Hi book friends. I’m sorry to say we received some very sad news this past week that my Dad had a bad fall in his cottage in California late overnight into Tuesday and was taken to the hospital. My siblings and I flew to be with him. Unfortunately he was unable to overcome his injuries and passed on Wednesday afternoon. It is a shock and devastating and comes about a year after my mother’s passing. He was a very special person to us and loved dearly by so many who knew him. So I’m going to be taking a bit of a blogging break for a couple weeks while I’m away in California. I would usually do an April Preview now, but I will need to postpone. I wish everyone a peaceful and good reading month and thanks for your kind thoughts.
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 Fictionlonglist, 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, we’ve made it to March. Yay it won’t be too long now before spring is on the way. We had such warm weather this past week that our snow melted away as you can see from this shot at the end of the road.
We need to get going on planting the vegetable seeds in our indoor pots. We usually can’t put them in the ground here till mid-May, so we have time to sprout these things for a while.
Meanwhile there’s plenty going on this month (besides all the bad news): the Academy Awards are on tomorrow night (with Conan O’Brien hosting); the Indian Wells pro-tennis tournament starts this week (yay!); the time change happens on the 9th; March Madness basketball begins on the 16th; then St. Patrick’s Day; and later spring break for many school kiddies across the land. Whoosh, I’d like to swing a golf club at some point. Lately I’ve been playing tennis doubles twice a week indoors, which is fun. I drive back to the city for that — crazy!
There’s many new releases to discuss, so let’s dive in. Novels by such well-known authors as: Laila Lalami, Susanna Kearsley, Karen Russell, Lawrence Wright, Emma Donoghue, and Kristen Arnett have new ones coming out this month … along with there’s Chris Bohjalian’s Civil War novel The Jackal’s Mistress (out March 11) and Colum McCann’s cable-repair ship novel Twist (out March 25), which I read early copies of last year. I won’t be spotlighting them here now, but I liked and recommend them both. See what you think.
Others I hope to get to include Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s new novel Dream Count (due out March 4), which Publishers Weekly says is about “the fleeting joys and abiding disappointments of four African women on both sides of the Atlantic.”
I remember reading Adichie’s last (adult) 2013 novel Americanah for a book club that dissolved just last year, so now 12 years later we are getting the new one. She had written some nonfiction and a children’s book during that time, but for whatever reason her next novel took a while. So yay, she’s back! And a slew are on order at the library.
I’m also keyed up to read Australian author Charlotte McConaghy’s new thriller-ish novel Wild Dark Shore (due out March 4) about a family and a stranger trapped on a research station’s island with no communication. I gather there are storms arising and apparently they must be able to trust one another to protect precious seeds they have in their care. Whoa.
I have read McConaghy’s two other novels: Once There Were Wolves and Migrations … and the natural world and climate change seem to figure prominently in all. She’s an eco-writer you could say and has a large following now.
Next up is British author Natasha Brown’s novel Universality (due out March 4) about a journalist who sets out to uncover the truth about a brutal attack at an illegal rave event on a Yorkshire farm. Apparently the journalist solves the mystery, but her viral exposé ends up raising more questions than it answers.
Natasha Brown writes short, whip-smart novels that skip around a bit and you have to be on your toes. I liked her 2021 debut novel Assembly,which received a lot of recognition, so I’m back now for more. She was only 31 when she published her first novel.
I’m also thinking about adding Emma Pattee’s debut Tilt(due out March 25) about a pregnant woman who comes to navigate through the aftermath of a major earthquake in Portland, Ore. It sounds scary. Lesley at the blog Coastal Horizons reviewed an early copy last fall and said it was intense but an impressive debut.
If I lose courage with that, then I might check out Nathaniel Ian Miller’s novel Red Dog Farm, which apparently is an atmospheric novel about a young man who tries to find purpose on a struggling Icelandic cattle farm …and must choose between home and the wider world. I don’t know this author, but it’s gotten some good reviews and I like it’s farming theme.
In screen releases, there’s quite a few adaptations to check out this month, including the eight-part TV series Long Bright River (due out on Peacock March 13), based on the novel by Liz Moore. It’s about a female Philadelphia police officer (played by Amanda Seyfried) who works in a neighborhood with high drug use where a series of murders take place, and she has a druggy sister who goes missing. Uh-oh. The book was good but quite gritty, which this looks to be too.
Next up is the six-part TV series: Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light (out on PBS, March 23), which along with Part I that aired in 2015 are adapted from the novels by Hilary Mantel that follow Thomas Cromwell, the chief minister in King Henry VIII’s court. It is so sad that Mantel died of a stroke at age 70 in 2022, but her works live on. I read one of the books Bring Up the Bodies, so I’m interested in seeing the series but need to find Season 1 in a set first. Have you watched it?
Also coming out is the third and final season of Bosch Legacy (out on Prime Video March 27) that is based on the police procedural novels by Michael Connelly. Yeah we’ve watched all the episodes and seasons of Bosch and now Bosch Legacy. They’re good and I wish they’d keep going. They’re addicting and one could get through an entire winter on a box set alone, lol. There’s been some good characters with Bosch along the way, including his daughter, his partner Hector, the chief, and the defense attorney “Money” Chandler, lol. Let’s give the series a big sendoff goodbye. Could there be more Connelly works in the hopper?
Lastly I’ll just mention a movie that looks a bit cute. It’s The Friend (out March 28), starring Naomi Watts, which follows a story about a writer in NYC who adopts a Great Dane that belonged to a late friend and mentor. It turns out the dog and the writer are both grieving over the loss of the friend and they help each other to heal over time.
It’s based on the novel by Sigrid Nunez, which I reviewed here in 2018. The book has various meandering thoughts and tangents in it that I don’t think the movie can match. Still I’ll likely see it. It reminds me that I need to get to more of Nunez’s novels.
In new music for March, there’s a plethora of notable albums coming out, including those by such artists as: Lady Gaga, Jason Isbell, Charley Crockett, My Morning Jacket, Mumford & Sons, and Alison Krauss & Union Station. These are all excellent artists to check out and are hard to choose from, but I’ll pick Jason Isbell’s album Foxes in the Snow (due out March 7) as my choice this month. It’s his first solo acoustic album without his 400 Unit band.
That’s all for now. What about you — which new releases are you looking forward to? Happy March!
Hi bookworms, how’s your week been? We finally came out of the deep freeze up here, and it went from -5F to +48F in a couple days, which was a crazy change, followed by a big wind storm. It feels like Miami in comparison. We will take it. Check out this photo I took yesterday driving home from errands.
Meanwhile the month has been flying by and there was a “little” hockey game on Thursday night in Boston between the U.S. and Canada that apparently drew over 16 million viewers across both countries. We were glued to it and it was very exciting for Canada to win in overtime. The game stayed civil and seemed to mean a lot to the northern nation amid all the talk of tariffs and annexation by the current White House occupant. The two countries have been friends for over 150 years, and I know many Americans stand with Canada, which is very helpful.
Just a reminder, this week the 10-part nature documentary series The Americas will air on NBC and Peacock. Narrated by Tom Hanks — I think it should be a captivating show, spotlighting the creatures, habitats, and ecosystems found throughout North and South America. My husband and I will be checking it out. Also over the past several months we’ve been trying to catch some of the Oscar-nominated films. We only watch one show or movie per night, but we’ve added some new ones to our seen list including:
September 5 — 4+ stars, a pretty gripping look chronicling when ABC Sports came to cover the Israeli hostage crisis live during the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany. Apparently this was the the first time a terrorist attack had been broadcast on live television and it was viewed by approximately 900 million.
A Real Pain — 3.5 stars, about two mismatched cousins (played by Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin) who take a tour of Poland to honor their late grandmother. This had some funny and poignant moments, but it seemed to be a bit undeveloped and I wanted to know more.
Anora — 3.7 stars, about a call girl from Brooklyn who impulsively marries the son of a Russian oligarch and finds trouble when his parents come to annul the marriage. This is a grim, tough film! Rated R for good reason. I had no idea what I was getting into. This is harsh and hits hard but is an eye-opener.
Gladiator II — 3.5 stars, Beforehand I thought this sequel wasn’t going to measure up and would have too much fake CGI, but I found it entertaining and actor Paul Mescal was easy to root for as a Roman gladiator trying to put an end to two tyrannical emperors.
Short Film Documentaries — We had never seen these before but our local theater was playing the five Oscar-nominated short films together. They were all quite strong. One is about Japanese elementary school students who create a musical performance; another follows a Parkland school mass shooting survivor; another a police incident shooting in Chicago; another follows a Texas death row inmate’s last days; and the last is about the double bassist and only woman in the New York Philharmonic in 1966.
So these movies are in addition to the ones we’ve seen listed here.
And now I’ll leave you with a couple reviews of books that I finished lately.
I want to thank Stargazer at the blog For Book People and Random People for telling me about this Vietnamese immigrant story, since I’ve been picking up various immigrant stories lately. And I couldn’t resist another.
3.7 stars / This is about Anh (age 16) and her two younger brothers who take a perilous boat trip in 1978 as refugees out of Vietnam to Hong Kong, where they await their parents and other siblings who never arrive. The three languish in refugee camps there until eventually getting the green light for the UK, where they are put in resettlement camps for a long while until public housing later becomes available. Anh watches over her siblings, while struggling with the grief over the loss of their parents, and trying to pick up a new culture and language. As the years go by, the three begin to separate a bit. Anh works as a seamstress in a factory, Thanh tries hard in school and ends up in insurance, and Minh drops out and gets into drugs.
I think I would’ve liked the print novel a bit better than the audiobook since the author jumps around with chapters among various perspectives and it can be a bit confusing with no labels on a few. There’s primarily Anh’s story, but also: the voice of a dead brother, news reports and letters, soldiers, survivors, and an unnamed narrator who you find out at the end is a second-generation immigrant relative who is writing about Anh and the brothers’ experiences.
It is interestingly told and much is quite moving, though other times it felt like it was done with broad brushstrokes with Ahn and her brothers going from camp life to housing and on with their lives without enough detail or development. It seems the author is doing a lot with the various perspectives and maybe it was a bit too much (when less could’ve been a bit deeper). Still it lends a heartfelt and eye-opening look into the Vietnam boat people who dispersed to various countries in the late 1970s and the sheer odds they faced. Many overcame so much to fit in and flourish in their adopted countries. This story tells of one family’s amazing resilience.
The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware / Scout Press / 341 pages / 2016
3.7 stars. I’m one of few who hasn’t read a Ruth Ware novel until now. I am not a big thriller reader and one reason is: they often get a bit crazy or unbelievable at some point … and this one was no exception. Still I enjoyed it at various points. The lead character journalist Laura “Lo” Blacklock is quite a mess when she gets onboard a glitzy one-week cruise ship the Aurora. Her place was burglarized before leaving and she had a fight with her boyfriend. Since then she hasn’t slept and drinks like a fish … in addition to taking her regular pills for anxiety and depression.
So when she hears what she thinks is a person being thrown overboard late at night from next door in Cabin 10, no one really believes her. Since everyone is accounted for, the crew thinks she’s been hallucinating or is paranoid. But a crew member takes her around to interview staff and others. Her ex Ben Howard who’s onboard seems really suspicious – as well as some of the others aboard. But it’s takes quite a while to unravel if there’s anything amiss on the ship.
Meanwhile it makes for a good confining setting amid an array of guests and seasickness … with Lo’s head in agony too from a nasty hangover, minimal sleep, and claustrophobia. It’s the perfect uneasy setting and Lo makes a wobbly main character. It reminded me a bit of The Girl on the Train mixed with an Agatha Christie. But towards the end the plot seems a bit of a stretch and gets a bit crazy, and I was ready, like Lo, to get ashore somehow, someway.
Still the madness is a bit fun, and I will likely get to the sequel The Woman in Suite 11 (coming in July) and see the upcoming Netflix movie of this one with Keira Knightley as the boozy and anxious Lo Blacklock.
That’s all for now. What about you — have you seen any of these movies, or read these novels — and if so, what did you think?
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.
Anheuser-Busch
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’ve made it to February, which is usually a short but busy month. After a warm week here, it looks like winter will be returning and snowflakes are forecast. We could use the snow as the snowpack here has been so little this year.
I’m still working on my sky photos as can you tell. I like posting ones with different colors, though the content of our front area looks about the same. It’s been a quiet week and a bit somber with news of the terrible plane crash in D.C. and the looming tariffs against Canada of all places — how outrageous — among other things. I once lived in the Virginia/D.C. area for over 15 years, so it’s awful to see such a tragic disaster there. Heartbreaking.
In this month’s new releases, there’s a lot coming out. It seems everyone wants a piece of February. Such popular authors as Jojo Moyes, Linda Holmes, Curtis Sittenfeld, Anne Tyler, Eowyn Ivey, Nickolas Butler, Victoria Christopher Murray, and Marie Benedict all have fiction releasing.
And in nonfiction, memoirs by Bill Gates, Rick Steves, and particularly writer Geraldine Brooks’ book Memorial Days (due out Feb. 4) about the tragic loss of her husband writer Tony Horwitz and her bereavement looks moving and I hope to get to it, though I’ll be focusing here on some other novels that I’m adding to my TBR.
First off is Ali Smith’s dystopian novel Gliff (due out Feb. 4) about two siblings, ages 11 and 13, who get separated from their mother and end up squatting with others in an abandoned school trying to navigate the cruelties of a digitally advanced surveillance state.
You might recall I said I wouldn’t be reading dystopian post-election, but now that Scottish author Ali Smith has added her clever wordplay and humor to it, I’m unable to resist. I have not read her popular Seasonal Quartet books, so this is my chance to give her writing a go. Have you read any of her books?
Next up is Australian author Charlotte Wood’s novel Stone Yard Devotional (due out Feb. 11), which was shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize and is finally coming out in this part of the world. It’s about a burned-out middle-aged woman who leaves Sydney to return to the place she grew up, joining a cloister of nuns in rural Australia, even though she’s an atheist.
Then a few things begin to interrupt the secluded life there, which plunges her back into the past. It’s said to be a meditative and finely observed story and one from a new-to-me Australian writer whose writing I’d love to try.
Much praise too has been heaped on Irish writer Roisin O’Donnell’s powerful debut novel Nesting (due out Feb. 18) about a Dublin-based mother of two young daughters (with a third child on the way) who decides to flee a violent household and try to start over.
According to Publishers Weekly, it examines the mother’s daily struggles and hard-won triumphs in a crystalline and lyrical prose. I’m usually not one for such domestic abuse kinds of tales but this one comes highly touted and appears to be mostly about the narrator’s efforts at rebuilding her life. So we will see.
For a different kind of action, there’s Jack Wang’s novel The Riveter (due out Feb. 11) about a Chinese Canadian who fights prejudice and falls in love during WWII, where he takes part in the invasion of Normandy and the inland fight to liberate France and Holland.
From the description, the novel seems a bit like a typical WWII love story — albeit from a minority’s viewpoint, but it’s received several starred reviews that say it’s particularly compelling, so I’m game for it, especially since the author grew up in Vancouver, B.C. (now works at Ithaca College in N.Y.), and I’m always looking to read more Canadian authors.
For more action reads, I’m looking at Callan Wink’s novel Beartooth (due out Feb. 11) about the struggles of two brothers living on the margins in the Beartooth mountains of Montana … who being desperate for money take on an outsider’s dangerous proposition that will change their lives forever. Uh-oh. But what more could you ask for in a Montana read? This is Callan Wink’s second novel set in Montana and I hope to read his earlier novel titled August too.
There’s also Allen Eskens’s latest crime mystery The Quiet Librarian (due out Feb. 18) about a middle-aged librarian in Minnesota who finds out when her best friend is murdered that her past from the mountains of war-torn Bosnia has returned and someone is out to get her. I mention the book as I know various bloggers have liked several of Eskens’ other novels as have I. He has a good ear for storytelling.
On the screen this month — in addition to the Grammys on Feb. 2 and a little game known as the Super Bowl on Feb. 9 — there might be some good escape viewing in crazy TV shows like The White Lotus (Season 3 on HBO Max, starting Feb. 16), Yellowjackets (Season 3, on Paramount+ with Showtime, Feb. 14), or Reacher (Season 3, on Prime, Feb. 20). We have seen the earlier seasons of The White Lotus, which get pretty crazy but have not watched Yellowjackets or Reacher — has anyone seen these? This time The White Lotus is set at a resort in Thailand so hopefully the show will have some great shots of the country.
But maybe a calmer bet is the 10-part nature documentary series The Americas narrated by Tom Hanks (on NBC & Peacock, Feb. 25). Apparently it was filmed over the course of five years and 180 expeditions across North and South America. The Americas takes viewers from pole to pole on an 8,700-mile journey looking at landscapes and encountering the plants, animals, and people who live there. It’s said to be an unprecedented series, so we’ll be checking it out and hoping that it can induce those on the planet to save nature instead of decimating it.
In movies this month, it’s best just to catch up on all the Oscar nominated films that are becoming available for streaming, but if you need something totally silly or mindless there’s the Amy Schumer movie Kinda Pregnant (on Netflix starting Feb. 5) about a woman (Schumer) who being envious of a friend’s pregnancy starts wearing around a fake pregnancy belly, and also Renee Zellweger in Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy (on Peacock, starting Feb. 13) which finds Bridget trying to manage as a widow and single mom. I guess that’s about the fourth movie in the Bridget Jones series — I have not seen them all … but the first one made me laugh.
Lastly in music releases for February, there’s new albums by Sharon Van Etten, Inhaler, The Lumineers, Sam Fender, and Basia Bulat among others. These all seem decent, but I’ll pick the self-titled moody album by Sharon Van Etten & the Attachment Theory, which you can hear the song Afterlife from here and the song Trouble here. I first heard her on SiriusXM.
Speaking of which I’ve just watched snippets so far of the FireAid L.A. benefit concert on YouTube and it’s pretty awesome — touching with some great performances from a wide variety of wonderful artists that’s still raising money for wildfire relief. It’s been a happy plus given the events this week.
That’s all for now. What about you — what releases are you looking forward to this month? Happy February everyone.
Hi. Was it a rough week or what? We need to pace ourselves with the crazy current honcho. Even for those avoiding the news, it’s not going to be easy with this wayward circus and trying to hold on. But I hope those in the South who got some snow enjoyed a moment of wonderment with those rare flakes. We’ve had a mild windy winter here without much snowpack so people are worried about drought. It’s supposed to be in the 50s a bit next week, which is a rare thing for this time of year. So it seems the Canadian winter here has flown south. Too bad for the skiing.
Meanwhile the nominations for the Academy Awards came out last week with the French musical Emilia Pérez getting 13 nominations, which is a record for a non-English language film, followed by The Brutalist and Wicked picking up 10 nominations each, and A Complete Unknown and Conclave with eight nominations, and Anora, a romantic-comedy drama, received six nominations.
I was surprised but pleased to see that the sort of unknown actress Monica Barbaro who plays Joan Baez in the Bob Dylan movie received a Best Supporting Actress nomination (wow), and that the foreign film I’m Still Here, which I’m hoping to see whenever its available, received Best Actress and Best Picture nominations. We have a lot left to watch but should see some more films before the March 2 award ceremony, which apparently is still proceeding after the extensive fire damage around L.A. County. I’m still big on A Complete Unknown, which features some classic songs and was very enjoyable to watch.
In TV series right now we’ve been watching Bad Sisters Season 2 and trying out Severance Season 1, which has a pretty kind of crazy sci-fi plot about some office workers who are being manipulated by their company like guinea pigs. Both shows (on AppleTV+) are sort of dark and satirical but a bit fun in that way. Speaking of which, one of the better series we watched last fall was Ripley (on Netflix) based on the Patricia Highsmith novel The Talented Mr. Ripley. It was done once as a film in 1999 so I wasn’t really expecting much, but the TV series with Andrew Scott as Tom Ripley is done really well and is creepy. It has an excellent cat-and-mouse crime plot and was shot in black-and-white on location in Italy with some wonderful shots. Thanks to Lesley at the blog Coastal Horizons who talked it up in September. It’s a bit of an intriguing watch.
And now I’ll leave you with a review of what I finished lately.
The Leavers by Lisa Ko / Algonquin / 2017 / 352 pages
3.75 stars. This novel is still very relevant and I remember when it came out it was much talked about, so I’m glad I finally read it. It’s about an undocumented Chinese worker Polly who gives birth to a son Deming in NYC and tries to make their lives work as a single parent, though she is repaying debts to a loan shark. She switches jobs from a seamstress in a factory to a nail salon technician while she and Deming live with her boyfriend Leon and his sister and her son in the Bronx.
Polly’s looking to go to Florida for a waitress job which she thinks will be better for them, but then one day when Deming is 11, Polly doesn’t come home and no one can find her. Deming, who’s close to his mother, is left with a hole in his heart, thinking she’s moved without him. Eventually when she doesn’t return, he’s given to white foster parents in Upstate NY, who raise him and later want him to complete college. But Deming, who develops a gambling problem, can’t give it his full attention. He has a talent for music and playing the guitar, which is his calling but he’s also sort of aimless. He still thinks about his biological mother — and one day when his childhood friend gives him info about her, he tries finding out where she is.
In alternating chapters, Polly tells her story … and soon things begin to be revealed about what happened and why she left. Meanwhile Deming’s life has been one in limbo — neither fully one culture or another — his identity is convoluted and he hopes in finding his birth mother, he might find himself too. Polly and Deming are characters with problems who might irk you with some of their decisions, but the novel also seems to realistically raise questions about undocumented immigrants and the kids who become disconnected from them, and gives them more nuance and understanding than what we perceive in current events. It’s a pretty potent issue right now and it hit home quite movingly.
That’s all for now. What about you — have you seen any of these movies or shows, or read this novel — and if so what did you think?
