Frigid Days and The Guest

Posted on January 17, 2024 by Susan

Hi All. We are just coming out of a deep Arctic freeze here, which we were in for about five days. Ouch. At one point it was like -40 (without windchill), which I think is my new record for cold since I’ve lived in Canada. I had my husband “walk” the dogs during the time, lol. Did you get any of the freeze? Now we’re back to regular winter temps and it feels easy in comparison. Even with a snowstorm upon us, it’s much better than a freeze like that.

My reading year is starting off okay, though I feel I’m already getting a bit behind, ha. I had some Publishers Weekly assignments due. Do you remember Adelle Waldman, the author of the 2013 novel The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.? Well she has a new novel coming out in March called Help Wanted, which is a workplace kind of story about a group of box-store workers in Upstate New York and the conditions they face. Adelle is a thoughtful author and I got to do a Q&A with her for PW, see that here. To research her novel, she actually worked at a box-store for about six months and found her co-workers hardworking and funny, but the conditions they faced were pretty unstable and hard to make a living doing.

Also I just came upon a Jan. 2 article in The Post by Stephanie Merry titled “When should you give up on a book? Readers weigh in.” I think it says a lot of readers give a book about 50 pages before deciding whether to stick with it or not. Though some readers bail after a couple of sentences, while others slog through a book to the bitter end. What is your rule of thumb for whether to keep on going with a book?

I must admit I’m usually a “slogger” and I rarely DNF books once I decide to pick them up. Ugh, I know It’s crazy — life is short etc. — but if you do enough research on what you’re going to read beforehand and what appeals to you, then you often don’t run into situations where you dislike a book so much to discontinue it. But once in a blue moon you will, and then it’s either bail or slog. I often think the book might get better so I should stick with it, which perhaps is just wishful thinking, though it can come true occasionally.

And now I’ll leave you with a review of a novel that I finished at the start of the year.

The Guest by Emma Cline / Random House / 304 pages / 2023


4.2 stars. Emma Cline is a master of outsider protagonists who do bad things — the antiheroes. I loved this one: it’s dark, edgy and unsettling — about a 22-year-old girl (Alex) who’s broke and has left the city and an N.Y. apartment full of roommates and a guy named Dom she stole money from — and snagged a rich man (Simon) twice her age on Long Island. She’s living with him for a month or so in his big house with the pool and near the beach but after one false move she’s out and left to make her way with nothing but a bag with a few clothes and a spotty phone that fell in the pool.

She ingratiates herself with a guy or two and bums a couple places to stay. She plans just to stay afloat for a week till she’ll crash Simon’s Labor Day party and try to get back together with him. But until then, she’s left to meander the gated places she’s not a part of. Meanwhile she’s scared that Dom, the guy she stole money from is after her. Along the way, she gets entangled with those she imposes on and leaves a line of destruction in her wake.

This is a fast read. One that stays with you after the last pages turn. Alex has some good sides and bad sides about her that was hard to turn away from. I probably liked the novel a bit more than others on Goodreads since its overall rating is just 3.34. This rating might be because Alex is sort of conniving and the story is a bit dark. Still to me, Cline puts you right there and takes you with this person, barely getting by, who you want to see not fail, despite her not being very likable. Maybe I liked the novel a smidge more than Cline’s 2016 debut novel The Girls, about a young girl who gets caught up in a cult in 1969 California, which was good but creepy. Cline’s still only 34 and a talent to watch.

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

Posted in Books | 48 Comments

Stats and Favorites of 2023

Posted on January 9, 2024 by Susan

Hi All. It’s time to take a look back at my reading for 2023 and see how I did and what I liked. It’s a bit weird but in terms of stats I would say it was sort of an off-year for me. I think because we moved in 2023 and were fixing and selling the old house and trying to renovate the new one, my head and time for reading were a bit skewed. I listened to many audios while I was driving the hour back and forth between the city and the rural place. Luckily in the end, it worked out and the move was completed and it’s been a happy change. So LoL that’s my qualifier.

Also I’m often a mood reader so it’s interesting to see what I picked up this year. I don’t plan much in advance. It looks like I still need to read more diverse authors and books from other countries, not to mention more nonfiction? Nah, fiction is my favorite. But I like that I read many new-to-me authors and they broadened my horizons. And now without fewer adieu, here are my stats and favorites for 2023.

Stats: 60 books completed & reviewed
Fiction — 50
Nonfiction — 10
Female authors — 46
Male authors — 14
White authors — 48
Non-White authors — 13
Print books — 28
Audiobooks — 32
American authors — 34
Canadian authors — 9
British authors — 4
Irish authors — 3
French authors — 2
Australian authors — 3
Brazilian author — 1
Turkish author —1
German author — 1
Malaysian author — 1
Zambian/African authors — 1

Favorite Fiction


1) Demon Copperhead was an epic read for me. It’s gritty but how Kingsolver weaves her Appalachian tale along the lines of the Dickens classic is nothing less than remarkable.
2) I was pleased to finally get to Gil Adamson’s The Outlander from 2007, which transported me with its journey of a female fugitive on the run in 1903.
3) The Nightbitch surprised me with its darkly funny and satirical look of a harried first-time mother on the brink … transforming into something feral.
4) In the past, I’ve been drawn in by Mary Lawson’s storytelling, and her tales set in small hamlets in northern Ontario hit the heart. A Town Called Solace is my favorite of hers.
5) The Light Pirate surprised me early in 2023 with its strong page-turning tale of climate change run amok in Florida.
6) Yellowface turned into my fun audio of the summer with its clever rendering and diabolical narrator that wouldn’t let go.
7) I had to listen to This Other Eden twice through to fully grasp it but found myself taken in by its lyrical passages and the terrible displacement of the people on the island.
8) Small Mercies is a powerful gritty crime novel set in Boston in 1974. The strong character of Mary Pat Fennessey blew me out of the water.
9) Fiona McFarlane is a new favorite Australian author whose two novels I read this year. Her unsettling tale The Night Guest about an elderly woman’s care didn’t disappoint.
10) The Personal Librarian is historical fiction that introduced me to the real life story of Bella da Costa Greene whose courage and life were amazing and challenging.
11) Eastbound is a novella that drew me in with its intense circumstances of two people in flight on the Trans-Siberian railway.
12) Study for Obedience is a very strange novel with a solitary narrator who is an off-kilter mess. But her unsettling circumstances stuck with me for quite a while after.

Favorite Debut Novels
1) Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder (2021)
2) Trespasses by Louise Kennedy (2022)
3) The Night Guest by Fiona McFarlane (2013)
4) Memphis by Tara M. Stringfellow (2022)
5) Lucky Red by Claudia Cravens (2023)
6) Go As a River by Shelley Read (2023)
7) City Under One Roof by Irish Yamashita (2023)
8) Maame by Jessica George (2023)
9) This Bird Has Flown by Susanna Hoffs (2023)

Favorite Memoirs /Biographies
1) Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You by Lucinda Williams (2023)
2) The Churchill Sisters: The Extraordinary Lives of Winton and Clementine’s Daughters by Rachel Trethewey (2021)
3) On Hitler’s Mountain: Overcoming the Legacy of a Nazi Childhood by Irmgard A. Hunt (2005)
4) You Could Make This a Beautiful Place by Maggie Smith (2023)
5) Better Living Through Birding: Notes From a Black Man in the World by Christian Cooper (2023)
6) Run Towards the Danger by Sarah Polley (2022)
7) Left on Tenth by Delia Ephron (2022)

Classics
1) Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin (1956)
2) My Antonia by Willa Cather (1918)
3) The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin (1963)

Favorite Crime novels
1) Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane (2023)
2) I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai (2023)
3) Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (2023)
4) The Last Ranger by Peter Heller (2023)
5) City Under One Roof by Iris Yamashita (2023)

Coming-of-Age Fiction
1) The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue (2023)
2) Lucky Red by Claudia Cravens (2023)
3) Maame by Jessica George (2023)

Historical Fiction
1) The Personal Librarian by Marie Bennedict & Victoria Christopher Murray
2) This Other Eden by Paul Harding
3) The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak
4) The Postcard by Anne Berest
5) The Sleeping Car Porter by Suzette Mayr
6) Hang the Moon by Jeannette Walls

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

Posted in Books | 42 Comments

January Preview

Posted on January 3, 2024 by Susan

Happy 2024 everyone. It’s my first post of the year and it feels good to be starting over again on a new reading year. I’ll be posting my stats and 2023 favorites next week. Until then I’m sharing my first book of 2024 — which is Emma Cline’s novel The Guest, which came out last May. It’s a dark little character study of a transient on Long Island.

I’ll wait to say more when I review it, but Cline will likely become an automatic read for me in the future because although her fiction seems to have a grim edginess to it, she can write like the wind and she remains a young novelist to watch. I liked her creepy 2016 debut novel The Girls and now this one too. Both have a dark vibe to them but also have a perceptive lens on things that’s skewered to perfection. 

Now let’s look at what’s releasing this month. I continue to like compiling these Preview posts as they help point me in a direction about what’s coming out and what might be good. First off, I’m curious about the novel Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino (due out Jan. 16) about a woman who makes a life for herself among humans in Philadelphia although she is in fact from a faraway planet. She’s been sent here to report back on the oddities of humans, and at a precarious moment she’s urged to share her message with the world.

I think it’s not really hard sci-fi but more literary fiction that’s a comic critique on social conventions of the day. I have not read this author before, but her two other novels 2 a.m. at the Cat’s Pajamas and Parakeet were widely praised along with this new one too. 

Another highly touted novel is the debut by Leo Vardiashvili called Hard by a Great Forest, due out Jan. 30, which follows a Londoner’s dark journey home to his native country — the former Soviet Republic of Georgia — to search for his missing father and brother. From amid the rubble and rebuilding, the publisher’s blurb says, “one family must rescue one another and put the past to rest; a stirring novel about what happens after the fighting is over.”

Written by a refugee from Georgia, who fled the country along with his family when he was 12, this author’s debut is said to be a powerful story about a family’s long-lost homeland. 

Next up is Karl Marlantes Cold War suspense novel called Cold Victory (due out Jan. 9),which is set in Finland in 1946 about two military attaches (one American, the other Russian) who challenge each other to a secret 500-kilometer cross-country wilderness ski race. But later the press finds out and spins it into a proxy battle between democracy and communism, upping the ante and the suspense once the race is underway.

I have not read this author yet, but his 2010 debut novel Matterhorn about the Vietnam War is still widely talked about and heralded. 

Meanwhile there’s quite a few new TV shows starting this month that might be appealing. HBO has been advertising the heck out of True Detective Season 4 called Night Country (starting Jan. 14 on Max), which stars Jodie Foster as a detective in Alaska who investigates the disappearance of eight men from a research station. Uh-oh. Can Jodie and her partner handle it? There are six episodes, one releasing each Sunday through February. And if you think Alaska looks cold, think again, the series was filmed in Iceland. 

Another murder/mystery series is The Woman in the Wall on BBC One starting Jan. 21, which stars Ruth Wilson as a woman who thinks she’s going a bit kooky due to all her sleepwalking when she finds a dead body in her house and she has no idea whose it is. Uh-oh. Will Ruth’s character get a grip in time?

Though maybe the series Expats (starting on Prime Jan. 26) might be better? It’s based on the 2016 novel The Expatriates by Janice Y.K. Lee and follows the lives of a tight-knit group of expatriates that includes Nicole Kidman living in Hong Kong.

Apparently author Janice Y. K. Lee is the daughter of Korean immigrants who grew up in Hong Kong and left for the U.S. with her family when she was 15. Hmm. I remember her novel The Piano Teacher and I’d like to read The Expatriates too — perhaps before seeing the series.

Another series you might watch for is the war drama Masters of the Air (on AppleTV+ starting Jan. 26), which follows the lives of eleven Allied men in a bomber plane who battle German fighters during WWII. It’s a companion series to Band of Brothers (2001) and The Pacific (2010), and has a large cast that includes Austin Butler, who starred in Elvis, as the lead. I repeat: Austin Butler is in this.

Also, speaking of WWII, a powerful and chilling movie looks to be The Zone of Interest (out in wide release Jan. 7), which is based loosely on the 2014 novel by Martin Amis, that centers on Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoss and his wife (played by actress Sandra Huller) as they strive to build a dream life next to the concentration camp. Scary. The movie has received high critical acclaim, so if I can gather my courage, we might see it.

But if that’s too much war for you then you might check out Season 2 of Feud: Capote vs. the Swans on FX starting Jan. 31. I did not see Season 1 of this docudrama series (I’m not even sure we get FX up here?), but that season chronicled the rivalry between Bette Davis (played by Susan Sarandon) and Joan Crawford (played by Jessica Lange) during the filming of the movie Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? Did anyone see Season 1 of Feud? The new season is Capote vs. the Swans which stars a slew of actresses, including Catherine Zeta-Jones, Calista Flockhart, Naomi Watts, and Diane Lane among others. So see what you think. 

And lastly in music releases I’ll pick the new album by Green Day called Saviors, which is their fourteenth studio album due out on Jan. 19. The band will embark on a large world tour thereafter. My husband and I once saw them in concert in Ottawa and it was fun, but I’m pretty old now, lol. Here’s the band’s new song called The American Dream Is Killing Me and the zombie video that goes with it. Lol.

That’s all for now. What about you — which releases are you looking forward to it? Happy 2024.

Posted in Top Picks | 38 Comments

Let It Snow

Posted on December 28, 2023 by Susan

Hi all. I hope everyone is well and enjoying their holiday break. We are getting close to 2024 now, so I hope you have chosen your first book to read in the new year. I plan to share my first book next week. Meanwhile we just got back from a little road trip a couple hours away where we took the dogs to go cross-country skiing.

Well, really my husband went to ski and I read because I’m not supposed to do sports yet due to my new knee. I need to wait till about three months post-surgery to commence activities. Right now I just passed my one-month mark, yay. But the snow in Western Canadian has not been good so far. It’s so minimal that people are rock skiing, I think. My husband took the dogs mostly hiking instead.

Over break we’ve seen two pretty good movies. We streamed the murder, courtroom drama Anatomy of a Fall, which is a French movie (mostly told in English) that’s a bit unsettling. The court case reveals the turbulence between a wife, who’s a writer, and her husband, and the thoughts of their blind son on what might have happened between them.

The movie goes on a bit long in the middle section but then has a pretty absorbing ending. German actress Sandra Hüller stars and is pretty convincing in the role. Critics seemed to like this crime drama and it wound up on various Best Of lists. We thought it was pretty compelling and gave it a thumbs up.

Next we watched the biographical movie Maestro about composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein on Netflix. Whoa Bradley Cooper stars, directed, and co-wrote the script for this film, which focuses on the relationship between Bernstein and his wife Felicia, played by British actress Carey Mulligan.

Much of the acting in this is terrific from both actors, and the music is alluring. Their marriage certainly had its tough challenges hidden from the world but also its very close connection. I know Cooper received a lot of flak for using a fake nose for the role, but it didn’t seem to distract me from the story. In many scenes, Cooper looked quite a bit like the Maestro himself … who it turns out was a complex man personally as well as a big chainsmoker. The movie, which explores this as well as his musical genius, was done to interesting effect.

And now I’ll leave you with a couple reviews of the last books I completed in 2023.

City Under One Roof by Iris Yamashita / Berkley / 304 pages / 2023


3.7 stars. It’s not often I read a thriller type mystery/crime novel, but I enjoyed this debut and the pages flew by quickly. It has great atmosphere — set in a small wintry hamlet in Alaska where most of the residents live in a big apartment-like building.

Then the town gets cut off when a storm and avalanche closes the road out and Detective Cara Kennedy (from Anchorage) gets stuck there investigating a case of body parts found on a beach of a nearby cove. Cara has had her own family tragedies and has come to the town to see if there’s a link with the case. She partners with local cop JB and they make a good duo.

The story is told in alternating chapters by three women: Cara (the detective); Amy, a teenager who finds the bodies and lives in the big apartment building; and Lonnie, a woman with some mental disability who might know about some evidence. They are all pretty well-rendered, but the detective’s chapters seem the most compelling. I will likely follow Det. Kennedy who’s also in the author’s next novel coming in February 2024 called Village in the Dark, set once again in a chilly Alaska locale.

You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith / Atria /320 pgs /2023


This was my last book and last audio of the year, which is narrated by the author. Granted I didn’t know anything about this memoir when I picked it up. In a dumb way, I thought it was about the other Maggie Smith, the British actress, but no it’s about the American poet from Ohio, whom I didn’t know about before this. Now I do, and quite a bit! She lays her life out pretty open and bare for all to see.

Her whole book is a series of short snapshots about her life with her two young kids, and the divorce she went through with her husband of some 18 years. It’s a divorce memoir through and through! The author, who tried to save the marriage after finding out about her husband’s infidelity, is just crushed by the long torturous split and ordeal with her once soulmate. They were said to be the last couple who’d ever get a divorce. But after counseling the marriage couldn’t be saved and he moved away to another state much to the sorrows of their family.

Maggie powerfully and lyrically as a poet tells about their split as she agonizes and feels the intense pain of it, the dissolution happening during the pandemic. After I started, I wondered if I should even be listening to the book during Christmas break? It was sad and I felt for the author. But maybe the book had lessons: like don’t take your partner for granted? Watch for the signs? I think for those who are going through a divorce or have, this book might be very helpful and consoling and something appealing to grab onto like a life raft for survival.

I thought the parts about Maggie’s work life and how her life as a writer or freelancer were not treated equally or as respectfully with that of her husband’s work life – pretty revealing and I think it spoke to a lot of couples’ work lives. One person’s is often at the expense of the other’s. I hope Maggie is in a better place now, various years later after her divorce. She certainly was in a dark place going through this, yet she also yields some humor and essential truths in writing about the experience.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these books or seen these movies — and if so, what did you think? Happy New Year.

Posted in Books, Movies | 42 Comments

Sleigh Bells Ring

Posted on December 19, 2023 by Susan

Greeting friends and readers! I hope you put your final book requests into Santa, your partner, and family members and that you receive a slew of new reads on Christmas Day, or over the holidays. Don’t we deserve it? I think so. We need new reads to propel us into 2024.

Meanwhile I happened to be at the local pet store when my husband spotted Santa in a booth taking requests. We rounded up Willow, on the left, and Stella, on the right, and tried to get a picture, though Willow turned out to be terrified of Santa, and Stella just wanted treats. So the end result is the girls and me look a bit funny. Still Santa was a good sport and tried to appease our Labs by taking their requests. Willow wants balls and toys, while Stella wants goodies and food of any sort, lol.

Anyways, I wanted to wish everyone a wonderful holiday and good times with their families. I probably won’t post next till after Christmas. Until then I will leave you with reviews of two short books that I finished lately.

So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan / Grove Press / 128 pages / 2023

4 stars. Sometimes it’s a bit hard to give a rating to a small collection of three short tales. But there’s enough in each one that made me think and made me mark a few particularly well-construed sentences. The first story So Late in the Day (2022) is the one most recently written — about a man whose subtle misogyny unravels his future plans with a woman he dates. The final sentence of that one is a whopper. You might like to check out how the author Claire Keegan reads the story herself, which can be listened to here.

The second story The Long and Painful Death (from 2007) is about a woman on a writing retreat who’s interrupted when a male professor insists on a tour of the place when she first arrives. The woman in this story seems the strongest of the bunch and sets out to right the obnoxious intrusion by writing a twist to her next story. The last story Antarctica (from 1999) is the darkest tale about a woman who has a weekend fling with a male stranger that ends with terrible consequences. This one lured me the most. I like some of its lines and its ending is quite haunting. Two of these stories were from previous collections, though all three tales in this collection seem to share similar themes of male transgressions and the fraught relations between the sexes. Irish author Keegan continues to be a tour de force especially with short fiction.

Her unsettling story Antarctica reminded me of other spooky tales, so I’ve made a list here of some of the most unsettling tales I’ve come across over the years by female writers. Have you read any of these short stories below? I have read all but two, those with the asterisks I’ve not read, but I’d like to get to. Do you have any scary ones to add?

  • The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
  • The Doll (1937) by Daphne du Maurier *
  • The Lottery (1948) by Shirley Jackson
  • The Demon Lover (1941) by Elizabeth Bowen *
  • A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1953) by Flannery O’Connor
  • Where Are Going, Where Have You Been (1966) by Joyce Carol Oates
  • Antarctica (1999) by Claire Keegan
  • Stone Mattress (2014) by Margaret Atwood

Eastbound by Maylis de Kerangal / translated from French by Jessica Moore / Archipelago Books / 137 pages / 2023

4 stars. This consists of a short but hellish ride on the Trans-Siberian railway, in which Russian conscripts have filled a train headed to some barracks in an unknown Russian location. But Aliocha, 20, is having second thoughts about going and when some soldiers on the train rough him up, he decides he wants to escape his conscription and whatever abuse awaits him there. He meets a French woman named Helene in first class, who’s fleeing her Russian lover, and together they form an understanding despite not being able to speak each other’s language. She will try to help him hide and escape. But there’s not much room, or time left on the train that is hurtling onward.

It’s a novel that first came out in France in 2012, but it feels very current to today’s Russian conscripts headed to Ukraine. In that way it’s quite hair-raising. The descriptions on the train and the fast pace of the writing drew me in from the get-go. Will Aliocha be found out and the two detained? Or will their alliance be able to allude capture? The atmosphere is quite tense and one easy to imagine.

I listened to the audio narrated by Jennifer Pickens who does a great job. And I’m glad to have found out about this novel after it was picked by the New York Times as one of its 10 Best Books of the Year in 2023, whoa. That’s pretty good for a slim novel that was written over 10 years go. It’s the first time it’s been translated into English and is only bout 128 pages, but it’s quite an evocative train ride.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read any of these books or short stories, and if so, what did you think? Happy Holidays! Ps. I’m three weeks post-op now and my new knee is doing well. I am starting to go to physio appointments this week. 🙂

Posted in Books | 36 Comments

Movie Season

Posted on December 11, 2023 by Susan

Hi. I hope everyone one is doing well and enjoying the holiday season. We had some snow last week so it looks like we might have a white Christmas after all, yay. At least there’s enough for my husband and dogs to do some cross-country skiing.

Meanwhile you might have noticed that I didn’t post a December Preview edition this month because of my knee surgery, but we should probably chat about possible movies to see this holiday season. It’s typically the time of year for some of the best movies to come out, so I have listed various ones below that are on my list to see. Let me know what you think, if you plan to see these, or if I’m missing any notable ones.

Over the weekend we watched two movies that were pretty decent. First Leave the World Behind based on the 2020 novel by Rumaan Alam is a doozy about a family whose vacation getaway to a luxurious rental home turns ominous when some kind of disturbance knocks out their devices and two strangers appear at their door. Uh-oh.

I liked the novel so I was geared up for the Netflix movie, which stars Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, and Ethan Hawke among others. It’s quite an unsettling, eerie story that made me worry about an attack and the end of the world. It’s better not to say too much so as not to ruin it, but the movie seems to go beyond the novel. It takes the story further, changes a couple things, and clarifies a bit more what’s happened. I thought it was effective — maybe not as good as the book — but it’s still mysterious and chilling. 

We also watched the Joan Baez documentary I am a Noise — in which the legendary folk singer takes a look back at her life while she concludes her last musical concert tour. The doc follows her life: her family, musical career, relationships (including with Bob Dylan) and activism.

She was only a teenager in 1958 when she began singing in clubs around Boston and then her breakthrough came performing at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival. The rest is pretty much history as she skyrocketed to fame and sang and made music for the next six decades. It’s quite a story and the photos and footage from her early years are particularly wonderful, but it’s also surprising how personal the doc gets, spending a lot of time on Baez’s mental struggles and conflicts within her family. I guess I would have liked a bit more on the music and a tad less on her private demons. Still it’s worth seeing. 

Now below are a list of recent and upcoming movies, mostly in order of their release, which I hope to check out:

  1. Anatomy of a Fall — A courtroom drama set in France about a woman writer trying to prove her innocence in her husband’s death, which also takes a toll on her son. (Stars Sandra Huller).
  2. The Holdovers —  A comedy-drama set in 1970 about a cranky history teacher at a New England boarding school who is forced to chaperone a handful of students with nowhere to go over Christmas break. Stars Paul Giamatti. 
  3. May December (Netflix) — Based on the teacher Mary Kay Letourneau who had an illegal relationship with one of her young students. (Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore star).
  4. Priscilla — A biographical-drama based on the memoir by Priscilla Presley about her years with Elvis. Directed by Sofia Coppola.
  5. Maestro (Netflix) — A biographical-drama centered on the relationship between American composer Leonard Bernstein (played by Bradley Cooper) and his wife Felicia Montealegre (played by Carey Mulligan).
  6. American Fiction — (wide release Dec. 22) A comedy-drama that follows a frustrated Black novelist and professor (played by Jeffrey Wright) who jokingly writes a stereotypical “Black” book out of spite, which later is published and receives widespread fame. 
  7. Ferrari — (due out Dec. 25) A biographical sports drama that follows the struggles of Enzo Ferrari, the Italian founder of the car manufacturer, as he pushes his drivers to the edge in a treacherous race across Italy in the summer of 1957. Adam Driver, Shailene Woodley and Penelope Cruz star. 
  8. The Boys in the Boat (due out Dec. 25) — Based on the bestselling book by Daniel James Brown about the University of Washington rowing team and their efforts at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Directed by George Clooney. 
  9. Origin — (wider release Jan. 19) A biographical drama about journalist Isabel Wilkerson, who while grappling with tragedy sets herself on a path of discovery as she writes Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. Ava DuVernay directs.

So there you have it. Do any of these appeal to you? I hope they’ll be good.

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

The Night Guest by Fiona McFarlane / Farrar Straus / 256 pages / 2013

I returned to a backlist read with this debut novel from 2013 because I had read the author’s second novel The Sun Walks Down in September and decided I needed to go back and check this one out too. I wasn’t disappointed. After two novels, Fiona McFarlane is now my new favorite Australian author … which is a high literary honor that once went to the renown Tim Winton but now I’ve passed onto her.

This debut is a squirm-worthy tale about a senior woman named Ruth Field, 75, who’s living in a rural area along the coast of Australia. She’s a fairly recent widow whose two sons call her weekly from abroad to check on her. But for her two cats, Ruth seems pretty isolated and struggling a bit with aging and loneliness. She even hears the sounds of a tiger one night that scares her and makes one wonder if she’s really cognitively sound. 

Then out of the blue a lady arrives named Frida Young who says she’s been sent as a caregiver to help Ruth with everyday life. The two women become quite reliant on one another, and later Ruth reconnects with a long-ago beau (now 80) from her youth growing up as a missionary child in Fiji. You root for Ruth to find happiness and love with Richard in her later years, but then after a few incidences you begin to wonder if Ruth’s not entirely in charge of her faculties and if Frida isn’t really all what she seems. 

That’s when things get a bit squirmy and you need to race to the end to find out what happens. This novel touches on caring for seniors and themes of love, trust, dependence and duplicity. It made me feel sorry for Ruth and want to protect her. 

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

Posted in Books, Movies | 32 Comments

Replacements and Prophets

Posted on December 5, 2023 by Susan

Hi. How is everyone doing? I hope you are enjoying the holiday season. I have been off the blog for a while due to my knee replacement surgery last week. I came home from the hospital on Friday afternoon and I’m getting my bearings. All is fine and I’m on the road to recovery, which right now includes strengthening exercises and plenty of icing. I’m still working to get the swelling down, but it’s coming. My husband and sister-in-law from Vancouver deserve a lot of credit for getting me through. And thanks to all of you for the encouragement and thoughts you sent beforehand. It was much appreciated.  

Before the hospital, I picked out a Christmas tree and we plan to decorate it this weekend. Hopefully the next post will be a bit more Christmassy. I still need to get more into the holiday spirit. I don’t even know where November went?!

In terms of shows lately, we’ve still been alternating episodes of the TV series Lessons in Chemistry (starring Brie Larson) with The Diplomat (starring Keri Russell) along with Bosch: Legacy (Season 2). All three shows are pretty good. I haven’t decided if we’ll return to watching the final season of The Crown (after four episodes) because reliving what happened to Princess Diana in that sad chapter is not really something I’m gravitating to right now.  

Meanwhile in book news, it seems the judges of the Booker Prize surprised a lot of people (me included) when they awarded Irish author Paul Lynch with this year’s Booker Prize for his novel Prophet Song. Oh my, I had to quickly look up what the novel was even about. I guess I was so sure Paul Murray would win for The Bee Sting since those who read it praised it so highly.

But no! It went to Prophet Song instead, which is a slow-burn dystopian novel about a woman’s struggle to protect her family as Ireland collapses into totalitarianism and war. The book only became available in North America today, Dec. 5, so perhaps it’s no wonder not many knew too much about it here. From what I’ve read, I think it has its backers and those who don’t think too much about it. But I’m putting the novel on my list for 2024. Its theme of a democracy falling into an authoritarian state seems timely and one we should all fear and work our hardest to prevent. 

And now I’ll leave you with a review of the only book I finished lately. 

Better Living Through Birding: Notes From a Black Man in the Natural World by Christian Cooper / Random House / 304 pages / 2023

I listened to this nonfiction book narrated by the author and I was taken by his enthusiasm for telling his story and his passion for birding. He covers a lot of ground and at first I didn’t even realize the book would be mainly a memoir of his life story … about his family, his coming out gay, his time at Harvard, his career working at Marvel and such. The book is also a bit of a travelogue about his far-off adventures (he’s traveled widely), and other parts include his birding and tips, as well as his Black activist work on civil rights. So the birding aspect is just one facet in a book with many. 

People might remember Christian Cooper for the awful incident he had in Central Park in May 2020 with a white woman who crazily accused him of threatening her life (when he only asked her to put her dog on a leash since they were in a protected area of the park), but his book is so much more than that one incident. It gives us a great introduction to him as a thoughtful, bright person who seems terrific. Along the way, I liked his strength, courage … and insights about birding and civil rights these days. 

People might have once thought that a black man in NYC being a passionate birder might be a total novelty, but Cooper says that is improving now. More African Americans and other races and ages are getting into birding and wildlife watching, and that’s good for everyone. Thanks to Christian Cooper and others like him. It’s certainly refreshing.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read this book and if so, what did you think? How is your reading going lately?

Posted in Books | 32 Comments

The Last Ranger

Posted on November 22, 2023 by Susan

Hi all. I hope everyone in the States has a very Happy Thanksgiving or wherever you may be. My relatives are gathering in Southern California for the holiday and it should be fun there. Though we are staying put for my knee surgery next week, so we will celebrate it here. Will you be getting a storm where you are or will it be nice and balmy for your turkey day feast?

Lately my husband has put up four bird feeders around the house, including the one in the photo, and we are watching to see which birds appear. I think the seasonal birds have flown south by now, so we are seeing many: Black-Capped Chickadees, House Sparrows, Magpies, Blue Jays, Northern Flickers, Mourning Doves, and Downy Woodpeckers.

Photo By The Ada News

And occasionally we see various other birds such as Pileated Woodpeckers, which are good-sized and have nice red-capped heads, and once this summer we saw a Great Horned Owl. The Northern Flickers (shown at left), which are also in the woodpecker family, have a colorful design to them so it’s nice seeing many of them here. But I have to practice taking pictures of the birds as they fly away at a second’s notice and I miss them. Our recent bird fixation jibes well with my nonfiction audiobook this month of Christian Cooper’s book Better Living Through Birding: Notes From a Black Man in the Natural World. I’m not that far yet, but I’m liking the author’s enthusiasm who narrates it for the audio. 

In other book news, I see that Justin Torres won this year’s National Book Award for fiction for his second novel Blackouts, which according to AP’s Hillel Italie is a “daring and illustrated narrative that blends history and imagination in its recounting of a censored study of gay sexuality.” Torres’s book imagines a conversation between a dying man and the young friend he educates about a real history in 1941 called “Sex Variants.”

Although I don’t think his novel will make my TBR list, it is worth noting that it beat out four other finalists, including Paul Harding’s novel This Other Eden, which I had picked to win, so I’m 0-2 on my literary award guesses so far. Next up, is the Booker Prize announcement on Nov. 26. 

Meanwhile we’ve been alternating watching episodes of Lessons in Chemistry starring Brie Larson as the quirky Elizabeth Zott — with the final season of The Crown starring Elizabeth Debicki as Princess Diana. We all know how that tragedy unfolded and I’m not finding it very easy to watch the tragedy again, though the performances seem pretty well done.

We also finished the four episodes of the miniseries All the Light We Cannot See – the first two episodes seemed pretty good, but the final two episodes seemed quite wobbly and a stretch to believe. Still the theme of a radio program connecting characters across enemy lines is a touching one. I liked the novel quite a bit more than the series. 

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

The Last Ranger by Peter Heller / Knopf / 304 pages / 2023

3.7 stars. I liked the main character of this outdoorsy crime novel named Ren Hopper, who’s an enforcement ranger at Yellowstone National Park. Ren seems burnt out dealing with unruly tourists and those who get into trouble with wildlife. And he’s still grieving over the loss of his wife and his mother’s descent into alcoholism, but he finds refuge in the nature of the park, fishing, and his chats with his friend Hilly, a wolf biologist, who lives in a nearby cabin.

Then while going fishing one day he runs into a man with his dog whom he senses is poaching a bear in the park. The guy Les seems bad news and soon after his friend Hilly is nearly killed in an episode in the park. Meanwhile someone is leaving Ren threatening notes and signs. 

As Ren investigates, the storylines play out in a slow-burn kind of way with plenty of atmosphere of life in the park and info about wildlife, particularly wolves, which were reintroduced to Yellowstone in 1995. I thought Heller intermingled these snippets fairly well without losing sight of the main thread. Towards the end, Ren gets involved in a relationship he doesn’t see coming, though perhaps the reader does. A flurry of action comes in the final stage, which I was waiting for. There’s not much of a surprise with it, but Ren and the perpetrators have their day. 

I sort of wonder if a sequel with Ren might be in the works. He’s a good character and Heller seems at home writing about national parks and life as a ranger, and Ren’s love life might just be going somewhere. I’d be happy to see a sequel. I have listened to four out of the six books written by Peter Heller, which were all outdoorsy/adventure male-propelled novels with a bit of suspense.

This wasn’t my #1 favorite (perhaps The Dog Stars still is), but it was engaging nonetheless. I listened to the audio narrated by Mark Deakins who’s done well reading some of his other titles. I expect another book perhaps next summer. And thanks to Sam over at the blog Book Chase, who also reviewed this novel, for reminding about it.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read this author or seen these shows — and if so, what did you think? Happy Thanksgiving. 

Posted in Books, TV | 42 Comments

Study for Obedience

Posted on November 14, 2023 by Susan

Hi. How is your week? Lately we’ve had many clear days with windy conditions. It was so windy a few days ago it sheared off some large branches from our poplar trees. We spent some of the weekend picking up the debris. We live near the prairies and the foothills here and it’s definitely the windiest place I’ve ever lived. In the summer there’s always a steady wind blowing. 

You might have caught the news that author Sarah Bernstein won Canada’s Giller Prize last night for her novel Study for Obedience. Wow! This surprised me since I sort of thought Eleanor Catton would win for her novel Birnam Wood, but No! Perhaps it’s a bit of an upset. Bernstein, who grew up in Montreal and now lives and teaches in the Scottish highlands, takes home $100K for the win. Congrats to her. The timing couldn’t have been better since I just finished reading Study for Obedience over the weekend (see review below). How apropos. The author’s novel is also on the shortlist for the Booker Prize. Will she win again? That would be quite a coup, but some are guessing Paul Murray’s novel The Bee Sting will win. Though we will have to wait and see on Nov. 26 when the prize will be announced. 

In other news, we’ve been watching and liking the TV series All the Light We Cannot See on Netflix and should finish it in a couple days. The two leads who play the blind French girl Marie-Laure and the German soldier boy Werner seem to be new actors and are pretty refreshing in their roles. With only four episodes in the series, the script seems to move at a brisk pace, faster than the novel it’s based on. Someone said the ending differs from the book, so I will prepare for that.

Also on Netflix we liked the movie Nyad  based on the true story of Diana Nyad’s long-distance attempts with her team to swim from Cuba to Florida in her 60s. It’s quite an interesting and unreal story … and I think Annette Bening spent a couple years training for the role. She’s a dedicated swimmer now. Jodie Foster is also good as her coach and long-time friend Bonnie Stoll, and the shots from the ocean are pretty compelling and put the miraculous feat into perspective.

Earlier we finished the final season (Season 3) of the British crime drama Happy Valley with Sarah Lancashire as Police Sergeant Catherine Cawood and Siobhan Finneran as her once-addicted sister. They’re both excellent in their roles, dealing with a demented bad guy who years ago hurt Catherine’s daughter. But man that small town in Yorkshire is riddled with dark crimes. It’s not exactly a ‘happy’ place. We followed that with Season 3 of the news drama The Morning Show, which was a pretty crazy season and sort of soap opera-esque. I’m not sure I’d recommend it, but at least the large cast was entertaining enough. During the season, Jon Hamm plays an Elon Musk kind of character who tries to take over the network and much shenanigans ensues. I still think Season 1 was the best of that series. 

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

Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein / Knopf Canada / 208 pages / 2023

(3.5 to 4 stars) I think Shirley Jackson (and Lydia Millet) might have liked this strange little novel … which includes an off-kilter narrator who goes to her brother’s rural estate in a northern country to help him with things after his wife leaves with their children. The narrator is a solitary “inept” person who took care of her siblings growing up, left journalism and is a typist for a firm, and tries to maintain control over herself and adhere to obedience at all times.

When her brother suddenly leaves for a trip, she is left at the place alone with his small old dog and begins to take long walks into the woods and mountains, eventually having to go into town in the valley for supplies, which is a bit hard since she doesn’t know the country’s language. Then weird things begin to happen (on properties in town) and she feels the animosity and suspicion from the townspeople, which she tries to make right by volunteering at the farm co-op and leaving some woven stick dolls, but things don’t exactly go as planned and you wonder how it will end.

The plot seems simple enough to understand, but the off-kilter solitary narrator goes off on tangents that may or may not be too understandable. She’s mentally out there … and reflects a bit about how the townspeople might belong there but not her. Some stuff she talks about flew over my head. Still the writing is pretty smart and with its long, long sentences is quite lyrical and alluring. It’s a nice wonder that this little unsettling novel won the Giller Prize and made the Booker Prize shortlist. Whoa. Though I was hoping the ending would have had something a bit more happen. The townsfolk seem to hold her to account for several bad things that happen, but the ending perhaps wasn’t as big as I was looking for, though plenty of murky oddness abounds.

Thanks to NetGalley and Knopf Canada for allowing me an advance copy to read and review.

Elizabeth and Her German Garden by Elizabeth von Arnim / 207 pages / 1898 

(3 stars) I’m learning about this author and her books a bit late in life. I listened to the audio read by British actress Lucy Scott of this semi-autobiographical 1898 classic tale, which reads like a memoir. In fact some people call it a memoir, others say it’s a novel, but I guess the publisher calls it a novel. 

I liked hearing about how a garden in the Prussian countryside made this woman — the protagonist Elizabeth — feel very happy and free from things that constrained her in her life. Her husband was an aristocrat, and life for women in her day was pretty confined, but it was made better when she moves to an old house in the countryside with a large garden. There she takes pleasure and refuge in outdoor life, planting, and nature, and with her writing and three babies — the oldest being 5 and the youngest 3, whom she refers to as “the April baby” and “the June baby.” Of course she has a governess for them and neither cooks nor sews but spends her time with books in the garden, and many see her as eccentric. 

Her husband — who thinks very little of women’s capabilities — she refers to as “The Man of Wrath.” And on Elizabeth describes in a diary-like style the seasons and the flowers in the yard, the servants, gardeners, and visitors who come by. It’s a pleasant enough tale as Elizabeth is in good spirits and making light fun of society and things of the day. Her memoir-like tale seems quite modern — as if she were talking about the refuge of gardening during the recent pandemic instead of what it offered her back in 1898. I’m not sure I knew women were talking about all she describes in the book — their rights, roles, and happiness — back then, so it has relevancy. 

I will have to read Von Armin’s most popular novel The Enchanted April sometime. Judging from her bio, she lived quite a well-traveled life, living in England, Switzerland, Prussia, France, and the U.S. and being born in Australia. So she was out and about and knew various languages and writers of her day, including EM Forster and HG Wells … and she fled WWI and WWII lands, spinning 21 tales and dying in South Carolina in 1941. Whoa I didn’t know much about her before I came upon this book, which was her debut and apparently a hit back in her day.

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these books, or seen these shows, and if so, what did you think? 

Posted in Books, TV | 32 Comments

Dogs Days of Fall

Posted on November 7, 2023 by Susan

Hi All. I hope you are well. The snow here has melted away and we are back to fall conditions with a family of deer grazing on our front lawn. This photo of our two Labrador dogs Willow and Stella was taken a couple weeks ago after the first snowstorm. The dogs love the snow and are my everyday helpers, getting the mail and doing errands with me. They like the dog park too in town.

Willow is a ball-crazy, red Lab and is almost three (her birthday is coming up on Nov. 22!), and Stella is our yellow, food-crazy senior girl at 11.5 years old. She’s the boss around the house, who’s never missed telling us its meal-time even by a minute. Both dogs get about a thousand pats per day, which is what they pretty much demand and deserve. 

Nothing is too new in the reading department, though I’m about five books behind pace now of my Goodreads reading goal for the end of the year, argh. I doubt I will catch up, but I have made a TBR list of about eight to 10 books I hope to squeeze in before Dec. 31. I will keep those under wraps for now. How are your reading goals going? Are you on track? Also don’t forget: next week Canada’s Giller Prize will be announced on Monday, as well as the National Book Award on Wednesday. I’m thinking Birnam Wood will win and perhaps This Other Eden, but I’m not totally sure.

And now here are a few reviews of what I finished lately. 

This Other Eden by Paul Harding / Norton / 224 pages / 2023

(4.3 stars) This was my first Paul Harding novel and wow he writes like dynamite. Beautiful passages of the setting and characters. And Edoardo Ballerini narrates the audiobook so well, bringing to life the story of a small mixed-race community on an island off Maine, established in 1792 by the patriarch Benjamin Honey, a former slave, and his Irish wife Patience. More than a century later in 1911 the Honey descendants are still living on Apple Island along with a couple other families and eccentrics — with the children being taught classes by white mainlander Matthew Diamond, who visits the island on weekends. Though all is not well when state officials, motivated by eugenics, start getting involved with the island’s direction and the poor people there. 

It’s sad and tough how the story plays out. There’s quite a few characters to keep track of, but the main characters — Esther Honey, the grandmother, and especially her grandson Ethan, who is a promising painter — are interesting to follow. Ethan gets sent off the island by Matthew Diamond to pursue his art and there he meets and falls for the Irish maid Bridget. You’ll want to see what happens to them.

Overall this is a tragic story and all the more since it’s based on a true story of long-ago inhabitants on Malaga Island, now an uninhabited 41-acre reserve off the coast of Maine. I thought the novel was well done — harsh yet with beautiful lyrical passages. I could’ve used a bit more perhaps from the minds of its main protagonists – but that’s just a quibble. The novel’s a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Booker. But will it win? I am not sure it will, but I’d be okay if it does. 

The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue / Knopf / 304 pages / 2023

(4.0 stars) The novel’s beginning – I found sort of creepy when married university prof Fred Byrne gets involved in the lives of two 20-something friends James Devlin and Rachel Murray who work at a bookstore in Cork, Ireland, that is throwing him a book launch. Rachel, 21 in 2010, is a student of Dr. Byrne’s and has a crush on him, and her roommate James is her new BFF, whom she meets at the bookstore. The start seemed like a used coming-of-age plot and made me feel that I was done with 20-something, millennial fare. I recall thinking I wouldn’t be picking up another. After all, I only read the first Sally Rooney book.

But then as it goes on the story expands its horizons — in the second half — and I found the novel much more engaging and worthwhile. Rachel, who’s trying to find her way amid the bleak recession, gets an internship with Deenie, Dr. Byrnes’s wife who works in publishing. Meanwhile her BFF James is trying to come out of the closet and also write a TV script, while Rachel’s dating a guy named Cary on and off. 

Rachel gets into quite a terrible bind and predicament along the way. And Dr. Byrne is quite the rogue. It’s one of those situations that marks one for life and Rachel is best to leave town after. The plot explores the lives of Rachel and James as they move on and where they go after some years … their friendship and the relationship with Cary too. 

Despite the serious drama of the plot (which I can’t say too much about without ruining it), there’s some funny lines weaved throughout the book, which made me snicker. I also liked how the ending came back around and gained some resolution about what had happened earlier, which I gather Rachel is able to find some comfort in. I listened to the audio narrated very well by Tara Flynn. The author Caroline O’Donoghue is one to watch, even though I like to think this is my last millennial, 20s story. This novel was on my summer list. 

The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray / Berkley / 368 pages / 2021

4.3 stars. When the novel was picked for my book club, I had no idea about the life story of Belle da Costa Greene and how she passed as white for years as the personal librarian to financier J.P. Morgan’s massive rare collection, even though she was secretly black. I had no idea either how successful she became in her role as Morgan’s librarian, bidding and making important acquisitions for rare art and manuscripts and representing Morgan abroad in a white man’s job role and world. From 1905 to 1913 when Morgan died Belle managed his collection, and then his will granted her $50K, which was over a million in her day. She continued on as librarian under Morgan’s son and became director of the Pierpont Morgan Library in 1924 and retired in 1948. 

Whoa this lady put herself on the line and had a lot of courage, facing the ire of JP Morgan and hiding her “secret,” and becoming so accomplished with his rare collection. The authors do a good job fleshing out her story, when a bit is missing from the real record since Belle burned her personal letters. Still the book provides an interesting glimpse into how Belle mingled in high society NYC and what her relations were like with the Morgan family and her own black family who lived with her for some time and she supported. As well as there’s a romantic angle between Belle and an art historian that you don’t know whether it will last or not. 

Mostly the tension permeates throughout the novel over Belle’s secret of passing as white during days of much racism, segregation, and white supremacy and whether she will be found out. At the end I wanted to know a bit more about her and the secret – which was not addressed in the Authors’ Note at the back. Still it’s an intriguing historical tale of a strong woman’s will, brilliance, and gumption that I’m glad I learned about. I’m hoping it will provide a good discussion for our book group next week.

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

Posted in Books | 33 Comments