Two Books, Same Author, Both Scary! 😱😳👻👿

 Thank you, Hilary and Gabe, for your book recommendations this week!

twisty, sinister, exciting plot, intriguing protagonist, Alex Stern

        After eating Thanksgiving food for several days, I crave something spicy and bitter, like Phad Thai or chili. After reading gentle time travel books and romantic comedies, the Alex Stern series by Leigh Bardugo feels like what I need. Two of my daughters recommended it, and they warned me it was dark and creepy. They were right. I raced through the first two books, Ninth House and Hell Bent. Bardugo intends it to be a trilogy--yes, I'm reading another fantasy trilogy. I like Bardugo's writing. She is adept at creating tension, plot twists, and characters that crackle with mixed motives and intentions. Alex Stern is a transplanted Californian on a scholarship to Yale because of her unique ability to see ghosts. Alex becomes a member of a secret society that serves other secret societies, safeguarding them during their rituals. She wrestles with helping the wealthy and privileged stay wealthy and privileged. She needs them, but why do they need her, and what happens when they no longer do?

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Crazy Books this Week--Good Crazy 😜

     This week, I read Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. I knew it had been a contender for the Man Booker Prize, so I had high expectations, but I was curious to see if I was up to the job. Cloud Atlas is one of those books I should read because it's an IMPORTANT book. Well, this was the week. 

    I like quirky books, whether it is plot, ideas, characters, or setting. Cloud Atlas is masterfully quirky. The book is like a set of nesting dolls. There are six narrators or six different stories told in six genres. It sounds confusing because it is confusing. Each story is told partway, then abruptly shifts to the next seemingly unrelated story. The center narration is of a post-apocalyptic world that has returned to the stone age and unashamed cannibalism. A repeated adage is, "The weak are the meat that the strong do eat." 

    The second half of Cloud Atlas is David Mitchell's answer to why not seek to be an oppressor or "eat the weak"? 

    "Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future."

― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas    

    I can see why it is considered a noteworthy book. It's technically brilliant, strives with thorny themes, and seeks to bring change. Cloud Atlas will linger in my mind.

☁️💨📚🎶

    I have now read the entire Before the Coffee Gets Cold series by Toshikazu Kawaguchi with Before We Say Goodbye. I read them out of order, so this was a jump back in time in a book about time travel. ;-) This series highlights how fleeting life is and contemplates how we spend it. It reminds me of a section of Mary Oliver's poem "Summer Day,"

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

Kawaguchi advocates for telling those we love how valued they are to us in his lovely stories. Here is a link to previous reviews in the series:

https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/search?q=Before+the+Coffee+Gets+Cold

🦋☕️🕰️🎐

    I haven't reviewed any Jasper Fforde books, but I have read him. He is seriously weird. He has a series called  Thursday Next about real life and the book world not always peaceable coexisting, and the brave woman, Thursday Next, brings order and justice. The first book is The Eyre Affair. He is funny, thought-provoking and mind-bending.

    The Constant Rabbit is about rabbits living in England who underwent an anthropomorphizing event that caused some of them to become almost human. They live in houses, wear clothes, have jobs, drive cars, and are not very accepted by their human counterparts. Fford uses his book to discuss discrimination in a clever, sly, funny, and fun way. The protagonist, Peter Knox, is a weak-willed rabbit spotter. It is challenging to tell rabbits apart, and few people possess the skill. He is employed by a nefarious organization that monitors the rabbits. Peter is growing uneasy with his complicity against this unfairly maligned group, but what should he do about it. Then, a family of rabbits moves in next door.

🐇🐰🚨🦊

 

I Find Ann Napolitano and Now I'm in Book Love ❤️

    The big question of Dear Edward by Anne Napolitano is what does this twelve-year-old boy, the lone survivor of a plane crash that killed his parents and brother, owe to those who died? Napolitano slices back and forth between the flight and Edward's post-crash life. It is a genuine, gripping story. Edwards wants to return to normal, but the truth-tellers in his life, his therapist, and his best friend, Shay, convey that he will never be Eddy again. This is a coming-of-age story, a quest story, and a grief story. I gave it five stars on Goodreads.

🌟🛩️📬✉️🌟 

    I love everything by Connie Willis, but I especially enjoy her earlier books. Uncharted Territory is a humourous, sci-fi, western romance. Two government-sponsored explorers are mapping a new planet with the help of an indigenous scout who can fine them for every transgression against his home planet, like walking on the ground or speaking disparagingly about the planet or the scout. A starry-eyed new guy is added to the team; he is an expert in mating rituals who has followed the hologram adventures of Findiddy and Carson for several seasons. This is short, more of a novella, but Willis has several story threads bringing tension and hilarity. Classic Connie Willis.

👽🤠❤️

 

    Mrs. Nash's Ashes by Sarah Adler has many things going for it. The main characters, Millicent, a romantic, optimistic former child actor, and Hollis, a cynical, jaded writer, are on an unexpected road trip. There is good chemistry and sparkling banter between the two of them. Millie is on a mission to reunite her deceased elderly best friend with the lost love of her life from when they were in the Army in World War II. She is in hospice in Florida, so the clock is tick, tick, ticking. Airplanes and cars conspire against them as they travel from New York City. Millie carries three tablespoons of Mrs. Nash's ashes in her backpack. Hollis doesn't believe in lifelong love but is roped in. They encounter many roadblocks and adventures. The book sounds delightful, but I felt it was meh. The good guys in the story were squeaky clean, and the bad guys were unredeemable. The book could have used more tension in the plot. I'm good with a formula romance but I still need surprises and more complex characters.

💖🚙☀️

So Many Good Books This Week! Mystery 🔎 Romance 💝 Time-Travel🕰️ Science Fiction👽

 

Mysterious, duo timeline, good/bad, bravery, sister love

    Searching for Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok is a thrilling mystery/suspense story. About two-thirds of the way through, I guessed what the ending might be and hoped I was wrong. Kwok creates characters that try hard to be what they think others want, whether love, respect, or being truly seen. Successsful brilliant Sylvie Lee has disappeared, and no one but her still-living-at-home, socially awkward little sister is searching for her. But who is Sylvie Lee? The police interviewed the family and asked her nationality, and got three answers. She's American, she's Dutch, she's Chinese. For her sister, Amy, to find her sister, she must get to the bottom of who her sister was. The story's narration moves between Sylvie, Amy, and their mother, building tension and giving slivers to who Sylvie is. It is effectively told and worth the time.

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    I could tell Nora Goes Off Script by Annabel Monaghan was a Romance book because of the happy pink and green on the cover. I just knew good things would happen after the sad things, of course. Recently divorced Nora Hamilton writes scripts for the romance channel. She barely keeps herself, her two children, and her one-hundred-year-old house afloat. She takes the pain of her divorce and crafts her first nonromance script, which sells big. It is filmed on her property, and the leading man, Leo Vance, doesn't want to leave. He offers to pay her a thousand dollars a day to stay for a week. They get to know each other. 

   Given the fantastic premise, Nora Goes Off Script felt well grounded in a life with school drop off, single mom schedules, noisy neighbors, and a mortgage. I also appreciated the sly winks at the romance tropes; even the names made me think of Nora Ephron and Leonardo DiCaprio. Nora also frequently refers to how she crafts her romance scripts--the formula she uses--and it's clever how her romance story starts the same but "goes off script." It made me smile.

🎬🎞️🌺🌅📖

    The second book in the Before the Coffee Gets Cold series, Tales from the Cafe by Toshikazu Kawaguchi continues in the same cafe about seven years later, with many of the same characters. I find these stories surprising and comforting. A theme in these tales is an opportunity to say what had been neglected to be said, to show love and care that hadn't been expressed. It is a place of second chances. 

    I have reviewed other books in the series here: https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/search?q=Tashikazu+Kawaguchi

☕️🌁❤️‍🩹🕰️

    Once, in a faraway library in the 80s, I stumbled upon a short story collection on the best seller's table. All fiction best sellers were novels, except for FireWatch by Connie Willis. I read it, and she became my favorite author. Her book, To Say Nothing of the Dog, is my favorite book. This week, I read The Best of Connie Willis: Award-Winning Stories. The short stories in this book are incredibly well crafted. Some are humorous, some are heartbreaking, and some are horrifying--imagine a world where all the dogs have died. I'd already encountered these stories in other anthologies, but they still drew me in and made me wonder about what-ifs. My favorite short story, "Even the Queen," is here. It is about mothers and daughters and that sometimes antagonistic relationship. It never fails to make me laugh.

👽🛸🚀🎄🕰️

Cozy Murder, Travel, and Praise to the Power of Books 📚

 

    My favorite type of mystery is a fun cozy with a twist. Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murders by Jesse Q. Sutanta fits that category. The amateur sleuth is Vera Wong, an elderly Chinese widow who lives above her tea shop in San Francisco. One morning, she finds a dead body in her shop and decides to solve the murder and dispense advice. 

    I have read Sutanto before (link: https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/2022/09/mostly-mysteries.html) and like the characters she creates. They are quirky and fun. By the end of the book, they have usually discovered something new about themselves--I like character growth--and solved a mystery. 

☕️🫖🕵️‍♀️🥮🌉

    My book club is reading travel books. Travels with Charley in Search of America by John Steinbeck is a classic in the genre. I had heard of it, but never read it. It was written in 1960 and published in 1962. It details Steinbeck's journey in a tricked-out truck with his standard poodle, Charley. I think Steinbeck's questions and views reflect that era. He talks frequently about men being real men. He is prescient about waste, describing cities ringed by their trash and the pervasiveness of plastic packaging. His journey starts in Upperstate New York and takes a northern route to Monterey, California then returns via Texas and the South. He makes a special stop in Louisianna to see some celebrated women called The Cheerleaders, who gather faithfully daily to verbally abuse those desegregating a local school. The words used were so vile he wouldn't repeat them. Reading Travels with Charley is like opening a time capsule and being shocked by past values and how some things haven't changed. He spent time debating the upcoming presidential election between Kennedy and Nixon and how terrible politicians are. As he goes through the southern states, he encounters a pervasive, blatant racism that seems shockingly cruel. Trigger warning: He quotes the use of the N-word. 

    I wonder how the discussion of this book will go at book club because it feels a bit like a hot potato. 

🛣️🌆🌁🚘🐩

The Cat Who Saved Books by Susuke Matsukawa feels more like an extended allegory than a novel. An orphaned high school student has been living with his grandfather and working with him at his used bookshop. Then, his grandfather dies. The grief-stricken Rintaro Natsuki is recruited by a talking cat to help him save books, leading exciting adventures. This book is translated from Japanese.

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