Stepping in the Write Direction

The fourth book in her Chief Inspector Gamache series, A Rule Against Murder by Louise Penny was reminiscent  of an Agatha Christie novel. It was one of several books selected by the Goodreads Kindle Book Club Forum for January 2024 reading and discussion. In 2022 I was reading my first Louise Penny book, A World of Curiosities, and it was a DNF for me which is rare. It felt like a lecture series I hadn’t signed up for. The difference between that book and Penny’s earlier book A Rule Against Murder was like night and day. I  absolutely loved this book! I felt like I wanted to highlight every passage. I’m not sure if it’s because it was so beautifully written, or because I’d been starved so long for a rustic isolated setting with a big old inn, a cast of characters, descriptions of bumblebees, and magazine print reverse tattooing itself to a grasping guest’s fingers while reading in a chaise lounge.  The setting was originally a robber baron’s huge old log hunting cab...

The title of this book, The Postcard by Anne Berest, is simplicity that belies the complexities and mysteries of a population of people born during the chaos of any Nazi occupied country during WWII. A postcard is the simplest form of mail to send or receive, and in this case a cryptic message received on one prompts a search spanning generations. For those born during the confusion of the war years, made more inscrutable due to deaths, fears of documentation, and destruction of buildings housing records, all caused by existing wartime conditions, a segment of humanity is left without genealogical connections intact, exacerbated by fears of that period that exact knowledge and record keeping might escalate risks. A daughter begins an odyssey of discovery seeking answers related to a mysterious postcard her mother received from Paris in January 2003, that ultimately leads to a precious gift.   Pile on top of a generation desperately seeking more information about their origins, a sm...

At first glance Bright Lights, Big Christmas by Mary Kay Andrews might look like a typical flavor of the month romance. It was one of three books selected by the Goodreads Kindle Book Club Forum for December, and when checking this 9/26/23 released novel, I found it had been widely read with   4,338 ratings on Amazon and 23,072 ratings on Goodreads. When I first listened to the Audible sample, it grabbed me from the beginning: a family Christmas tree farm had a spring freeze that killed a number of trees, the patriarch  just had a heart attack and his ex wife was caring for him because his current wife dumped him as being a nurse wasn’t compatible with her vision of the future , but the surviving trees needed to be taken up to NYC imminently as they did every year for the big Christmas tree selling season, and this year the future of the farm depended on the income from their trees.   It is up to brother Murphy and his little sister Kelly to take charge of the NYC sales t...

I stumbled upon Dawn Dickerson’s book The Problem with Denny: A True Story of Hope For An Unwanted Child on Amazon because the cover caught my attention. The next thing that grabbed me were these two statements: 1.) Who wouldn’t be surprised to learn their dad had an 89-page FBI file and was a wanted man? 2.) Who would believe you when you say your mom has been married over eight times? I’m drawn to books that involve people who surmounted a difficult childhood to become successful contributing members of society. I bought the Kindle edition and started reading it immediately, despite having a ton of digital library books demanding my attention, and I read it straight through to the end in one sitting. The author is telling her father’s story, and he had real family challenges. This book deals with his earliest years through an honorable discharge from the service, and presumably future books may cover later years. The book is stand alone, so you have a complete story with no cliffhang...

Debut novel for author Amanda Peters 2023 Barnes & Noble Discover Prize Winner  Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction Finalist A Sarah Selects Book Club Pick (Amazon Sarah Gelman) Named a Best Book of the Year by Amazon, Apple, People, Barnes & Noble, Harper's Bazaar, Good Housekeeping, CrimeReads, Booklist, Debutiful, and more. In the Berry Pickers, Amanda Peters’ debut novel,  there is a spareness in the prose like you find with Louise Erdrich. All the rhythm and story comes from the motion of the characters and the cadence of their voices reverberating off hillsides, swallowed in the vast expanse of prairies, rivers, and forests, or amongst those gathered together before the warmth of a fire under a sky full of twinkling stars. It is a beautiful book about love, family, generations, the seasonal nature of farm work, the persistence of memory, self sufficiency, a crime, recognizing beauty in the world wherever you find it, how the heart seeks the place it most fee...

I felt most of this book was extremely well written, but it couldn’t decide on its intended direction. The first 200 pages or so were very interesting. After Romney loses his 2008 presidential bid, he was casting about for direction in life while simultaneously struggling to process the loss itself. The Orrin Hatch Senate seat then fell into his lap. The irony is Romney actually voted with Republicans 81% of the time as a Senator, but his raw acrimony toward Trump and the “MAGA constituents” contaminated his well, keeping him from serving constructively those conservative principles he grew up embracing. Another irony is many of the Trump supporters he eschews likely voted for Romney back in his 2008 presidential contest with Obama. He can’t see that probability because everything and everyone associated with Trump is anathema to him.  By the time I got to page 224, I felt like I was reading the male political equivalent to a reality show script from “The Real Housewives of Or...

The storyline in We Begin at the End  by Chris Whitaker sticks to you like the scent of orange blossoms unexpectedly hitting you late at night as you drive past a Florida grove with the windows down. It is powerful and unforgettable. A series of events are invoked by an accident that occurs at night when a young girl goes looking for her older sister thirty years earlier. It blooms from there like droplets of color ink on wet paper, it’s expanding tentacles affecting primarily one family, and many who are part of their extended community. A number of crimes are committed, including murder, which must be solved or an innocent person may get railroaded by the overzealous prosecution. There is quite a bit of strong language as the main character Duchess is a teen with a traumatic life and a lot of rage, fear, and sadness inside. She often seems like a student with ADHD and oppositional defiant disorder.   By page seven readers are drawn in by an emergency situation as California’...