Monday, October 30, 2023
THOUGHTS
I seem to have taken on the role of family historian. I'm the one who has worked with my father on the family tree. I'm the one who, over the years, organized the family to contribute to birthday and anniversary albums for my parents. I'm the one who has made sure that these things did not get thrown out in the move and now I am the one who is choosing what to scan and keep for the next generations. So far, I have managed to scan just one of the many 'projects' that we did over the years and have turned it to a Shutterfly album so that my sibs and our children can each have a copy -- especially since we all contributed something to the effort. It's the only one I am doing this way. Everything else they get is going to be on a flash drive (a very BIG flash drive).
TICKETS
A triple header this weekend! All music.
• Friday night, "The Knights with Chris Thile." The Knights are a New York based chamber orchestra that likes to explore the boundaries of orchestral music through collaboration. Currently, they are touring with mandolin player Chris Thile, a musician as much at home with Bach as he is with Bluegrass. While usually my reaction to contemporary orchestral/chamber composition is more along the lines of ugh, these guys have caught my attention with the music they perform. (I especially get a kick out the fact that the orchestra's two very talented founders, artistic directors and brothers are the same ages as my two eldest children.) 
• We saved the best for last: Sunday afternoon, Handel and Haydn Society's "Luks Leads Beethoven" performing Mendelssohn-Hensel: Overture in C Major, Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 3 and Symphony No. 8. This was by far the best concert of the week-end. The other two were fun and upbeat but H+H was sublime, music composition and performance beyond compare.
THE BOOKS
Winds of Evil by Arthur W. Upfield
Mid-20th C mystery series set in Australian out-back featuring a half aboriginal, half white MC and all the racial stereotyping that was common to a lot of the writing of that period. I guessed whodunit early on but not the motivation; I think I am into this series more for the atmosphere and the setting. Enjoying the series so far. Just a question of how many I actually want to read. Kudos to the publisher for not bowdlerizing the books.
3.25 stars
Under the Jaguar Sun by Italo Calvino
First, the s-l-o-w, dr-ohhh-ning narrator killed any joy there might have been in this read. Second, it turns out that what I was reading were actually fragments of three works in progress at the time of his sudden death, which is not revealed until after I had slogged through three very strange stories. En fin, this one bad experience has completely turned me off to the idea of delving further in the works of Calvino. The only upside is that the book was less than three hours.
No rating
Death Comes to Marlow by Robert Thorogood
A lovely palate cleanser after the Calvino. This is the second book in the badly mis-named Marlow Murder Club series (sounds like a name chosen by a publisher to ride the coattails of the Thursday Murder Club, doesn't it?). At least the author hasn't let the publisher's hype get in the way of his making the series his own. Enjoyable read.
3.25 Stars
Salvation of a Saint by Keigo Higashino
The is the second book in the series begun in The Devotion of Suspect X. I will not binge read the series. I will not binge read the series. I will take my time and savor each book. I will take my time and savor each book. The perfect crime. How did she do it? Did she do it? Keeps you hanging right to the very end.
4 stars.
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
Book # 200 for the year. Another author I am not rushing through. I enjoy her tales. The themes are universal; the details are specific. Short stories of the immigrant experience that weave into a larger whole. Most fun of all is when she sets the action of one section or another in the Boston area, and particularly when it is set in the town where we lived for over 30 years.
4 stars
Ellie and the Harpmaker by Hazel Prior
This one was a mixed bag for me and I wonder if I had read this one first whether I would have bothered to pick up Veronica and the Penguins (not the correct title but then again it was published under different names in the UK and US). The book is driven by the premise that the titular Ellie is stupid enough to marry a man whose reaction to a break up with a lover is to take a hammer to her collection of Beatrix Potter china. Danger, Will Robinson! I am not into abusive-husband driven stories. Fortunately Clive stuck to destroying property not people. Nonetheless, this story has some redeeming qualities that kept me reading. The Harpmaker, the other voice in the narrative, was a gem and I stuck around to see how his story turned out. All in all, as annoying as Clive was, it was an enjoyable story about people trying to figure out what love, marriage, happiness and family are all about.
3.5 stars
The Foolers -- A magic show. Family-oriented fun on a school night -- hey, but no problem 'coz we are empty-nesters. All kidding aside, it was a good show and we really enjoyed it -- even if we thought we were buying Penn & Teller tickets, because it was not immediately clear that P&T were not the performers but the producers. Also helped that the theater is a 10 minute drive. We'll be back in our seats in November when the band Chicago comes to town. Can't wait.
Becky Nurse of Salem by Sarah Ruhl. My goodness what a difference a week makes. This performance was head and shoulders above the one we saw last week. Strong acting. Stronger vehicle. Darkly funny. The lead actress, Angela Brazil, did a great job -- had to do a great job, because the way the play is written, the whole play hangs entirely on the lead. But then again, Angela is always a pleasure to see on stage, no matter what role she is playing.
From MikeFinn's Novels About Old People: links to reviews of twenty-one novels by nineteen authors 
No sooner was I settled in with Maud than one of my holds came in, one that I needed for Bingo. Still, I stuck with Maud. The light-hearted alien story would have to wait. Actually, I had the book on hold long before I decided that I would use it for HB. It was the Connie Willis name on the cover that did it. I knew that I was in for a treat even without reading a single review or commentary. In the end, it was aliens at my own speed -- funny, kind, free of paranoia and mindless violence and funny. In other words, I really enjoyed the book. I hope all you Willis fans will, too.
No. No. No. Indubitably I have outgrown teen romance stories. Indeed, I gave up Harlequins and Nora Roberts et al. over 30 years ago and now avoid anything that is primarily a genre romance -- too much formula and too much fantasy.
I did not read this for HB but certainly could have if I had had the right squares. I loved the lecturer and thought that she did an excellent job of research and of laying out her theses. Most fascinating thing about the whole lecture series is that Armstrong is a lit major, PhD in Medieval Literature and Professor in the English Department at Perdue AND not a historian, even though this series of lectures is more history than literature. Her talk about pandemics (of which the Black Death the most deadly) was eerily prescient. Great Courses & Armstrong released a follow-up series of lectures in 2022, which is waiting in my library. Thank you, Elenaterri for this one. 
Ugh. DNF. Life's too short. The abusive male characters were more than I was willing to sit through. I may try the next in the series. Loved the cover art.
Working my way through the series. The more I think about this one, the more I like it. Twists and turns, dead-ends and red herrings. But why does the cover art have to be so depressing?
The first concert of the season was local-- 10 minutes from the house in a cozy venue just perfect for chamber music. We heard the Darshan Trio (violin, piano and cello) playing music from Beethoven to a couple of pieces from contemporary composers I've never heard of. Delightful evening.
I'm doubling back to review Chocolat, which I started back at the beginning of September. It took so long to finish because I was eyeballing it. The movie is 4.5 stars; the book is not even close. Harris wrote and set the book in the 1990s -- and she was wrong, wrong, wrong. The movie got it right. It should have been set in the 1950s. The reactionary mores portrayed in the book went out of style with the Beatles, even in France. The movie also played up the magical realism much more than the book and to much better effect. The bad guy in the book is the priest not the local lord of the manor -- and oh, my was he one whack-job. In other words, don't rush out to read the book; the movie is much more enjoyable.
The book starts out light and bright and just gets darker and darker as the story develops.
I have always liked this one. It feels so normal on the surface and yet is so deliciously malicious and cold-blooded below it. One of his best.
The Leonid McGill series. Violent in a few places but still clever and well-written as Mosely runs the reader in circles.
Written in 1928. Two years after writing this book, where the mystery is solved by a mystery solving club, Berkeley helped found the "Deception Club."
I filched this one someone else's HB list. Having already read a book for Black Cat (there's a cat on the cover), I read this one just for fun. It is an interest approach to physics but after a while, it was repetitive.
I chose this one off my bookshelf out of pure laziness. I wanted to read something for Country Mystery and didn't know what I wanted to read.
A library hold that was finally mine to read but that I did not read for HB. I enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to the next. MC is an interesting character. He is starting to loosen up a bit and I'm not sure if that is good or bad for the series.
I enjoyed this one. Poirot was not obnoxious and Aggie was serving up a surfeit of pickled herring (personally, I like mine drowned in sour cream) just to keep us on our toes.
As soon as I saw that I could use this series for Great Plains, I was clicking on "borrow" at the library. I wasn't planning on continuing the series but I was desperate. Some of the shenanigans in this book are too unbelievable to be anything but "gallows humor."
Published with a foreword by Martin Edwards, so I learned some interesting things about the book before I even began the story. Berkeley liked to experiment with mystery stories. Usually we know who the victim is but Berkeley was the first to write a "who was done in" mystery and that issue had to be cleared up before moving on to the whodunit problem. This one is definitely going on the re-read pile.
A one-hit-wonder.
The book itself was a disappointment, even more than the narration, because it started off so good and then just completely fell apart at the end. It ever so badly needed two things: a ruthless editor and an author who listened to his editor — and my sympathy is with the editor. The book was full of riches, stories of pre-War Poland, of the Soviet gulags, of the antisemitism of everyday life, of escaping to America (and still facing antisemitism, racism and prejudice), of being a brilliant mathematician never recognized by her peers because she was a woman, of hardship, disappointment and anger, of revenge. But, the author wanted to tell all of his stories, whether they fit in the plot or not. He didn’t know how to, where to end the book and just kept meandering on and, trying to tie up every single loose end whether it needed tying or not. Kind of like this paragraph.
Okay, finally an Inspector Bonaparte that I did not like. My notes say that the premise was interesting but that it was disjointed and lacked verisimilitude. Too much disbelieve needed to be suspended. Maybe that is why less than a week and five books later I can’t even remember what the story was about. Still, I just bought a few more of this series, because all authors have bad years.
These two volumes were nowhere as good as the first two but I did walk away with one new author to devour — and a whole bunch more not to bother with.
“Fethering is on the south coast, not far from Tarring…”
“This is dedicated to the one I love…”
Thank you, Moonlight Reader. I missed this one way back when.
