Greetings. I hope you are all staying well, sheltering in place. It’s not easy, but it’s the best thing we can do for the foreseeable future. Have you been able to concentrate enough to read much, or have you been too distracted by the news? It seems to come and go with me. Some days are more conducive to reading than others. I try to tell myself to keep a handle on the anxiety, while doing other things.
Lately, I’ve turned off the TV news and have been tied up doing taxes, applying for Canadian citizenship (yea! I could get dual citizenship if this works out), doing my boot camp class virtually, going for dog walks, and talking with family and friends via Zoom. Oh it’s a new world out there, but it’s best to try and adjust. I’ve enjoyed keeping in touch with blogging friends during this time and knowing how each of you are doing in your part of the world, so write when you can.
Now I’ll leave you with reviews of a few books I’ve finished recently. (Two were e-book reads, and two were audiobook listens.)
Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA by Amaryllis Fox / Knopf / 240 pages / Oct. 2019
Why I Picked It Up: I think I first saw this memoir on Kathy’s blog over at Bermuda Onion and then found it as an audiobook at my library. The author narrates the audio and does a pretty good job of it as I was drawn in from the get-go. I’m also a fan of the show “Homeland” — and the movies based on the John le Carre novels — so all of the true-life books coming out recently by female CIA agents who signed up after 9/11 are sparking my interest.
Synopsis: This is a memoir by a woman who was recruited while she was doing graduate studies at Georgetown University, at age 22, into the CIA. It describes her youth, her college years at Oxford and abroad, where she met and interviewed Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma; her recruitment by the CIA while at Georgetown and training at “the farm”; and her eight years as an agent in the field tracking and trying to infiltrate terrorist arms networks to thwart nuclear attacks.
My Thoughts: The author’s life certainly makes for fascinating material. And her book is quite revealing even for its little tidbits into life at the very secretive CIA. How did she even get to publish it? Well apparently she gave the manuscript to the CIA for a year and when they didn’t do much with it …. she made their minor changes and went ahead and had it published without their final approval, Whoa.
It’s a memoir that’s pretty engrossing for its glimpses into her training at the CIA and for her years as a spy in the field. The main mission she describes in the book is her contacts in various overseas locations with a Hungarian arms dealer who has links to al-Qaeda and its intentions to detonate a nuclear device. You’ll want to stay tuned to find out how her interactions with him play out, but thankfully a detonation of such a device is averted.
It’s one of those books that will make you worry with its descriptions of what goes into a nuclear bomb and how nuclear materials are missing from the former Soviet Union, and how terrorists around the world are trying to get and use them. A few parts of the memoir come off a bit CIA insider-y and flew by me, but other parts are about her personal life (two marriages during these years) and her work, which takes a big toll on it. Towards the end she has a baby with husband #2 in China and continues to do dangerous work even with the baby by her side (yikes!)… until eventually she gives up the job.
I thought it was interesting though scary to think about. It’s a slim book and I felt a bit of it was padded and just filled with her thoughts about trying to gain trust and peace and how her attitude about the work changed over time. It could be construed in places as thin on material or lacking in more detailed missions but apparently the author has said that it was meant more as a coming of age story than an operational CIA one. So you might take that into account. Despite these caveats, I still found it pretty eye-opening and worthwhile.
Separation Anxiety by Laura Zigman / Ecco / 288 pages / March 2020
Why I Picked It Up: The cover made it look light and fun (yes I’m a dog person) and something maybe easy to read during Covid-19 … though I think it ended up being darker than I expected.
Synopsis: This is one of those woman-on-the-brink kinds of stories. And when we first meet middle-aged Judy Vogel — she indeed seems to have gone through a lot in a short time. Her parents’ recent passings have taken a sad toll on her as well as her teenage son’s need to be free and independent of her, and the separation with her husband, who still lives in their house because they can’t afford to get a divorce or live separately.
Her best friend is also sick with cancer, and Judy — once an author of a successful children’s book (made into a PBS series) — struggles from writer’s block and hasn’t written anything meaningful in years. Instead she writes for a living small, infomercial-like pieces for a health/happiness website that she can almost do in her sleep. So when Judy finds a baby sling in her basement … and ends up putting the family sheltie in it … and caring her around like a therapy dog, can you really blame her?
My Thoughts: This sad, pained, and angry woman is undergoing a crisis and depression … but her daily misadventures are told in a pretty snarky amusing way, which reminded me very slightly of the humor in Maria Semple’s 2012 novel “Where’d You Go, Bernadette.” At times it’s a little whiny and other times right on.
Judy’s life continues to snowball downwards … leading to run-ins at her son’s Montessori school and at a writer’s retreat seminar … but it ends after an event with a hopeful upturn that put a smile on my face. Maybe Judy is finally able to appreciate what she has …. and of those people she meets and has around her. And while it features a dog slung around her throughout the story … it’s not much about the dog.
The German House by Annette Hess / Translated by Elizabeth Lauffer / HarperVia / 336 pages / Dec. 2019 (in Germany in 2018)
Why I Picked It Up: I think I heard about this German debut novel through the blogosphere and it looked alluring. I listened to it as an audiobook and the narrator has a pretty strong German accent, but it seemed to fit well with the main character of Eva Bruhns.
Synopsis: “The German House” is a coming-of-age story about 24-year-old Eva Bruhns who lives with her parents (who own the German House restaurant), and her sister who is a nurse, and her younger brother Stephan and their dog. It’s 1963 and Eva is offered a job to work as a Polish translator at the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials, which she doesn’t know much about and which her family and fiance don’t want her to get involved with. But Eva accepts the job and comes to learn plenty during the long trial about the atrocities committed there and secrets from the past.
My Thoughts: It’s an engaging slow-reveal-kind-of story that explores complicity, guilt, and justice — and also has quite a few side plots going on too: about whether Eva will marry her fiance, her sister’s relationship with a doctor at the hospital, the prosecutor David Miller’s life, her parents, and even fires that are being set in the city.
Much of it kept me interested … though at times the novel’s abrupt transitions between the characters and side plots made it feel clunky and some character turns perhaps require some suspension of disbelief. Eva is at times annoyingly naive at first …. though her character undergoes quite a rough coming of age during it. At the end, some character side plots are resolved while others are more left up in the air. All in all the parts about the real-life trial and its testimonies seemed well researched and were effectively brought to life.
The Cactus League by Emily Nemens / Farrar, Straus and Giroux / 275 pages / Feb. 2020
Why I picked It Up: It should be baseball season right now but sadly it isn’t. Still I thought I’d give this short novel a whirl to get some old baseball, spring season spirit going. It’s also a debut novel by a promising writer who’s the editor of The Paris Review and was reviewed favorably by Susie at the blog Novel Visits.
Synopsis: The novel’s nine chapters — or nine innings I suppose — delve into various characters all having to do with a major league baseball team’s spring training in Arizona. The chapters interconnect in a way showing various sides of the star player — Jason Goodyear — during preseason. There’s chapters involving the team’s batting coach, a baseball groupie, a sports agent, a team owner, an injured pitcher, baseball wives, the stadium’s organist, a rookie, and a 7-year-old fan.
My Thoughts: The structure of “The Cactus League” reminded me a bit of Elizabeth Strout’s novel 2008 “Olive Kitteridge.” Its chapters feature the lives of separate characters … but interconnect in a way involving the team and the player Jason Goodyear. In that way it’s like interconnected short stories yet it is a novel.
I found “The Cactus League” pretty easy to jump into and thought it captured a picture of the competitiveness of spring training, the atmosphere, and a glimpse into these various people connected to the team’s spring training in Arizona, but it all seemed a bit dark or shady. Most were not really likable to me, and it didn’t exactly conjure a sense of baseball’s excitement or goodness.
It felt more like the seedier side or greedier side of a ball club, though there were tinges of redemptive aspects to it. I also didn’t care for a prelude by a sports reporter that came at the start of each chapter. These parts didn’t jibe for me. I liked some character’s chapters better than others, so in that way it felt a bit uneven. But by the end you certainly get a sense of how flawed Jason Goodyear is … and yet how also human and good as well.
That’s all for now. What about you — have you read any of these books or authors — and if so, what did you think?
Though I have been working from home, I have been working so much it has cut into my reading time. So I have been reading less. Hopefully the worst of this pandemic will pass soon.
Life Undercover sounds good. I think that it is standard procedure, and very common for ex – CIA folks to have their books vetted by the organization.
Hi Brian: that’s good you can work from home though I can see how it would cut into your reading. My part-time job was completely wiped out so I will just have to wait it out. The Life Undercover manuscript was turned in for vetting but apparently it was never given finally approval for publication by the CIA …. and some thought there might be a lawsuit …. but not sure if anything has come of it.
I read the first two books and agree with your take on both of them. The Cactus League sounds good to me.
Most days I’m having trouble focusing on books in print and do better with audio while I walk or work on a puzzle. Stay safe!
Hi Kathy: I recently was working on a puzzle (my first in a long time) while listening to an audio and it worked really well so I might try that again. I know what you mean about having trouble focusing with print, I’m doing a bit better with e-books lately. I’m glad you had similar reactions to a couple of these books as I did.
Sounds like it’s been a bit of a bumpy reading month for you. I suppose that’s to be expected these days. My focus on books has improved in the last week or ten days, but before that it was very poor.
Good for you for doing your taxes. Once they extended the deadline here until 7/15, I basically put them out of my mind!
Continue to stay safe and enjoy some spring weather.
Thanks Susie, yeah I agree as time has gone on my reading focus has improved and I’m doing better with e-books lately. All of these books above seemed to have pluses & minuses about them, but I’m glad to have picked them up. So glad too to have the taxes (almost) done! ( I have to do both Canadian & U.S. taxes ugh). The spring is trying hard to break out here …. but Mr. Winter keeps trying to return.
Like you, I have days when I can focus on reading, then other days when I’m too distracted to settle to anything. I’ve been going for some really long walks to make me super tired each night, so that cuts into my reading time, as most of my reading happens in bed at night.
I had a phase of reading books set in East Germany/Germany at the end of last year, The German House was the final one. And one I really enjoyed despite the occasionally clunky bits.
PS Wow! You’ve still got snow.
Hi Brona, good to be back in touch with you. We still have snow here and I’m thinking it might last another two weeks before fully melting away. I’m glad you liked The German House (maybe I saw it on your website?) … I found it a good story & pretty compelling. It seems long walks are really helpful now … but I can see where reading levels would fall off a bit. Wishing you good health in Australia.
I’ve not read any of those books but the Cactus League looks interesting. I am not a huge baseball fan but for some reason I enjoy baseball books!
How are you doing? It sounds like you have kind of embraced our new normal. I jump from being very at ease with everything to being very agitated. I am a little on edge. I’m not all that stir crazy but my kids are. It’s been pouring rain here so you can’t go out much in that and we’ve been told not to anyway. I need to figure out a mask because as of Friday we have to wear one if we go out at all. The one I had, the one all over the Internet was too thick and almost had me passing out.
Now, I heard a June 10th date. Not even sure that is doable. Now people in Korea are getting reinfected. I saw that on NPR today.
Still a little too distracted to read but I must as my club meets on Zoom next week to discuss Just Mercy.
Hi Ti, I’m doing okay. I go a little stir crazy … but just coping with long walks for fresh air. It’s hard to believe it’s raining there again. I hope you can find or make a mask. I wear a scarf sometimes. I hadn’t heard the news report about people getting reinfected … Ugh that’s awful news. I’ll have to check that on NPR. I still need to read Just Mercy. I’ve done a few Zoom chats so far and they seem to work out well. Hope you have fun with it … even if you don’t get to the entire book. Stay well there.
Ooh, I want to read that CIA book, for sure. The woman with the therapy dog book sounds good too. I loved the Maria Semple book, as you know.
Once I setttle down to read, it goes fine. In fact, I am reading some dense and tough non-fiction these days plus doing a reread of The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood for a Zoom reading group meeting later this month. Did you see the podcast interview of M A by Cheryl Strayed in the NYT yesterday? It was full of wisdom and calmed me down on my hardest day of anxiety so far. Today I am picking up, curb side, a big order of books I made at the indie bookstore where I used to work. Nine books! Very excited.
Hey Judy: Nine books, wow! Excellent. Are they mostly nonfiction or fiction? I didn’t realize Atwood was on a NYT podcast yesterday … thx for letting me know, I will look for it. I remember The Robber Bride fairly well but it could use a reread too. A lot of Zoom chats going on …. we’ve turned into a virtual world, but I think it will work to flatten the curve. Sounds like you are staying safe …. while doing your research. But when will the peahens be back? I hear it’s raining there. They are waiting for the sun perhaps.
Your comments made me wonder if ebooks are suddenly getting a big boost. Hope so. Some of the recent work with virus persistence on surfaces and different materials was done at the NIH Rocky Mtn Lab in MT.
Yeah e-books & downloaded audiobooks are big these days. Currently the libraries are all closed & I’m not getting any print books & can instead easily download e-books and audios. Learning about the existence of the virus on surfaces & materials has been helpful via the NIH site … as we get rid of grocery packaging & detox the house & clean phones & everything else. There’s always a bit of risk but we are trying to lower it.
I have Separation Anxiety here and, like you, I chose it as it looks like a light read. I started it when everything started shutting down here, and set it aside for what might be called very light reading. Now that I’ve read your review, I think I can safely pick it back up again and read it through to the end.
In fact, I’m going to try to finish all the books I started and set aside during the last few weeks. I feel like I need to get back into my happy reading place.
Hi Deb, you eventually will get back to your happy reading place. I agree that the woman’s problems in Separation Anxiety were a bit much or overwhelming at first but luckily there is some humor to it … and it ends on a better note. Still it might not be everyone’s cup of tea at this time. Hope your week is better !
I want to read that CIA book definitely, I love books like that. Enjoy your books and stay safe, hopefully this will all be over sooner rather than later,
Hey Cindy: thanks for stopping by. The CIA book was pretty revealing & personal so it does draw one in from the beginning. I think we have a ways yet till this quarantine age is over …. but I will stay hopeful. Stay safe!
I often find myself distracted too.
Have you watched Covert Affairs? It’s one of my favourite tv series, it features a young woman who is recruited into the CIA. It likely bears almost no resemblance to the truth but it’s fun to watch.
Wishing you a great reading week, good health and a Happy Easter
Hey thanks Shelleyrae. I haven’t seen Covert Affairs but I should check it out. I like the female spy kinds of series. So thanks for telling me about it. Sounds good to me and I’ll need another after Homeland Season 8 finishes which will be soon. take care there!
I’m finding it hard to read. Concentration is part of it, but the other is that I’m trying to entertain my 9 year old best I can so I feel guilty if I spend too much time reading when I could/should be doing something with him. I carve out time when he sleeps or when he plays video games in the eventing. Separation Anxiety has been on my radar for a few weeks. Be healthy 🙂
Hey Stacy, thanks for stopping by. It seems really tough on parents at home these days juggling everything. I can imagine we all are going to go stir crazy at some point. Reading at night has its own challenges. Like staying awake 🙂 You might like Separation Anxiety — although the woman is going thru quite a bit in the story.
I haven’t, but The German House sounds interesting!
I was havign trouble reading, but that has passed and now ALL I want to do is read. Writing has become difficult. Maybe because if I’m at my computer I’m going to check the NYT or the Johns Hopkins coronavirus tracker…it’s a toxic rabbit hole. My self-control is nil.
Other than that, we’re fine. Inconvenienced, but not having to deal with the pandemic in the way so many people have. It breaks my heart.
Yeah Catherine: reading some of the CV stories has been really heartbreaking. And like you, I’ve been checking the online news way too much. My mind is scattered these days. You might like The German House … as it had various plots going on in the story that kept my attention. The author did much research into the real-life trial that took place in Frankfurt … and what happened.
At first I had a lot of trouble concentrating on a book, but it has gotten a bit easier. It depends on the day. I’ve read a lot of short stories, which seem to be working well for me right now.
If you’re a sports person, it’s a great idea to read sport-y books! I have a couple around here somewhere if the urge takes me!
Hi Naomi, I like sport-y books. I’ll fit one in every once in a while. It’s good you are getting to short stories. I don’t read them as much as I once did but I should. Glad things are getting better for your reading there. hope the virus is not too crazy in your town. Stay well.
Hope you’re doing fine, Susan. My concentration has been on and off. Most of the books I’ve read this year have been 3*, so I’m not sure if it’s me because other readers have been raving about those same books (Hmmm…) The memoir sounds interesting. I’ve seen lots of articles featuring Separation Anxiety as light and quirky, a book for tailored for these crazy times. I would love to read the baseball one–unevenness and all.
Hi Carmen /thanks for the feedback. Yeah I don’t think I’ve read a 2020 novel yet that was five stars either … some have been backlist …. so I don’t think it’s you. We’re waiting for the next great thing. And I hope it comes in the next month or two. I could use a baseball game right about now. take care.