🫀🏦🔥🪄♖📔🥢🇯🇵✈️❤️💔❤️‍🩹 A Much Better Reading Week

 

    Many years ago, I saw the Stephen Spielberg movie based on the book Empire of the Sun by J. G. Ballard. I knew it wouldn't be a happy read, but I was ready for something of substance. It is historical fiction, but J. G. Ballard did spend four years of his life in a Japanese internment camp during World War II as a child. The novel revolves around a ten-year-old British boy who is separated from his parents during the first days of the occupation of Shanghai. He lives several months on his own, waiting for his parents to return, before being captured and put in a camp. He learns to be a survivor. He doesn't have parents to help him, but he is smart, observant, and determined. The war exposes him to aspects of human nature: the generous and the exploitative. 

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    The Society of Unknowable Objects is written by Gareth Brown, who wrote The Book of Doors. I find his books to be fast-paced and well-plotted, often taking unexpected turns. There are magic objects in the world that look ordinary, but are slightly heavier and feel off. When you hold them, you are able to do something magical like fly, become incorporeal, or control others' movements against their will. Many secrets remain to be discovered.Where did these magical objects come from, and are there more? Magda is the newest and youngest member of the society, and she is the one to travel to Hong Kong and examine a possible recently discovered magical object, not knowing others are searching for these objects to misuse them.

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        Benjamin Stevenson writes terrific mysteries. The plots are complex and intricate, like a screwball comedy but in the best way. Ernest Cunningham often finds himself in the midst of quirky murders, so much so that he decides to become a detective, but he needs a loan to get his business started. He has tried bank after bank. Finally, a rural bank wants to meet with him to consider his loan. When he arrives for his appointment, the bank director demands that he find his missing brother before he will consider the loan. Upon leaving, Ernest finds the doors chained shut. He becomes embroiled in a robbery and, along with several other people, becomes a hostage. Over the course of the book, Ernest finds that everyone in the bank is a thief. More than hearts are stolen, spontaneous combustion is a problem. I like Stevenson's mysteries because they are implausible but possible, and he tells you along the way what he's doing. He'll point out important clues, yet I never can guess who it is. 

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    Abby Jimenez writes the best romances. I like how her characters aren't shiny, happy people. They have big, life-controlling problems. Larissa has been handed a crappy hand in life. Her alcoholic father used her Social Security number without her knowledge and ruined her credit. She is stuck in a low-wage, waitressing job, with multiple side hustles to make ends meet and pay down the debt her father ran up to regain her credit. Her mother keeps getting involved with the same sort of men as her father. She has a new boyfriend, Mike, whom she likes well enough, but she really vibes with his best friend Chris, who is secretly in love with her. How will this turn out?

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🪄🎄🎅🐸📚🗡️🐉🌨️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Not the Best Week--Book Wise

Every book this week was part of a series. This was not a great reading week. Two of the books were barely meh, but one was terrific. That one first:

    Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret: A Festive Mystery by Benjamin Stevenson is the third in a series of clever mysteries. Ernest Cunningham has a knack for solving murders. This is useful because he ends up in the vicinity of several murders. Ernie talks directly to the reader, telling them they have all the clues they need to solve the murder alongside him. He is like a magician. I know there is sleight of hand and misdirection, but I don't spot it. When he explains it all at the end, it makes sense. Stevenson does a good job of writing a twisty plot. Benjamin Stevenson is one of my current favorite mystery writers. 

Reviews of previous books in the series: https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/search?q=Stevenson

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    Love's a Witch by Tricia O'Malley is a romantasy — lots of magic and magical creatures. Three sisters return to their childhood village home. Their home was not a happy one, and it has left its mark on the three adult women. Sloane, the oldest sister and main character, is fiercely protective of her two younger sisters. More than they would like. O'Malley uses the enemies-to-lovers trope effectively. This book is the start of a series with an overarching problem of a family curse that keeps the three sisters from staying in one place for long because strange, disastrous things start to happen. This book didn't knock my socks off. The shift from enemies to lovers was too quick to feel authentic. It was cozy, and wacky things happened with magic going haywire.

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    Adversary to a Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer is the fourth in the series. I thought the first book was fun, inventive, and quite clever. The subsequent books have to try much harder to capture the whimsy of the first one. It didn't happen. The author's solution to the plot slowing down is a sex scene. I find too much sex and not enough plot and character development boring. 

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🐊🧹🦎🌸🏡🐦‍⬛🌎🎶❤️Two Orphan Girls and Theology

This week I read two splendid books about orphan girls who make the world a better place.

    Jordan Ifueko accomplishes something difficult in The Maid and the Crocodile. She crafts a captivating story with compelling characters and action, while also challenging my thinking about how societal norms around economics operate. Small Sade is an orphan who has aged out of the orphanage. At seventeen, she must find work and a place to live. With one look at Sade- crippled by a child labor accident, with unusual patterns on her skin- it will be difficult to find a maid position. By misfortune, she accidentally binds herself to the Crocodile god, believed to eat young women. Sade has secret strengths and a will to help those like her.

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    I remember discovering Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery and loving it. I think I was in my thirties and dived into everything I could find written by Montgomery. Then came the TV series with Megan Follows. Chef's kiss.

     The Grace of Wild Things by Heather Fawcett is a tip of the hat to Anne. A twelve-year-old orphan keeps getting returned to the orphanage. Because she's a witch. Her solution is to become an apprentice to a real witch--who eats children. The no-nonsense witch is more interested in eating Grace than training her. They strike a bargain. Grace has to complete all the spells in the witch's grimoire before her favorite cherry tree blossoms. Can Grace complete such a difficult task while making new friends, battling arch-enemies, and bullies? 

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    When it comes to books on theology, I don't read them in a week like most other books. It takes me months. After many months of 2-3 pages each night, I completed Gavin Ortland's Why God Makes Sense in a World that Doesn't: The Beauty of Christian Theism. I think the title echoes Timothy Keller's book,  Making Sense of God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. Keller's book is excellent; Ortland's is, too. He approaches the proof-of-God argument in ways that were new to me. Ortland looks at the elegance of mathematics, the splendor of music, and the strength of love. Some of his arguments sailed over my head — he quotes some heavy hitters on both sides of the intellectual fence — but overall I closed the book encouraged in my belief in a God who created a predictable, sophisticated world with delightful transcendence out of his deep, abiding love.

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📚🚙🐈‍⬛🌮📆📺 Two Very Different Romances

 

    I read One Day by David Nicholls because I'd heard of its quirky premise. It follows two recent university graduates, Dexter and Emma, for twenty years. They get together on the night of graduation, St Swithins's Day, July 15th. David Nicholls takes a deep dive on one day of each year for the next twenty years, July 15th, to describe their paths. Sometimes towards each other, sometimes sunk deeply into their separate journeys. It works. There is romance, but there is drug use, failure, stagnation, triumph, disappointment, and maturing. I also watched the movie with Anne Hathaway — she's so good — and it glossed over some of the grittier parts of the book. 

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    The Forget-Me-Not Library by Heather Webber was a fun read. I would call it a magical realism romance. I have a bent towards books about libraries and bookshops. The book is dual-narrated by two women: Juliet, who is on a road trip, and Tallulah, a recently divorced mother of two. They meet by chance in the town of Forget-Me-Not, Alabama, when Juliet's car breaks down in front of the home of Tallulah's home. The car dies, releasing a puff of blue smoke. Very. Telling. It signals to the residents that Juliet has suffered heartbreak. Her car won't work right until she's found the healing she needs. That involves magical cats, strange coincidences, and trusting her heart.

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🐇🥕🛤️🍁☕️🍁A Favorite and a Meh

    This week I reread Watership Down by Richard Adams, an influential book in my life. I read it the first time when I was in junior high. I had an hour bus ride and was able to get many pages in. I realized that the book was about more than rabbits seeking a new place to live in safety. It looked at different systems of government: authoritarian, kleptocracy, isolationist, and democracy. Adams manages to take these big ideas and make them vital to the lives of a group of rabbits. I wasn't surprised to learn that Adams served in World War II. His rabbit characters have the camaraderie of a group of soldiers fighting a fierce enemy. Hazel is the leader. His brother Fiver is a visionary. Bigwig is the powerhouse. Blackberry is the thinker. Dandelion is the storyteller. The rabbits have their own language and mythology, much like a Tolkien novel. What is needed for flourishing? A balance of freedom and responsibility. 

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    The Time Hop Coffee Shop by Phaedra Patrick is about a magical coffee shop. It only appears to the people it chooses. Greta Perks is in her forties and longing for her past life as a famous actress in coffee commercials. During that time, she met the man in the commercial who became her husband both in real life and in Maple Gold Coffee land. They had a daughter who also appeared in the commercials and is now a surly teenager. Everything in her life- her marriage, her career, and her relationship with her daughter isn't what she dreamed. Then she gets an invitation to the coffee shop, and a special blend lets her live in the town from the Maple Gold commercials, where she is gorgeous, successful, loved by her wonderful husband, and adored by her daughter. Life is perfect. Or is it? The main premise is fun, but I found the book's pacing a little slow and its message, live the life you have, somewhat trite.

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⚾️🏟️🧢🦩💀🦩👞⛵️🐈📚🐲💳 Memoir, Murder, Magical, and Mythical

 

    My mother and her big sister grew up in Maryland in the 1940s and 1950s. This lovely memoir, About My Mother: True Stories of a Horse-Crazy Daughter and Her Baseball-Obsessed Mother by Peggy Rowe, is set in roughly the same time period. The memoir circulates around Peggy and her mother's relationship. It was one of opposites. Peggy's mother only did things the right way, which also happened to be her way. Peggy was horse-obsessed. Her mother never had a hair out of place, and Peggy's fondest desire was to dress as Annie Oakley. Peggy got herself into some funny scraps. What shines through the pages is the love these women had for each other. And how crazy her mother was about the Orioles!

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    Sometimes you need to read a cozy mystery, and I'm finding Donna Andrews' Meg Langslow series to be a balance of murder and mayhem with romance and buffoonery. Book #3, Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingos, takes place in a single weekend in Yorktown, Virginia. Meg Langslow is an ornamental blacksmith and native of the area. Practically everyone there is a relative. They are an eccentric bunch. Her boyfriend's mother is the organizer of the annual Yorktown Reenactment of the siege of Yorktown with an accompanying craft fair. Her boyfriend's mother is dedicated to complete authenticity, including having the cannons firing night and day for realism. No wonder there's a murder!

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    Lost Evangeline: A Norendy Tale by Kate DiCamillo, illustrated by Sophie Blackall, is the last book in the series. They are all set in Norendy, a vaguely 18th-century European country where strange, enchanting things happen. Evangeline is a very tiny girl found by her cobbler father in the toe of a shoe brought for repair. The cobbler's wife never takes to the girl, but the father and daughter share a love of the sea and a desire to be sailors. 

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    I have read some historical novels by Kate Quinn, including The Huntress and The Alice Network, and enjoyed them. The Astral Library is a fantasy departure for her from her usual genre. The Astral Library is a place of sanctuary for the disenfranchised. I found it to be a great defense of public libraries. Libraries are one of the few places you can linger without spending money. When my children were young, we would go and use the computers, read stories, and each one could pick out five books to take home. Two of my daughters worked as pages at the library. It was a place we looked forward to visiting every week. Quinn captures the refuge quality of libraries through her main character Alix. Alix has graduated from the foster system she's been in since age eight. She works three jobs and pays rent to live on someone's couch. Her barely stitched-together life is coming unraveled. She goes to her favorite place, the Boston Public Library, and enters a door from the Reading Room she never noticed before. She finds herself in Astral Library and is invited to live in a book of her choosing. The library, however, is under attack. Could Alix be the one to save it?

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⛵️👨‍🏫📝🛝👟📸🦜🏨💌Wrecked by Elizabeth Strout, Warmed by Katherin Center, Enchanted by Kate DiCamillo

 

    I have been reading Elizabeth Strout for a while and looked forward to her latest novel, The Things We Never Say.

https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/search?q=Elizabeth+Strout

I appreciate how authentic her characters feel and how genuine their emotions and actions are. Reading her novel is like looking at a painting that is slightly off center, by design. The goal is to cause an internal dissonance that heightens engagement with her novels. Loneliness is a central theme in Strout's work. Artie Dam is a compassionate, effective high school teacher who is deeply troubled by the current culture's bending toward casual cruelty and corruption. He is kind to those who are wounded. He receives news that changes his life, and he has to decide how to live with it. So much of the book's action is internal and interpersonal drama, but it feels large. It reminds me of the movie It's a Wonderful Life. It caused me to ponder how much difference one life could make.

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    Katherine Center's romance novels aren't just escapist reading. She wrestles with poignant struggles that women face — aging, changing bodies, motherhood, and beauty culture. I like that she doesn't give neat answers, but instead portrays the complexity of those topics. 

    And she still tells a compelling story with lots of action and humor.

    Lanie is a native Texan and mother of three boys, four and under, who moves to Massachusetts so her husband can pursue his music career. She leaves behind her support system and a life that barely worked, but now doesn't. Motherhood has completely pulled her under. Someone asks how far along she is, and it breaks her. She's not pregnant. Things need to be different, so she starts by joining a gym. It changes things. 

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    The Hotel Balzaar: A Norendy Tale by Kate DiCamillo, illustrated by Júlia Sardà, is the second Norendy tale. The characters from the first book, The Puppets of Spelhorst, don't appear in the second book, but the stories are from the same universe. They have the same magical, anything-can-happen feel. A young girl, Marta, lives in the Hotel Balzaar where her mother works as a maid because Marta's father, a soldier, never returned from the war. Marta's job is to be a mouse: quiet, unobtrusive, and not talking or being noticed by anyone. Then a mysterious, elderly countess with a beautiful green parrot arrives and notices Marta. She tells Marta seven stories that reveal Marta's greatest wish. Extraordinary.

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❤️📖🏞️🐕❤️🎧🐺👑🦉Two Sister Stories and a Romance

 

    The Secret Book of Flara Lea by Patti Callahan Henry is historical fiction. It jumps back and forth between the early 1940s and the 1960s in England. Two sisters were sent from their home during Operation Pied Piper, where the children of London were evacuated to safer locations during the Blitz. Older sister Hazel and little sister Flora are taken in by Bridie and her teenage son, Harry. Hazel, fourteen, takes her responsibility to protect five-year-old Flora seriously. Hazel creates a magical world through stories that she only tells to her little sister. It's called Whisper Wood. Flora tragically disappears. Twenty years later, Hazel finds a book entitled Whisper Wood, by an American author. Is it her sister? Even though this book isn't attributed this way, it felt like magical realism. It kept me guessing through its plot twists. 

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    I do like a bit of romance. This Story Might Save Your Life by Tiffany Crum is a best friends trope. Benny and Joy are long-time best friends and famous podcasters. Their podcasts feature different scenarios where someone survives a life-threatening situation. One of them knows how, and the other has to guess. It's humorous and heartwarming. Joy has narcolepsy, and she has found herself in several life-threatening situations. The book opens with Joy cryptically passing Benny a note as they record their podcast. The next day, she disappeared. As Benny searches for her, their backstory is revealed. Crum has several I-didn't-see-that-coming moments. I also learned a lot about narcolepsy. It doesn't sound fun. I found the book to be creative and twisty.

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    Kate DiCamillo is a magical author. At the recommendation of a granddaughter, I read The Puppets of Spelhorst: A Norendy Tale. It is part of a trilogy that is made up of short novellas. I read an interesting review that talked about passive protagonists in children's books- think Pinocchio- and it made me consider this book from a child's view. Children can perceive themselves as having no power, but large desires. The five puppet characters in this book, a girl, a boy, a king, an owl, and a wolf, aren't magical. They don't come to life. They can only talk to each other, but DiCamillo enlivens them through conversations, observations and by believing in their purpose for being created. She also captures the interaction between the two sisters who receive these puppets. This is a fantastic book, and I look forward to reading the rest of the trilogy. 

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🐄🥵💸🐏🐮🐖📰📝📚Some Big Books!

 

    The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett was highly recommended by my sister. We both had enjoyed Stockett's previous bestseller, The Help. I was excited to read this historical fiction novel even though it was 656 pages long. Stockett writes beautifully about her home state of Mississippi in the early 1930s, and she does so with both eyes open. She doesn't gloss over the racism, misogyny, or eugenics of the time. The story centers around two misfits. An eleven-year-old orphan named Meg, trapped in a truly awful orphanage, and Birdie, an unmarried, plain woman who is the sole provider for her mother and grandmother on the family farm. Things get so tight that Birdie is dispatched to beg for money from her younger sister, who has married into a wealthy, social-elite family living in the university town of Oxford, Mississippi. As Jafar wisely says, "Desperate times call for desperate measures." Things do get very desperate. The plot is well-told. The setting--the heat, the clothes, the food, the flowers, the cars--was evocative. You feel you're there. It pits the condition of the rich against that of the poor, the haves versus the have-nots, and what society considers valuable. The characters are what elevate this novel from good to substantial. Birdie and Meg are memorable and authentic. It was worth the time investment.

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    After the intense read of The Calamity Club, I needed something soothing and cozy, like All Things Bright and Beautiful by James Herriot. This is the second book of the series. James has married and is living in an apartment at the top of Skeldale House, treating animals large and small. He is also negotiating life in the 1930s, however, in the Yorkshire Dales of Great Britain. World War II is on the horizon, but that's in the third book.

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I think Writers Revealed: Treasures from the British Library and the National Portrait Gallery, by Alexandra Ault (Editor), National Portrait Gallery, London, was a gift from my Dear Husband. The book contains mini biographies of authors, mostly British, their portraits or photographs, and a photo of a draft of something they've written, usually in their own hand. It is divided into five sections depicting authors at different times in history, but also in different places in their writing journeys: on the road to success, facing censorship and secrecy, fame, and writing to change the world. Seeing their faces and handwriting humanizes them. They become less "Famous Author" and more human beings. 

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👵🏻🏠👓👽🛸🪐Memoir and Science Fiction? Yes, Please!

 

    I have a Little Free Library outside my house, and someone put this lovely book inside it. Thank you! Oh No, Not the Home: Observations and Confessions of a Grandmother in Transition by Peggy Rowe reminds me of Erma Bombeck's book. They are full of observational humor about herself and people in her orbit. She makes jokes about the fun of getting old. I found her books warmhearted and giggly. I want to read some of her other books!

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    I picked up Moss'd in Space by Rebecca Thorne because a review said it was similar to The Murderbot Diaries. It is similar, but not the same. Thorne does a great job of creating a space world with interesting problems. On a space station, the artificial air adversely affects some inhabitants. The only cure is to live on a planet with good air; however, the only planet close to Space Station 13 does not want the station inhabitants. Our hero, Torian Raznor, has one remaining family member, her older sister, who is slowly coughing herself to death. Torian works for smugglers to earn money to buy her own starship. It is an abandoned alien spaceship covered in moss, but it is also what she can afford. Torian is a likable, caring character who needs a break to save her sister, get accepted to the sole planet in the solar system that can support life, figure out her alien starship, and forget about her non-romantic partner, former captain Amelia. I liked the cozy vibe of the book. It had a balance of action, character development, and relationship advice for alien spaceships with abandonment issues.

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🐝🦀🦦🌳🗡️📔🐐📖🐝 Three Very Different Fantasy Books

 

    The Everlasting by Alice Harrow has been popping up everywhere, highly recommended. I had it on hold for several weeks and was excited to read it. It started slow. So slow, I almost gave up on it. Then, strange things started to happen. This is a book about time travel, destiny, fate, agency, and true love. What can we do? What can we make others do? Every story needs a villain, and this one has a deliciously conflicted villain. Do they want what's best for their beloved country and its inhabitants, or do they want to be the supreme being? There are two protagonists. A nerdy historical scholar with glasses named Owen Mallory. He is an expert on his country's greatest hero and the other protagonist, Sir Una. They were born a thousand years apart, yet they feel like they know each other. I liked the story because it was an intriguing play on the problems and solutions time travel can engender. The main characters, mostly Owen, were an authentic mix of cowardice and bravery. There was a lot of sex, and I found it a distraction from the plot. It felt like an editor said to add some steamy stuff. 

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    I read the first book in this series, https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/2026/02/light-hearted-aussie-and-serious.html, and put Heretical Fishing 2 on a wait, then forgot about it. I ended up borrowing it twice to finish it. It was twenty-five hours as an audiobook! It is a gently paced. It is litRPG, but it focuses on cultivation, meaning much less fighting and much more leveling up, farming, fishing, and creative skills. The main character, Fischer, is awakening more animals and people to become Cultivators. The capital, also known as the enemy, is becoming aware of the growing threat to its lock on the country. This is not a challenging book at all; it totally has the don't-worry, be-happy vibe, and I enjoyed it for what it was.

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    I have read several Kate DiCamillo books lately. She is an amazing author. I find her witty, heart-warming, and inventive. One of my granddaughters, a joy to my life, recommended The Beatryce Prophecy to me, and I loved it. It is YA and a short read. DiCamillo sets up contrasting characters and situations. Two orphaned young people trying to find their way in the world: who helps and who harms; a boy versus a girl, a monk versus an elderly village woman, selfish ambition versus selfless love. It gives the plot good tension and highlights light by placing it against the dark. So good.

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