Life's Too Short

 

Dial A for Aunties

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by Jesse Q. Sutanto (read by Risa Mei)

Library loan

 

 

Publisher's Summary

 
"Sutanto brilliantly infuses comedy and culture into the unpredictable rom-com/murder mystery mashup as Meddy navigates familial duty, possible arrest and a groomzilla. I laughed out loud and you will too.” (USA Today, four-star review)

“A hilarious, heartfelt romp of a novel about — what else? — accidental murder and the bond of family. This book had me laughing aloud within its first five pages… Utterly clever, deeply funny, and altogether charming, this book is sure to be one of the best of the year!” (Emily Henry, New York Times best-selling author of Beach Read)

One of NPR's Best Books of 2021!

One of PopSugar’s "42 Books Everyone Will Be Talking About in 2021"!

What happens when you mix one (accidental) murder with two thousand wedding guests, and then toss in a possible curse on three generations of an immigrant Chinese-Indonesian family? 

You get four meddling Asian aunties coming to the rescue! 

When Meddelin Chan ends up accidentally killing her blind date, her meddlesome mother calls for her even more meddlesome aunties to help get rid of the body. Unfortunately, a dead body proves to be a lot more challenging to dispose of than one might anticipate, especially when it is inadvertently shipped in a cake cooler to the over-the-top billionaire wedding Meddy, her Ma, and aunties are working at an island resort on the California coastline. It's the biggest job yet for the family wedding business — "Don't leave your big day to chance, leave it to the Chans!" — and nothing, not even an unsavory corpse, will get in the way of her auntie's perfect buttercream flowers.

But things go from inconvenient to downright torturous when Meddy's great college love — and biggest heartbreak — makes a surprise appearance amid the wedding chaos. Is it possible to escape murder charges, charm her ex back into her life, and pull off a stunning wedding all in one weekend?
©2021 Jesse Q. Sutanto (P)2021 Penguin Audio

 

DNF for cause

Maybe I have lost my sense of humor and the ridiculous. I was enjoying the opening and looking forward to a fun, light-hearted read when out of the blue the whole thing went south, completely derailed. Who in their right mind chooses to trivialize attempted date rape and manslaughter these days? It is not a laughing matter and I didn't stick around to see it become one. Man, am I getting self-righteous in my old age -- and with little tolerance for insensitivity and stupidity.

Necessary Roughage

 

A bit of good trash now and then is good for the severest reader. It provides the necessary roughage in the literary diet.

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Phyllis McGinley, author

 

I have been on a light-reading binge lately with little to say about the various books other than I enjoyed them for one reason or another but don't have much else to say about them. These are books that aren't part of series that I am working my way through (Louise Penny, Ann Cleeves, Ngaio Marsh, Charles Todd et. al). On The West Wing, they called it "taking out the trash day," getting rid of the unresolved minutiae so they could move on to the big stuff.

 

The Van Gogh Deception

 

 

By: Deron Hicks
Narrated by: P.J. Ochlan
Series: Lost Art Mysteries Series, Book 1
Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins

 

 
Publisher's Summary
A Sunshine State Young Readers Award nominee 
Dan  Brown meets Jason Bourne in this riveting middle-grade mystery  thriller. When a young boy is discovered in Washington DC's National  Gallery without any recollection of who he is, so begins a high-stakes  race to unravel the greatest mystery of all: his identity. 
As  the stakes continue to rise, the boy must piece together the disjointed  clues of his origins while using his limited knowledge to stop one of  the greatest art frauds ever attempted.
©2017 Deron Hicks (P)2020 Tantor     

 

DD recommends. I might even read more in the series, if I can borrow them from the library. This is thriller at my speed.

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The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (Dramatized)

 

 

By: Dorothy L. Sayers
Narrated by: Ian Carmichael, Peter Jones, Martin Jarvis
Length: 2 hrs and 28 mins
Performance

Publisher's Summary
The elegant, intelligent amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey is one of detective literature's most popular creations. Ian Carmichael is the personification of Dorothy L. Sayers' charming investigator in this BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation. The dignified calm of the Bellona Club is shattered when Lord Wimsey finds General Fentiman dead in his favourite chair. A straighforward death by natural causes? Perhaps... but why can no one remember seeing the general the day he died? And who is the mysterious Mr Oliver? Lord Peter moves between London and Paris, salon and suburbs, to unfold the intriguing case.
©1991, 2002, 2006 BBC Audiobooks Ltd (P)2006 BBC Audiobooks Ltd

 

I don't like dramatizations. But it was free and it has been sitting in my Library for a while... and it is a Dorothy Sayers. So I sat through it but I was right, I don't like dramatizations. It is even worse than reading an abridged edition. But there isn't a lot of Sayers available on audio and I have read all that I can get my hands on. Time for some re-reads.

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Revenge of the Wrought-Iron Flamingos

 

 

By: Donna Andrews
Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
Series: Meg Langslow, Book 3
Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
Unabridged Audiobook

Publisher's Summary
Yorktown, Virginia, is reliving its role in the Revolutionary War by celebrating the anniversary of the British surrender in 1781. This year, plans include a reenactment of the battle and a craft fair. Meg Langslow has returned to her home town for the festivities - and to sell her wrought-iron flamingos.
Meg's also trying to keep her father from scaring too many tourists with his impersonation of an 18th-century physician - not to mention saving her brother from the clutches of a con man who might steal the computer game he's invented. It's a tough job - until the swindler is found dead, slain in Meg's booth with one of her wrought-iron creations. Now Meg must add another item to her to-do list: Don't forget to solve the murder!
©2019 Dreamscape Media, LLC (P)2019 Dreamscape Media, LLC

 

Pure mind candy

This is a series that I am not rushing through. It is just sitting on the back burner waiting for those days when I want to read something that is entirely mindless and entirely preposterous. Something I can laugh with and at.

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The Luck of the Bodkins

 

By: P. G. Wodehouse
Narrated by: Jonathan Cecil
Series: Drones Club, Monty Bodkin, Book 1
Length: 9 hrs and 5 mins
Unabridged Audiobook

Publisher's Summary
Things on board the RMS Atlantic are terribly, terribly complicated.... Monty Bodkin loves Gertrude, who thinks he likes Lotus Blossom, a starlet who definitely adores Ambrose, who thinks that she has a thing for his brother, Reggie, who is struck by Mabel Spence, sister-in-law of Ikey Llewellyn (movie mogul, Ambrose’s prospective employer and reluctant smuggler), but hasn’t the means to marry her. With well-meaning but unhelpful ship’s steward Albert Peasemarch and a toy mouse with a screw-top head thrown in for good measure, it will, indeed, take the luck of the Bodkins to sort it all out.
©2012 The Trustees of the Wodehouse Estate (P)2012 AudioGO

Wodehouse delights in absurdities and I delight in Wodehouse. 'Nuff said.

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The Raphael Affair

 

 

By: Iain Pears
Narrated by: Ralph Cosham
Series: Jonathan Argyll Art History Mysteries, Book 1
Length: 5 hrs and 31 mins

 

Publisher's Summary
Set in Rome, The Raphael Affair features the perpetually beset General Bottando of the Italian National Art Theft Squad; his glamorous assistant, Flavia di Stefano; and Jonathan Argyll, a British art historian. When Jonathan is arrested for breaking into an obscure church in Rome, he claims that it contains a long-lost Raphael hidden under a painting by Mantini. The painting disappears - then reappears in the hands of the top British art dealer, Edward Byrnes. How has Byrnes found out about the hidden masterpiece, and whom is he acting for?
There is also the curious matter of the safe deposit box full of sketches closely resembling features of the newly discovered painting. A hideous act of vandalism occurs, then murder. Bottando faces the most critical challenge of his career, and Jonathan and Flavia find themselves in unexpected danger.
©1990 Iain Pears (P)1996 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Found this in the Audible Plus catalog of free books. I grabbed it because I like art history. No idea who the author is but the premise looked interesting. The book wasn't bad and I thought I would try other books in the series.

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The Funny Thing About Norman Foreman

 

By: Julietta Henderson
Narrated by: Katherine Parkinson
Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
Unabridged Audiobook

Publisher's Summary
"Charming, warm and uplifting...there is so much to love about this book." (Laurie Frankel, New York Times bestselling author of This is How It Always Is)
A triumphant and touching debut about the unlikeliest superstar you’ll ever meet.
Twelve-year-old Norman Foreman and his best friend, Jax, are a legendary comedic duo in waiting, with a plan to take their act all the way to the Edinburgh Fringe. But when Jax dies, Norman decides the only fitting tribute is to perform at the festival himself. The problem is, Norman’s not the funny one. Jax was.
There’s also another, far more colossal objective on Norman’s new plan that his single mom, Sadie, wasn’t ready for: he wants to find the father he’s never known. Determined to put a smile back on her boy’s face, Sadie resolves to face up to her own messy past, get Norman to the Fringe and help track down a man whose identity is a mystery, even to her.
Julietta Henderson’s delightfully funny and tender debut takes us on a road trip with a mother and son who will live in the reader’s heart for a long time to come, and teaches us that - no matter the odds - we must always reach for the stars.
©2021 Juliette Henderson (P)2021 Harlequin Enterprises, Limited

DD recommends. I liked it. It was bittersweet but with the emphasis on the sweet. Surprised that it was published by Harlequin; it is much better than what I've come to expect from that imprint.

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The Man That Got Away

 

 

By: Lynne Truss
Narrated by: Matt Green
Series: A Constable Twitten Mystery, Book 2
Length: 7 hrs and 37 mins
Unabridged Audiobook

 

Publisher's Summary
1957: In the beach town of Brighton, music is playing and guests are sunning themselves when a young man is found dead, dripping blood, in a deck chair. Constable Twitten of the Brighton Police Force has a hunch that the fiendish murder may be connected to a notorious nightspot, but his captain and his colleagues are - as ever - busy with other more important issues. Inspector Steine is being conned into paying for the honor of being featured at the Museum of Wax, and Sergeant Brunswick is trying (and failing) to get the attention of the distraught Brighton Belles who found the body. As the case twists and turns, Constable Twitten must find the murderer and convince his colleagues that there's an evil mastermind behind Brighton's climbing crime rate.
Our incomparable team of detectives are back for another outing in the second installment of Lynne Truss' joyfully quirky crime series.
©2019 Lynne Truss (P)2019 W. F. Howes Ltd

 

I read the first book in the series. A Shot in the Dark and I still agree with what I said:

"It's the characters, not the mystery

... Suspend disbelieve all ye who enter here. While it isn't the best mystery story I have read, how can you not laugh at a Police Chief who has no interest in catching criminals and his rookie constable who is smarter than he is and does have an interest in catching  them. I like her wry humor; it is the saving grace."

Book 2 is better than the first. If I can find them at the Library, I'll be back for 3 and 4. And I love the cover art.

My Beloved World

by Sonia Sotomayor (read by Rita Moreno)
Library Loan

 

 

Publisher's Summary
 
The  first Hispanic and third woman appointed to the United States Supreme  Court, Sonia Sotomayor has become an instant American icon. Now, with a  candor and intimacy never undertaken by a sitting Justice, she recounts  her life from a Bronx housing project to the federal bench, a journey  that offers an inspiring testament to her own extraordinary  determination and the power of believing in oneself.

Here is the  story of a precarious childhood, with an alcoholic father (who would  die when she was nine) and a devoted but overburdened mother, and of the  refuge a little girl took from the turmoil at home with her  passionately spirited paternal grandmother. But it was when she was  diagnosed with juvenile diabetes that the precocious Sonia recognized  she must ultimately depend on herself. She would learn to give herself  the insulin shots she needed to survive and soon imagined a path to a  different life. With only television characters for her professional  role models, and little understanding of what was involved, she  determined to become a lawyer, a dream that would sustain her on an  unlikely course, from valedictorian of her high school class to the  highest honors at Princeton, Yale Law School, the New York County  District Attorney’s office, private practice, and appointment to the  Federal District Court before the age of 40. Along the way we see how  she was shaped by her invaluable mentors, a failed marriage, and the  modern version of extended family she has created from cherished friends  and their children. Through her still-astonished eyes, America’s  infinite possibilities are envisioned anew in this warm and honest book,  destined to become a classic of self-invention and self-discovery.

©2013 Sonia Sotomayor (P)2013 Random House Audio          

 

Justice Sotomayor is one tough dude.
 
Any seven year old who decides that she must be the one to administer her own daily insulin shots and sets about to do it herself -- including having to light the gas burner with a match so that she can boil the syringe to sanitize it -- has the tools needed to grow up to be not just a judge but a Supreme Court justice.  That's where her story begins and it was just the first of many hurdles in her life that she met with grit and determination.  I loved every minute of the time I spent listening to her life story.

 

The Eighth Detective

also published as Eight Detectives
by Alex Pavesi (read by Emilia Fox)

Library loan

 

 

Publisher's Summary
 
There are rules for murder mysteries. There must be a victim. A suspect. A detective.

Grant McAllister, a professor of mathematics, once sat down and worked all the rules out - and wrote seven perfect detective stories to demonstrate. But that was 30 years ago. Now Grant lives in seclusion on a remote Mediterranean island, counting the rest of his days.

Until Julia Hart, a brilliant, ambitious editor knocks on his door. Julia wishes to republish his book, and together they must revisit those old stories: an author hiding from his past and an editor keen to understand it.

But there are things in the stories that don’t add up. Inconsistencies left by Grant that a sharp-eyed editor begins to suspect are more than mistakes. They may be clues, and Julia finds herself with a mystery of her own to solve.

Alex Pavesi's The Eighth Detective is a love letter to classic detective stories with a modern twist, where nothing is as it seems, and proof that the best mysteries break all the rules.

A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt and Company 
©2020 Alex Pavesi (P)2020 Macmillan Audio

 

A solidly three-star read.

I grabbed this one after reading Elanterri's review. I wanted to see if I agreed with her assessment or if as a reader of mysteries I would have a different take on the book. I agreed with her but have my own take on the book.

McAllister's mathematical analysis of the 4 ingredients (as they were described in the book, not rules) were interesting but, in the final analysis, banal. It might make a fun paper to write for a college "math for poets" paper to show that you understand set theory. ("For poets" was a designation we used at my college to describe a series of somewhat watered-down classes that were aimed at fulfilling the requirement that we all had to take at least two classes in each of four areas of endeavor). For lovers of murder mysteries, this mathematical analysis is just one more way to look at the stories we love to read.

The structure of the book is just plain weird: stories within a story with some twists. Julia Hart reads the stories to McAllister and then they discuss them and when they get to the end of the 7th short story, all hell breaks lose. That same discussion 6 times over just got boring. Honestly, I would have been just as happy to read the unadulterated short stories because they were much more interesting that the rest of the tale.

The bottom-line is that something was missing from this book, something that makes this a "meh" rather a "wow."

 

The Last Judgement

Life's Too Short

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Publisher's Summary

In an exchange of favors with an art dealer colleague, Jonathan Argyll unluckily offers to transport a painting from Paris back to Rome. It seems routine work, and Jonathan gets to meet his girlfriend, Flavia, who works for Rome's Art Theft Squad.But when a would-be thief tries to take the painting at the train station, and the art dealer seems less interested in his purchase once he sees it, Jonathan wonders why, as events unfold, someone is willing to kill for it. With customary wit and panache, Jonathan and Flavia embark on a breathless chase to capture a killer who has been refining his own particular art for many years.

©1993 Iain Pears (P)1997 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

 

 

It is so much easier to write about the books you hate!

 

A few weeks ago I read The Raphael Affair by Iain Pears. It was enjoyable but nothing to write home about. The other day, I picked up another book in the series, The Last Judgement. It was DNF within 15 minutes -- just as soon as a supposedly intelligent man falls for one of the oldest cons in the book and lets a stranger watch his bags, which include a purchase (i.e., not his property) that he is delivering to buyer on behalf of a gallery owner while he goes off to buy cigarettes. The stupidity of the whole set-up so utterly pissed me off that I quit reading before the chase was even underway. I don't care how amazing the rest of the story is supposed to be.I lost interest in pursuing it. DNF!

 

I soothed away the hurt with a nice Ngaio Marsh.

The Dictionary of Lost Words

 

by Pip Williams (read by Pippa Bennett-Warner)
Library loan

 

 

Publisher's Summary
 
Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, an Oxford garden shed in which her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Young Esme’s place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper containing the word bondmaid flutters beneath the table. She rescues the slip and, learning that the word means “slave girl,” begins to collect other words that have been discarded or neglected by the dictionary men.

As she grows up, Esme realizes that words and meanings relating to women’s and common folks’ experiences often go unrecorded. And so she begins in earnest to search out words for her own dictionary: the Dictionary of Lost Words. To do so she must leave the sheltered world of the university and venture out to meet the people whose words will fill those pages.

Set during the height of the women’s suffrage movement and with the Great War looming, The Dictionary of Lost Words reveals a lost narrative, hidden between the lines of a history written by men. Inspired by actual events, author Pip Williams has delved into the archives of the Oxford English Dictionary to tell this highly original story. The Dictionary of Lost Words is a delightful, lyrical, and deeply thought-provoking celebration of words and the power of language to shape the world.

©2021 Pip Williams (P)2021 Random House Audio

 

Interesting thesis. Lousy execution.

While I agree with the author's thesis (he who controls the language, controls the narrative), the story was boring. I kept wondering where it was headed. Usually I don't mind a book that meanders along, but then again, at least I have a hint of where we are headed and the scenery along the way is interesting and engaging. The author could have made her point in half the time and perhaps even given us a more powerful story. I think that the only reason I finished the book was because I wanted to see where the author went with it.

ACCC: February, 2022

 

Main read:    Death in the Clouds  (read by Hugh Fraser)
Side read:  A Rage in Harlem by Chester Himes (read by Samuel L. Jackson)
( no poll this month)

I  tore through both reads in less then 24 hours. Enjoyed them both thoroughly.

 

Publisher's Summary
From seat number nine, Hercule Poirot is almost ideally placed to observe his fellow air travelers on this short flight from Paris to London. Over to his right sits a pretty young woman, clearly infatuated with the man opposite. Ahead, in seat number 13, is the Countess of Horbury, horribly addicted to cocaine and not doing too good a job of concealing it. Across the gangway in seat number eight, a writer of detective fiction is being troubled by an aggressive wasp. Yes, Poirot is almost ideally placed to take it all in - except that the passenger in the seat directly behind him has slumped over in the course of the flight ... dead.

Murdered. By someone in Poirot's immediate proximity. And Poirot himself must number among the suspects.

This title was previously published as Death in the Air.
©1935 Agatha Christie Limited (P)2003 HarperCollins Publishers

 

While I enjoyed Death in the Clouds, I did have one big issue with it. This is the second book in a row where the perp was the almost-too-good-to-be-true love interest of the innocent ingenue.  But otherwise, a delightful locked room mystery -- because how much more locked can you get than an airplane in flight!

 

Publisher's Blurb

Academy Award nominee Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction, Star Wars films), fresh off the success of his uproarious, Audie-nominated performance of the mock children’s book Go the F**k to Sleep, delivers a swaggering, darkly-humored rendering of Chester Himes’ classic first novel. 

Himes, described by The Sunday Times as “the greatest find in American crime fiction since Raymond Chandler”, was no stranger to the world of crime: in his late teens and early 20s, he served seven years in the Ohio State Penitentiary for armed robbery, the confession to which was beaten out of him by the police. He delivers the tale of his hopelessly naïve hero suddenly finding himself on the run from a hypocritical and far-from-heroic police force with lurid violence and brutal humor. There is no voice better than Mr. Jackson’s to narrate this hardboiled story of love and crime, set in a richly imagined, mid-20th-century Harlem.

©1957 Chester Himes (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Listening to A Rage in Harlem as read by Samuel L. Jackson was a pure delight; he made the book sing. The book itself was a merry chase through Harlem's underworld of crime, complete with car chases and gruesome murders and very much in the style of the 1950s' down and dirty he-man, macho crime fiction that was being written at the time.

 

Three Act Tragedy

 

 

 by Agatha Christie (read by Hugh Fraser) c. 1934

Agatha Christie Centenary Celebration read

 

 

 

Publisher's Summary

Sir Charles Cartwright should have known better than to allow 13 guests to sit down for dinner. For at the end of the evening one of them is dead - choked by a cocktail that contained no trace of poison.

Predictable, says Hercule Poirot, the great detective. But entirely unpredictable is that he can find absolutely no motive for murder...

©1934 Agatha Christie Limited (P)2002 HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

 

 

Go, Aggie! It isn't until the very end that you realize just how delightfully complicated this story is.

 

Charles was scumbag through and through. A sociopath and a psychopath -- manipulator of people and cold-blooded murderer -- responding to the whims of his gonads. Yes, yes, I am willing to find only the worst in Charles.

Not a fan of Egg. There was just something about her that bothered me (and her mother, too). Don't think I ever saw what she saw in him -- or why. She fell hook, line and sinker for his manipulating, his flattery and his fawning attention. She just never thought out what being married to a man thirty years her senior would mean 10, 20 years from now. Beautiful but not very perspicacious.

Satterthwaite was a dupe and Charles used him badly. Poor Satterthwaite.

Hastings was not missed; he had long since worn out his welcome in his role as unreliable narrator. His secret has been revealed so that by now the reader knows not to trust him. Yes, mystery novels are about deception and leading the reader astray but when you know who is doing the deceiving and how they always do it, it gets boring. No Hastings opens a whole new tool box -- and we have just gotten our first peek as to what is in it.