I'm Still Reading - This Was My October

 Despite (or maybe because of) my continuing struggle with the "blahs," reading continues to give me great pleasure when little else does. I may not have the energy right now to write formal reviews, but that's freed me up to wander rather serendipitously from book to book as things catch my eye. 

These are the ones I read in October:

• Beautifully written novel
• Longtime series fans will especially appreciate catching up with familiar characters such as Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge, and Bob Burgess, among others.
• Explores the impact of Covid on the world, families, and friends
• 5 Stars

• Crime Fiction set in England
• Main character is a young teen girl with the instincts of a modern Sherlock Holmes
• Requires a committed suspension of disbelief
• Fun read and setting but a little too far over the top for me in the end
• 3 Stars

• Perhaps the worst 2024 Booker Prize nominee
• Pretentious and confusing style
• Who cares?
• 1 star

• Would make a perfect Tom Hanks movie
• Two strangers meet in a cemetery once a year to help each other cope with the grief of losing a loved one.
• Thoughtful but funny
• A little too predictable, but fun
• 3 Stars

• An explanation of and renouncement of Cancel Culture"
• Frank, brutal, and sometimes funny as hell
• Author's sense of humor is all over the map - from subtle irony to slapstick
• 4 Stars

• Very clever format and points-of-view
• Sometimes cartoonish characters that the reader still care about
• Somewhat predictable but does have a few fun twists
• My October Cover of the Month
• How to make the world a better place by "deleting" certain people
• 4 Stars

• Salman Rushdie memoir detailing the New York knife attack that he miraculously survived
• A chance to learn about Rushdie's post-fatwa life in his own words
• Even those who are not fans of Rushdie's fiction will appreciate this memoir.
• 5 Stars

• The kind of feel-good novel about books, bookstores, and booksellers that we all just need to read sometimes
• Two great characters: old bookseller and a little girl who sees right through him
• A bit of a German fairytale 
• 3.5 Stars

• Lots of theories about slowing down brain aging
• Debunks lots of things we've all been told about demential and Alzheimer's
• A suggested lifestyle approach that, at the least, can't hurt anything by trying it
• Who knows? Something else to consider
• 4 Stars

• Based on the Netflix series called Killing Eve
• Some characters are the same
• Some characters are the same but meet different fates
• Some main characters are created just for the series
• Some characters are of different gender
• Basic plot is the same
• One of those rare times I think the adaptation works better than the original novel it's based on
• 3 Stars

So that was my October. I've only read four books so far in November but I'm reading some nonfiction that slows me down a bit, so I'm not surprised by that. I hope you are all doing well. I hope to catch up on comments sometime soon and appreciate your patience. Hang in there, guys.

Wandering Stars and My Friends (Impressions)

 

"A nation is not conquered until the hearts of its women are on the ground. Then it is finished, no matter how brave its warriors or how strong their weapons." 

Pros:

• Memorable Characters - especially, as indicated by the above quote, the women.
• Part One is solid historical fiction from the Native American perspective
• Tommy Orange writes very readable historical fiction.

Cons:

• Part Two (set in 2018), the aftermath of the tragedy that ended Orange's There There, makes for tedious reading well before it is over. 
• The novel offers little that hasn't already been said just as well in numerous other similar novels written by Native Americans.

"The trick time plays is to lull us into the belief that everything lasts forever, and, although nothing does, we continue to live in that dream."

Pros:

• Well developed, complex characters
• Seamlessly ties together Libyan history from the 1980s through the aftermath of the Arab Spring of 2011
• Excellent prose style
• Vividly captures the paranoia that Libyan exiles lived with for decades
• Satisfying and somewhat hopeful ending

Cons: None that are worth even mentioning

These are the seventh and eighth 2024 Booker Prize nominees that I've read. My Friends is one of my favorites so far, Wandering Stars one of my least favorites - with five still to go.

Piglet - Lottie Hazell (Pocket Review)

 

Let's start with the essentials:

• The main character of Lottie Hazell's Piglet is a young woman whose parents hung that atrocious nickname on her when she was a child because of a one misunderstood incident involving a large cake. 
• Piglet's narcissistic parents are guilty of some of the worst parenting imaginable. 
• Piglet is very insecure.
• Piglet resents the personal successes and achievements of even her closest friends - and acts accordingly towards them.
• As an adult, Piglet is now obsessed with everything to do with food, including its preparation and quality.
• Piglet cannot control her appetite, especially when she is under unusual stress.

That said, I did not feel bad for long about not giving a hoot about this narcissistic character as she goes about detrimentally impacting the lives of just about everyone who makes the mistake to letting her into their worlds. 

Piglet is filled with characters I never grew comfortable with no matter how much I tried to understand their motivations for doing some of the rude things they kept doing to each other. This is one of those "every man for himself" kind of novels where, in the end, almost everyone ends up getting pretty much what the reader might wish upon them. None of it particularly good. 

The best I can say for Piglet is that it's well written, and that it reads very smoothly. But still, the bottom line is that I couldn't wait to leave for good the company of the people in Lottie Hazell's fictional world. That's probably why it felt so good to turn the last page.

This one is just not for me. 

Three Years a Traveler - Leslie White (Pocket Review)

(The last six weeks have conspired to throw me so far off my normal reading and blogging schedule that I now find myself way late  reviewing the last half-dozen books I've read despite how long it took me to read that lot. I've been trying to review them in the order I read them, but the longer this strange new schedule continues, the more hazy the plot details are becoming. Consequently, I'm going to go with some shorter, "pocket-sized" reviews for the immediate future - while trying to get back into the old rhythm, hopefully sooner than later.)

 

You would be hard-pressed to come up with a more concise summary of Leslie White's Three Years a Traveler than the words the author chose for her memoir's subtitle: "One woman, one dog, seven RVs, and the path less traveled to heal the heart." That's just about perfect.

White's decision to hit the road as a contract employee, someone willing to work for just about any hospital in the U.S. that needs someone on a temporary basis having her specific diagnostic skills, resulted from three horrific years she and her family endured together. As she puts it, "Of my immediate family of five (my parents and two brothers), four of them have had cancer and three of them died from it in as many years."

"I thought I could simply drive away from the heartache of my parent's passing, the boredom of my depressing life, and perhaps somehow repair my crumbling relationship with BF. Well, yes...and no."

White is in for a rather rude awakening because it's about to get a whole lot worse before it starts to get better.

Along the way, as she uses the trial-and-error method to finally pinpoint the RV that will best suit her limited driving skills, White will make a lot of rookie road-traveler mistakes - not the least of which is bringing her freeloading boyfriend (the infamous BF referenced in the above quote) along on the first leg of her journey. But she adapts, she learns a few new tricks, she makes friends, meets some nice people, meets a few jerks, and finally settles into a lifestyle that seems to do for her exactly what she was hoping for when she first decided to chuck it all and hit the road.

The best part of all of this is that White saved a seat in the RV for the rest of us. And we get to go on one hell of a ride with her.

Three Years a Traveler is fun for anyone who has ever wondered what it would be like to live out of an RV for a few months - or years. If you're curious about the lifestyle, this is a great place to start.