully it’s not too overly done. I don’t often read such Hollywood kinds of memoirs, but I was a bit curious about the writers in their family.

I was also supposed to review Ruth Ware’s 2016 novel The Woman in Cabin 10, which I finished on audio, but I think I will wait till next time (I’m too long-winded already). I finally tried a Ruth Ware! lol. Her novel is coming out as a Netflix movie with Keira Knightley sometime in late 2025. And there’s a book sequel — thanks to Kay at Kay’s Reading Life for alerting us — of The Woman in Suite 11 coming in July. More of the infamous character Lo Blacklock!

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read any of these and if so, what did you think?

Hi bookworms — how is everyone doing? It’s been a busy week here but I’m coming up for air now … after completing a couple things for my part-time jobs I had to get done. It was a really cold week too and the deer were on our road in 30+ herds looking for something to eat. They came running to our bird feeders. The photo shows just a small part of their group. The one deer in front stopped when he saw me taking a picture from the window. We usually let them have a snack or two in such cold weather, though they can drain the bird feeder pretty lickety-split, so eventually we put the feeders in the garage at night when we remember to.

Meanwhile the Super Bowl is on soon. Will you be watching the game, or skipping it? I admit I’m usually a big football fan, but neither of these teams playing is one of my teams, so we’ll be watching at home mostly for the ads, halftime show, and munchies. I hope there’ll be a Clydesdale Bud commercial with a Labrador puppy, lol. That would make me happy. But I think this year it’s going to be a young Clydesdale that’s the star in the ad this time. Watch for it. I still miss the puppy ad though, lol. You can rewatch it here on the link.

My reading has been a bit meandering due to busyness, but I’ll leave you with a couple reviews of what I finished lately. These two books below make a good pairing — and I didn’t even do it on purpose. The first is a novel about a female immigrant from Afghanistan who lives in Berlin and tries to hide her background amid her active night life, while the second is a memoir of a refugee from Vietnam (during the fall of Saigon in 1975) who grew up in Michigan and also describes trying to blend in and hide her background. The immigrant life is tough. Come to think of it, I also read the novel The Leavers in January, which is about immigrants from China in New York, so I guess I’m on a reading theme these days and I didn’t purposefully know I was doing it. I think what draws me to these kinds of tales are the immigrants’ challenges and perseverance, and how the stories about them are often quite moving and well written. They certainly are relevant right now.

Good Girl by Aria Aber / Hogarth / 368 pages / 2025

3.7 stars. Nila, 19, who narrates this novel details a lost year she has going to night clubs in Berlin with friends and where she meets Marlowe, a thirty-six-year-old American writer who once wrote a notable book. Nila is going through some tough times and growing pains — taking drugs with her group, obsessing about Marlowe, and trying to hide her Afghan and poor background. She also misses her mother who died years earlier. Her parents were doctors in Afghanistan who fled a decade or so ago with her and then wound up in public housing in Berlin, graffitied with swastikas, where Nila was raised. They were unable to get good jobs.

Now Nila amid her partying tells those who ask that she’s Greek. She gets involved with Marlowe who’s controlling and at times violent … and much of the narration details their drug-taking and relationship over a year’s time. Nila seems to be trying to find and right herself …. to try for grad school and become a photographer, though she keeps disappointing herself and her father who expects her to be a “good girl.”

You have to read to the end to see if Nila continues on her path of self-destruction or gets on with it to something better. There’s some sharp writing throughout this debut, so although I tired of some of the continual cycle of partying and sex with Marlowe, I was impressed by the writing style and Nila’s impressions and the details of Berlin and pleased it ended a bit more upbeat. The author, first a poet, apparently grew up in Germany and now works as a writing professor at the University of Vermont. She was raised speaking Farsi and German and now writes in her third language, English.

Owner of a Lonely Heart by Beth Nguyen / Scribner / 256 pages / 2023

4 stars. I liked hearing the author narrate the audio of her life as a Vietnam refugee who when she was 8-months-old was taken by her father out of the country with her sister, uncles, and grandmother the day before the fall of Saigon to North Vietnamese forces in 1975. Later she was raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan, by her father and stepmother and only came to meet her birth mother who was left or stayed behind in Vietnam until years later when she was 19. Her mother had come to the U.S. when she was 10 and had settled in Boston, yet they didn’t meet until years later.

Her memoir is clear, raw, and sincere describing what it was like growing up as an immigrant minority in a White Midwestern city and trying to understand her identity and their family dynamics, which wasn’t really talked about at the time with her often bad-tempered father. Much of it too talks about motherhood … trying to get know her own mother who she’s only visited a handful of times and is not close to and what happened in Vietnam when her mother stayed behind — along with being a mother herself to two young boys.

Part of the book feels like a memoir looking back on her life and school years in Michigan and other parts feel like essays about her perceptions as an immigrant in the U.S. and about motherhood. She wrote the book during the pandemic, which adds another dimension to it. Towards the end there’s a chapter about changing her Vietnamese name from Bich to Beth, which she does since it would cause less fuss and questions. Overall I was moved by the author’s story and perspective and liked her sensibilities.

I had forgotten I had read and liked the author’s 2015 novel Pioneer Girl and reviewed it on the blog. That’s when she was going by Bich Minh Nguyen, so I might not have realized this memoir was by the same author when I picked it up. She is a Guggenheim Fellow recipient, has an MFA from U of Michigan, and now teaches creative writing at the University of Wisconsin. I will look for what she writes next.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read books like these and if so, what did you think? Enjoy your week.

Hi all. We are so saddened and sorry to see all the tragedy unfolding this past week in L.A. County, which is horrific and mind-blowing. Truly epic and awful. My brother evacuated from Pasadena on Tuesday night and thankfully he and his place are okay but so many others just a couple miles away are not. The wind that hit on Tuesday night was scary – hurricane-force winds and there was no way to control or do anything but run for your lives if you were in the line of fire. So much devastation has been left and I fear the number of dead will rise. I don’t know how it all started if it was from power lines, or a spark, or arson, but tragically it all got out of hand very quickly.

We have been staying in Orange County about an hour south of what’s going on in L.A. and were alarmed by the high winds. You can see the smoke from the L.A. fires in this sunset picture (above) I took last night. Let’s just hope the winds will stop so the firefighters can get this under control. It’s been a daunting event and I’m thinking of all those affected. I hope that Jinjer at the blog The Intrepid Angeleno is all right and others who blog from Southern California are too. It’s like a war zone around the L.A. area. For some much-needed levity, I will add this photo of the dogs, which my husband took around Christmas, to keep hope alive.

Now today we are headed back home on our long road trip north — sort of with a heavy heart — but thankful for the holiday times we’ve had here and seeing my dad and brother, who are both okay. I hope you all are well and I will leave you with a couple reviews of books that I finished at the end of 2024.

Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice / ECW / 224 pages / 2018

3.6 stars. When power and communication go out in an indigenous community in northern Ontario, the band’s council tries to figure out what is happening and how to provide heat and food during the long harsh winter for as long as they can. The story follows Evan Whitesky and his family who does his best to help others in the community, which finds out there’s been a collapse in the cities down south.

Then a white straggler arrives from the south who they don’t know whether to trust and supplies start to run low. You have to wait till the end to see how the reckoning plays out. But the perspective of such a power communication outage on an indigenous community — that seems a bit better adapted to band together and survive off the land — makes the story a bit more interesting, and you root for Evan and his wife Nicole and their small hamlet to get by.

I sort of promised myself post-election that I wouldn’t read apocalyptic societal collapse kinds of novels, but I had been curious about this Canadian novel beforehand and it pulled me in. It’s a bit of a quietly told story full of a cold, snowed in landscape, which looms large in it. The ending is a bit open and not fully drawn, so it was a ripe for a sequel, which came out this past October. I will get to it.

Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham / 688 pages / 1915

4+ stars. I read the first 50 percent of this novel as an ebook in October and set it down then picked it up again and read the last 50 percent in December. This classic is a coming-of-age kind of tale about British protagonist Philip Carey and his early life history that seemed a bit like David Copperfield in how he faces many ups and downs from adolescence to adulthood and different places, people, and adversities. Philip is certainly tested along the way.

He’s an orphan (after his parent die early) with a clubfoot who’s raised by his loveless uncle, the Vicar, and aunt. He is very self-conscious about his clubfoot and walking with a limp and it seems to affect much of his life. Philip sets off to find his calling in life which takes many stops and starts along the way from trying for the priesthood, then as an accountant, then as an artist in Paris, then back to England and training to be a doctor and then running out of money and working in a shop and becoming a clothes designer for a while.

And there’s also pale-faced Mildred, you won’t forget her. The saga of Philip meeting Mildred, a waitress at a cafe, and falling for her goes on endlessly. Mildred takes advantage of poor Philip and his cash a number of times but still he’s obsessed with his love for her. (But she not so much.) Oh the sorry choices he makes. He can’t seem to shake his life of her, but eventually things happen to propel him. It seems Philip has to hit rock bottom to eventually be able to rise again.

It’s a long tale that felt like quicksand at some points and I was swimming around in it for a long while. Still I needed to see it through — and to know what becomes of Philip and his journey to solvency and hopeful redemption. Along the way, Philip’s thoughts about the human condition from religion to work, art, and love make it a worthwhile exploration, which you go through with him. Though a bit exhausted by the novel, I was elated to have finished, and the ending seems a bit happy in outlook.

At the end Philip is only 30 years old — what a long journey to that point. You sort of wonder if a sequel was ever considered, but I guess not. Apparently the tale is autobiographical to the author Somerset Maugham’s life — who was raised by his uncle and aunt and trained later as a doctor. He had a stammer instead of a clubfoot that surely affected his life.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these and if so, what did you think? Stay well everyone!