Books Completed Since July 1

 The Early Life of Walt Disney, Andrew Stanley Kiste
What a total surprise to find this book; I didn't know it existed. Walt's life has been stringently chronicled (I have most of his bios, even the defamatory one), but his early years not in so much detail as this provides. Kiste goes back to the early history of the Disney family (Norman French who later settled in Ireland, then emigrated to Canada and later to the United States. There's a great deal more about Walt's father Elias and mother Flora; their life in Chicago, Marceline, Missouri, and Kansas City; plus about the other adult figures in Walt's short childhood, and the bond with his brother Roy. While there are not many more details about Walt's early life that have not been covered briefly in other biographies, Kiste expands the experience by talking about the historic events going on around Walt at the time: the changing status of the Midwest as the country shifted from an agricultural country to an industrial one, the average life of a farm family at the time, what Walt would have experienced in France as an ambulance driver, and the craft of early animation.

Takes a "deep dive" into what Walt would have experienced. Includes a tour of the reconstructed Disney home on Tripp Avenue in Chicago where Roy, Walt, and Ruth Disney were born.

  Sounds Like Love, Ashley Poston
Joni Lark, celebrated songwriter, with her creations performed by the likes of Willa Gray (think Taylor Swift), has suffered a setback ever since her mother was diagnosed with dementia: she can't write. But after she meets arrogant Sebastian Fell, son of hit rock star Roman Fell (who Joni's mom once performed with), a melody starts running through her head, and a voice begins speaking to her, a wry, lonely guy who claims he keeps hearing her thoughts. After Joni convinces herself she's not going crazy, she starts to warm up to the voice in her head, as he does to hers. It's this companion who's keeping her from losing it when she returns to her hometown of Vienna Shores, North Carolina, and her parents' business, a music hall called the Revelry, where she hopes to break her writer's block. Instead, she finds out her parents mean to close the venue, and that even her best friend is going through changes she can't talk about.

As in all Poston's romances, a little bit of otherworldly air in this sweet novel, which addresses what happens when stress causes your creativity to dry up, and, most importantly, making the most of the time you have left when medical problems intervene. 

  As Various as Their Land: The Everyday Lives of Eighteenth Century Americans, Stephanie Grauman Wolf
This is part of HarperCollins "Everyday Life in America" series. (I have all the others.) It covers the period from the end of the early colonial period through the Revolutionary War, addressing topics from how (and what style of) homes were built, who lived in them (originally just one room, it wasn't just a nuclear family, but possibly grandparents, grandchildren, adult unmarried siblings, even the hired hand or a servant), what they ate, how their children were treated (as the century went on, even lower-class families cherished their youngsters more) and then how the elderly were treated (they often ended up at the almshouse), how and what they worked at, and how injustices and crimes were handled (yes, men had the upper hand, but a man could still be put to death for murdering his wife). One of those books where you wondered how people survived even the most day-to-day crises.

  Harvest of Hope, Faith Baldwin
Fourth in a series of nonfiction inspirational books by Baldwin, who was a popular "woman's novel" author of the 1920s through the 1970s (she'd be shocked, I think by the "dark romances" currently in vogue). She was also a popular speaker at women's clubs and religious gatherings. I picked up her nonfiction because she was a friend of Gladys Taber, and these books are similar, although not as compelling. A seasonal tour through one year in her life.

  Problematic Summer Romance, Ali Hazelwood
This is a sequel to Hazelwood's Not in Love, about Eli Kilgore's rebellious younger sister Maya. She and Eli's friends and co-workers are in Italy for Rue and Eli's destination wedding in Taormina when almost all of them get food poisoning. This leaves Maya to obsess about her brother's partner Conor Harkness, who's dark and broody due to a really obnoxious family situation, but whom she became friends with years earlier during an emotional crisis.

The "problematic" part of the romance is that Conor is fifteen years older than Maya, and he thinks the gap will ruin her life if he engages with her. For me, the "problematic" bit is that for a mid-twenty-ish professional, Maya acts like a spoiled teenager and constantly flaunts herself in front of Conor thinking that seducing him will change his mind. Very frustrating reading. The protagonists from Deep End, which seems to be very popular, have a cameo.

  The New Girl, Cassandra Calin
I'll read anything that takes my interest, and I have picture books, like The Parakeet Girl, in the library to prove it. The cover of this book immediately caught me. It was only after I bought it that I realized that I'd seen the author's comics shared on Facebook.

Lia is a 12-year-old Romanian girl whose family (mom, dad, and little brother Denis) is moving to Montreal. If it isn't bad enough to be torn from school and her best friend, she gets her first period at the airport! After a summer spent trying to learn French, she starts school where they put her (and other immigrants) in an immersive homeroom to improve her French. Lia thinks she'll never make friends, but slowly she does, and her talent at art eventually gets her a spot on the school newsletter.

One of the reasons I bought this is that Lia is finally an adolescent protagonist I could identify with: she has horrible cramps every month (which, thankfully her parents, like mine, and her school—unlike mine—sympathized with). This was a great graphic novel, and I want a sequel because does her classmate ever tell her about their crush???? I enjoyed this more than Ali Hazelwood's new book!

  A Life Drawing: Reflections of an Illustrator, Shirley Hughes
I found a surfeit of illustrations by Hughes online one day, having loved her art for years, and wondered if there was a book about her career as an illustrator, like existed for Beatrix Potter or Tasha Tudor. Well, yes, there is: this book, from her childhood reading comics through her children's book series like "Alfie."

The book includes the sketches she made in art school, quick little illos in the margins, and beautiful two-page spreads of memories from her lifetime, including a gorgeous one of a railway station during World War II, with families and wives saying farewell to their soldiers. Great stuff for Hughes fans. Can be found used for reasonable prices.

  The Dog Who Followed the Moon, James Norbury
Inspirational book about a lost puppy who learns life lessons from a dying wolf—basically, enjoy your whole life, not just the goals, but the journey itself. The watercolor illustrations are beautiful. 

  Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and Other Lessons from the Crematory, Caitlin Doughty
Maybe this was a strange reading choice for a new widow, but it was actually very helpful, if slightlymacabre. Doughty was fascinated by mortality from childhood, and the book chronicles her years working at a crematory, and how it solidified her feelings concerning the deflecting way we treat death in the modern world.

If nothing else, it made me feel better about our decision as a couple to use cremation as a body disposal method. Dead bodies packed in overpriced containers taking up land needed for living people seems selfish, and the descriptions of embalming were just gross, not to mention that embalming fluid and other chemicals contained in coffins are now leaching into our ground water. Let's not even talk about the "extras" they talk you into.

  Cop Talk: True Detective Stories from the NYPD, E.W. Count
I suspect this was published to feed the interest in New York City crime engendered by Law & Order, since it came out four years after the series premiered. It's a collection of stories about NYPD detectives and some of their more interesting cases, from drug busts to murder cases.

  The Cloisters, Katy Hays
My first "dark academia book. Ann Stilwell is eager to get away from Walla Walla, Washington, after the tragic death of her father. Excited by academia, the work of her academic tutor on augury, and the idea of working in New York City, she accepts a summer job at the Met, only to be snapped up by Patrick, a curator at the Cloisters, Manhattan's evocative medieval museum. Here she meets Rachel, sophisticated and with all the connections, and Leo, the earthy but sexy gardener for the institution. Curator Patrick and Rachel enlist Ann to delve into the secrets of a tarot deck from the Renaissance era, but the twisted secrets of the personalities soon make Ann wonder: who should she trust? I enjoyed it.

Books Completed Since September 1

  Dear Little Corpses, Nicola Upson
This is the tenth book in Upson's "Josephine Tey" mysteries in which the writer (the real Tey's actual name was Elizabeth McIntosh; Upson writes of Tey as an original character who wrote McIntosh's novels) is enjoying a quiet stay in at the country cottage she inherited from an aunt in the village of Polstead with her lover, Marta. It is the day before World War II is declared and the village is preparing for the arrival of evacuee children from London. Unfortunately the buses arrive with more children than expected and in the chaos a little girl named Annie from the village vanishes. The longer the search goes on, the more dire the consequences appear to be. In the meantime, an eccentric family take on one little girl but refuse to take her 10-year-old brother, who is temporarily billeted with Josephine and Marta, who are in conflict when Marta's demanding director, Alfred Hitchcock, requires she come to Hollywood early.

I love Upson's writing; she has the talent to make these mysteries sound as if they were written in the 1930s without the unfortunate racism and classism that was rampant at the time. This also captures the spirit of the day leading up to and then the days after Great Britain declared war on Nazi Germany, and the attitude of a small town preparing to take in frightened and bewildered children. The menace of secrets held within the village limits is also well portrayed. I really enjoyed this one.

  Border Crossings: A Journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway, Emma Fick
This is the niftiest travel book I've seen in a long time. Fick and her "then-boyfriend, now-husband" Helvio, inspired by a used book about traveling the Trans-Siberian Railway, decide to do just that. They start in Beijing and end in Moscow. The unique thing about the book is that it's narrated in Fick's watercolor sketches and hand-lettered narrative. The whole thing is priceless...sketches of Mongolian nomads, Chinese train officials, countrysides, local houses, decorations, foods, passports, tickets, customs, animals, even the Moscow subway stations. It's fascinating, a real treat for the eyes.

 The Make-Up Test, Jenny L. Howe
Picked this up off the remainder table in Books-a-Million and discovered with amusement that it was set in a fictional college in Rhode Island (and the protagonist is from Maine)—it even features the Jack O'Lantern Spectacular at Roger Williams Park in one chapter. Allison Avery and her ex-boyfriend Colin Benjamin find they're going to have to work together in graduate school. Allison's looking forward to talking about literature and especially with working with Professor Wendy Frances, but the thought of teaching a class has her flummoxed. A whole book about people who obsess about books! And although Allison is plus-sized, it's not mentioned on every page of the book but exists as an undercurrent of the difficult relationship she has with her father. No crazy gay friends; they're all sane here. And Professor Frances is a wonderful, supportive character.

 The Rediscovery of America, Ned Blackhawk
An exhaustive scholarly history of how European exploration and settlement of North American, primarily the United States, ruined the thriving Native American settlements all over the continent. I was quite pleased to find an expansion of a history of the southwestern settlements like Acoma that Alistair Cooke touched on briefly in the second episode of his 1972 series America. Also enjoyed a further exploration of my home region of New England, if "enjoyed" can be properly used to refer to a narrative of steady betrayals and brutalities. I was also interested to learn of the contributions of Native American women like Laura Cornelius Kellogg and Elizabeth Bender Cloud in the fight for Native rights, since I had never heard any historical references to Native women, just modern ones like Wilma Mankiller. One must be strong-stomached to read the endless litany of broken agreements, unfulfilled treaties, and flat-out removals of indigenous people from the lands where their ancestors had fished, farmed, and hunted for ages, not to mention the terrible boarding schools and removal of children from their parents into foster care, where the kids were forbidden to speak about their heritage and they were often abused physically and sexually. Note that early settlement is covered more thoroughly than modern events.

I did find a minor error in the chapter which talks about the popularity of Westerns on television/in movies in the late 1950s featuring stereotypical and more than often offensive Native characters. Blackhawk states that Disney's "Peter Pan...Americanized the English tale Peter and Wendy and incorporated Indian characters and music in its depiction of Never Never Land." The "Red Indians" (as the British called them) in Peter Pan were ported directly from J. M. Barrie's book, which I read for the first time only a few years ago. Tiger Lily and the other members of her tribe were already there in glaring racist display, with Tiger Lily talking in a horrific "Pidgin Chinese" manner, substituting "Ls" for "Rs" ("Velly velly good" and similar dialog). It was repulsive. The British were apparently fascinated by American and Canadian "savages" and loved to see them in adventure tales.

 Truly, Madly, Sheeply, Heather Vogel Frederick
This is the last of the Pumpkin Falls mysteries, according to the advertisement, and I will miss Truly Lovejoy, her ex-military family, and her new home in New Hampshire. It's a busy autumn for the Lovejoys: Aunt Truly is marrying her old sweetheart, and they're buying a dilapidated farm on which they plan to raise sheep to make specialty yarn, plus at school they're building catapults in science class for the annual pumpkin toss. But someone seems to be trying to drive True and Rusty off their farm, not to mention decorative pumpkins are disappearing all over town. It will take Truly and her friends to solve both mysteries. And what about the new boy in school? Will he take Truly's mind off her friend Calhoun?

A couple of quibbles: What kind of fourteen-year-old still believes in haunted houses and ghosts, especially in a military family? And then there's the matter of the names of the sheep: One of the ewes (all but the ram named after famous women) is named "Frances" Scott Key? Couldn't another female historical figure have been found rather than turning a man's name into a woman's? Dolley after Dolley Madison, who saved the Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington? Sybil for Sybil Ludington who rode through the night to call the militia to help at the Battle of Ridgefield? Anne for Anne Hutchinson, who was a woman minister in Rhode Island who was persecuted because women weren't supposed to preach the gospel? Celia for Celia Thaxter, famous New England artist? Sheesh.

This has the most beautiful cover of any of the Pumpkin Falls mysteries. I'd love to have a print of it to frame!

 Travels With George: In Search of Washington and His Legacy, Nathaniel Philbrick
A delightful voyage with Philbrick and his wife (and their Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever Dora) as they retrace a tour of the entire United States as taken by George Washington by mostly carriage (but some by ship) between 1789-1791 to rally the states to accept the new Constitution. Like our first president, the Philbricks do the tour in stages following Washington's route via his journals and diaries, so it's a travelogue, a history of Washington's life, and a slice of life in post Revolutionary America all at once. I loved this book to death.

 The Ghost and the Stolen Tears, Cleo Coyle
The eighth book in the "Haunted Bookshop Mystery" series taking place in the fictional Quindicott, Rhode Island. Jack Shepard, the New York private eye shot dead in the entrance to the old bookstore now owned by Penelope Thornton-McClure and her aunt Sadie. Penelope, a widow with a school-age son, returned to her hometown and revived the fading shop, is the only one who can see Jack's ghost, now haunting the store. Alas, in this outing, as in the seventh book, Jack has turned into a martinet again, talking too much slang and bullying Penelope. As always, Penny's travel "back in time" sequences via Jack's lucky nickel are the most interesting parts of the book, and her two buddies Seymour the postman and Brainert the professor get more annoying by the day. Oh, the plot has to do with a missing necklace and a nomadic woman who travels around in her trailer.

 The Director: My Years Assisting J. Edgar Hoover, Paul Letersky with Gordon Dillow
This is Letersky's story of being an assistant to the famous and sometimes infamous J. Edgar Hoover. Letersky is evidently a Hoover fan, although he's not silent about Hoover's likes and dislikes. One hears so much about Hoover's buddy Clyde Tolson, but in this narrative he's a tottery cranky old guy. The best part of his book are Paul's stories about Helen Gandy, Hoover's private secretary for over fifty years, and about his own career as an FBI agent.

  It Happened One Fight, Maureen Lee Lenker
This book would be a lot shorter without the male and female protagonists constantly shoring up each other's egos once they finally begin talking to each other. It has its good parts—a lively 1930s based romance between Dash Howard (based on Clark Gable) and Joan Davis (based on Joan Crawford and Bette Davis), who find themselves married after a prank. So they go to Reno to make a film, after which they will be publicly divorced. But they've always had feelings for each other. and things don't go as planned.

Lenker has a nice sense of the 1930s, and so many of the things the actors endured back then (including the casting couch and pleasing gossip columnists, even if the latter costs your soul). In the end, though, I felt a bit empty.

  Pony, R. J. Palacio
Silas Bird is an unusual 12-year-old. Some years earlier he was struck by lightning and survived. Brought up in a solitary cabin by his photographer father in the 1860s, one night rough riders abduct his father to help with some sort of project that will make him a fortune. His father tells him to wait at the cabin until he returns, but after two days he packs up and mounts the bald-faced pony the kidnappers had brought with them and then apparently escaped. The pony leads him—and his "imaginary companion" Mittenwool—to a wood where he teams up with a grizzled marshal looking for counterfeiters, and this is only the beginning of Silas' adventure. Silas is a very peculiar boy and I was irritated by the narrative at first, but the story soon becomes very compelling.

Warning: some people have had problems with this story because there's a very subtle gay character in it. Big deal.

 The Best American Travel Writing 2021, edited by Padma Lakshmi
I don't know what possessed me to buy this book after what happened in 2020...but I was pleasantly surprised! Many of the essays had to do with staying home during the pandemic and missing travel or discovering new things about staying at home, or what happened to travelers during the pandemic, like the first story about quarantine on a cruise ship "Mississippi: A Poem, in Days" and "Out There, Nobody Can Hear You Scream" are the two best, and most sobering, essays about Black travelers and the challenges they still face in America's tourist places. Deep sea diving, the residents of Las Vegas, bathhouses, traveling and suicide—I don't think I caught a bad essay here.

  Heat Rises, Richard Castle
This is the third in the series of "Nikki Heat" novels supposedly written by the author hero of the television series Castle. The stories are basically extended Castle stories with the characters' names changed and a couple of tweaks. Kate Beckett = sexy Nikki Heat, Richard Castle = magazine journalist Jameson Rook (Castle/Rook, get it?), Captain Montgomery = Captain Montrose, Ryan and Esposito = Raley and Ochoa, Laney Parish = Lauren Parry. (Rook's mom is also an actress, and has a part in this novel as well.) In this outing, Heat is called to a crime scene at a bondage dungeon where the victim turns out to be a priest. As she works on the case, she's supported by someone from "higher up"—until she gets too close to information no one wants revealed. Surprisingly complicated and nonstop plot includes a nail-biting chase through one of the tunnels under Central Park. Really enjoyed this one.

  Yesterday's Britain: The Illustrated Story of How We Lived, Worked and Played, by Reader's Digest
This is a delicious coffee-table sized book (a little over 300 pages) summing up the years 1900-1979 (with a brief coda to the end of the 20th century) in Great Britain starting with chat about the new century, through agonizing Edwardian fashions to the terror and carnage of "the Great War" to the sparkling Twenties that landed, like the United States in a 1930s crash, to explode into World War II.

As usual with these books, I get bored once I get to the 50s with all the rock and roll and later hippie stuff, but it's all good with photos, pamphlets, maps, advertisements, and personal recollections. Found this at the library book sale. Would love if there was one for France...I wonder!

  Her Name, Titanic, Charles Pellegrino
This is a nifty combination of a narrative of the voyage of the Titanic alternating with Pellegrino's interviews of Bob Ballard and the story of how Ballard and his crew found the wreckage of the doomed liner. Even if you've already read other Titanic books, Pellegrino's narrative of the night of April 14, 1912, is compelling and interesting, and even contains trivia I didn't know. The latter includes Pellegrino talking about his dad, who worked on the Minuteman missile program. There's an interesting parallel introduced by Pellegrino between the Titanic and the space shuttle Challenger, since both were done in by ice.

Not your typical Titanic book!

Books Completed Since February 1

  (not quite) Mastering the Art of French Living, Mark Greenside
I confess, I read this doing research for a piece of fanfiction. I don't know if I got much information out of it, but it was fun to read, if I thought the anecdotes were overlong, but Greenside inadvertently gave me the title I needed for the story.

Basically it's a fish-out-of-water story of what happens when Greenside decides to spend part of each year in Brittany. He loves the French lifestyle eventually, but has to navigate around different traffic regulations—his story about getting into his first accident in France is rather jaw-dropping—getting permits, renting a car for the part of the year he's in France, getting repairmen to work at his house, etc. Luckily he has some very patient French friends who help him, since the French legal system is legendary for its strictness and complicated procedures (how true that is I don't know, but I have read this in more than one book).

If you've always wanted to live in France but wanted to check out the pitfalls, you might want to read this book if just for some chuckles.

  Crayola: A Visual Biography of the World's Most Famous Crayon, Lisa Solomon and Crayola LLC
This is a book best found half price or on remainder, but if you've been, like me, a Crayola junkie since childhood, it's a delight. It contains the history of the Binney & Smith (now Crayola, LLC) company, who made a product now known around the world (they also created the first dustless chalk). The majority of the book is a history of the current and some of the past colors, and trivia about the older colors ("flesh," of course, became "peach" in the 1970s when some kind souls pointed out that not everyone had pale skin, and "cadet blue" was first called "Prussian blue" but was finally changed because kids didn't know where Prussia (part of Germany) was any longer, etc.).

Of interest are old full-page Crayola advertisements and projects done with Crayola crayons by professional artists. Color junkies, rejoice!

 The Essex Serpent, Sarah Perry
This looked like a mystery story so I picked it up. And I have to say Perry writes a compelling tale with complex characters. But it's not really a mystery story, it's a psychological one set in 1893 England. There is an old legend on the Essex coast that a monster exists in the shadows, and suddenly dead bodies begin to turn up on the shore. Cora Seaborne, a widow with an intense interest in the growing science of paleontology, believes the "monster" may be a prehistoric life form that still survives, so she arrives at the seaside in the company of her overprotective maid Martha and autistic son Francis to check out the rumors. There she's introduced to William Ransome, the local vicar, and his vivacious wife and their lively children. Ransome insists there's no "serpent" or "monster," and hates that his parishioners believe in the old tales, but a few dead bodies on the shore and a mysterious sound put the whole small town on edge. This turns villager against villager until the mystery of the sound is finally revealed. Ransome and Seaborne have a romantic moment, and at the close of the book it looks like she's about to insinuate her way into his life the way she insinuated herself into the life of a talented surgeon—and then basically forgets him—during the story.

That's all that I took away from the story. There's also a do-gooder rich couple who help the poor, and a medical friend of the talented surgeon who sticks with him through his most difficult hours, and Martha hooks up with a radical protestor. I kept reading because the prose was excellent, but the fact that basically "they discover that ________ is the source of the sound and everything else was just people's imaginations and so we see what rumor and paranoia do to a formerly close-knit community" was rather a letdown.

 The McMasters Guide to Homicide: Murder Your Employer, Rupert Holmes
This is the first in a planned series of mysteries written by the multi-talented Holmes, who has done two previous books, a television series called Remember WENN, Tony- and Edgar-award winning plays like The Mystery of Edwin Drood and Accomplice, and much, much more—but of course he's best known for his bestselling late 70s-early 80s rock song "Escape" (known to most people as "the Pina Colada song").

Think of the McMasters school as Hogwarts for homicide. That's the hook in this delightfully diabolical, tongue-in-cheek novel in which people attend a university to learn how to commit the perfect homicide; the twist is that the person must really need killing and there is no other way to keep them from continuing to ruin other people's lives. You follow our main protagonist Cliff Iverson, the young Englishwoman Gemma Lindley, and Hollywood actress Doria May as they seek to rid the world of an overbearing employer who caused the deaths of two of Cliff's friends, a woman who's building her career by blackmailing Gemma, and the Howard Weinstein-like monster movie producer who holds Doria in servitude for turning him down. Half the story follows their training on the "god only knows where" McMasters campus (which reminds you more than a little of "the Village" in The Prisoner television series, which is no accident), and then they're let free to pursue their final exam: killing their bete noires. Filled with more twists than a Six Flags roller coaster, more clever quips than Bob Hope's stable of writers could manage, and more double crosses than a game of tic-tac-toe, it's a wild ride full of unexpected turns, incredible training sequences, and a big dollop of sly humor, with all sorts of references hidden in the text.

Rupert's almost finished with the second volume, Murder Your Mate, and I can hardly wait to see what he comes up with. But first, a re-read...!

  A Book, Too, Can Be a Star, Charlotte Jones Voiklis and Jennifer Adams
I'm a Madeleine L'Engle completist, which means I had to get a copy of this charming children's picture book that simply tells the story of how L'Engle as a child began to write and dream and eventually published both adult and young adult books, but finally came to fame for writing the now immortal A Wrinkle in Time. The artwork is lovely as well. I have Voiklis' children's biography of her grandmother and wish someone would do an adult version!

  Rivers of London: Deadly Ever After, Ben Aaronovitch, Celeste Bronfman, Andrew Cartmel
In the newest of the graphic novels taking place in Aaronovitch's "Rivers of London" universe, Beverley Brook's sisters Olympia and Chelsea, goddesses in their own right, are attending a gathering in the woods when they remove an invisibility charm from a mulberry tree growing there. Unfortunately it frees the angry spirit of a Victorian fairy-tale illustrator named Jeter Day. The next thing they know, Day's spirit is invading people and forcing them to re-enact fairy tales. With the aid of Abigail Kamara and her friends the talking foxes, the pair must rectify this error without letting Thomas Nightingale or his apprentice Peter Grant know what happened.

This is a fanciful, if lesser effort in the "Rivers" series. The story is a little slight and frankly Olympia and Chelsea are not that compelling as main characters. Abigail also seems drawn a bit older than she is and it throws the story off a little. Still, another peek into Aaronovitch's magical world until the next real book comes out.

 True North: Travels in Arctic Europe, Gavin Francis
I knew this was the book for me from the blurb: "In this striking blend of travel writing, history and mythology, Gavin Francis offers a unique portrait of the northern outposts of Europe." And boy, what a book—I thoroughly enjoyed Francis' journey.

He begins in the Shetland Islands, following the stories of the earliest explorers who went north looking for "Ultima Thule," including St. Brendan. He then continues to the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, Svalbard, and finally Lapland, telling each region's myths and history, along with a portrait of the people who live there (most of whom long for warmth, but grow homesick and return) and the natural features and native birds and animals. He explores the areas mostly by hiking, but also takes the rare aircraft and travels by ship as well. His writing is beautiful, not flowery but very evocative and descriptive; it's a pleasure to read and certain descriptions, especially of the tough inhabitants who remain living there, stick in your mind long after you're done reading that portion. If you dream of cold weather and Arctic exploration, this is definitely the book for you!

  CSI: Grave Matters, Max Allan Collins
The fifth in Collins' series based on the original CSI series. Once again, the team is working two cases: Rebecca Bennett insists her mother's death was probably foul play on the part of her stepfather, and she convinces the sheriff's department to dig the body up for an autopsy. But when Grissom, Sidle, and Stokes open the casket, a different body is contained in it instead. In the meantime, Catherine and Warrick are summoned to an eldercare facility, where their own assistant coroner, David, feels there's something suspicious about the death of Vivian Elliot, a woman who was recovering quite rapidly from surgery until she was found dead; they also discover from the head of the facility that more deaths of elderly women seem to be occurring than usual.

Collins has the characters down pat—you can hear Petersen in Grissom's dialog, Fox in Sara's, etc.; you could practically convert each of his CSI books into a television movie. And as always, the two cases have a connection to each other, but Collins works it so skillfully that you don't expect it until it happens, and the getting there is suitably complicated. CSI fans should enjoy, and they work well as a forensics mystery as well.

  Beach Read, Emily Henry
January Andrews writes bestselling romance novels, but after her father dies and she learns a terrible family secret, she doesn't believe she can write another "happily ever after" tale again. She retreats to the family lake cottage in order to clean and sell it, only to discover that renting the cottage next door is Augustus Everett, her old college rival, who writes deep, meaningful novels, the kind that make the bestseller lists. Turns out Gus is also suffering from writer's block, and once they begin talking to each other, thanks to the local bookclub, they come to an agreement: Gus will spend the summer writing something with a happy ending and January will write a serious novel, and each will teach the other about the successful ingredients of their craft (so January will take him to fluffy rom-com settings and Gus'll take her on his interviews with a cult member).

This book did make me cry. There are themes of betrayal and secrecy woven through the tale, so it's more than your usual fluffy rom-com stuff. The relationship builds naturally and the supporting characters (even a couple of less savory ones) are realistic. I enjoyed this one.

  Testament of Trust, Faith Baldwin
This is the third of Baldwin's nonfiction books which cover a year in her life, but, rather than only discussing the seasons and her home, she talks about issues of faith, belief, and love. While I don't find these as compelling as Taber's "Stillmeadow" books, they contain much food for thought about relationships, positivity, and the folly of negative thinking.

  Bonk, Mary Roach
After reading Gulp, I wanted to investigate more of Roach's science books. Once again she writes with a light touch while imparting loads of information.

This book is, if you hadn't guessed from the title, is about sexuality, and each chapter focuses on a different study of human sexuality, from impotence ("ED") remedies to analysis of orgasm to the role of the clitoris in sex, all the way to an absurd chapter about how pleasurable sex among pigs produces more piglets. There's an examination of the early research of Alfred Kinsey as well as the later work of Masters and Johnson, how early treatments for "hysteria" were just doctors diddling their patients, and a doctor who reconstructs penises.

Roach has a nice, easygoing way of approaching science topics, People who like their science texts completely serious should avoid, however.

  My Name is America: The Journal of Brian Doyle, A Greenhorn on an Alaskan Whaling Ship, Jim Murphy
This is actually one of the better of the "Dear America" books devoted to male historical characters. Brian Doyle has run away to sea to make life easier for his older but sickly brother Sean Michael; their hard-working father often comes home drunk and Brian argues with him instead of keeping silent, so he leaves to give his brother peace. He signs on the whale ship "Florence" and is thrown bodily into shipboard life. Onboard he meets all sorts of people, from York the profane one and Nathaniel, who is devoted to his Bible. The captain has very bad luck in locating whales in warm Hawai'ian waters (this takes place in 1874, when whales were starting to be overfished), so they head north into the Arctic, only to be caught in the winter ice.

The story is grim and uncompromising, but never reaches the level of despair that proliferates when Barry Denenberg writes one of these books. Instead it is realistic in that even in despair it retains some small bit of hope. Recommended with the usual warnings about mature (death, etc.) subjects.

Books Completed Since April 1

  CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Companion, Mike Flaherty, case files by Corinne Marrinan
This is an oversize paperback that reviews the first three seasons of the acclaimed CBS crime drama, chronicling its creation and its characters (Gil Grissom, for instance, was originally named Gil Sheinbaum, but it was changed because star William Peterson was an admirer of astronaut Gus Grissom). Each of the episodes of the first three seasons is summarized in detail, and then, in inserts, there is discussion of the unique aspects of the episodes, the unusual special effects the series was noted for, original script concepts that were changed for the episodes, what prompted each story, etc. There are also two-page character profiles of Grissom, Catherine Willows, and the rest of the Las Vegas CSI team. (Why was the show based in Las Vegas, you might ask? Well, because except for the FBI laboratory at Quantico, VA, Las Vegas literally does have the largest crime lab in the country, and really does run three shifts to process all the information that passes through it!) Illustrated with photos from episodes galore and looks into how real crime scene investigation works (tip: it doesn't go as quickly as you see on the series!).

A good book to find used for the CSI lover in your family.

  Murder in Chianti, Camilla Trinchieri
Following the death of his wife Rita, former NYPD homicide detective Nico Doyle (his mother was Italian and his father Irish) has moved to Rita's hometown of Gravigna in the Chianti region, and is enjoying helping Rita's family at their restaurant, but he still grieves for his wife. One day a dog's yelping summons him to the woods near his home, where he finds a flashily-dressed, and very dead, man. He immediately summons the local maresciallo (policeman), Salvatore Perillo, who quickly finds out Nico's background and seeks his help solving the mystery. Nico accepts reluctantly, hoping Perillo won't find out the secret of why he left the NYPD, but as the mystery deepens, he finds out people that he now knows well and even likes were acquainted with the victim and nobody wants to talk. He does adopt the dog that alerted him to the body, a fluffy little animal he names "OneWag" for his habit of only wagging his tail once. (Everyone else calls the dog "Rocco.")

Not only a murder mystery, but an examination of small-town Italian life, the book is filled with talk of wine, cooking, and the communities that form around the local restaurants. If you're looking for a straight mystery, you might want to look elsewhere, but if you also want a primer on Italian life, this is the book for you, filled with mornings eating pastry, evenings enjoying pasta dishes, and the smells and sounds of the Chianti countryside. You also slowly learn about Nico's past life, and a secret that binds the small town together.

  Many Windows: Seasons of the Heart, Faith Baldwin
For many years, Baldwin wrote what was then called "women's fiction" and is now known informally as "chick lit," as did her younger friend Gladys Taber, but, like Taber, she also wrote several nonfiction inspirational books. The difference is that while Taber wrote about her home, Stillmeadow, and about her friend Jill, and their three children, Baldwin's books are more about faith and happiness, introspective volumes that discuss human behavior, belief in God, good and evil, and society in general, while also talking about her day-to-day life over the course of a year. Many Windows is the second of five volumes, and they make very nice bedtime reading.

  As the Crow Flies, Craig Johnson
This is the eighth book in the Longmire series, and begins with Walt Longmire and his friend Henry Standing Bear scouting out a new location for Walt's daughter's wedding to Michael Moretti after their original choice has been taken over by another event on the nearby Cheyenne Reservation. Someone suggests they look at the beautiful Painted Warrior cliffs as a replacement setting, but as Walt and Henry check out the venue, they see a young Crow woman fall from the cliff. Appalled, they find her dead, but the baby she was carrying is still alive. And now Walt is determined to find out what happened to her, only to have to partner with "the rez's" new tribal police chief, Lolo Long, a veteran with attitude, to do so.

This is the usual excellent mystery I've come to expect from Craig Johnson. I've been watching the television series long enough that now I hear Walt's narration in Robert Taylor's voice and Lou Diamond Phillips when Henry Standing Bear talks, but the books and the series are completely different, but equally good, animals. (Cady isn't married in the series, for one.)

If you don't cry during the last few paragraphs of the book, you have no soul.

  Movie-Made America: A Cultural History of American Movies, Robert Sklar
I have a strange history with this book: I actually bought it a couple of years ago as a gift for a friend, and really wanted to keep it. Luckily I found a nearly new copy at McKay's earlier this year.

People today associate the movies with Hollywood and the wealthy and being a wealthy influencer, but the movies as a medium were begun by immigrants, and immigrants at the lowest social order (according to the upper classes!), including Jewish men like Adolph Zukor and William Fox who founded the earliest studios. Churches, middle- and upper-class people, and concerned social groups were convinced that the "movies" would lead people, especially children, into perdition when the nickelodeons emerged, offering cheap entertainment. Later the movies became a scapegoat for the "cheapening" of American life, encouraging divorces, drinking, wild behavior, and other obscenities in otherwise "nice people" (just as radio, cheap paperback books, television, and finally the internet later took the blame for the same or similar behaviors).

While a social history, Sklar also hits the artistry of movie greats like Edwin Porter, D.W. Griffith, and others who took the movies from short, usually funny or erotic vignettes to full-fledged storytelling, using a mixture of closeups, medium shots, and long shots to develop narrative and pace. Sexism, racism (especially in Birth of a Nation), erotica, the Communist witch hunts, complaints of doctors that movies caused everything from bad eyes to abhorrent behavior, and other topics are also discussed.

This make a great companion piece to one of my favorite books on the history of film, Kenneth MacGowan's Behind the Screen, which I also found in a used bookstore, long long ago.

  Amongst Our Weapons, Ben Aaronovitch
In the newest of the "Rivers of London" series, detective and apprentice wizard Peter Grant is investigating a dead body found in the London Silver Vaults which lie underneath the city. The man that was found was killed instantly and his assailant disappeared without a trace. Along with this mystery, Peter is experiencing an even more terrifying future: being a father! His partner Beverley, in reality the goddess of Beverley Brook, is about to give birth to twins.

I was amused that the first few chapters of this book actually read like a magical version of a Law & Order investigation; all it lacks is Lennie Briscoe. Peter is now teamed up with a non-magical partner, Danni Wickford, who views all the "magical bollocks" with some wonder and some skepticism; it doesn't look as if she will follow in the footsteps of Peter's original partner, Lesley May, who went rogue and reappears here.

All your old favorites are back—Guleed, Nightingale, briefly Molly and Toby the dog (since Peter is now living with Beverley rather than at the Folly), Miriam Stephanopolaus, Abigail's talking foxes, plus Alexander Seawoll gets a larger role as usual, and the team accompanies him to "the North" and meets his father. There are also the usual puns and references to other fandoms, including a really big Monty Python call-out as part of the plot.

If I have any complaint, with Peter living with Beverley, we don't get the charming bits that take place at the Folly, and I'm sort of on the fence with Peter's life turning into a domestic drama.

  The Secret Language of Color, JoAnnEckstut and Arielle Eckstut
This is a coffee-table size book about...surprise!...color. There is a chapter for each of the primary and secondary colors—what the particular color represents in various societies, how it's used in signage, how it relates to animals and birds, its place in culture, etc.—and then alternating chapters talk about colors in science: physics and chemistry, the earth, the universe, plants, animals, and finally humans.

If you're as into colors as I am—I've been crazy about colors of paint, crayons, fireworks, plants, etc. since childhood—this is the book for you.

  CSI: Sin City, Max Allan Collins
The second book in the CSI tie-in series. In this entry, the crime lab is working two cases once again: Sara and Catherine have been assigned to look into the murder of a worker at a strip club (night shift commander Gil Grissom believes that Catherine's former work as a stripper should provide her some extra insight into the case), while Grissom, Nick, and Warrick, along with homicide detective Jim Brass, look into the report of a missing woman named Lynn Pierce, who was threatened by her husband (on tape).

Collins has a good handle on the television characters and the book reads like an episode of the series. You can often hear the actors speak the lines. (One particular scene involves the discovery of a sex toy. Sara Sidle says gleefully, "DNA on a stick!" and you can imagine Jorja Fox saying the line.) He also has a way of describing scenes so they can be clearly envisioned. If you were a fan of the early episodes of the series, you will find these are a good addition.

  Mysteries of the Alphabet, Marc-Alain Quaknin
I'm always interested in books about the alphabet and linguistics. This is an unusual book as it tries to be an art book and a history of the alphabet. Ouaknin is a rabbi, so the Hebrew alphabet is often referenced, and he takes this history not just back to hieroglyphics and cuneiform, but traces the meaning of each of the letters, gives them a numerical value, gives them symbolic meaning, etc. Multiple illustrations (maybe too many) show the original letters and their derivations on archaeological finds. Translated from the French.

  When Wanderers Cease to Roam: A Traveler's Journal of Staying Put, Vivian Swift
Sometimes serendipity happens at the library book sale. I saw the lettering on the side of this, along with the unfamiliar author's name, and wondered "Did Susan Branch illustrate a book for someone?"

No, Vivian Swift is both the author and illustrator of this delightful book that covers a year in her life at her Connecticut home. There are beautiful landscapes, drawings of birds and animals, leaves, gardens, bridges, seascapes and more, along with Swift's diary entries, list of emotions over the seasons, memories of her past traveling in Europe, discourses on tea and cats and nature, and more. It's a beautiful little volume if just for the watercolors, but the commentary is enjoyable, too.

  Three Debts Paid, Anne Perry
This is the next volume in the Daniel Pitt mystery series, which finds Daniel defending his former history professor in a case of assault. Another writer accused Nicholas Wolford of plagarism and took a swing at him; Wolford retaliated and broke the man's nose and jaw, and now he's afraid both charges will ruin his reputation. In the meantime, Daniel's good friend Miriam fford-Croft has returned from Europe where she studied to be a pathologist and is working with eccentric Dr. Evelyn Hall at the morgue on a particularly grim set of killings: the murderer strikes on rainy days and then disfigures the bodies. One woman, then another, and then a man are all killed, with the same disfigurement, leading them to the obvious conclusion that the same person is responsible. Daniel's old classmate Ian Frobisher, now a police detective, is on the case, but is severely hampered because the man killed was a banker and involved in secret budget negotiations; they are not allowed to question his family or his bank.

Once again Perry weaves an intricate plot in which all aspects of both cases eventually intertwine. We also get to know Ian Frobisher better as well as follow the progression of the relationship between Daniel and Miriam. Sir Thomas and Charlotte Pitt make cameo appearances as Daniel and Ian try to get to the bottom of things.

My only quibble with this is that a crucial piece of evidence linking the killings is only mentioned in the last few chapters of the book, which seems like cheating to me. The clues should be all set out at least in the first half of the book so readers can try to solve the mystery along with the detectives. Waiting to present this clue until just before the climax of the story seems unfair.

  Beyond (The Founding of Valdemar, Book 1), Mercedes Lackey
Praise Ghu! After Lackey's simply dreadful Eye Spy with its carbon-copy instantly-recognizable avatar for a Certain Public Figure—a true plot cheat—I was afraid she'd forgotten how to write a good book.
 
If you, too, suffered through Eye Spy (or part of Eye Spy, as I did; I couldn't finish the awful thing), please note she has not forgotten how to write a great book. Here she gives fans of her Valdemar universe what we have wanted for years: the story of the Kingdom of Valdemar and its founder, Duke Kordas Valdemar. Kordas' duchy is a rural community of mostly yeoman farmers and livestock breeders; Kordas himself loves and breeds horses, including the stunning "Valdemar Gold." As the story opens, a new Gold filly is born and given as a gift to Delia, Kordas' sister-in-law (who harbors a secret crush on him after he saved her life).
 
Behind this bucolic facade, Kordas is a worried man. Like all his contemporaries, he was "fostered" (read: held hostage) at the court of the Emperor at a young age and then sent home expected to obey the avaricious and self-absorbed commands of his liege lord. But Kordas' father has taught him to expect that some day the Empire will try to invade Valdemar, lay waste to its beautiful lands, and take all that they need, including the beloved horses. So for years his father, and now Kordas, have gathered mages and made preparations for the population and the livestock of Valdemar to escape via magical Gates to lands far in the west where the Empire cannot encroach on them. Their plans are set to come to fruition during the upcoming annual Empire Regatta. Then Kordas is summoned to the Capital for a meeting of the heads of all the principalities, dukedoms, baronies, etc. Kordas goes, leaving his capable wife Isla, Delia, and his mages in charge, but what he finds at the Capital—including Air Elementals enslaved in scarecrow-like artificial bodies and "foster" children toed into line with obedience spells—so horrifies him that he finds he must help more than just the people of Valdemar.

A whopping great tale, with memorable characters, including "the Dolls" (whose secret will make you squirm), and a constantly moving plot. There are still avatars for Certain Public Figures (and their actions), but they are well disguised in the plot and not at all smack-in-the-face smirkingly obvious. Lackey hasn't written such a good adventure in several volumes. Definitely looking forward to the next two books and the definitive story of how the Companions came to be.

If I had one quibble, it's that we're told how special the Valdemar Golds are, but...why? Is it just their color? We almost learn more about the Chargers (including the two sent the Emperor who are "fake" Valdemar Golds), the Tow-Beasts, the Sweetfoots (riding horses), and the Fleetfoots (race horses) than we do about the Golds.

  Manhattan Mayhem, edited by Mary Higgins Clark
This is a book of mystery short stories set in...surprise!...New York City, each based in a different neighborhood. Three take place during or just after World War II, and two involve the Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park, but with two radically different plots. (Some of the plots do not involve murder—but Julie Hyzy's "Alice"-centered plot does; was a fan of Hyzy since the "Manor House" mysteries.) Was very intrigued because the story set in Chinatown, written by S.J. Rozan, is worked by the usually disapproving mother of Chinese-American detective Lydia Chin! Lee Child contributes a Jack Reacher story set at the Flatiron Building, and there's even an odd time-travel story called "Evermore." In the meantime, a dying woman gets some epic revenge; a series of murders is committed with clues from lyrics from musicals; a mystery play is the setting for a play about a murder mystery; and a young Italian man trying to escape crime can't escape other obligations—plus more in seventeen pavement-pounding stories!