A tree grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith

 

I read this book for my book club a little reluctantly because I had read it before; however, I realized that I remembered so little of it that it was like reading it for the first time. I have to admit that I was not overly fond of the author's writing style, but I did get sucked into the story and wanted to know what happened to the characters. I do like stories where people overcome the odds to succeed and in that sense, the book is very affirming. I had a hard time with many of the characters who are so one dimensional. The librarian, the teachers, the saloon owner, and even the relatives only seem to have one side to them; there's very little depth or nuance to any of them. The description of Francie's interactions with the librarian were laughable (and slightly offensive). Like Huckleberry Finn, the book uses some offensive language and characterizations of Jews and other minorities.

The murder of Roger Ackroyd, by Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie's third novel featuring Hercule Poirot has the detective in retirement (showing she didn't necessarily plan on such a long career with him). Roger Ackroyd has been killed and many of his acquaintances and family members have both means and motive. Narrated by his friend and neighbor Dr. Sheppard, we learn that Ackroyd was concerned that his late friend, the widow Mrs. Ferrars, was being blackmailed. Just as Ackroyd was to learn the identity of the blackmailer, he ends up dead. His niece asks Poirot to investigate the murder, which he does along with Dr. Sheppard who takes on the role of Hastings in this book. As usual, there are many twists and turns in the plot, but the ending was definitely a surprise.
 

Mission to Paris, by Alan Furst

This was an enjoyable spy thriller that takes place in the lead-up to World War II. Austrian-American actor Fredric Stahl is strong-armed by his film studio to go to France to make a film, in spite of the clearly increasing tensions there. Once there, Stahl is the target of many competing forces, both pro- and anti-German. He agrees to participate in several risky operations to gather information for the American consulate, placing himself and his friends in danger. All the while, he is pursuing a relationship with Renate, a woman working on his film, and having an affair with another. While I liked the writing and premise, the book seems a little anti-climactic.
 

A place for everything: the curious history of alphabetical order, by Judith Flanders

 

This is an extraordinary study that shows how humans slowly transitioned toward the use of alphabetical order to organize all manner of things from files to reference works. While it might seem obvious to us now, it was a slow revolution in how people think about the world around them. Earlier conceptions of the "right" way to organize things often revolved around hierarchy or grouped ideas around subject concepts, but as the world became more complex and the information landscape grew astronomically, it was necessary to resort to new methods of organization. Author Judith Flanders presents a fascinating history of the development of many types of organization systems, showing how truly innovative many of them were, including one of my favorites, the card catalog.

Love's Labour's Lost, by William Shakespeare

 

I read this play in anticipation of a performance by Penn State's Centre Stage in April. It's one of Shakespeare's earlier comedies and follows the King of Navarre and three companions who agree to swear off women for three years while they study. Of course, their plans quickly go off track, especially when a French princess and her friends come for a visit.

Selected poems of Charles Baudelaire, translated by Geoffrey Wagner

 

I bought this book in the 1990s at the University of Pittsburgh bookstore when I worked at Hillman Library. I thought it would be a good way for me to practice my French reading, since it had the original poems in French and the English translation on facing pages. It did, in fact, prove to be a good exercise, but I'm embarrassed to admit that it took me 30 years to take on this project. In the meantime, this book traveled with me from Pittsburgh to New Haven to State College to Albany and back to State College before I picked it up recently and read through all the poems several times. It was a fun project!

The secret of Chimneys, by Agatha Christie

 

In Agatha Christie's fifth mystery, down on his luck Anthony Cade travels from South Africa to London to deliver a manuscript memoir by a British diplomat to the fictional country of Herzoslovakia to a publisher in return for 1,000 pounds. Anthony also agrees to deliver a packet of letters to a woman whom he believes has been blackmailed. Once in London, it's clear that there are many people and organizations trying to prevent the delivery of the manuscript, and when one of them breaks into Anthony's hotel room, he steals the letters by mistake. Anthony is determined to get the letter back and deliver the manuscript, and he follows the clues to the country mansion Chimneys, where a man has been murdered. Once again, Christie has developed a plot that is so intricate and with so many twists and turns, that it's hard to summarize. I'll just say that Anthony stays one step ahead of the bad guys throughout the book, and he teams up with Superintendent Battle, from Scotland Yard, and a beautiful widow, presumably the author of the packet of letters, to solve the crime. Although not the main character in The secret of Chimneys, Superintendent Battle appears in four subsequent Christie mysteries. The fictional country of Herzeslovakia appears in two other Christie stories, and I was fascinated to see that there is a travel poster for this country available on Ebay.
 

 

Service model, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

 

I really loved this science fiction novel by British author Adrian Tchaikovsky. Humanity is in decline, and when a virus disrupts the work of most robots, the robot valet Charles murders his employer, then is set adrift on the world. Ordered to go to the Diagnostics Center, he walks for days until he locates the center, but along the way he observes how all the estates that he passes are run down, and the robots tending them are all dysfunctional. When he gets to the Diagnostics Center, he meets up with another robot and they team up to find appropriate work for Charles, who is now unemployed and who has been renamed Uncharles. What follows is a series of adventures as the two cross what appears to be a post-apocalyptic landscape with few humans left alive. Service model is a compelling and funny take on the human condition. The dialog between the two robots as well as others whom they meet along the way is both provocative and hilarious. I was completely entertained by this book and couldn't put it down. Each new situation that they encountered was outrageous but plausible, and the ending was both highly entertaining and satisfying.

Flight, by Lynn Steger Strong

 

I have mixed feelings about this novel about three siblings, their spouses and children, and a young mother and her daughter. I had a hard time keeping track of all the siblings at first. Henry and his wife Alice live in an old house in Vermont that Alice inherited from her grandmother. They're hosting Christmas dinner for Henry's sister Kate, her husband Josh, and their three children, as well as Henry's brother Martin, his wife Tess, and their two children. Alice is a social worker, one of whose clients is Quinn and her daughter Maddie. This is the first Christmas after Henry, Kate, and Martin's mother Helen died, so it's particularly fraught with grief and other emotions. All of the characters have what appear to be major flaws. Henry is an artist who is obsessed with the environment and makes no money. Alice was an artist but has had to stop creating art and works as a social worker to help make ends meet. Kate is a stay at home mom, which she loves but won't admit. Her husband Josh works in finance at a mid-level job; he has no ambition because he's always relied on his trust fund for support, but this has been depleted by his poor investment decisions. Tess is a highly stressed attorney who is anxious about everything, especially her children. Her husband Martin is a professor on leave due to some inappropriate behavior with his students. As they come together, they struggle with decisions regarding the disposition of Helen's estate, with Kate and Josh hoping to be allowed to live in the house and everyone else, at least initially, hoping to sell it and split up the proceeds. The story advances slowly and is interspersed with Quinn's narrative. She is a single mom who is a recovering addict; Alice is her social worker, but is obsessed with Maddie as she has been unable to conceive a child herself. As they prepare for Christmas dinner, they all rally to help find Maddie, who has gone missing while her mother was out drinking. I was put off by the unlikability of all of the characters. How likely is it that every single member of a family has such distressing issues? It's a non-stop stream of bickering and arguing and picking on the spouses behind their backs. None of the children are charming. I just didn't find this pleasant to read. Nothing much gets resolved, although the ending seems to have mellowed everyone out, including the kids. I also found the writing to be a little awkward. 

The man in the brown suit, by Agatha Christie

 

Agatha Christie's fourth mystery doesn't include any of her more famous detectives. The main character, Anne, is a young woman who loves adventure and decides to solve the mystery of who killed another young woman in an unoccupied home up for rent. The clues lead her to book passage on a ship to South Africa and introduce her to a cast of characters that may or may not be involved in the crime. Stolen diamonds, refugees from justice, secret service investigators, wealthy politicians, and more are all under suspicion, and Anne proceeds to follow the trail to find the murderer and thief. Another of the characters, Colonel Race, appears in three later books by Christie, including two in which he is a close friend of Poirot's. Initially given mixed reviews, The man in the brown suit is just as compelling and page-turning as any Christie mystery. However, the prejudices of the time (1924) are reflected in the depictions of Black South Africans, which may be off-putting to readers.

Eight hundred grapes, by Laura Dave

I was disappointed in this novel by popular author Laura Dave. I had read another book by her and found it to be entertaining (The night we lost him), but this one is so problematic that I didn't enjoy it nearly as much. The main character, Georgia, runs home to her parents after seeing her fiancé, Ben, walking down the street with another woman and a child; after confronting them, she learns that the woman is a former lover and the child her fiance's. He only learned about the child several months ago, but had kept it secret from Georgia for all that time, even though they're not only set to be married in a week but also relocate to London, where Ben's ex and child live. Once at home, Georgia learns that her parents are selling their vineyard and planning to separate, as her mother has taken up with a former romantic interest from decades ago. Georgia further learns that there's a rift between her two brothers, because Finn is in love with Margaret, Bobby's wife, and the feeling is mutual. If that isn't enough drama, Georgia's parents are selling their small, family vineyard to a large corporate operation, and Georgia starts trying to sabotage the sale. My problems with this book abound. First, the writing is atrocious. Granted, I have an advance reader's edition, but that can't account for the awkward sentences and terrible plot. Second, none of Georgia's actions are believable. She runs out into the street in her wedding dress, which she is being fitted for, when she sees Ben with his ex and the child. Then, she goes home, packs a bag, and drives nine hours in her wedding dress to see her parents? If she had left right from the shop to make the drive, it would be almost believable, but she packs a bag, so she must have gone home to do it. She also goes to the headquarters of the company that's buying her parents' vineyard, interrupts a board meeting, and fights with the President over the purchase. She then files an injunction against the sale in a scene that makes it look like the process of filing an injunction involves just going to a courthouse and filling out a piece of paper (is it really that easy?) Third, characters repeatedly make comments that are unclear as to their meaning, and it's not explained. A good editor might have cleared some of this up, but this book comes across as a first draft, rather than an almost completed book. Advance reader's editions often have typos, which I can overlook, but there are so many problems with this book that the fact that it's an ARE can't account for all of them. I can't recommend this book.
 

French lessons, by Ellen Sussman

In honor of Valentine's Day, I decided to read this short novel about love in its many forms. French lessons is about three French tutors and their respective students who have signed up for private lessons in Paris. Nico spends the day tutoring Josie, a French teacher who has recently lost her married lover in a plane crash. Josie is visiting Paris alone, grieving in a way that she cannot do at home, and her encounter with Nico helps her along on the way to recovery from her paralyzing grief. Philippe is teaching beginning French to Riley who is in Paris with her two small children and husband, Victor. Vic has been distant lately, staying out late and leaving early in the morning, and Riley is feeling more and more isolated and finding no comfort in the ex-pat groups that she belongs to. She spends the day with Philippe, wandering around Paris on a tour that eventually leads to an afternoon of passion at his apartment. Finally, Jeremy passes his last day with his tutor, Chantal, fantasizing about kissing her. He's feeling some dissatisfaction with his marriage to Dana, an actress working on a film in Paris. All three of the tutors are single and looking for love, and all three of the students are experiencing some kind of crisis: grief, abandonment, or dissatisfaction. The book is framed by two short chapters that have the tutors meeting up before and after their day, and the bulk of the book is one chapter devoted to each relationship. The stories don't have pat endings, but each pair of tutor and student had learned something about themselves and what they want, and moved themselves a little bit further along to getting it.
 

The dig, by John Preston

 

I really enjoyed this novel based on the true story of the discovery of an Anglo-Saxon ship burial in Sutton Hoo, England. As war approached Europe in 1939, Basil Brown was hired by a landowner, Edith Pretty, to excavate the mounds on her property, long assumed to be ancient burial sites. He's unsuccessful with the first few mounds, but strikes it rich on the largest mound in the field, unearthing what appears to be a ship burial. The wood used to build the ship was long decomposed, but left its shape in the sand of the mound along with all of the metal rivets used to build it and the items that were buried with it. Before long, Brown is pushed aside by men from the British Museum who take over the excavation and relegate Brown to a subordinate role. This novel brings the characters to life, including Mrs. Pretty, widowed and with a small son, Robert, as well as the cast of archeologists who descend on the dig such as Stuart Piggotty, a college professor and archeologist and his wife, also an archeologist but also his former student. The book shows the excitement of such a find, which changed the historical narrative about England after the end of Roman rule. Previously thought to be an uncivilized and barbaric time, the find made clear that there was a sophisticated trade network in existence in the 6th-7th centuries. Based on the amount of gold and silver artifacts found in the burial chamber, it's likely that the ship burial was for a king, possibly King Raedwald, King of the East Angles. The 2021 Netflix film based on this book and starring Ralph Fiennes and Carey Mulligan hews closely to the book with a little added drama and romance to spice it up.

The murder on the links, by Agatha Christie

 

This is Agatha Christie's third mystery and her second one featuring Hercule Poirot. Although I read a lot of Christie as a teenager, this was not one that I'd read. I really enjoyed this mystery in which Poirot is asked to go to France to consult with a man about some concerns he has regarding an old secret. Poirot takes his friend Colonel Hastings with him, but when they arrive, they find that the man has been killed that morning and his body found in a shallow grave on a golf course next to his home. I loved the writing and the twists and turns of the plot. As usual, it keeps you guessing all the way to the end when Poirot reveals the killer.

The writing of the gods: the race to decode the Rosetta stone, by Edward Dolnick

 

I really enjoyed this fascinating and well-researched history of the finding and decoding of the Rosetta stone. After several men failed to make headway, two scholars took on the project, one English and one French. Thomas Young made an initial discovery about decoding personal names, but stalled after that. Frenchman Jean-François Champolllion realized that the hieroglyphs were used to represent sounds in all or most words, not just in names that needed to be spelled out, such as foreign names liked Ptolemy. Author Edward Dolnick provides a thorough historical background to the discovery, which was made during Napoleon's ill-fated invasion of Egypt in 1798. He also seems to delight in taking the reader on tangents about other languages and explorers, making this an entertaining read. Written for a lay audience, Dolnick does a good job of explaining technical issues related to the decoding of the hieroglyphs, providing excellent corollary examples of the concepts in English. There are illustrations throughout the book, including examples of hieroglyphs and black and white photographs, and there are eight pages of colored plates as well. There are lengthy notes and bibliography sections and an index. I recommend this book and look forward to reading other works by him.

Cinema love, by Jiaming Tang

 

I liked this book about a group of Chinese immigrants who struggle with life and love in New York's Chinatown. The story actually spans decades, starting in China where many of the characters cross paths in the Worker's Cinema, a run-down movie theater that's used by the town's gay men, most of them married, to meet up with each other. Over the next decade, many of these characters immigrate to New York where they live in extreme poverty. One of the things I was struck by is the overall unhappiness of all of the characters in the book. The women are in loveless marriages, and the men are struggling to survive while also secretly seeking out male companionship. No one communicates effectively with each other, and resentments and regrets linger for decades. One of the characters feels responsible for the closure of the cinema that resulted in her husband's death; it's only late in the book that she learns that the cinema would have closed anyway and she carried that guilt all her life for nothing. None of these characters are very likable, and they all make bad decisions, which would usually make me dislike the book, but I found this one to be very compelling.

The secret adversary, by Agatha Christie

 

I really enjoyed the second novel of Agatha Christie's. It's the first of five books starring the characters Tommy and Tuppence. In this one, Tommy and Tuppence meet after the war, and neither has had luck finding employment. They decide to team up as the "Young Adventurers" and take on jobs for hire. Tuppence is offered a job, but when her potential employer disappears, she and Tommy decide to track him down, and get embroiled in a much larger conspiracy that involves people at the highest level of government. It's a fun read that brings Tommy and Tuppence together not just as friends, but also romantically.

The Friday afternoon club: a family memoir, by Griffin Dunne

 

I enjoyed this celebrity memoir written by actor, director, and producer Griffin Dunne. It brought to life the crazy life of his parents and extended family in the 1960s and 1970s as they lived and worked in Hollywood. He tells his own life story without flinching from his father's closeted identity, his mother's illness, his brother's mental illness, his sister's murder, and disputes with his extended family, specifically John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion. Griffin Dunne grew up in a wealthy and entitled family, attended private schools (until he was expelled), then moved to New York City to try to make it as a stage actor. He had some success with acting and producing films, but discusses many of the missed opportunities that he had as well. He's not shy about sharing the names of many of the actors who attended parties as his parents' home, sharing seedy details about drunkenness along with heavy cocaine and LSD use. At one point he reports that Susan Sarandon gave him a sheet of acid from Timothy Leary's personal stash for his 28th birthday party. He also writes quite a bit about his life-long friendship with Carrie Fisher; they met at teenagers but stayed friends until her death in 2016. Most of the action in this book takes place in the 1960s through the 1980s, with a large portion covering his sister Dominique's 1983 murder trial.

Edmund: in search of England's lost king, by Francis Young

This is a good introduction to Edmund the Martyr, King of East Anglia until his death in 869. Edmund was killed by the Danes, reportedly tied to a tree, shot with many arrows, then beheaded. His head was separated from his body and thrown into the woods, where it was found later, by some accounts guarded by a wolf, reunited with his body to which it became re-attached. His body was said to be incorruptible (in that it did not decompose), one of the many miracles attributed to him. Over the following decades and centuries, his body was moved several times before being housed in a shrine in Bury St. Edmund. It was later lost, possibly during the dissolution of monasteries that Henry VIII set in progress. This was a well-written account that covers the historical period leading up to Edmund's death, the various reports of the death itself, and the growth of a cult around Edmund that led to a portrayal of him as the King of all England, even though he was actually only one of many kings that controlled smaller territories at that time.. The last chapter addresses the location of Edmund's body with the author putting forward a plausible theory that it is interred in the monk's cemetery next to the Abbey ruins at Bury St. Edmund, under what is now a tennis court.
 

Deep & wild: on mountains, opossums & finding your way in West Virginia, by Laura Jackson

 

I enjoyed this collection of personal essays about West Virginia. Author Laura Jackson is a West Virginia native and writes lovingly about her home state. She covers many topics, but primarily the flora, fauna, and geography of the state. Chapters address copperhead snakes, opossums, dogs, the red spruce, country roads, topography, and much more. With an easy prose, Jackson gives the reader a good understanding of what makes West Virginia special, but without denying or overstating its problems.

The enchanted April, by Elizabeth von Arnim

I really enjoyed this 1922 novel about four women who travel to Italy, renting an old castle for a month. All of the women are unhappy for different reasons, but they find that their month away has given them the time and space to heal and face their respective concerns. The writing reminds me of E.M. Forster's classics Howards End, and A room with a view with their witty dialogue and comical situations, but also real-life sorrows and anxieties. This is a scholarly edition with a lengthy introduction, bibliography, chronology of von Arnim, and explanatory notes, which were very helpful.
 

Dear Evan Hansen, book by Steven Levenson; music and lyrics by Benj Pasek & Justin Paul

 

Dear Evan Hansen is a musical that will be coming to Eisenhower Auditorium in April, so I thought I'd read the play before going to see it. I really enjoyed this sad, but heartwarming, play about a boy who gets drawn into a long-term web of deception following the death of a school mate. It shows how one lie leads to another, until it's almost impossible to extricate oneself without blowing everything up. I won't give away any of the plot lines here, but will just say that this is a worthwhile read.

Devil is fine, by John Vercher

 

Devil is fine tells the story of a biracial man who has just lost his teenage son. He inherits a plot of land that was meant for his son upon reaching age 18, but since his son died before then, he inherits it instead. Intending to sell the land and arranging routine inspections prior to the sale, he finds that the land is a former plantation and has the skeletons of enslaved people as well as the plantation owners on it. These developments wreak havoc with the narrator's mental stability, and an element of magical realism enters the story. The narrator has regular conversations with his dead son, he is transported into the past where he inhabits the persona of the plantation owner as he abuses his slaves, and other times he experiences hallucinations that he is turning into a jellyfish. In the meantime, he has a high level of difficulty getting along with everyone else in his life, including his son's mother, his co-worker, and new people he meets along the way. I found his conversations with others to be so filled with hostility that it was difficult to imagine anyone behaving that way, even someone grieving the way he is. Eventually, after what seems like a series of psychotic breaks, he has an epiphany that allows him to move forward.

An unfinished love story: a personal history of the 1960s, by Doris Kearns Goodwin

 

This is a wonderful look at not only the relationship between Doris Kearns Goodwin and her husband, Richard (Dick) Goodwin, but also an in-depth memoir about both of their experiences working in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations in the 1960s. This was my Albany book club's December pick, but none of us finished in time, so it's carried over to January. I thought it would be mostly about their personal relationship, but there is a lot of substantive history here. It's fascinating to read about their experiences, bolstered by the artifacts and documents that they explore as they root through Dick Goodwin's hundreds of boxes of archives. It was also interesting to see how their opinions about John and Robert Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson evolved as they reviewed the events of the 1960s from the vantage point of 50 years in the future. I loved the writing and couldn't put the book down.

The Brooklyn follies, by Paul Auster

I really enjoyed this novel by Paul Auster, one of my favorite authors. The Brooklyn follies tells the story of a recently retired, divorced man (Nathan) who relocates to Brooklyn from his former suburban home. His comfortable routine of writing, visiting a favority bookstore, eating in a local diner, is upended when he realizes that his nephew (Tom) is working in the bookstore that he regularly frequents. Both of their lives are further upended when Tom's niece (and Nathan's great-niece), Lucy, shows up on their doorstep. Adventures ensue as they try to find out what happened to Lucy's mother, get involved in a forgery scam, travel to Vermont for a getaway, and meet new friends that will change their lives forever. This is a well-written, heartwarming, and amusing story about making a new life with the people around us.
 

The Plantagenets: the kings that made Britain, by Derek Wilson

 

This is a good introduction to the Plantagenet dynasty in Britain. It devotes a chapter to almost all of the kings from Henry II through Henry V, one chapter on the War of the Roses, and then a final chapter on Edward IV, Edward V, and Richard III. It includes helpful family trees of the ancestors of Henry II, the Plantagenet kings, and the Houses of Lancaster and York. My one beef is that the family trees include the individuals' lifespan dates, but I would also like to see their dates of rule. Most kings' portraits are included in their respective chapters, and there is one map of England and its territorial possessions under Henry II. The book covers more than a dozen reigns and 300+ years of history in fewer than 300 pages, so it is a cursory look at this period.

The mysterious affair at Styles, by Agatha Christie

 

I read what I thought was a lot of Agatha Christie mysteries when I was a teenager, probably a few dozen, but that's only a fraction of her 66 novels and 14 short story collections published between 1921 and 1976, and I haven't read any of her non-fiction, poetry, or plays. I recently decided to delve back into her works, taking a chronological approach, so I began with this one, her first book and her first mystery featuring Poirot. My past reading of Christie was scattershot: basically as I came across her books in used or new book stores or the library. Reading them out of order didn't hamper me, but I thought it would be fun to read them as she created them this time. I thoroughly enjoyed this one as it introduced Poirot for the first time as a Belgian refugee from the Germans during and after WWI and his friend Hastings, a wounded veteran from the same conflict. I like the way Poirot roots around for the solution to every puzzle, sometimes being led astray but always finding his way back to the truth, often inspired by a stray comment from Hastings. And Hastings always takes the wrong lesson from every clue, but his goodness of heart makes him unable to be suspicious of a friend. Very enjoyable!

How to connect, by Thich Nhat Hanh

 

This is the second book in a series of "how to" books by Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh that I've read; other books in the series include How to Eat, How to Fight, How to Love, How to Relax, How to See, How to Sit, How to Focus, and How to Work. How to Connect is a thoughtful, yet brief, book (124 pages) that provides insight into how you might make more meaningful connections with others through mindfulness, breathing exercises, meditation, and other techniques.

Headshot, by Rita Bullwinkel

I was prepared to dislike Headshot because I really don't like boxing as a sport, but I was surprised by how engaging this book was. It's about a boxing tournament for teenage girls that takes place in Reno, with many of the girls traveling long distances to participate along with their coaches and family. Eight girls are boxing, and each chapter chronicles the interior lives of each pair as they advance through the brackets. I think the author did a masterful job of presenting each girl's personality and motivation as they go through the eight rounds of each bout. The writing is very good and presents each girl's personality and background without making it about race or diversity. I also found it interesting that the focus is on the girls without bringing in romance or boyfriends back home. There are men in the book, but they're in the background as coaches and judges. This is a short book (only 207 pages), but definitely worth a read.
 

Much ado about nothing, by William Shakespeare

 

I really enjoyed this play about Beatrice and Benedick, Hero and Claudio. I read it in anticipation of seeing the play performed at Penn State's Centre Stage, and I'm glad I read it first because I understood the performance much better than if I'd gone in cold.