The Sunday Philosophy Club, by Alexander McCall Smith

 

This is a slow-paced mystery that builds slowly to a not very dramatic climax. Isabel Dalhousie is an independently wealthy woman who lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, and who spends her time working as an editor of an academic journal on philosophy. While she refers repeatedly to the Club mentioned in the book title, they never actually get together to talk. The mystery in question is what happened to a young man who fell from a balcony at a concert. Was it an accident, suicide, or murder? Through her thoughtful musings and gentle conversations with friends and family, Isabel comes up with one theory or another about the incident, eventually eliciting a confession from the one person responsible. Throughout the book, Isabel's thoughts consider many philosophical questions, some of them arising from the mystery and others from the articles that she's reviewing for her journal. While I'm used to a more fast-paced approach to mystery stories, this was an interesting take on the genre, and I'm curious about how the author developed the series, which now has 15 entries.

Erasure, by Percival Everett

 

Erasure was my Albany book club's May pick and I was excited to read it because it's the book behind the film American fiction, which I saw in a local theater back in February. I loved the film and I'm happy to say that I love the book as well. Now that I've read the book, I'm impressed by how closely the film followed the book, although it comes across as much funnier on screen. Erasure is about a novelist and professor named Thelonious Ellison, who goes by his nickname, Monk. Raised in a well-off and highly educated family, he writes literary fiction with fairly modest sales. A death in the family leads to Monk's relocation to the Washington, D.C. area to be his mother's caretaker; she has dementia and is becoming more and more difficult to manage at home. After several scary incidents, Monk puts his mother in a nursing facility, leaving himself more and more isolated. With his latest book rejected by multiple publishers, and in need of funds to support his mother, he decides to write a parody of urban fiction that ends up becoming a best seller. Trying to maintain his anonymity, dabbling in a new romantic interest, and taking care of his mother, he struggles to forge a path forward with many comical outcomes. I loved Everett's writing and look forward to reading more by him. His latest novel, James, tells the story of Huckleberry Finn from the enslaved man Jim's viewpoint. That book has been selected for my local book club's September read, along with the original Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, giving us the summer to read both.

How to think like an economist, by Robbie Mochrie

 

With How to Think Like an Economist, economics professor Robbie Mochrie provides a historical overview of the development of economic theory from classical times to the present. Profiling twenty-four scholars and thinkers, Mochrie demonstrates how economic theory evolved from the time of Aristotle, when musings about economics arose from philosophy and focused primarily on individual behavior and household management, to the Enlightenment period with the publication of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, and beyond. Mochrie brings the narrative to the present day, sketching the careers and notable achievements of prominent economists, mostly men but including a few women, many of whom were the recipients of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. He notes their impact on government thinking and action addressing phenomena such as the Great Depression, unemployment, inflation, poverty, and policy. Mochrie shows how the study of economics developed from different traditions including history, law, and engineering, all bringing a distinctive stamp to their respective theoretical approaches. His clear writing and chronological approach show how economic theory grew and changed as each scholar built upon the record of previous thinkers. VERDICT This is a deeply researched and lively introduction to the history and theory of economics.

 

A version of this review was published by Library Journal 149:7 (2024): 96.

The spy who came for Christmas, by David Morrell

 

This is a short (233 pages) spy novel about a man who's on the run from his Russian-mafia kidnapping partners. It turns out he is deep undercover but has reached the limit of what he's willing to do to stay that way. He's on the run, shot in the arm, with a baby under his coat, as he tries to evade his fellow kidnappers in Santa Fe on Christmas Eve. He takes refuge in a home with a woman and her young son and has to defend the home from the mobsters while keeping everyone alive. This is a fast, propulsive read from the author of First blood, the book that launched the Rambo character and films. Well-written, this is a real page-turner.

Garden of lamentations, by Deborah Crombie

 

This mystery is the 18th in a series written by Deborah Crombie that stars Detectives Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James and which is set in London. I haven't read any of the earlier books in the series, so I was jumping into the middle of characters and plot lines that carried over from earlier books. In some series, that's not a problem, but I found it hard to connect to these characters until quite a way into the narrative. This mystery follows two plot lines. One focuses on Kincaid as he investigates loose ends and suspicions from previous books in the series. Gemma is wrapped up investigating the murder of a young woman whose body was found in a garden surrounded by a block of homes where she both worked and had friends. I would suggest starting this series from the beginning.

The Templar legacy, by Steve Berry

This is an enjoyable and entertaining thriller about the search for the lost Templar wealth and the discovery of the descendants of the 700 year old order which was demolished in the early 14th century.
 

The Wager: a tale of shipwreck, mutiny, and murder, by David Grann

 

This was my State College book club's April pick, but not something that I would normally have chosen. For some reason, I'm not drawn to tales of the sea, even though I do like nonfiction and history. Nevertheless, I'm glad they chose this book because it was a riveting story about the ship and its voyage around Cape Horn that led to its destruction on the rocks off of a small island. The surviving sailors set up camp on the island and eventually split into two groups to try to escape. Only a few members of each group made it to safety, and their competing stories about their ordeals make up the narrative of this book. Grann, who also authored Killers of the Flower Moon, presents all of the competing versions without judgment, leaving it to the readers to decide for themselves who's at fault.

How to relax, by Thich Nhat Hanh

 

This is a great little book (116 pages) that serves as a primer on how to relax focusing on short meditations using the breath and mantras to help. It consists of brief one or two page essays or paragraphs on topics that will help you relax in a lot of different ways. Headers such as Resting, Healing, Awareness of the breath, Stopping, Looking deeply, and many more look at the different ways that we are over-stressed and anxious and the many ways that we can use to reverse those states. It's part of a series of publications with similar titles: How to sit, How to eat, How to Love, etc.

The dictionary of lost words, by Pip Williams

This is one of my favorite books of the past year. Set in Oxford, England at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, it is the story of Esme, daughter of one of the lexicographers who created the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Esme spends most of her childhood hanging around the Scriptorium, a converted shed in the backyard of the OED's original editor, Dr. Murray. She becomes obsessed with words, especially those that are discarded because they aren't important or significant. She realizes that many of these lost words are deemed of no importance because they relate to marginalized elements of society, such as women and the poor, and she takes it upon herself to save and document the meanings and uses of those words. I loved how the methods used by the lexicographers to research and document the many meanings of words are revealed; it shows the truly monumental effort that went into creating the first edition of the OED. While Esme is a fictional character, many of the others in the book are historical. The backdrop to this story is the fight for women's right to vote and World War I and the impact of both on both men and women. This is a riveting and compulsive read!
 

Unclutter your space with feng shui, by Antonia Beattie and Rosemary Stevens

 

I enjoy reading books and articles about both decluttering and feng shui, but this book is light on the principles of both concepts. It's a very quick read with cute illustrations, but there are many other resources that are better. For decluttering, (why do they use the term "unclutter"? Even Google tried to correct the term), Marie Kondo's books would be a more thorough and practical approach.

Narcas: the secret rise of women in Latin America's cartels, by Deborah Bonello

With Narcas, VICE News reporter Deborah Bonello has provided readers with a short (160 pages) but fascinating look at some of the women who have risen to the top ranks of some of Latin America's most notorious cartels. Focusing on Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala, Bonello demonstrates how the deep poverty of the region lead so many to enter into the drug trade. Many of these women were highly successful for a period of time, but most of them were arrested eventually; some of them even turned themselves in and collaborated with the DEA to avoid arrest or lengthy prison terms. Bonello's motive for writing the book is to show that there are women in these roles even though they have been largely overlooked by the news or popular media. Much of her writing consists of her impressions based on interviews not only with the women whom she was profiling but also with others in their organization, their neighbors, other reporters and researchers, and law enforcement.
 

Birnam Wood, by Eleanor Catton

 

I really liked this novel set in New Zealand. It's about a group of environmentalists who work together to farm and garden on unclaimed or unused tracts of land. They decide to farm a new property but become embroiled in a conspiracy that's incredibly dangerous. Mira is the de facto head of Birnam Wood, the collective of farmers and environmentalists. Her best friend, Shelley, is thinking of leaving the group, but stays in to be involved in the new project, which has the potential of being funded by an American billionaire, Robert Lemoine. He wants to invest in good works and non-profits; however, Lemoine has much more planned for the property than Mira and her friends can imagine, and how that plays out creates a slowly rising tension in the book that kept me reading to the end. Mira's friend Tony is a budding reporter who decides to investigate the story as a way to break into the field, and his probing sets in motion a series of events that will be catastrophic. None of the characters in this book are particularly likable, but their actions and motivations are fascinating, and I found it impossible to put this book down.

Water on fire: A memoir of war, by Tarek El-Ariss

 

This is a deeply moving memoir by Dartmouth University professor of Middle Eastern studies Tarek El-Ariss. Growing up in war-torn Lebanon during its fifteen-year-long civil war (1975-1990), El-Ariss and his family suffered through constant bombardment and other dangers while trying to survive on a daily basis. In spite of the war, he and his family went to the beach, attended school, and took vacations in England, with the war a constant presence around them. He spent some time in the Côte d’Ivoire to avoid being conscripted, returned to Beirut to attend college at the American University of Beirut, and ultimately moved to the United States to complete his graduate education. Occasionally El-Ariss digresses to provide brief history lessons on Lebanon and Syria, helping provide context for the events in his own life. El-Ariss tells his story in a roughly chronological fashion, but intersperses it with episodes from his adult life, and the entire memoir is framed around his recognition as an adult that he needed therapy to address the trauma of growing up surrounded by violence. VERDICT This important memoir documents the impact for a child growing up during the Lebanese Civil War.

This review was previously published in Library Journal here.