☠️ Great Mystery and Amusing Short Stories🥠

 

    I like a clever, amusing, dark mystery. Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson is a practically perfect mystery. At the beginning, the narrator, Ernest Cunningham, who writes ebooks on how to write mysteries, says he will abide by Ronald Knox's famous 10 Rules of Mystery Writing:

1. The Criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of the story but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has allowed to follow. 
2. All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.
3. Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.
4. No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end. 
5. No Chinaman must figure in the story.
6. No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.
7. The detective must not himself commit the crime.
8. The detective must not light on any clues that are not instantly produced for the reader's inspection.
9. The stupid friend of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal any thoughts which pass through his mind; his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly below that of the average reader. 
10. Twin brother, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been dully prepared for them.

    These rules are from the 1930s, and Ernest has updated them, replacing racist #5 with something else. Ernest hilariously refers to the rules explaining when someone is not guilty as the mystery unfolds. I enjoyed the ride he took me on, and I figured out the killer but didn't know why he did it. My favorite rule is #9. 

    My DH, who also likes murder mysteries, found this one too dark at first.

    "But it's funny," I protested. 

    That makes all the deaths okay, right?

    Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone is written by an Australian author and takes place in Australia. I listened to the audiobook read by an Australian, so it was like being read to by Bluey's father, Bandit. Win!

🔎🎿🇦🇺☠️🔍

amusing, insightful, quick bites

    Alexander McCall Smith's book Tiny Tales is like eating delightful little canapés. The stories are quick, humorous, and usually have a little zing. My favorites are several stories about Pope Ron, the first Australian pope. Smith swims in some deep waters, talking about God and the nature of evil and how your native childhood country owns parts of your heart. By the end of the book, I'd been encouraged to look for the good in those around me and not take myself too seriously. The short stories are like fortune cookies: sweet but with a message.

Here is another review of Alexander McCall Smith's book The Number One Ladies Detective Agency: https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/search?q=McCall+

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I Read a Super Serious book 🐍💉, a Clever Mystery 🔐🐟📱, and YA Fantasy 🐉🐲

  Barbara Kingsolver is a SERIOUS writer (Pulitzer Prize winner), and her goal is to make you experience injustice viscerally. Demon Copperhead is a first-person narration of a young boy called Demon Copperhead, patterned after Charles Dickens's book David Copperfield. Kingsolver writes about a scrappy hero born into poverty in the Appalachian mountains at the cusp of the opioid crisis. His single, ex-drug addict mother tries her hardest to give him what she never had--stability and love--but is sucked back under, orphaning Demon at ten years old. He is at the tender mercy of the stressed foster care system in one of the poorest regions in the United States. As Demon grows up, he encounters a spectrum of people, from those who care for him to those who want to use him up. It is a brutal story of abuse, addiction, and exploitation set against the beautiful scenery of his beloved mountains. David Copperfield is easier to read because it happened long ago and far away. Demom Copperhead is fiction that is true for a child today. It gives the book gravitas.

    Kingsolver uses her prodigious writing skills to humanize an unfairly despised and disadvantaged population. It is a well-told story, heartbreaking story. I wish it had been shorter. At times, I felt crushed by Demon's bleak circumstances and choices. I stopped midbook and read something else for relief. I'm glad I read it, and I doubt I'll ever reread it.

    Here is a lovely, five-minute interview with Barabara Kingsolver talking about Demon Copperhead and Charles Dickens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TwYw0cjxlw

🐍💉💊⛰️🙁

 

    I visited a fantastic independent bookstore in Severna Park, Maryland, called Park Books & LitCoLab. The knowledgeable and helpful employee recommended this mystery to me because I like Richard Osman's The Thursday Murder Club (reviewed here: https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/search?q=Thursday+Murder+) and Robert Thorogood's Death Comes to Marlow (reviewed here: https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/search?q=Death+Comes+to+Marlow). I consume most of my books in audio format, but The Twyford Code by Janice Hallett needs to be read. It is hard to describe, but I will try. First of all, the entire story is told through transcribed audio files. It is a mystery about a little boy who discovers a book containing a code, causing something terrible to happen to his beloved teacher. Steven Smith is dyslexic and didn't learn to read well until he was an adult in prison. When he gets out, he is determined to solve the mystery of what happened to his teacher, Miss Isles. Or the book is about something else. You have to read it to see. You will like this one if you like clever, code-filled books (and I do).

📚📱🔐🐟💸

    I have been a Cornia Funke fan since I read her Inkheart trilogy. Her books are translated from German into English, and they resonate with me because I lived in Germany for nine years of my life. The descriptions of the flora and fauna conjure up walking in the German countryside. Her characters are German folk art with fairies, trolls, and other fantastic creatures come to life. Dragon Rider isn't her best work; however, I enjoyed her character arcs and plot twists. They don't feel American to me, but European. It is an old-world quest and coming-of-age story.

🐲🐉🐸🐦‍⬛

The Lastest Ann Patchett Novel 💦🍒 and I am Tricked into Starting Another Trilogy ☹️ and It's a Good One😠🧵🪡

elegiac--a story told with sorrow

 I am in awe of Ann Patchett for many reasons. She co-owns a bookstore, loves opera, and is a successful novelist. She's living the dream. I have read almost everything she's written and vibe with her style a great deal. 

   Tom Lake is her latest novel. I listened to it on audio read by Meryl Streep. It was sublime. I received it in my Libby App but waited to start it. I knew the book would wreck me, and I needed to fortify myself against the elegiac thread stitched into Ann Patchett's prose and plucked powerfully by Meryl Streep. A writing teacher once told me suffering is plot. These women are masters of suffering. The combination of Patchett's writing and Streep's interpretation is devastating, but in the best way. I've seen Tom Lake described as the story of young love versus mature love, and I agree. What resonated for me was the love between mothers and daughters as it changes over time. Small children are physically consuming, teenagers are emotionally exhausting, and adult children are untethered from your ability to protect them. 

   The plot reminds me of nesting dolls. There is plot within plot within plot. It is the beginning of COVID, and Lara's three daughters, in their twenties, have returned home to the cherry farm in Michigan where they grew up. The book is told from Lara's perspective. As they work to hand pick sweet cherries, the daughters want to hear again about their mother's early life as an actress and her summer love affair with a not-yet-famous actor, Duke--the gritty details they've been too young to be told before now. There are many precarious minefields to navigate as the narrative moves between young aspiring actress Lara and the mature woman of fifty-eight Lara. Will the cherry farm stay afloat, or will it be destroyed by climate change? What daughters will stay? What does the future hold for the daughters? What was Lara's relationship with Duke? Why did she stop acting? Who does Lara love the most--her husband or her young love? What can she tell her daughters about her past? What needs to remain secret?  

   Tom Lake vibrates with symbolism and meaning that I won't fully understand until my fourth or fifth reading. There is much to be said about this book because it is wonderfully dense, like a great carrot cake filled with juicy raisins, bitter walnut pieces, and tender shreds of carrot, then covered with cream cheese frosting. So delicious and complex!

    I predict this will be the best book I read this year. 

🍒🪆🏊‍♀️

 

    My daughter recommended the book, This Woven Kingdom by Tahereh Mafi, and I'm glad she did. It is a well-done fantasy book full of adventure, magic, and intrigue. As I approached the end of the book, I wondered how will Mafi, who'd been crushing it, end this fantastic book? There only so many pages left to do it justice . . . *gasp*. It's a trilogy. And the final one has yet to come out. 

☹️

    This Woven Kingdom reminds me of Cinderella. I wonder if Mafi had that in mind as her framework. It works well, but this isn't a Cinderella waiting to be rescued by a prince. Alizeh kicks butt. The story is told between Alizeh and the crown Prince, Kamran. There might be a bit of Romeo and Juliet going on as well. All these elements are skillfully blended into a crisp, fast-paced book stocked with likable characters trying to solve big problems with adeptness and tenacity. 

      These Infinite Threads is a worthy sequel to Tahereh Mafi's first book of her newest series, This Woven Kingdom. The characters grow in complexity, and while some problems are solved, larger ones arise. It continues to be fast-paced and attention-grabbing. My biggest complaint is Mafi likes to end her book on a giant cliffhanger. My subsequent complaint is the next one will be out sometime in 2024. My life is so hard. My reading life, at least.

🥹

🔮🪄❤️🧵🪡🧽🧹🧞‍♀️

Maybe Aliens, more HP, and a Family Saga

 

    This quirky book, Where the Forest Meets the Stars by Glendy Vanderah, was superb. A biology graduate student doing field research encounters a lost child who claims to be an alien inhabiting a dead child's body. The characters in this book are wonderfully broken and complex. The book asks a big question: what do you do with death and pain? Move closer or move away? I like where it landed--risking to care is costly, but worth it.

🌳✨⭐️👽🌟🌌

  I avoid spoilers, but if you haven't read or seen the Harry Potter series, you probably have chosen not to. There are spoilers ahead. Also, I'm revisiting the Harry Potter series, so expect to see more HP posts in the future. This week I read Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. It is instructional to see seeds of future story plots being planted. The tight plot of the entire series, is a lesson to writers.

 Knowing that Harry and Ginny end up together makes Ginny's early reactions to Harry hilarious. He was her crush for a long time. I thought Hermione and Harry were better suited to each other than Harry and Ginny, but as I reread HP and the Chamber of Secrets, I wonder if I'm not as right as I believe. I will probably say this as I reread through each Harry Potter book.

🪄🧙‍♂️🧙‍♀️🐍🪄

   Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo was recommended to me as a family drama, and it does that exceptionally well. Acevedo weaves the stories of four magical sisters and two of their daughters into a gripping, wrenching, loving, heart-expanding tale that is hard to put down. Halfway through, I did put it down because of the graphic sex. It was too much for me, but I returned and finished it because the story was compelling, and I wanted to know what happened. It is a great book I'm not 100% happy I read.😐

🍲👨‍👩‍👧‍👧💍👶🏻💃🏻

Baltimore, Hogwarts, and London 💔🧪🇬🇧🧙‍♂️

 

  R. Eric Thomas's book Kings of B'more--great double entendre of a title--takes place in and around Baltimore (B'more). The narration ping-pongs between two sixteen-year-old gay friends, Linus and Harrison. Linus is moving out of state in a few days and has yet to tell Harrison. An anxious soul, Harrison wants to give his friend, Linus, a final fantastic day together. I moved a lot growing up because my dad was in the military, and this book captures the poignancy of losing your best friend when you need each other most. Navigating growing up is better when you have someone who gets you, what you're going through, and is striving to "be more."  

🩳🌞☀️😎🚗🏳️‍🌈

 J. K. Rowling has become a controversial figure of late. Is that why Audible is offering her book Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone for free, if you're a member, through August 10th? https://www.audible.com/about/newsroom/stream-the-first-harry-potter-audiobook-free-on-audible-stories

  Jim Dale does an award-winning narration of a complex, many-character book. This book is always delightful. The characters are multilayered, with several storylines, and they are humorous and clever. I admire how the three friends work together, shoring up each other's weaknesses and celebrating each other's strengths. The despised child becoming the hero never gets old for me, and this is probably why I love A Wrinkle in Time, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and Inkheart. 

🪄🧌🐲🧙‍♂️

    The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner is her first novel. It is interesting and well researched--it is historical fiction, but it is too closely following a formula for its multiple plot lines. I found the main character too flawless. It also gets off to a slow start, but gains momentum. I think her subsequent novels will improve as she ventures out a little more into her own style. It is a worthwhile read, especially if you are an Anglophile. 

🧪💍🧐🗺️🇬🇧