In July 2014 my brother Steve wrote an entry in this blog about Earl Swift’s book Auto Biography. He did a great job of writing about it so I will limit my thoughts. The motivating factor for the author to write the book, finding a ’57 Chevy whose owners were all known, is a great hook. It was only possible because unlike most people who bought cars in the late 1950s, the original...
Oh dear, another contender for a spot in my top ten books of the year. It's a crowded field this year. This was a challenging read as there were multiple interwoven plot lines and the complex history of Portugal and the end of its empire in Africa to take in. Wikipedia was my friend here as historical figures and events were important in this story. In the 1980s David, an American...
This book (like the one I wrote about last) features a main character in mourning; I hoping to move to another focus soon. The narrator is Isabel Moore, a middle school teacher whose best friend Josie died in a car accident. The two women were drawn to each other because they were both funny and offbeat. Isabel gives us many very funny lines of her own, as well as Josie's, over the years they...
I should begin by confessing I had to stop reading this book halfway through. Right away you learn the main character is in mourning; he and his wife were in their 30s and recently married when she was killed. She had always lived in dangerous situations as a war zone journalist but was moving toward giving it up when she was killed in Pakistan by a US Hellfire Missile. After her death, he...
The third in the Neapolitan Quartet by Elena Ferrante is set at a time of upheaval and social unrest in Italy. In the aftermath of the 1968 protests in Europe, bombings and assassinations by both the left- and right-wing groups occurred throughout the 1970s. The lives of the two women at the center of these books (Elena and Lina) reflect some of the strife and social changes. My thoughts about...
The second book of Elena Ferrante's four Neapolitan novels (which should be read in order) takes up as Lina (Elena's brilliant friend) marries the apparently mild-mannered Stefano. Lina learns that he must do as the powerful hated Solara brothers request to be successful in business. This infuriates her so much that she rejects Stefano and he beats her the first night of their honeymoon...
I have been looking forward to reading this because I found Kate Atkinson's last book Life After Life so admirable. I was not disappointed. Life After Life tells the story of the Todd family, particularly Ursula, born in 1910, with a focus on her life in London during World War II. The book was notable for the Groundhog Day method of storytelling;...
This book was JacquiWine's choice for "a book that deserves a wider audience" at Reading Matters and I wholeheartedly agree. Dorothy Baker wrote Young Man with a Horn (made into a movie with Kirk Douglas) in 1938. This 1962 book about twin sisters was based on her own daughters, according to her husband. The novel is narrated first by Cassandra as she drives to the family...
For several years Tony has been raving about this book and the other two in Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan novel series and there is a fourth about to come out. I'm very happy to have three more to go. Lila is introduced to us when the narrator Elena receives a phone call from Lila's son who says she had disappeared two weeks previously. At age sixty-six Lila took all traces of her...
After the grimly intense, beautifully written After the Fire, a Still Small Voice, I was ready for a cream puff of a book. George’s Grand Tour, reviewed by Reading Matters, fit the bill. Two elderly neighbors plan to follow the route of a previous Tour de France in a car. George can only do this because his hovering daughter will be incommunicado in Peru for two months. A monkey wrench...