Books Completed Since May 1

  Bitter Medicine, Mia Tsai
This was my first read for Asian Pacific American Heritage Month; the cover caught my eye immediately. Elle Mei is a descendant of the Chinese god of medicine. She's laying low because she has done an unspeakable thing in her society: taken away her brother's magic. Everyone believes Tony is dead, but Elle seeks to protect him. Instead, Elle works as a calligrapher at an agency that provides magical glyphs to anyone who pays. One of Elle's customers is Luc Villois, a half-elf who always seeks out Elle's glyphs, not only because he knows she's good, but because he is drawn to her. However, Luc has his own problems, including being held in servitude by a tyrannical boss who knows a secret about his past.

But Elle's hidden magic and Luc's talents are not going to shield them for long: larger forces are at work. And if Elle wants to protect Tony, she's going to have to risk her own talents to do so.

Slow-building, gentle romance with a magical system I've not seen used in any other book. Elle and Luc are unique (at least to me) leads, and Tsai only slowly unravels what ties hold both of them captive. The action shifts from Raleigh, NC, to London, to San Francisco in the course of the story.

 The Wonderful World of James Herriot, James Herriot, edited by Emma Marriott
I bought a copy of this despite the fact that I have all of the Herriot books and have since their original paperback American releases in the 1970s and 1980s. This is a good way to introduce fans of the new All Creatures Great and Small series to the real story of James Herriot rather than the fictional soap-opera stuff they toss into the new series (the actors on the new series are wonderful, I have to admit, and Samuel West is a treat to look at). The volume is chiefly memorable excerpts from all the Herriot books, but I bought it because, between the stories, Emma Marriott narrates the true story of Scotsman Alfred Wight and his wife Joan (James and Helen) and Donald and Brian Sinclair (Siegfried and Tristan Farnon), as names and locations were changed for the Herriot's veterinary memoirs. This also contains two introductions by Wight's son and daughter to their father's life which are illuminating and worthwhile. A photo insert of the family and the area is included; worth the "double buy" if you're already a Herriot fan.

  Misfortune Cookie, Vivien Chien
This is the ninth in Chien's "Noodle House" mysteries, and protagonist Lana Lee is far from Lee's restaurant; she and her attorney sister Anna May are headed for Irvine, California, where Lana will be attending a restaurant convention and the sisters will reconnect with their Aunt Grace, their mother's sister. At the first day of the convention, Lana witnesses a vendor and a journalist having a loud argument; she discovers at a cocktail party she attends with her aunt and sister that the journalist is a friend of Aunt Grace. During the party, this woman is killed. Despite the fact that Anna May wants Lana to stay far away from mysteries, Aunt Grace enlists Lana's help in ferreting out who killed her friend, as she can't believe Nora Blackwell committed suicide as the police believe.

So here's Lana with her nose in crime again. This time she can't ask help from her best friend Megan or work friend Kimmy, or even her cop boyfriend Adam, and she has a disapproving Anna May at her side, but Aunt Grace is definitely in her corner. Sunny California sights await as Lana once again puts her observational clues to the test. (And, needless to say, doesn't attend much of the restaurant convention!)

  Raising Cubby, John Elder Robison
Robison, author of Look Me In the Eye, a memoir of his Asperger's syndrome (and brother of Augusten Burroughs, who wrote Running With Scissors), addresses parenthood on the autism spectrum in this story of raising an autistic son. He opens with his son Jack's impending trial for being dangerous ("Cubby," Robison's nickname for his son, was fascinated with chemistry, especially explosives, and was accused by investigators of being a potential terrorist after his chem lab was raided, even though it contained no explosives and the chemicals were stored safely), and then flashes back to his courtship, marriage, and the birth and childhood of his son.

I know it's Robison's unique narrative, but he's so flip sometimes it irritates me, and the narrative diverges wildly on occasion. The part of the memoir about the trial is truly scary: that these little bits of "evidence" the police and FBI gathered could send this curious and obviously harmless kid to prison for the rest of his life! I found the rest of the book "so-so," but a still intriguing look at how a neurodivergent father and son navigate the neurotypical world.

 The Heart Principle, Helen Hoang
This is the third in Hoang's trilogy (The Kiss Quotent and The Bride Test precede it) where the protagonists are on the autism spectrum.

Anna Sun is a violinist who became famous due to a viral YouTube video, and a composer was so taken with her performance that he wrote a song for her to perform. Unfortunately Anna is now so self-conscious that she can hardly play anything, let alone the song; she decides she's not playing well enough and just plays and replays pieces until it frustrates her. She's also tormented by her ambitious sister Priscilla and an impeccably groomed, handsome fiance that her family loves but who just told her he wanted an open relationship. In revenge Anna goes on a dating app and finds Quan Diep (brother of Khai in Bride Test and partners with Michael in Kiss Quotient), a tattooed motorcycling maverick who, amazingly, makes her feel comfortable. Then her father has a stroke and Anna is expected to pitch in on his care.

Like Sophie Go (scroll down), poor Anna has this family who devalues her at every step. She's seen as "weird," "wrong," "selfish," and other negatives; when it turns out she's on the autism spectrum, a fact Anna can't initially wrap her mind around when her therapist introduces her to the idea, she keeps going back to her family's assessment, especially since the family rejects the whole idea that they have someone "imperfect" in their midst and that she's not just "lazy" and "odd." Anna, too, doubts herself so much she rejects the diagnosis and keeps saying "Yes" to her creepy family. Quan and his friends are the only ones who treat her decently. Keep that in mind when you read the book, because you'll want to cancel most of Anna's family, especially when you see how they treat her father during his "recovery.'

  Beaverland, Leila Philip
Beavers made the first American millionaire: Johann (later John) Jacob Astor. The fashion in those days was the beaver top hat, and every gentleman, especially every English gentleman, wanted one. Thereupon became the run on beaver fur on the North American continent.

Philip takes us on the journey with the beaver and the tragic history in which their numbers diminish due to overtrapping and farming, which changes the landscape of the North American continent. She talks to trappers and fur sellers, asking why they still participate in the lifestyle, and to scientists who have proven that reintroduction of beavers into ecosystems improves them and returns the land to a better state, even when it has been tragically polluted.

The trapping/fur chapters seem rather overextended as she tries to make sense of why ecologically-minded modern men and women would still participate in the activity (most of the trappers are actually game wardens who deal with overpopulation or beavers who are encroaching on farm areas). There's also an odd chapter about iconic New England stone walls in which she...gasp!...realizes were probably built by enslaved Africans or Native Americans and spends the entire chapter apologizing for liking them. This isn't a surprise for anyone who's studied American history—marginalized minorities (African slaves, Native Americans, Chinese/Asians, etc.) always provided brute labor—and discounts the undisclosed artistry with which the enslaved persons built and maintained the walls.

All-in-all the beaver lore is great to read, especially her observations of beavers themselves and the stories of people who interacted with them, like the "Beaver Lady."

  Sophie Go's Lonely Hearts Club, Roselle Lim
The last of my reads for Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. Sophie Go has just returned from Singapore having finished her training in traditional matchmaking, and has moved into an apartment in Toronto to start her career. But Sophie has a secret: she never completed the course due to one of her clients, a foolish girl who committed suicide over love. She's determined to work past this event: if her demanding mother and doormat father will allow it. Unfortunately, Sophie's no sooner started to network customers than her selfish mother drops the bomb in public about her not finishing the course. So Sophie proposes to an unofficial club of elderly Chinese men at her apartment building that she can find each of them a match, and that she'll do the first one for free. She also inadvertently acquires a very particular younger male client who seems impossible to match.

Based on the Chinese belief that there is a red thread that binds soulmates, this is a magical little book that follows Sophie's efforts and how she becomes friends with each of her elderly clients and struggles against her family. Her mother is truly a gruesome, grasping, selfish woman and her father just rolls over on his back like a submissive dog to make her happy, choosing his wife over his child to keep the peace, and she is the only fly in the ointment in this delightful story, with Sophie discovering there is a red thread for everyone.

Of course I cried.

 The Women's History of the Modern World, Rosalind Miles
I really need to get Miles' first book Who Cooked the Last Supper?, but this was one of my leftovers from Women's History Month.

Where are the women in history? Oh, we hear about some of them: Madame Curie, Harriet Tubman, Grace Hopper, Emmeline Pankhurst, Susan B. Anthony. But so many others have been buried by the "party line" of history that puts men first. Did you know many musical pieces credited to Felix Mendelsohn were actually composed by his sister Fanny? That women were at that wall striving for freedom during the French Revolution, not just men? That Katharine Wright was an integral part of the Wright Brothers' partnership? That women actually crossed over Niagara Falls on high wires? Notable women, intellectual lights hidden by the patriarchy, like Mary Wollstonecraft, the women of the Seneca Falls convention like Lucy Stone, the stalwarts of the women's lib movement. Chapter after chapter chronicles women's achievements that were left behind, or rights that were toppled by ignorant male beliefs.

A lot of people I knew. Many I didn't. Entertaining narrative that occasionally skitters off track, but it works.

  Re-read: The Case of the Missing Auntie, Michael Hutchinson
This second in the "Mighty Muskrats" series revolves around four children, Samuel, Chickadee, Atin, and Otter, cousins in the Cree nation who call themselves "the Mighty Muskrats," and live at the Windy Lake reservation. Chickadee's grandfather admits to her that his younger sister Charlotte was taken away from his family in the late 1950s in what they called "scoops"—native children who were adopted (mostly to act as servants) for white people. Now with the Muskrats heading into the big city to go to an exhibition fair, a disturbed Chickadee thinks their first mission should be to try to track down their missing aunt, but the boys are full of anticipation about visiting cousins, going to the fair, and Otter just wants to see his favorite Native band perform. No sooner are the kids at the much vaunted mall in the crowded, confusing city that they run into Brett, a boy who used to live on the "rez" and who Chickadee secretly had a crush on., and things start to go a little haywire. But Chickadee is still determined, no matter what, to find missing Auntie Charlotte.

This reads like an old-fashioned kids' adventure—the covers even look like a Happy Hollisters book—with modern sensibilities (internet, cell phones, etc.), real-life problems (Native people still coping with terrible laws once enacted by white settlers), a boy who's ended up in "the wrong crowd" after a move to the city, and the problems of a usually-overlooked culture. The kids meet good and bad people of all cultures, cope with bureaucracy, find out some hard truths about their past, but also are confident that they can help overcome it.

Vesper Flights, Helen Macdonald
This is a series of chiefly nature essays, mostly about birds, by the author of H is for Hawk. While a few address Macdonald's fear about the future of natural places—as we all should!—most of them are lyrical, lovely tales of meadows, discovering nature, the habits of birds and other wild creatures. Her beautiful talent with language infuses every piece with wonder. Her essay about the vanished "Tekels Park" is heartrending; "Eclipse" is stunning and captured all the feelings I had in 2017 watching the total eclipse of the sun in North Georgia. "Swan Upping," about the custom of tagging swans for the Crown, is fascinating. She even talks about Wicken Fen, where the Godolphin Arabian is banished in Marguerite Henry's King of the Wind.

For everyone who loves nature and beautiful essays.