The Cue Card

Hey thanks to everyone who stopped by last week and had nice things to say about the “pretty exciting news,” which I held off sharing until now. So without further ado … can we have a drumroll please … The news, which several of you seemed to have guessed correctly at, is that we’re moving! We bought a house with land in the Alberta countryside about 45 to 50 minutes south of where we live now in the city. Woohoo. It’s a bit of a farm or ranch-style house and even comes with a red barn in the back field, which is quite different for us. (The photo pictured is not where it is but where I went bicycling last week, so keep that mountain view a bit separate in your mind.) 

We’ve been at our present city location for 17 years now, ever since I moved to Canada (first part-time in 2006, then full-time in 2010). We still love our little place here, but we wanted to try something new and different. And we are very surprised it actually happened because others wanted the place too, so it stunned us when the owners picked our offer out of a handful. We were just very lucky it came through. Was it destiny? 

The only trouble is now we have to sell our current house. So it is going on the market in two weeks, while I’m going to be away visiting my parents in California, which I had planned beforehand. I’m not making this stuff up! So we have much to do to get ready, but I think we can pull it off, if we put our pedals to the metal, so to speak. The dogs will probably be a bit bewildered when we start packing up but hopefully all of us will like it in the end. We don’t plan to move into the new house till maybe November as we’ll be doing some fix-ups there first. Though excited, I’m also a bit torn over our old place, which we put our hearts into over these past many years.

So there you have it. The news in a nutshell. And now I’ll leave you with a review of the novel I finished lately. 

Unlikely Animals by Annie Hartnett / Ballantine / 368 pages / 2022

Brief Synopsis: This is about a family who live in a small town in New Hampshire who are going though some strains for various reasons, notably because the father Clive Starling, who had an affair awhile back, is apparently dying now from a rare brain disease. 

My Thoughts: I liked parts of this novel, notably the characters. There’s the daughter: Emma Starling, age 22, known for her healing hands, who returns home after never starting med school in California which they thought she was doing … and her brother Auggie who is a recovering addict to Oxy pills … and Ingrid, their mother who’s unhappy with their father and takes up with the family doctor, and especially the dying father Clive Starling, who is acting a bit unusual due to his brain illness and diagnosis. 

The characters seem pretty likable, especially the colorful personality of Clive and Emma, who wants to spend time and help her Dad before he worsens. While back in her hometown, Emma starts teaching 5th grade at the local school, while trying to figure things out. And Clive wants her to help him find her old best friend Crystal Nash, who’s been missing for a while and people think is dead after getting involved with opioids. And Auggie is in town putting together a play of the Titanic. All this seems enough. 

But somewhere a long the line, the plot and other various components, seem to go a bit overboard and I began to lose some patience with it. There’s voices of local dead people in the cemetery who weigh in along the way, including from the early 20th-century naturalist, Ernest Harold Baynes, who once had a lot of wild animals living on his large estate in town. Then there’s also tangents of the plot involving the opioid crisis, the Crystal Nash missing person case, the kids at Emma’s school, and a pet fox, and a troubled deer that lays waste to the inside of a house. Some of it’s fun, charming, and absurdist stuff (like the deer episode), while other parts just go on a bit too much or overboard. 

I think I’m in the minority of those who didn’t overly love this quirky novel, though I liked how it eventually pulls the family together in a warm-hearted way and its authentic small-town feel. I just lost a bit of patience along the way in how it gets there. I gave the story, which I listened to as an audiobook, 3.5 stars on Goodreads.

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

Hi all, I hope your summer is going great and you’re not sweltering too much. I have been away reffing a provincial junior tennis tournament for 11 hour days in a city 90 minutes north of here, so I was gone all of last week. It was really hot, but now it’s so nice to be home and relax with the dogs and spouse. The girls Stella and Willow have been swimming most days in the river here. They love it and are pros.

I also have some pretty exciting news that came about sort of suddenly, but I think I will share it next week when it’s fully confirmed. I don’t want to jump the gun and then have to retract it. You can try to guess what it might be, if you want or just stay tuned. 

Meanwhile I’m excited that Tuesday is the pub date of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s new novel The Daughter of Doctor Moreau. I was able to snag an early review copy and quite enjoyed it. 

It’s about Carlota, age 20, who lives with her beloved father, a doctor/scientist, on a farm in the outback of the Mexican Yucatan Peninsula in 1877. Carlota had been saved by her father Dr. Moreau when she was young of a serious malady and now he experiments on creating hybrid creatures that are part animal and part human.

So far though he has not perfected their full health or longevity. Still the hybrids live on their property and are Carlota’s best friends, especially since she’s grown up so isolated and without knowing her deceased mother. Yet Dr. Moreau’s benefactor is growing impatient waiting for better results from the doctor’s lab so he can use the hybrids as workers on his land. 

It’s a mysterious plot that lured me from the start, especially with Dr. Moreau’s hiring of a 29-year-old British property caretaker named Montgomery, who seems quite taken by Carlota and drowns his past sorrows in alcohol. Fast-forward six years and life on the farm takes a turn when the benefactor’s son Eduardo falls for Carlota and the unpleased benefactor pulls the farm’s funding and plans to take what he thinks is his. The consequences set off a reckoning that will change everything. 

I found the novel a fun summer read and a page-turner, which is based loosely on the H.G. Wells classic The Island of Doctor Moreau, published in 1896. There’s been a couple of movies made of it, notably the one I recall from 1977 had actor Michael York playing a shipwrecked survivor who comes upon a remote island where a mad scientist is carrying out sinister experiments on the island’s inhabitants. It was scary for me then and I think I only watched glimpses of it.   

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau takes a different tack than the original, re-imaging the story all quite creatively and plausibly on the Yucatan peninsula in 19th-century Mexico. I liked the daughter Carlota’s perspective who seems to find out things about her father’s secrets, lies, and obsessive scientific creations along the way that ruptures her world. Montgomery, too, is an enticing character, who alternates chapters with Carlota and takes up the hybrids’ cause. 

This is my first read of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s books and I was impressed by her writing and historical details of the times. I’d like to read more of her work. Have you read her novels: Mexican Gothic and Velvet Was the Night? This latest novel could be my pick of the summer. It has the allure of being a bit eerie, mysterious, and something you can’t turn away from till you find out what happens. Check it out, if it sounds like something for you.

Thanks to Sabrina at the publisher Del Rey for providing me with a copy to review for my thoughts. 

Next up I listened to the audio of the actor Brian Cox’s 2021 memoir Putting the Rabbit in the Hat, which he narrates well and entertainingly. I normally don’t pick up actor or celebrity memoirs, but every once in a blue moon when something calls to me I’ll do it. For whatever reason, I’ve listened to actor Michael Caine’s 2018 memoir Blowing the Bloody Doors Off and now this one.

At age 75, Brian Cox wrote this looking back on his life and career. I didn’t really know much about him before this but found out he grew up in Dundee, Scotland, with his parents who had a grocery store and his four older siblings. His father died when he was 8 which changed his world, leaving the family dirt poor and his mother with mental problems. He began acting in local theater productions and trained as an actor in London before gaining fame on the London stage and working for the Royal Shakespeare Company, where he played King Lear among other roles. He eventually left for Hollywood becoming a character actor in numerous movies. 

In the book, although he talks a bit about his family life, more time is spent talking about one production he’s done after another. I had no idea he had been in so many plays and movies, including that he played the first Hannibal Lecktor in Manhunter from 1986. Apparently he’s been in hundreds of productions, but what I mostly remember him for is his part as the father in the TV series Succession about a media mogul family, and as Winston Churchill in the movie from 2017. 

He’s a talented actor. But I wonder if readers (like me) are trying to figure out in his book if he is like the mean father he plays in Succession. I didn’t exactly get that sense from the memoir. He seemed pretty good natured recounting his life, his family (he’s been married twice with two kids with each wife), and his thoughts on acting and life lessons. 

But I still wonder a little if he has some prima donna to him. Still his bluntness on a range of topics and his fellow actors make parts of the memoir a bit refreshing and juicy. For instance he has high thoughts  of director Spike Lee but doesn’t think much of Quentin Tarantino. His favorite actor is Spencer Tracy but he looks pretty disparagingly on Johnny Depp and others. He also doesn’t proscribe to “method acting” in playing characters nor does he do much research on roles when he’s playing real people. He says the character is in the script. 

He recounts many of his long-ago productions and co-workers, which I didn’t know so those sort of passed me by. But other mentions of such actors as Laurence Olivier, Peter O’Toole, Judy Dench, and Eva Marie Saint were much appreciated. All in all the memoir was a bit of a mixed bag for me, but still I learned a bit about being on movie and theater sets and how acting works. And he recounts it all pretty entertainingly, though it does run on a bit long. 

That’s all for now. What about you — do you know these authors or actor and what did you think? 

Hi. I hope everyone had a great weekend. Have you been under the heat dome lately? It seems we have been under the rain dome the past couple weeks. Luckily the rivers here seem to have crested so it doesn’t appear they will flood like they did in 2013. This photo was taken on Sunday June 12 when we went for a hike on our anniversary. It was nice to get out in the foothills with the dogs, where everything is quite green. We didn’t run into any bears but kept our eyes peeled as one was spotted in the area. 

It’s a busy time of year and we are off on Friday to vacation back East for a week in the Thousands Islands area of Ontario. It should be a lot of fun and I will report back on how it goes. We are hoping for sunny skies and plenty of bicycling and summer reading. Unfortunately the dogs will have to stay behind with the dog sitter, but the week should go by pretty quickly. And now here are reviews of what I finished lately.

The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa / translated by Stephen Snyder / Picador / 192 pages / 2009

This is a quiet little novel, which I read for my book club and ended up loving. It’s about a housekeeper whose employment agency sends her to work for a 60-year-old man who has memory issues from a car accident that happened when he was 47 … so his memory can only hold things for 80 minutes.

But the housekeeper manages to adapt and work around his disability and comes to respect the Professor for his mind and his ability to teach math so well. He’s a math whiz who solves and wins mathematical contests through the mail since he doesn’t go outside much. And the housekeeper, who narrates the story, is a single mother whose boy comes to stay after school at the Professor’s place while his mother cleans and he does his homework. 

The three form a heartwarming bond over numbers — there’s a surprising amount of math equations in this book — and baseball, but I found both to be oddly enjoyable. And there’s also enough of a mysterious quality about the Professor and his sister-in-law (who oversees his care) … to keep one turning the pages in this short, moving novel. I felt I sort of knew these three and their friendship by the end and it was hard to let them go. This is my second book by Yoko Ogama whose novel The Memory Police I liked quite a bit as well. She’s a big talent in Japan. Here’s a profile of her from the New York Times in 2019.

Hell of a Book by Jason Mott / Dutton / 336 pages / 2021

The novel unfolds in two storylines with the first being about a Black author on a book tour, and the second being about a Black boy named Soot who is bullied a lot at school for the darkness of his skin. The first storyline about the author is quite funny in parts and I had to laugh about how much he seems to dislike talking and answering questions about his bestselling novel on tour. I’m not sure he was meant to go on a publicity tour, though it’s quite funny and spoof-filled about the publishing, book world. 

Along the way, the author who has an excessive imagination begins to see (or not see?) a Kid, who follows him in certain spots and you begin to wonder if the Kid is real or imaginary and what’s happened to him. Meanwhile the second, alternating storyline — about the boy Soot is quite sad and disturbing when he sees a policemen stop his father outside their house. There’s a few police pullovers in this novel that are disturbing. And the author’s examination of the Black experience and events going on today, which make their way into the story, are noteworthy, scary, and moving to hear. 

It’s interesting how the storylines eventually merge and make a strong, cohesive impact. Hell of a Book is more than I thought it’d be at first with the humorous author tour. I listened to the audiobook version read by JD Jackson and Ronald Peet, who both did a great job. With many issues to think about — it’s no wonder the novel won the National Book Award for fiction in 2021.

The Rose Code by Kate Quinn / Morrow / 656 pages / 2021 

This long sweeping novel, which took me nearly two weeks as an audiobook to finish, was a bit of a mixed bag for me. While I liked much of the historical aspects of the Enigma code breakers, particularly the women, at Bletchley Park during WWII and the atmosphere of the Blitz and the war, I thought the romance and relationship-y drama parts of the story seemed to take over a lot of the novel and the three main women characters irked me a bit at times. 

There’s Beth, who’s shy and a smart code breaker, but whose wimpy side can get a bit annoying; then there’s Mab, who marries a lovely poet named Francis Gray, but who lashes out at her close friends when tragedy strikes; and finally Osla, who I seemed to like best, because she snags a relationship with Prince Philip of Greece a couple years before he meets Queen Elizabeth. Having Prince Philip and his one-time real girlfriend as part of the story, I thought was entertaining. Osla has a bit of a party girl image to her (with Philip) – so she is a bit refreshing and you wonder about their pairing and what Philip was like then. Osla is also involved in a wrenching bomb scene that is particularly chilling.

Perhaps other aspects of the story get a bit farfetched along the way. Code breaker Beth gets put in a sanatorium (for what’s believed are indiscretions), but she still manages after a few years to discover a traitor in their midst … who her friends and her band together to try to find and capture after the war, which seems all well and good for a rousing culmination. 

Kate Quinn has an easy engaging way about her storytelling and how she weaves it all together, which rightfully earns her a lot of kudos. My only quibbles with the book is that I think I was looking for something a little bit more substantial or less romance-y in a historical tale about the lives and code-breaking of those at Bletchley Park. Perhaps I should read some memoirs and nonfiction to delve deeper into the particulars. I remember liking the 2014 movie The Imitation Game, which was about the Enigma code breakers, and there’s plenty of other books on the subject.

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

Hi. Happy June. Summer seems almost in full swing now even though it doesn’t officially start for a couple more weeks. It’s high pollen season here, and there’s quite a bit of yellow dust on the deck and walkways. But the lilacs are out, and our dog Willow likes having her picture taken near them.

Meanwhile, it’s been busy. We’ve had company come through town, a couple job projects to finish, and soon we’ll be going on vacation in a couple weeks back East. We’ll be staying at a cottage in the Thousand Islands area along the St. Lawrence River, near where my husband grew up, so it’ll be a bit like old times before the pandemic.

Hopefully it’ll be just the place for summer reading. I’m not exactly sure how I picked my list this year, but it includes books that either came out earlier this year, or are due out this summer. Some are books I’ve mentioned before on the blog and haven’t gotten to yet, and a few others are novels that I have advanced readers copies of, while others are just ones that seem interesting to me. I don’t think I picked many thrillers this year because I decided I usually don’t like them as much as I want to. But I tried to weave in a few lighter ones with the deeper ones to make an enticing mix. See what you think.

The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka / Feb. 22 / Knopf / 192 pages
From the award-winning author of The Buddha in the Attic comes a novel about what happens to a group of obsessed recreational swimmers when a crack appears at the bottom of their local pool.
Why I want to read it: This author is said to be top-notch, and it sounds poignant about an older woman swimmer who’s slowly losing her memory.

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus / April 5 / Doubleday /400 pages
Meet Elizabeth Zott: a one-of-a-kind scientist in 1960s California whose career takes a detour when she becomes the unlikely star of a beloved TV cooking show.
Why I want to read it: it’s been hugely popular and I’m hoping it’s a fun story.

Trust by Hernan Diaz / May 3 / Riverhead / 416 pages
“A genre-bending, time-skipping story about New York City’s elite in the roaring ’20s and Great Depression.” – Vanity Fair /
Why I want to read it: The structure of this novel seems interesting and is said to make the story seem like a puzzle to solve.

River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile by Candice Millard / May 17 / Doubleday / 368 pages
The harrowing story of one of the great feats of exploration of all time and its complicated legacy.
Why I want to read it: This was an epic undertaking to try to find the source of the Nile, and Richard Burton was said to be one of the best explorers ever.

The Lunar Housewife by Caroline Woods /June 14 /Doubleday / 320 pages
A stylish and suspenseful historical page-turner set in the 1950s that follows an up-and-coming journalist who stumbles onto a web of secrets, deceptions, and mysteries at a popular new literary magazine.
Why I want to read it: This novel seems to have some Cold War intrigue about it.

Winter Work by Dan Fesperman /July 12 / Knopf /352 pages
An exhilarating spy thriller inspired by a true story about the precious secrets up for grabs just after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Why I want to read it: I’m liking the spy and Cold War stuff these days.

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia /Del Rey/July 19
From the New York Times bestselling author of Mexican Gothic comes a dreamy reimagining of The Island of Doctor Moreau set against the backdrop of nineteenth-century Mexico.
Why I want to read it: I remember the 1977 movie of this and it was spooky.

On Java Road by Lawrence Osborne / Hogarth / Aug. 2 / 256 pages
A veteran British journalist living in Hong Kong investigates the disappearance of a student protester during the 2019 uprisings in this atmospheric novel.
Why I want to read it: The author is said to be a good writer and the subject seems intriguing.

Cyclorama by Adam Langer / Bloomsbury / Aug. 2 / 352 pages
The deeply moving, propulsive story of ten teenagers in 1982 brought together by a high school production of The Diary of Anne Frank that will shape and influence the rest of their lives, jumping forward to 2016.
Why I want to read it: The Diary of Anne Frank left a mark on me as well.

Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid / Ballantine / Aug. 30
In this powerful novel about the cost of greatness, a legendary pro tennis player attempts a comeback in 1994 when the world considers her past her prime.
Why I want to read it: I’m a tennis fan who has played the sport all my life so this premise is up my alley.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read any of these, or do you have any of them on your radar? And do you have a summer list?

Happy Memorial Day weekend. Woohoo, feels like the start of summer. It’s good to be back on the blog. We had our May long weekend last weekend, and I was busy playing in a tennis doubles tournament. We lost in the finals, but it was fun; my partner from Vancouver and I enjoyed playing. And now it feels good that June is nearly here. It’s one of those lovely times of year when we can open up the windows and be neither too cold or hot. Though it’s been pretty dry and windy so we could use some rain so we don’t turn into a dustbowl too early. I planted our first tomato and zucchini plants along our back fence, and I have much more gardening to do.

Next weekend I’ll put out a Preview post of notable new June releases and then perhaps the following week my pick of summer reads. Can you believe it’s already that time of year?! We’re about at the halfway point. Do you have any summer trips and plans ahead? We have a week at the end of June to visit back East, but I’ll tell you more about that later. And now I’ll leave you with a couple reviews of what I finished lately. 

The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb / Anchor /352 pages/ 2022

I enjoyed this slow-burn mystery about a very valuable Stradivarius violin that gets stolen. And Ray, the talented violinist who it belongs to, is a winsome protagonist whose story growing up as a Black classical musician in North Carolina is an interesting eye-opener. All the stuff and racism he has to face and go through is never-ending, and yet he perseveres with his skill and love of music.

Ray’s beloved grandmother gave him her grandfather’s violin, which he only finds out later is a valuable instrument, but then he’s sued by his own family for the violin (worth $10 million) as well as the ancestors of his great grandfather’s slave owning master. It gets pretty dicey when they all want Ray’s money and violin, but he loves performing with it and doesn’t plan to sell, especially since his beloved grandmother gave it to him before she died.  

Then right as Ray is due to go to Moscow to compete in the world-renown Tchaikovsky Competition his violin is taken from his New York City hotel room and a ransom note of $5 million is left. Will he find out who did it in time? And will he win the competition? You have to stick to the very end to find out what happens. 

I enjoyed this mystery and coming-of-age tale, which I listened to on audio read expertly by JD Jackson (my fourth by this actor). Maybe the novel could have been a little trimmed in places, but the background information about Ray’s life is all pretty good. Overall it’s an enjoyable and potent debut from an author whose knowledge of playing in orchestras as a professional violinist made the story seem all the more authentic. 

The Daughters of Yalta: The Churchills, Roosevelts, and Harrimans: A Story of Love and War by Catherine Grace Katz / Mariner / 317 pages / 2020 

I both read and listened to this nonfiction book. It’s a 5-star read that tells the fascinating true story of the three famous leaders who took their daughters to help them at the Yalta Conference in 1945, towards the end of WWII. Kathleen Harriman (age 27), Sarah Churchill (age 30), and Anna Roosevelt (38, a mother of three) and their Dads are brought vividly to life in this little-known history that impressed me with the women’s contributions at Yalta as well as their devotion to their fathers. 

Kathleen had been working with her Ambassador father (Averell Harriman) in Moscow for the 15 months prior to the conference and was sent ahead to the Crimea to help prepare the venue, which had been plundered by the Nazis. Sarah, meanwhile, was a stage actress-turned Royal Air Force officer whose father Prime Minister Winston Churchill relied on for her astute mind; and Anna, once an editor at the Seattle Intelligencer, had become an aide at the White House to her father President Roosevelt, and managed his schedule at the conference while trying to protect his health. 

Yalta on the Crimean Peninsula was not an easy conference to get to, especially for the ailing President Roosevelt, who ended up dying two months after the conference ended, but the Big Three Allied leaders (Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin) had much to discuss about the end of WWII and how to build a lasting peace. So they journeyed far and wide to get there, with Roosevelt and Churchill stopping first in Malta, and then taking a long flight and car journey to get to the Crimean Peninsula, where the U.S. and British delegations were put up in palaces once used by the czars, while Stalin and the Russians stayed at a villa. 

The conference, which took place over a week in early February 1945, seemed to have profound effects on its participants, who were seeking cooperation and trust of one another while facing many obstacles. And the three women were affected by some of the terrible things they’d seen during the war — particularly Sarah Churchill during the Blitz and Kathy Harriman who was sent to witness the mass graves of Polish officers at Katyn Forest in the Soviet Union. While in Crimea, the women took tours around the area and witnessed the war’s devastation to Sevastopol, Yalta, and to starving POW soldiers.  

What becomes clear in this account is how the three daughters (all quite young) rose to the occasion in helping their fathers, whom they adored, during this very important time, where so much was a stake. And though the three women never became close friends, they shared this time in history together and it became one of the highlights of their lives.

Katz’s book is a fascinating view — that combines telling about the important issues discussed at Yalta and the various figures and sides there — with the relations of the fathers and daughters and what happens to them once they leave the conference. Unfortunately many of the conference’s commitments and good intentions were fleeting as the Soviets soon expanded into Eastern Europe, and it was criticized for contributing to the Cold War.

I was surprised by the prevalence of divorce, death, and the suicide of loved ones that seemed to touch on the women’s lives. But sadly that wasn’t uncommon to those who experienced WWII. It’s a story that kept me turning the pages to find out what became of Kathy, Sarah, and Anna — remarkable women living through difficult and extraordinary times.

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