I do love a book that takes me into a new world. This memoir by an indie-rock musician whose mother was Korean, her father American did take me to a new place. Her focus is her time growing up in Eugene, Oregon as a difficult child, a more difficult teenager, and then her mother’s cancer diagnosis and death when she was 25 years-old. After reading comments on Goodreads, I wondered if her...
In 2009 on a break from looking at online real estate listings for houses in his price range, Bill Dedman was distracted by the most expensive house for sale in New Canaan, Connecticut for $24 million dollars. The house had been unoccupied since this owner bought it in 1951. He first learned the name of the owner, Huguette Clark, then everything else he could learn about this reclusive woman...
This 24-hour-long audiobook was ideal for me at this time. And while Robert Massie’s 624-page treatment of Catherine the Great could have been overwhelmed by dull facts or obscure political struggles, it was consistently engaging. I was happy to have this to listen to as I worked on jigsaw puzzles. Catherine the Great lived from 1729 to 1796 and reigned as empress from 1762 until her death...
I will begin by saying that I prepared for the “worst case scenario” for my medical procedure on January 27 to remove cancer cells from my face by arranging for plenty of food and help, as well as an audiobook and print book that I had underway. It turned out that I was not able to read or listen to an audiobook for about a week. I am happy to be better at last and have finished the...
This book was a good audiobook for a frigid winter week as it takes place during the beach week of a family with grown kids who all love good food. Our narrator is Rocky, the mother, who by her account is always mad and not always sure why, and whose default is to worry about what bad thing might happen. And oh yes, she’s experiencing menopause and has some pretty detailed descriptions of...
The author says she has always connected more readily with non-human creatures than with her fellow humans. In fact she credits her pet pig Christopher Hogwood, named for the British conductor, with her increased ability to enjoy other people. She and her husband Howard adopted Chris when he was a runty little fellow on a nearby farm in New Hampshire. He thrived in their care, was able to escape...
This is my eighth Elizabeth Strout book and is distinguished by having so many of the familiar characters show up again. Her first main character, the cranky Olive Kitteridge, is now 90 and living in a retirement home. She is visited by Lucy Barton and the two tell each other stories and sometimes Olive complains that Lucy’s stories are pointless. Lucy, the novelist, tells stories and...
It was thanks to Laura that I listened to this memoir of a blind federal judge. I was immediately charmed by the mention of locations of his youth in Washington, DC: Glen Echo, Rock Creek Park, these are magical names from my childhood in then-rural Northern Virginia. I’m not sure I ever went to Glen Echo Amusement Park, but my siblings and I sang the Glen Echo jingle, “Glen Echo...
This is the second book I’ve read in the Benjamin Black crime series featuring pathologist Dr. Quirke. Black is the pen name of the award-winning Irish writer John Banville. The series is set in Dublin in the 1950s. As it was in A Death in Summer, the story is horribly unpleasant, and Quirke’s behavior is awfully irresponsible and self-destructive. Having just completed a long stint...
It was Reading Matters that took me to this book. The author is the much admired Irish writer John Banville, writing mysteries under the pen name Benjamin Black. I have read one of John Banville’s books. The mystery solving characters of his books are a medical pathologist named Dr. Quirke and a policeman Detective Inspector Hackett. In this one Dr. Quirke begins an affair with the wife of...