Stepping in the Write Direction

What I Ate In One Year by Stanley Tucci is an interesting, light, humorous, and witty read for anyone interested in cooking, good food, restaurants, acting and actors, what Tucci’s daily business and family life is like, and what the heck is going on with his wife Felicity Blunt who Tucci portrays constantly throughout the book as potentially engaging in affairs, which I’m sure is just a humorous device of some kind. You couldn’t help noticing everytime he mentions where she’s off to, there is a tongue in cheek sarcastic suggestion that other men may be involved, throughout the entire book, yet they pair beautifully in the kitchen, and he makes the point, “Time cooking with someone you love is time well spent.” Before this book I was reading Richard Osman’s latest, We Solve Murders, and struggling to get through which I didn’t expect as I’ve loved previous books he’d written. I found it very different from his books in the Thursday Murder Club series. Tucci’s book by comparison was a v...

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney is about two brothers with a tenuous relationship who are coping with the death of their father, realigning their lives in their post father worlds, and grappling with the meaning of life and spirituality as well. The book takes place during a period that leads up to the approaching Christmas holiday. The older brother is an educated, successful attorney. The younger brother is an Irish chess champion who lived with their father, and was with him during his final days. Both brothers are in relationships with women that are not exactly traditional, and this initially becomes a certain degree of conflict between them. There are family and comunnity expectations to contend with, as they move forward into the lives that feel most comfortable to each.  Life doesn’t come in “one size fits all,” despite what well meaning parents, siblings, friends, and coworkers may think. It takes strength to stand up for the things that give our individual lives meaning and pu...

Sipsworth by Simon Van Booy is the kind of book that you don’t want to let go of until you’re finished, and when you are, you feel full of something deep in your heart, have a catch in your throat, and eyes that want to water. The next day, you go back to the book to save the passages you couldn’t take the time to when you were in a hurry to find out what happens next. Each passage you locate leads you closer to understanding fully what Helen Cartwright is experiencing throughout the book.  Another book released recently, The Life Impossible by Matt Haig, covers similar terrain, “Once upon a time there was an old woman who lived the most boring life in the universe. That woman rarely left her bungalow, except to see the doctor, help at the charity shop, or visit the cemetery. She didn’t garden any more. The grass was overgrown, and the flowerbeds were full of weeds. She ordered her weekly shopping. She lived in the Midlands…She was only seventy-two, but since her husband passed awa...

What Happened to Nina by  Dervla McTiernan deals with a parent’s greatest fear, a missing child. It reads like a gripping police procedural wrapped in a study of family dynamics, which is further wrapped in literary fiction. A young college aged couple, Nina and Simon, who’ve been involved for about four years go off to Stowe Vermont, a short distance from their homes, for a week of hiking, but only Simon returns from this trip, and Nina’s family is unaware he’s home, somewhat reminiscent of Gabby Petito’s disappearance during a summer vacation with boyfriend Brian Laundrie who returns to his family in Gabby’s van, while Gabby’s family, not notified of Brian’s return, grows increasingly alarmed when she fails to respond to repeated attempts at communication with her, ultimately prompting them to contact law enforcement. Themes in the book involve domestic violence’s coersive control, inter-partner violence, dealing with grief and trauma, the lasting effect of social media’s innuend...

If there is a better action thriller than Red Sky Mourning by Jack Carr, I have yet to read it. In May 2023 I read two of Carr’s earlier books: Only the Dead and Terminal List, rating both 5 stars. This newest of Carr’s publications is the 7th in his Terminal List book series. The action starts very early, as Carr sets the tone, “…governments will gain new technological powers to increase their control over populations, based on pervasive surveillance systems and the ability to control digital infrastructure. We would be wise to remember that a society’s primary organizing principle is its monopoly on force, its ability to control its populace and export violence in the form of war.” Two different AI intelligence oriented sentient quantum computers are characters in this novel, as each system designer strives to have their creation first to attain the power of global domination. The plot tension is well underway by page 30, and this book is essentially unputdownable ...

Bitch by Lucy Cooke is about finally getting the science right, debunking the male biases in zoological research influenced by the work of Charles Darwin. This early perspective on research embraced, “the widespread notion, popularized by Darwin, that females were generally passive and males active. The theory was embellished by others and labelled the Organizational Concept–the universally accepted model for sexual differentiation not just of bodies, but behaviour too.”  This book leaves readers dazzled by the complex diversity among different species’ reproductive systems as revealed by countless research studies Cooke details. This research done in the last half of the 20th century as well as in the first quarter of the 21st century is cause for astonishment, reverence, and awe as so many new discoveries are made regarding what drives evolution, reproduction, and social development in countless different species’ communities, and puts the Organizational Concept in its prope...

The Great Frontier: In The Beginning (The Reborn) by Ron Jenkins is an answer to the question “What could life be like on Earth and in space hundreds of years from today?” The book is a fascinating, spellbinding, engaging portrayal of future life, almost epic in the sense the characters are working to create the best life possible through their top level scientific research and technological advances, while embracing values of family, love, connection, and community, ultimately defending all they hold dear against what seems like eternal forces of encroachment, disruption and destruction in the form of an Earth based corporate and criminal Cartel, more powerful than any government, seeking control and riches, while co-opting space’s only military force run by the United Nations.  The quality of  the writing and storyline draws readers in.   As scientist Mara emerges from her research facility in the shuttle to check for survivors in a starship on a collision course with h...