Books Completed Since March 1

 Meg & Jo, Virginia Kantra
How much you enjoy this book is relative to how you react to modern-day retellings of classic stories. I didn't mind the updating so much as Kantra's portrayal of Jo.

So, predictably, this is a modern-day retelling of Little Women. Mr. March is an army chaplain who is too absorbed with his military flock to spend time with his wife and daughters. Mrs. March is back living on the family farm in Bunyan (a tip of the hat to Pilgrim's Progress referenced in the original book), North Carolina, raising goats and selling goats' milk products. Meg, who also lives in Bunyan, is a former attorney now married to John Brooke (a car salesman), and they have twins, DJ and Daisy, who Meg gave up her job to raise at home, but she feels guilty because John has to work so many hours to support them on one salary. Jo lives in a tiny apartment in New York City; having lost her journalist job, she's become a sous chef under the watchful eye of Eric Bhaer, a celebrated chef with his own restaurant. (Beth and Amy will be covered in a second book coming out at Christmas 2020; Amy's still an artist, studying design in Paris. Beth's a musician who has written a song that has come to the attention of a famous country star. They have cameo appearances here. Laurie's modern alter ego, Trey, also has pretty much of a bit part. Very dull.) Then, an accident. Marmee is hurt and Meg must help her; she discovers that the family farm is in debt.

Some people took this updating very badly. I thought Kantra translated it pretty well. Her day-to-day portrayal of Meg's days as a stay-at-home mom was realistic but almost becomes too much; got very tired of reading how often Meg had to strip off DJ's dirty diapers or how often the kids got messy. We get it: SAHM's don't spend all day sitting on the sofa eating chocolate and watching television. The troubles Mr. and Mrs. March have with their marriage hark very much back to the real-life troubles of Abba and Bronson Alcott, where the latter pretty much forwent his family obligations, leaving Abba to do all the work of feeding and clothing the kids, while Bronson discussed philosophy with his fellow Transcendentalists. It was also a hard look at how service men and women often are distanced from their families by military obligations. Also thought Sallie Moffat made the transition from past to present very well, although I frowned when two of Sallie's snooty friends turn out to be Rose Campbell and Phebe Moore from Alcott's Eight Cousins. Note: Rose was never snobby, nor was Phebe. I found it insulting to the original characters.)

(Also, what in the dickens is the matter with DJ? In this female-centric book I can see why they made Daisy the articulate one, but what's with DJ? He hardly says anything, barely does anything, and has no character at all. Even as domestically boring as the original "motherly" Daisy was, she at least had a character. DJ is like a toddler lump of clay.)

Oh, Jo. What can I say about Jo? First is a petty complaint of mine. Why, oh, why, did Bhaer have to be a chef? There are so many of these dippy celebrity chefs on television, why did we need yet another one? Couldn't he have been something interesting? A scientist, an astronaut, an artist, another writer, even a famed college professor? But a chef? Ugh!! And of course Jo [spoiler spoiler spoiler] has to get pregnant after using an aged condom? Good grief. Good God.

I was interested in the modern spin enough to think about getting Beth & Amy when it's released, and to see if Kantra works on the Mr. and Mrs. March plot more. But I am bitterly disappointed in Jo's modern update.

 Mary Poppins, She Wrote: The Life of P.L. Travers, Valerie Lawson
Having seen the Disney version of Mary Poppins when it first came out, I was quite familiar with the contentious relationship between Ms. Travers and Disney, who, she said, sweetened and prettied up her non-nonsense, vain, plain nanny and turned her story into a sugary confection of singing and dancing animals, with a preposterous subplot about suffragettes. Having also read Mary Poppins and been rather ho-hum about it except for the chapter about the starling and John and Barbara (of course who are not in the movie), I did have to admit Travers made a good point, even though I enjoyed the film more.

Frankly, reading this book made me like Travers—born Helen Lyndon Goff, and known as Lyndon in her youth—as an adult a lot less. She had a hard bringing-up: her father, Travers Goff, was a bank clerk who made up stories about himself and drank too much. Her mother, Margaret, was orphaned and was raised by her "Aunt Ellie." Lyndon lived with Aunt Ellie for a time as well. Like her father, she never thought of herself as Australian, but as a UK expatriot. As an adult she lived in England, raised an adopted son there (he later became an alcoholic), "taught" at various American universities where she was lionized but never really taught anything, just spoke extemporaneously and expected the students to idolize her. Plus she became involved with a spiritual guru named Gurdjieff, who was a fraud and a sadist to his followers, requesting they do absurd and sometimes hurtful things to prove themselves worthy. I suppose the author wanted me to see Travers as an independent woman ahead of her time and erratic creator of a cultural icon, but frankly by the time I was done I disliked the woman intensely and it was a slog to get through the last half of the book.

 Wonton Terror, Vivien Chien
In this fourth "Noodle Shop" mystery, Lana Lee, now officially the manager of the Ho-Lee Noodle House in Cleveland, Ohio's Asia Village shopping center, is overseeing a new venture: having a food truck at Cleveland's new Asian Night Market. Their "next door" neighbors at the Night Market are fellow food-truck vendors Sandra and Ronnie Chow, proprietors of Wonton on Wheels, and old friends of both Lana's parents and Ruby, a jewelry vendor at the Night Market. As the night ends, Lana and Ho-Lee's chef Peter spot flames coming out of the Wonton on Wheels truck—and then there's an explosion. When the smoke and the debris clears, the truck is no more, and Ronnie's body is still inside. When Lana's boyfriend Adam Trudeau of the detective squad looks into the crime, he discovers Sandra had been an abused wife and she is the immediate suspect. Lana, on the other hand, suspects Sandra's brother Gene, a disheveled often-drunken man resentful of his sister's abuse.

Between Adam telling her to bow out of the sleuthing this time, and Lana's over-eager best friend and roommate Megan egging her on, how can Lana not ask a couple of questions? Or talk to some people associated with the Chows? After all, Ronnie was abusive and Sandra deserves some justice...

Another reasonably interesting adventure from Chien, in which the Lee family dynamics are as interesting as the story.

 Timekeepers: How The World Became Obsessed With Time, Simon Garfield
This was the one non-Women's History Month item I read because of yet another change to Daylight Effing Saving Time; it's a collection of essays about various aspects having to do with peoples' interest in time, from the role of trains in establishing standard time around the world, the establishment of our calendar, an interesting essay about the tempo at which older music should be played (the classic composers apparently played their own compositions at a tempo that philharmonics that will not use today), horology a.k.a. watchmaking (and the story of how the Swiss watch came down in the world), working smarter at your job, a crazy movie called The Clock that is just twenty-four hours of movie clips involving clocks, and the slow food movement and other attempts to "go back in time" like the Prince Charles-designed village of Poundbury (which I realized the moment I read about it that it's the village being lampooned as "Plinkbury" in the hilarious young adult book Christine Kringle). Enjoyable for anyone interested in the history of timekeeping.

 Where the Past Begins, Amy Tan
I have never read any of Amy Tan's books, but this one looked so tempting: about her history and how that history affected her writing. I enjoyed her stories—if "enjoyed" can be used considering the sadness of much of the text—of her past: of her mother who made a forbidden match after being in an arranged marriage (she abandoned her daughters from her first marriage to come to the US), and of her mother's bouts of depression and threats of suicide, of her go-getter father, of how she and her brother Peter (who was an advanced student for his age) were pushed and bullied in their education and how she never felt good enough compared to him (he later died of a brain tumor), of how she thought of herself as "the fat little girl," of how she loved drawing as a child (some of the drawings are included in the text), some of these memories very painful and distressing to read. The rest of the book—about how she doesn't know how she writes, and how sometimes she has to force herself to do it—is actually kind of blah. She talks about learning music and how she made up stories in her head to go along with the music she was learning to play, and this leads to the most excruciating bit of the entire book, eight pages of a pointless story about a woman named Anna that was inspired by Rachmaninoff's Concerto No. 3. I am sorry Tan's childhood was so bleak, but it made absorbing reading—the rest: eh.

  Final Exam, Carol J. Perry
Lee Barrett, now settled into her job as field reporter for WICH-TV in Salem, Massachusetts, is happily helping her Aunt Isobel ("Ibby" to her friends) prepare for her 45th class reunion, and meets other members of the reunion committee at the house she and Ibby share, including Steve Overton, class Golden Boy, who's running for Congress; Penelope Driscoll, an avid scrapbooker; and Bobby Ross, former hockey prodigy with a drinking problem. But there's a fly in the ointment of this school reunion: earlier in the day Lee and her camerawoman Francine witnessed a vintage Ford Mustang being pulled out of the water at the old granite quarry: a car that belonged to Aunt Ibby's high-school sweetheart Ted Thorne, who vanished the night of the prom and was assumed to have run away from an unhappy home life in that very car.

A human skeleton is found in the car. And you can guess who it belongs to. And at the same time, Lee, who's a "scryer" who's seen visions of future and past evens in shiny objects since she was a kid, begins having them again: about the class reunion, about Aunt Ibby and her mother Carrie, and other more ominous things.

Once I got over the shock that Lee's "elderly" Aunt Ibby was in the same year graduating class as I was (Class of 1974), I enjoyed this one because you got some glimpses into Ibby's younger life and her relationship with Lee's mother. I pegged "whodunit" about 2/3 of the way through, and the person behind that person (read: the real bad influence is exactly who you think it is), but still enjoyed Perry's storytelling, as well as Pete's further acceptance of Lee's otherworldly talent and its uses in revealing the truth. Not a lot of one of my favorite characters (River North, the witch and television host) in this story, but maybe another time. 

 Holiday Symbols (2nd Edition), Sue Ellen Thompson
This is a neat Omnigraphics reference volume described by the publisher as "describ[ing] more than 900 symbols associated with 224 popular holiday and celebrations in the United States and around the world." This is done in an alphabetic order with standard sections: an opening summary that tells what type of holiday it is (religious, national, cultural, etc.), date of observance, where in the world it's celebrated, what symbols represent it, what colors may represent it, and what holidays are related. Then the full entry talks about the origins of the holiday, the symbols and their history, and a bibliography for further reading. Along with the usual standard holidays (Christmas, the solstices, various cultural groups' new year celebrations, etc.), there are Indian, Japanese, Chinese, Laotian, Greek, Russian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, and more holidays. Great for research about celebrations around the world and just plain browsing.

 The Olive Farm, Carol Drinkwater
Most Americans probably remember Carol Drinkwater for playing Helen Alderson Herriot in the BBC's beloved All Creatures Great and Small television series for the first three years. (If her romance with "James" looked very realistic, I understand that it was because she and her co-star Christopher Timothy were having an affair.) But this story follows Drinkwater after her Creatures tenure, when she is still acting and producing, but also in love with Michel, a divorced father of two. Both have always wanted a country home in France, and, on a mad whim, decide to sink all their savings into a crumbling old Italian country home and olive farm called "Appassionata." They are risking a good deal of money, because if they can't make up the difference in a certain time, "Appassionata" will be repossessed and none of the money they spent, even for upgrades, will be returned. So in they move to a property clogged with weeds and brush, into a house full of insects with a leaky roof, and try to carry out their improvements despite a nasty succession of hired people who either treat them like dirt or run out on them, their friends—an impoverished African migrant worker and a local, René, who helps them get the olive crop up and running—while still working on both their careers to be able to earn money to fix the money pit that is Appassionata.

At the same time that I was indignant over the people who cheated them and wondering how they could possibly live in such a hot, horrible climate in a bug-infested dirty house, I was really wistful over reading about their great adventure: taking an abandoned piece of property and turning it not only into a going concern, but into a home that embraces family and friends. Drinkwater's lively, descriptive style never flags and whether she is freaking out about having to fly back and forth to the States and make the closing on the property, mourning over her father's death, coping with Michel's slightly resentful daughters, or describing the beauty of the countryside just outside of Cannes, her narrative is spot-on. Looking forward to the sequel!

 The Bookish Life of Nina Hill, Abbi Waxman
Y'all know I have this love-hate relationship with chick-lit. At its most basic this is a love story, but the fact that the protagonist is an introvert book-lover who works in a bookstore and whose only social life is playing trivia was very close to my heart.

Nina Lee Hill was raised mostly by her beloved nanny Liz, but knows she's loved in her own way by her single mother Candice, a photojournalist. She loves her job at Knight's Books, but the shop's come on hard times and her boss Liz Quinn is always hiding out from the landlord. Nina lives with her cat Phil in an old, picturesque, and old-fashioned neighborhood in Los Angeles, and the highlight of her week is playing trivia with her closest friends (their team is "Book 'Em, Danno"). In fact, their team is so successful they regularly have to change venues—and that's where they come up on a new team that can wax their tails, and the team captain Tom, who completely captures Nina's attention and vice versa.

But there's a bigger shock in store for Nina: her biological father, who she never knew, has died and left her a legacy which includes a whole bunch of half-siblings and cousins she never realized she had, who range from Peter, who's gay, friendly, and delighted to find Nina, to Lydia, the aggressive cousin who thinks Nina's out to falsely claim their father's inheritance.

And, of course, there has to be the usual misunderstand where the couple break up and all seems lost, which is de rigueur in romance stories. But this one is fun

 Young Americans Colonial Williamsburg: Maria's Story, 1773, Joan Lowery Nixon
Ten-year-old Maria Rind faces her toughest challenge—previous to that it was coping with her three rambunctious brothers—after he beloved father dies. Maria and her father were very close, and now she needs her mother more than ever. But Clementina Rind can do only one of two things: give up and appeal to charity, or continue publishing her husband's newspaper, The Virginia Gazette. She chooses the latter, making Maria feel even lonelier than ever as she takes over most of her mother's cooking chores and rides herd on her mischievous brothers. However, when Maria realizes they will lose all they love, including her grandmother's silver spoons that mean so much to her mother, if her mother does not continue working on the newspaper, she tries to make do—and then fears that when her mother publishes stories counter to that of the opinions of the British Crown, they will lose the newspaper after all!

Some of this book is quite sad because of Maria's loneliness and need, and she just can't understand why her mother can't drop everything to comfort her; then later she cannot understand why her mother can't just go along with everything the King and Parliament says to keep their life secure. Only later will she understand that her mother has to stick to her principles.

Factual essays at the end of the story talk about child life in 18th century Williamsburg, the city itself, and the role of the printers in dissemination of news, and of the new ideas of liberty.

 The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers, 1937-1943, From Novelist to Playwright (Volume 2), edited by Barbara Reynolds

Reynolds, also the author of a biography of Sayers which I quite enjoyed, has distilled letters of interest into this volume, which starts as the author brings her most famous creation, Lord Peter Wimsey, to the stage in a play called Busman's Honeymoon (the book followed later), and follows her as she becomes a playwright, author of both stage work (The Devil to Pay, The Zeal of Thy House) and radio plays (the noted BBC productions He That Should Come and The Man Born to Be King), as well as explaining her role as Christian apologist, noting that she was not stating her own philosophies but teaching the beliefs of the Church, coping with the approach and then ordeal of World War II, and keeping in touch with her son John Anthony, who is now away at school. There's a long row between herself and the BBC about her production of The Man Born to Be King because she wished to tell the story of Jesus as if he, as she believed, was a real, live human being, and the BBC authorities were apprehensive lest this "less than reverent" version of the Biblical tale be construed as sacrilegious. (They also complained that it used "slang" and didn't sound "Bible-like," which was what Sayers intended, to show Biblical people were just "folks" like anyone else. And the temerity of having ... gasp! ... Christ's words spoken by an actor? Shocking!)

I found myself reading passages aloud, not about religion, but about her feelings about freedom and responsibility, akin to that of Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." (Which, apparently, is not what most people think it is, but in Sayers' case it was.) Very enjoyable if you are a Sayers' fan and can get past just thinking of her as Wimsey's author, but as someone with a great deal of interest in Biblical interpretation.

I thought there were the only two volumes of her letters, but it appears there are two more, one of which goes for online for $913.00! Needless to say I won't be reading them, even borrowed, as the library never has anything I read. A pity, because her writing engrosses throughout.

The BBC Production of The Man Born to Be King (not the original, from 1967)

 Murder in Tranquility Park, J.D. Griffo
In the second of the Ferrara Family mysteries, granddaughter "Jinx" has talked Alberta Scaglione (who recently inherited a lake house from her deceased aunt) into jogging with her in the morning, through a park that has a hand-built treehouse in one of its numerous old oaks. Unfortunately for both, one morning they find a dead body laying under that particular tree: Jonas Harper, an employee of the city.

You guessed it: before you can say sfogliatelle, Alberta, Jinx, Alberta's sister the ex-Sister, and sister-in-law Joyce are back on the case, especially after Jinx's best friend Nola, a schoolteacher, is accused of murdering Harper, and deputy Kichiro Miyahara, Nola's boyfriend, starts acting very strangely. With the help of Nola's principal, Sharon Basco, and the new medical examiner Lori LaGuardia, two elderly Italian ladies and their granddaughter, and one African-American sister-in-law dive into the crime. For their efforts, they have the police chief call them pazzo, get the brakes cut on a car they're driving in, and end up having Alberta and Jinx run smack into danger.

These books are sometimes highly improbable, but are just fun, and it's so great to have an Italian protagonist who uses all the sayings I heard in my childhood.

 The Light of the Home: An Intimate View of the Lives of Women in Victorian America, Harvey Green
Another library book sale find. Illustrations of household items and Victorian men and women from the Margaret Woodbury Strong Museum in New York liberally dot this interesting book about the lives of middle-class women. While men went pioneering, exploring, and out into the sordid business world, the woman was supposed to be the stabilizing, civilizing force that created a moral society. Therefore great steps were taken to keep her pure and innocent, giving rise to myths that women's brains weren't "large" enough to be able to cope with higher learning, and doctors' misunderstanding of how the female reproductive system actually worked led to belief that "female problems" inevitably led to "hysteria" (the same root as the word "hysterectomy") and mental illness.

If all this wasn't bad enough, there were so many rules: length of courtship, how women should dress and behave, the suppression of women's sexuality (it might cause mental illness!), a long list of mourning etiquette, and more. Through diary entries and history texts, women's lives are followed from their graduation from girlhood to womanhood, courtship, "of course" marriage, and finally death. Meanwhile there were some breakout ladies: women who actually remained spinsters because they wanted to, women who had ... gasp! ... careers, and women who rode that dangerous new fad, the safety bicycle!

The chapters on women's health (apparently you had to keep your uterus from falling out!) and housework are real eye-openers!

This Month's Theme...

So what's everyone reading for Women's History Month? The other day I corralled some of the women's nonfiction I have, and, of course, I have plenty of mystery stories with female protagonists. Alas, that means I can't read a Longmire book this month. 😊

I've already read Meg & Jo, Mary Poppins She Wrote, and the fourth "Noodle Shop" mystery (Wonton Terror), and, since I try to alternate fiction and nonfiction, thought it would be appropriate to go from an Asian mystery to Amy Tan's book Where the Past Begins. I have all sorts of choices after that: in fiction the latest paperback edition of one of the "Royal Spyness" mysteries, another "Witch City" mystery, another Flavia de Luce book, the resumption of Cleo Coyle's "Ghost" mysteries, even a book about BBC workers during the second World War; in nonfiction the second volume of Dorothy Sayers' letters, the final volume of Blanche Weisen Cook's Eleanor Roosevelt bio, Heather Lende's Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs, the book about Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret that got their nanny "Crawfie" fired, and more.

And, oh, goodness, the library book sale is next weekend... It's supposed to rain, so I must mull upon how to keep the books dry.

Books Completed Since February 1

 Young Americans Colonial Williamsburg: Nancy's Story, 1765, Joan Lowery Nixon
This is the third in Lowery's series of six book, each focusing on a boy or girl growing up in the colonial city of Williamsburg. In this entry, the protagonist is Nancy Geddy (who is the niece of the John Geddy featured in Ann's Story), the daughter of a silversmith. Her mother died after her birth and she was brought up learning housewifely duties from her grandmother. Then, when she was ten, her father James dropped a bombshell: he is remarrying!

Now twelve, with a toddler half-brother Jamie, Nancy still chafes at her stepmother's criticism. Elizabeth will not allow her to use her mother's recipes, is always sick now that she is pregnant again, and, when Christmas approaches, is refusing to decorate or make dainties for the twelve days of celebration coming up. But this is only part of Nancy's troubles. One of her best friends is Tom, the orphan apprentice who works at her uncle's foundry. If the new Stamp Act that the British have imposed on the colonies is enacted, the foundry (and Nancy's father's business) might lose customers as well as a way to collect debts, and Tom may have to be let go from his apprenticeship. Can Nancy prevail upon her gentle father to take a stand against the Stamp Act with the other Williamsburg merchants, and somehow come to terms with her feelings about Elizabeth?

I found this a well-moving story with a good explanation (which we rarely got at school) about how the Stamp Act affected the colonial population personally. I just wish there had been a scene at the end where perhaps Nancy would find out why her stepmother was so retiring, and also realizing that pregnancy did indeed make Elizabeth very ill and that she wasn't "acting." There are the usual short essays at the end about Williamsburg and colonial childhood, plus one on the lives of the real characters in the story and another on the Stamp Act.

 The Boston Massacre: A Family History, Serena Zabin
As we zip through our American history classes, the "Boston Massacre" (the shooting of four Boston citizens by British soldiers in 1770) is barely a blip on the radar, except as one of the events that led to the Revolutionary War. And when we do learn it, it's as simple as several hundred British soldiers being quartered on Boston soil who turned on their American "enemies."

Except at the time, they really weren't. Zabin tells the stories of the soldiers, who lived a very poor life, who came to colonial soil under orders, and some came with wives and children, which was common practice back then. Women especially were essential to the military scene, as they not only remained with their husbands, tempering bad influences, but washed, mended, and did minor doctoring for not only their husbands, but his fellow soldiers. These women and children also had to be housed, and some became part of the Boston community. Other soldiers, on their free time, courted and later married Boston (or local) women, so they were not soldiers kept in a separate "ivory tower" encampment, but also became part of the community, so that the rebellion being sown around them was difficult for all involved. Not to mention that some soldiers realized the advantages of living in the colonies rather than a military life or the thoughts of going back to an overcrowded city or lonely village and deserted in impressive numbers, with fellow soldiers reluctant to bring them back and Massachusetts denizens willing to defend them.

This book concentrates on the little known-practice of wives and family accompanying the armies (American wives did this as well, as the tourguides at Valley Forge and other Revolutionary War national parks will tell you) and just how integrated some of the "redcoats" became in Boston society (General Thomas Gage, for instance, had a Boston-bred wife). It is probably of most interest to those studying or interested in the Revolutionary War era.

 Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, Dick Moore
I found this at the "perpetual book sale" at the local library; it's Moore's story of the classic child stars of the silent era through the 1940s (and a bit into the early 1950s). Moore started his career in films before he was a year old and, while he appeared in several "Our Gang" ("Little Rascals") shorts, he's most famous for giving Shirley Temple her first screen kiss in Junior Miss. Moore talks to as many of his fellow child star compatriots as possible, from a candid Jane Withers, to a cagy Shirley Temple, to the child actor he considered his best friend, Matthew Beard ("Stymie" of the Our Gang comedies), as well as Natalie Wood, Roddy McDowall, Diana Cary ("Baby Peggy"), Margaret O'Brien, the Watson boys (the most famous, Bobs, was the famous "he ain't heavy he's my brother" child), Jackie Coogan (whose parents' squandering of the money he earned in Hollywood led to the "Coogan Law" regulating child actors' pay and who it actually went to), Jane Powell, Bonita Granville, and more. Some of the kids had positive experiences, but for most of them it was painful. Dean Stockwell speaks about being teased for his part in The Boy With Green Hair and shaving his curls when he quit films in his teens. They worked long hours, they usually received a sub-par education (Roddy McDowall was chagrined at the lack of education he had; Dick Moore himself remembers only one studio teacher who really cared that they learned their lessons and who wouldn't allow the studio heads to take the kids' three daily hours away), they were forced to pose for photos endlessly and have staged birthday parties.

I found this book fascinating—and ultimately sad at how these kids who delighted us so much at the movies had such a hard life. I also learned something that I didn't know: Gene Reynolds, the noted television producer—he did M*A*S*H—began his career as a child star! Well worth reading if you're a fan of classic film.

 In the Shadow of Vesuvius, Tasha Alexander
Lady Emily and her husband Colin Hargreaves (an intelligence gatherer for the British government) are vacationing in Pompeii with Emily's childhood friend Ivy when they turn up a dead body that has been encased in plaster like the Pompeiian bodies found on the site. The man's body is discovered to be that of an American reporter who had visited the site some months ago. When the police write it off, of course inquisitive Emily and ever-suspicious Colin want to find out who killed the man and why. Their immediate suspects are an American brother-and-sister, Benjamin and Calliope Carter and perhaps the camera-shy archaeological worker Stirling—or perhaps the handsome tour guide Mario. It certainly isn't Emily's old friend Jeremy Bainbridge, who seems enamored by Callie Carter, and surely can't be a young woman who gives a surprising introduction of herself, has a connection with the couple's past, and falls in with Emily and Colin's party.

As in the last few of these mysteries, there are alternate chapters set in AD 79, the date of the fateful eruption of Mount Vesuvius, about a character who seems to have nothing to do with the plot until the last couple of chapters. This is Kassandra, a Pompeiian slave who gains her freedom when her father buys both himself and her out of slavery. She is a talented poet whose work on an epic brings her to the attention of a suitor who courts and later marries her former mistress. The fact that Kassandra's poetry, presented at first anonymously, was well-received when scribbed as graffiti on the Pompeiian walls, was interesting at first, then the story took a really predictable turn (I wanted to shake her and yell "You stupid girl, you should have known that would happen!"), and it's only at the end that her fate ties in with the mystery of the murdered American reporter.

I also wanted to kick Colin's butt more than several times in this story. Due to something revealed a few chapters into the story, he turns into yet another male horse's ass, which is not only not like him, but it led to him treating Emily's feelings quite badly. The charm of Colin always was that he never did this sort of thing, and it's irritating that he's developed the habit now.

I did enjoy most of this except for the conclusion of Kassandra's story and Colin's behavior, as my paternal grandparents lived on the island of Ischia before they emigrated to the US and Vesuvius figured in their past. Also amused at yet another offhand reference to Elizabeth Peters' character Amelia Peabody and Radcliffe Emerson!

 Elfquest: The Final Quest (Volumes 1-4), Wendy and Richard Pini
It seems so long ago, and then again it seems like yesterday that I was traveling up to Boston to visit friends: Mary Bloemker, Pat Brimer, Abby Rogers, Gail Paradis, Deb Walsh, Mary Fall, and Steve Eramo. One of our destinations was the comic book store Million Year Picnic at Harvard Square, and one of the things Abby bought religiously was a comic called Elfquest. I've never been a high fantasy fan or a comics fan, but one weekend when I was staying at Abby and Gail's apartment, I picked up the first issue of Elfquest to read. And the second. And then however many Abby had at that point. And the next time I was in Million Year Picnic, I bought up all the back issues to catch up, and then collected and read for years, although the last hard copies I got was "Kings of the Broken Wheel." Still not being much of a comics devotee, and not going to a comic book store regularly after not going to the laundromat on Buford Highway weekly, I didn't read the subsequent sequels until the Pinis posted them online in 2009.

So I had to collect the final four compilation volumes of the saga, which ended officially February 28, 2018 (40 years after the original issue 1 was published), and they've been sitting in my TBR pile since July. I needed a special day to sit down and read them, and the day I found was perfect: damp, rainy, dark, and miserable. And suddenly it was the 1980s once more, and I rejoined Wolfrider chief Cutter, his lifemate Leetah, his best friend Skywise, his children Sunstream and Ember, and all the Wolfrides, Sun Village people, Go-Backs, Waveriders, and other elfin and human denizens of the World of Two Moons. The time has come finally for the elves to make a decision: stay on the World of Two Moons and face the inexorable march of the warlike humans who are encroaching on their territories, or come back to the floating palace they had arrived in and head back to their origin planet, a decision that will break up friends, families, and even couples. In the meantime children are born, evil humans pillage and destroy while others embrace their elfin visitors, and fate spins its wheel. Fitting adventures lead to an expected parting, but not without a loss or too. Yes, I cried at the end.

 A Dream Given Form: The Unofficial Guide to the Universe of Babylon 5, Ensley F. Guffey and K. Dale Koontz
I thought we had bought every Babylon 5 book ever written (except for the complete "encyclopedia," the price of which makes me want to faint), until I saw this volume; it is a fairly new publication from 2017. Perhaps there is new interest in the series because of it showing on Amazon Prime for so long? I wasn't aware it even existed until someone used it as a reference at the Crusade panel at DragonCon.

Whatever. Don't expect an episode guide—you're better off finding one online or going back and finding Jane Killick's five-volume season-by-season guide. This one looks behind each of the episodes for themes, plot points that will later reappear, origins of quotations or verse uttered by the characters, storylines that link to Shakespeare and other classic (and classical) writers, items that will show up later, even humorous lines of dialog. It's a great read for B5 fans because they notice things even most B5 fans didn't—for instance, I never noticed that Bester never unclenches his left fist!

In addition to all the episodes of the series, the authors also talk about each one of the Babylon 5 films and all the episode of the followup series Crusade, and there is an interview with Peter Jurasik about working on the series and the character of Londo Mollari.

 The Real Beatrix Potter, Nadia Cohen
This is a new biography of Potter. Coming on the heels of Linda Lear's exhaustive biography, I don't think it offers anything new, although I seem not to remember so much material about Canon Hardwick D. Rawnsley, who awakened Beatrix's interest in saving the Lake Country.

Beatrix Potter was born into the wealthy household of Rupert and Helen Potter (a lawyer and amateur photographer, and a heiress) to a stifling life of her parents' social ambitions. She wasn't allowed to have friends, so she turned to art, including highly detailed botanical sketches of fungi, and the clever drawings of small animals in letters to friends' children that became the basis for her "little books," the charming small volumes that became classics. Her first romance ended in tragedy; her second left her a happy, contented farmwife who preserved great tracts of land from developers.

Well told by Cohen. Contains an album of photographs of Potter, her homes, and land.

 The Mutual Admiration Society, Mo Moulton
In 1912, the idea of a woman's going to university was still strange, if not an abomination in some minds. Women's minds were not strong enough to absorb higher learning; it would make them go crazy. Or it would destroy their "womanly, nurturing qualities" and render them unfit wives and mothers. Certainly well-bred feminine women would not want to do anything like that. And just to make certain women didn't get ideas beyond their station, while they could attend university, take the same examinations as men, and be marked, but they could not graduate and receive a diploma.

But more and more young women sought education, including a parson's daughter named Dorothy Sayers, who was learning Latin at age six, wrote prodigious plays and acted them out. At Oxford Dorothy met Muriel St. Clare Byrne, Charis Barnett, and "D. (Dorothy) Rowe." Occasionally along with Muriel "Jim" Jaeger, Amphilis Middlemore, and Catherine "Tony" Godfrey, they formed a group called "the Mutual Admiration Society." They supported each other, occasionally fought with each other, put on elaborate plays with each other, and mostly knew each other's secrets, and they all defied convention. Sayers had a child out of wedlock. Charis Barnett became (shockingly!) a birth-control advocate, and then also a well-known authority on child rearing. Muriel was most certainly a lesbian. From their experiences, and the experiences of the women who stood with them and followed after them, a new generation of independent women rose.

I confess I read this mostly for Dorothy Sayers and the snippets about Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane, but I loved reading about university experiences early in the 20th century, and I always enjoy reading about Oxford University.

 The Book of Dust, Volume 2: The Secret Commonwealth, Philip Pullman
Well, I don't know what to say. I put off reading La Belle Sauvage until it reached paperback, but when this went on sale I asked for it as a birthday gift. Pullman's managed to turn this into a Bildungsroman/picaresque journey in which Lyra is severely tested. But what a Lyra! Pullman, whose Daemon Voices expresses contempt for how C.S. Lewis treated Susan, turns her into Susan, someone who doesn't even believe in her daemon any more, due to a couple of avant garde books she is reading, and is set at odds with Pantalaimon from the first page. In the first chapter Pan witnesses a murder and Lyra gets seemingly insignificant news from a classmate that starts the whole plot moving—and before we know it evil plots are roiling and Lyra's and Pan's problems become so severe that he walks out on her. Lyra's quest for him starts with the Gyptians, but leads far afield.

Pullman was determined this book be disturbing and it sure is, but it's annoying as well. Pan is still seething over having been abandoned by Lyra in The Amber Spyglass (which was seven years earlier; surely they'd had it out before then?), doesn't like the books she's reading, and finally goes off on a quest of his own having had a tantrum like a spoiled child. Like many college students, Lyra has let herself be brainwashed by fashionable thought (the truth about the authors is revealed in other narratives in the story). The Magisterium, as a thinly disguised Catholic/Christian church hierarchy gone amuck (as in The Handmaid's Tale) now seems to be being underwritten by a Big Business (oh, Lord, not this again). Instead of an amber spyglass, there is now a new method to see "Dust" and of course the Magisterium (and what seems like some Muslim-like terrorists as well) want to see every industry that can produce this method ruined and/or closed down. The evil  people, of whatever stripe, are ruthless: there are deaths (including of a once-innocent elderly man), of men, women, children, daemons) and violence, including against Lyra. If she came out of The Amber Spyglass with her innocence lost, she's certainly lost everything now. On her travels she, like Huckleberry Finn, goes off on little side trips, the most bizarre of them in Prague with a character who reminded me of someone in Nick O'Donohoe's "Gnomeworks" duology.

And the whole book ends in cliffhanger after cliffhanger. What's going to happen to Alice (arrested) and Malcolm (wounded in searching for Lyra) and Pan and Lyra herself, not to mention the two different men who are stalking her? Well, we've got to wait for the last book to find out.

 Consider the Fork, Bee Wilson
Again, I hate to cook, but I enjoy well-written books about the history of cooking or history and cooking. I actually bought the e-book version of this for James, but turned it up for a dollar and bought a real copy.

Wilson tells the story of cooking and food from Stone Age cooking pots to modern appliances via chapters about pots and pans, slicing implements, heat for cooking, ingredient measurement and ingredient reduction, utensils, preservation of foods, and kitchen design. In the process we learn about Fannie Farmer, how new the use of forks is, the difference between Chinese and Japanese chopsticks, the dangers of cook fires, and how mortar and pestles morphed into mixers.

If you're at all interested in cooking history, you should enjoy this lively book.

 Seasons, edited by Mercedes Lackey
In this thirteenth collection of stories about Lackey's fictional world of Valdemar and its lawkeeping Heralds with their otherworldly Companions. In this edition the stories all revolve around seasonable celebrations: Midwinter, Midsummer, spring festivals, fall harvests. The opening story is rather pedestrian, but most of the remainder are page-turners. Lackey herself finishes the volume with an offbeat story about friendly spiders who have appointed themselves guardians of a small town. Charlotte would probably have approved!

In between we have continuing adventures from previous short stories about Lady Cera of Sandbriar, Herald Wil and his precocious daughter Ivy (who are involved in a tense tale which includes a version of the Welsh Christmas custom the Mari Llwd), the kyree Nwah and her bonded human changeling Kade (a great change comes to their relationship in this story), Hektor Dann and the rest of the Haven city watch in a humorous tale about a yearly contest, the Animal Mindspeech expert Lena and her new husband Keven, the revengeful Paxia in her vendetta against Heralds, and Sparrow and Cloudbrother. Others are standalone, one of my favorites being "A Darkling Light" about two country children who are tasked with setting festival torches alight but who are afraid of running into autumn spirits. "A Midwinter's Gift," about a young woman who overhears a dark plot to ruin a friend, is another enjoyable tale about a girl who is expected to fulfill her family's plans for her future but finds her talents lie in another area altogether.

Great visiting with Valdemar as always!

  The Queens of Animation, Nathalia Holt
Holt did such a good job with The Rise of the Rocket Girls and I have always been such a classic Disney fan that the moment I could afford this book I grabbed it. It's a good book about the contributions of the heretofore silent (or perhaps "silenced") women of the Disney Studios, but ultimately it's sad.

The majority of Disney's chief animators were men, as well as most of the story department. (Women did work at Disney in other capacity besides secretaries and clerks; the Ink and Paint Department was chiefly made up of women who carefully traced and then colored the animators' original drawings to cells that were then filmed.) There were a few exceptions like Bianca Majolie and Grace Huntington, and they were mercilessly bullied by the male animators, including big jolly teddy bear Roy Williams, who would later gain fame onscreen in The Mickey Mouse Club. Almost none of the women in the story department or in other high-ranking animation jobs were ever credited on the films. But you definitely saw their work: the savage dogs in Bambi were designed by a woman. As were the beautiful critically-acclaimed crystal designs in the "Nutcracker" sequence of Fantasia. (Fun fact: "The Nutcracker" ballet was unknown in the United States at the time Fantasia was released, but George Ballanchine was a fan of the original concept drawings. In 1954 he staged the first American version of The Nutcracker on stage, and since then it has become a Christmas classic.)

The saddest tale in the volume has to be that of Mary Blair. If you went to the 1964 World's Fair, she was the designer of "It's a Small World," and you can still see her artistry in both the Disney parks. As Mary Robinson, she married one of Walt's animators, Lee Blair, and her art wowed Disney. Very soon her work eclipsed that of her husband, and he became a violent alcoholic, verbally and physically threatening her and her children. She kept it all hidden.

It was always known that the women at Disney were not paid as well and little allowed into "the boys' club," but this really brings home the bullying and anxieties they went through. It's very sad that these talented men took such glee in doing this. An illuminating but ultimately sobering book.

 A Brushstroke With Death, Bethany Blake
After reading about the tough times of Disney's female animators, I wanted something light to read. This Barnes & Noble "exclusive" (and it is, too; no release on Amazon until this fall) fits the bill: it's a witchy cozy about Willow Bellamy, who owns the art studio The Owl and Crescent, which has a resident owl as well as Willow's pet cat Luna, and a rescue pig. Willow, along with her friends Astrid and Pepper, are all witches, Willow from a long line of Bellamy adepts, including her Grandma Anna and her mother, the latter who has eschewed the craft and is the mayor of Zephyr Hollow. Willow also has custody of the Bellamy spellbook, which figures in the story after one of the local merchants, crabby Evangeline Fletcher, is killed after a meeting at Willow's studio. And did we mention Fletcher's nephew Derek is Willow's old boyfriend? And he'll profit if his aunt dies?

Plus there's another fillip of mystery that pops up: the detective who shows up to investigate the case is a dead ringer for the handsome dark-haired man walking his dog that Willow painted days earlier (and he even has a dog).

So who killed crabby Evangeline? Was it Derek? One of the other small businesspersons, including a weird filmmaker, all of whom hated her? The absent-minded caretaker of the Fletcher property? Or maybe it's Willow herself, since the murder weapon came from a still life she organized? Can Willow, Astrid, and Pepper ferret out the killer?

This is light, fun, and a pleasant way to spend some reading time, especially after some very heavy reading, and the mysterious police detective is easy on the mental image of him.

 America Celebrates! A Patchwork of Weird and Wonderful Holiday Lore. Hennig Cohen and Tristram Peter Coffin
Newspaper and magazine articles make up the contents of this unusual holiday book about American celebrations, from the classic ones everyone knows like New Year's, Christmas, Independence Day, etc. to holidays celebrated by certain ethnic or regional groups, like Boys' Day and Girls' Day in Japanese neighborhoods; the buzzard festival in Hinckley, Ohio; Green Corn Festivals among the Seminole and the Seneca; and Bastille Day among the Cajuns. The dates on these articles range from 19th century datelines all the way through the 1980s: for instance the New Years' articles include pieces on Boston's no-alcohol street party "First Night," the Philadelphia Mummers Parade, and 19th century Open House and calling customs. Fortunetelling superstitions for both New Year's and for Hallowe'en appear, all sorts of Thanksgiving celebrations challenge the classic Pilgrim feast, and King's Day, Sweet Potato Day, Derby Day, St. John's Day, Dewali, and more grace the pages.

 Re-read: Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Kate Douglas Wiggin

  One Fatal Flaw: A Daniel Pitt Mystery, Anne Perry
This is the third entry in Perry's Daniel Pitt series, in which Daniel is begged by a young woman to help her boyfriend, who has been accused of killing a rival gang leader and then covering it up with arson. Daniel's friend, the scientist Miriam fforbes-Croft, recalls that one of her instructors at university, Sir Barnabas Saltram, once was able to save a member of the nobility in a case where a fire killed the man's young wife and he was accused of murdering her. Daniel is able to secure Saltram's services and with the help of his fellow attorney Kitteridge, Robert Adwell is cleared. And then, not weeks later, Rob Adwell is killed in a similar manner in a similar situation, and the young woman who pleaded for his life is accused of the crime. Daniel and Miriam are stunned; two so similar crimes could not have happened. Could they have been wrong? Could Sir Barnabas have been wrong—more than once?

As always, a deliberate narrative in Perry's classic style, and although Miriam is an appealing character, strait-laced and sober Daniel is not as colorful or interesting as either his father or mother were in the earlier Pitt series. The mystery is interesting up to a certain point, when you realize what happened, and then the remainder of the book is proving that.

 Boston: A Social History, Brett Howard
I find the best things at book sales. This one's an episodic history of The Hub, with chapters devoted to the founding (including William Blackstone hightailing it out of there when the Puritans showed up) and setting the record straight: the Pilgrims didn't found Boston, the Puritans did (and they didn't much like each other). Subsequent chapters are devoted to "the first families" of Boston, the Adams family, the Kennedys from the first immigrant to the first Catholic President of the United States, traditional Boston foods, Harvard, Massachusetts writers, the different churches and denominations, Bostonians at war, crime and punishment, and more. The volume is illustrated with vintage woodcuts, engravings, and black and white photographs, and is different from most chronological histories of any city. Enjoyed this.

 Kindness Goes Unpunished, Craig Johnson
In the third book in Johnson's Longmire series, Walt Longmire accompanies his good friend (and sometimes better half) Henry Standing Bear to Philadelphia where Henry will exhibit his Native American photos and deliver a lecture, and Walt will visit with his daughter Cady, who's practicing law at a firm there. But he is no sooner arrived at Cady's home than he gets a heart-stopping phone call: Cady's in the hospital with a severe head injury after falling down concrete steps. As Walt grapples with the fact that Cady may not come out of her coma, he is, of course, also determined to bring her attacker to justice. With the support of the family of his deputy Victoria Moretti, and eventually two Philadelphia police officers (plus Vic's family, most of whom are police), Walt discovers the attack's ties to Cady's boyfriend whom he has doubts about, and who appears to be a drug user. So he's floored when said boyfriend is also killed.

Another great Longmire adventure which takes Walt and Henry out of the familiar environs of Absaroka County while still remaining strongly themselves. Readers of this book say Johnson brings Philadelphia to life; I've only been to the city once doing tourist attractions, but his "Philly" seems very real, from the big areas like the Benjamin Franklin Bridge and monuments to small details like a local bar near Cady's home. Vic's family, as she's stated, are complicated, and Walt learns the full import of that in this story. Also great touches with Walt's and Henry's friendship and how the latter acts as a governor to the former's often hasty decisions.

I usually don't care for police procedurals of any stripe, but this series has me hooked because of the character relationships.

Books Completed Since January 1

 A Wartime Christmas, compiled by Maria and Andrew Hubert

 More Holmes for the Holiday, edited by Martin H. Greenberg, Jon L. Lellenberg, and Carol-Lynn Waugh

 Inventing Santa Claus: The Mystery of Who Really Wrote The Most Celebrated Yuletide Poem of All Time, Carlo DeVito

 Hanukkah in America, Dianne Ashton

 Young Americans Colonial Williamsburg: Caesar's Story, 1759, Joan Lowery Nixon
This is one of six children's books Nixon wrote in the Colonial Williamsburg series (Will's Story, set in 1771, is reviewed here). Caesar, age seven, is a slave on the Carter's Grove plantation near Williamsburg, and in the past he and "Master" Nat, son of the owner, have been best buddies. Now Caesar is old enough to work in the fields and Nat is old enough, with his uncle's tutelage (his father has died), to learn how to run the plantation. Caesar hates the fact that his days of play are over, but he is told by his father, mother, and other slaves that it's time for him to grow up. Then Master Nat requests that he be trained as his personal servant, and Caesar must learn to treat his former playmate with the type of unquestioning respect a black person is supposed to give to a white person in those days.

One cannot really "enjoy" this book because of the way Caesar, his mother, father, siblings, and fellow slaves are treated. On every page you bristle at the unfairness of the human condition in the 18th century. One of the saddest things about this book is the brainwashing of Nat: a year ago he and Caesar were fishing and hunting buddies, now Nat is parroting the party line of his uncle, who truly believes people of color aren't mentally sufficient enough to determine their own fate and who must therefore remain in servitude. And you can see that Nat is still fighting this conditioning by the way he sometimes speaks to Caesar as an equal and then recollects and scolds him for being familiar, but with regret in his voice, so that you can understand that slave owners were not "born evil," but have been trained into the social beliefs that preceded them.

In any case, Caesar grows in wisdom and learns to feel pride in himself and what he can accomplish within the unfair strictures of slavery, keeping hope alive for the future. A very sobering read within its age limitations—except for not going into extreme detail, Lowery spares nothing when discussing what punishment, like whipping and possibly being sentenced to death, slaves might incur if they disobey their masters or run away—but retaining a spark of hope that things might be different someday.

 Agents of Influence, Henry Hemming
"Fake news," Hemming tells us, is nothing new, but it was especially important to one country in 1940. Things were going badly for Great Britain as Hitler's war machine marched westward. If not needing a fighting force from the United States, Britain badly needed what the US could provide in fighting materials: ships, aircraft, weapons, and just about everything else. But to a United States just tottering out of the Depression, recalling the mess they had been involved in during the Great War, this was just another evil siren call to get involved in someone else's war. How could the British convince the US to help them?

Thus came to the States William Stephenson, who became well known after a book and miniseries about him in the 1970s, A Man Called Intrepid (which Hemming states is mostly false). He and a team of operatives from Canada carefully placed stories which supported President Roosevelt and decried the Nazi party into magazines, newspapers, and on the radio. But facing them were hardliners like the America First Party and its staunchest defender, American hero Charles Lindbergh. Having been thoroughly snowed by the Nazis, who convinced him they could not be beaten, and with more than a dribble of anti-Semitism and close-mindedness, Lindbergh convinced or strengthened many Americans' belief that the Nazis would be eventual victors, but would leave the United States alone once they had conquered Europe.

In alternate chapters, we learn how Stephenson's team paved the way for sales of scrap and programs like Lend-Lease to exist, and the methods of infiltration they used (cunningly forged false maps, surveys, official documents, etc.), and how Lindbergh fought back. We're also introduced to Hans Thomsen, a diplomat from Germany who fed pro-Nazi/German information to Congress so that it could be printed (for free) in the Congressional Record and thus distributed to newspapers, at no cost to the Nazi regime. Interesting if not compellingly written.

 The King's Justice, Susan Elia MacNeal
This is the ninth book in the Maggie Hope series, and the second in which the author has addressed the subject of serial killers; I hope [no pun intended] she's got it out of her system because the idea makes me squeamish.

Margaret "Maggie" Hope, raised in the United States but back in Great Britain after her aunt leaves her the family home in her will, having fallen in with the British war effort and eventually becoming a spy who finds out hard truths about all her family, and finally, in the previous book, having been unfairly confined on a remote Scottish island with other spies and one murderer, is starting to come apart at the seams. She's thrown herself into new work—disarming unexploded bombs—and is smoking, drinking, and driving a fast motorcycle in an effort to run away from her terrifying memories, including the upcoming execution of the serial killer Maggie caught after he almost took her life. But there's a new serial killer in town who may eclipse the old: he/she is leaving stripped bones in suitcases in the Thames. Who are these new victims, and is there any connection to the old killer?

One understands why Maggie has gone in the direction she has, but it's still hard reading. You want to shake her and tell her "STOP!" The plot is suitably convoluted and very grim, and introducing us to an ethnic group I'd never heard of, the "Britalians," Italian immigrants raised in Britain but suffering bigotry from all fronts because of Italy's inclusion in the Axis Powers. In fact, one of Maggie's bomb squad team is a serious young man who is not only Britalian (did they really use that word? it sounds very modern) but a conscientious objector who was given a white feather by some young ladies in a restaurant. In a parallel to Maggie's psychological upheaval, her friend Chuck's husband has come home suffering with shell shock, silent one moment, violently angry the next.

As I said, more creepy serial killer plot which I hope MacNeal has gotten out of her system now, as some of this reads like true crime, but a true page-turner.

 Re-read: The Furthest Station, Ben Aaronovitch
This novella in the "Rivers of London"/Peter Grant series takes place after The Hanging Tree and the graphic novel Black Mould, as Peter tackles some strange occurrences in the London Underground. Commuters are being verbally assaulted by ghostly figures who are trying to tell them something, but by the time the people report the events, they are already forgetting what happens. Piecing together the story, Peter believes someone's life is in danger—and the ghosts are trying to help that person.

The biggest problem with this story is that it wasn't another Peter Grant book. 😉 There's simply not enough of our favorite characters: Peter, Abigail (who's catching on frightfully quickly), Thomas Nightingale, Toby, and Peter's old friend Jaget Kumar of the Metropolitan Transit authority. The ghosts are entertaining (and in one case a little heartbreaking) and we meet another river.

  Daemon Voices: On Stories and Storytelling, Philip Pullman
This is a collection of essays, or rather written versions of presentations Pullman has given at bookstores, libraries, science fiction conventions, and even religious convocations (since Pullman is an atheist that's an interesting proposition!) in which he talks about storytelling and the art of narrative (including stories told in art, which several of the essays are devoted to), plus side visits to the purity of fairy tale narrative, how modern teaching methods are ruining children's joy in reading (I agree with him there!), how he hated Narnia for what Lewis did to Susan (huh! well, I understood Lewis' metaphor if Pullman didn't—and this from a man who was railing about imaginations being destroyed!), the concept of "phase space" (several essays are devoted to this) in which a pivotal point in a story rests on not just what happens next but all the things that could have happened next, the Gnostic gospels, how ridiculous belief in any type of god is, how our loss of innocence in adolescence curbs the wild creativity of childhood, that the Fall of Man was a good thing, how teachers stifle a love of poetry, how he created the mulefa on The Amber Spyglass, and much, much more.

There's a lot to enjoy here, especially about narratives (especially those unseen) and storytelling, and Pullman can tell a good yarn, even in a collection of essays. Be aware he's a long-winded and opinionated cuss, though; if you don't mind that, there's much to like here. 

 Beyond the Trees: A Journey Alone Across Canada's Arctic, Adam Shoalts
Naturalist and explorer Shoalts, the author of two other books about canoeing and hiking in Canada, wants to accomplish something that has been never done before: crossing Canada's territory at the Arctic Circle by canoe. He times it to the sesquicentennial of Canada becoming a separate country, and also must carefully time his journey until after the winter ice breaks up, and then still has only three months to go thousands of miles. Even worse, he is going to make the trek west to east, which will require him to canoe upstream on most of the rivers he encounters, including the great Mackenzie and the treacherous Coppermine (which is pretty much all rapids), plus navigate Great Bear Lake.

I am the least "naturalist" person you can imagine, but love reading stories like this. This one seems to be a bit lacking, and it's not because of Shoalts' writing skills—when he is given a chance to be descriptive, he is quite good (especially about the fierce mosquitoes and blackflies that infest the region in summer)—but because he has set this long goal for himself and such a short time to do it in, his trip seems to be rush, rush, rush. Over and over you will read how many kilometers he made that day, in how many hours, and of the exhausting work he had to do to travel that distance (rise at 3 a.m., fight against current and wind, push every muscle to the limit, endure swarms of insects), and the only time he "rests" is sitting out bad storms. At several points he wishes he could camp and fish (he's eating nothing but freeze-dried meals flown out to him at certain points), but his timetable is so tight he can't. Another night he is invited to have a shower and a good meal at a wealthy man's fishing camp, but again his timeline harries him on. I kind of wish he would have made a shorter trek, and been able to stargaze, observe wildlife, fish, explore old ruins...the book would have been less exhausting for the reader, who also would have gotten more enjoyment from it. What's the use pushing yourself like this to "see if you can do it" if you don't have time to stop and absorb it all?

I liked the book, but would have enjoyed it more if it wasn't such an endurance test rather than an enjoyable voyage.

 Young Americans Colonial Williamsburg: Ann's Story, 1747, Joan Lowery Nixon
This is the first of the six Williamsburg books done by Nixon. Ann McKenzie is the daughter of Williamsburg's doctor/apothecary and also wishes to become a doctor, but the adults all tell her no woman can be a doctor and she's better off learning housewifery instead. Ann still persists in learning what she can about nursing and taking care of patients, and she even finds a way to take lessons in Latin from a supercilious boy in exchange for doing his mathematics homework, although she finds out later she is learning less than she thought she was. She's also afraid of the rumors circulating that, now that the capitol building has burned down, that they will be moving the Virginia capital "up the Pamunkey River" and her family will be forced to go live in the wilderness currently there.

Aside from this premonitory plot point (the capital of Virginia did later move "up the Pamunkey" to Richmond), Ann's story is rather pedestrian. She gets in mischief with male friends and a girlfriend named "Peachy," including sneaking out one night to see the slaves holding a dance, a move Ann fears brought smallpox to them, and you do feel sympathy for her having to accept her fate as becoming a housekeeper instead of getting to fulfill her dreams as a doctor. A nice portrait of regular Williamsburg society three decades before the Revolutionary War, plus a look at old-world medicine, but not as heartwrenching as Caesar's Story.

 The Happy Hollisters and the Secret Fort, Jerry West
This follows The Happy Hollisters and the Trading Post Mystery, but now it's spring vacation. The kids befriend a road crew that is building a new parkway on the site of an old fort that was active during the Revolutionary War, but the exact location of the fort has been lost. The historical society offers a reward to anyone who can locate the fort before the parkway goes through, and of course the five Hollister children (Pete, age 12; Pam, 10; Ricky, 7; and Holly, 6, and little Sue, age 4) would love to discover the hidden site. At the same time, the kids also befriend a family whose home is on the route the parkway will take; they would love to move their house to a new lot, but none are available in the town of Shoreham and the family doesn't wish to move away.

Large construction machines may fascinate children and some adults, but there are entirely too many bulldozers and other earth-moving machines in this entry for my taste. Plus, what on earth is the deal with Joey Brill? In this book, also determined to find the fort and earn the reward, Joey steals an old letter that may point the direction to the fort, knocks Pete unconscious, and lets himself be bribed by a stranger—none of which he ever seems to get punished for. His parents must really be in somebody's pockets!

I've Always Wanted to Do a Tribute Webpage to Kate Seredy...

. . . so here it is!

Favorite "Dozen" Books of 2019

Once again, there's the difficulty of having to narrow these down to a dozen; I usually end up with the traditional baker's dozen [thirteen] instead. If this was a "best books," maybe the Griffo wouldn't be on here, because there's a bit in the story that's on the edge of credulity. But, being a "favorite," it needs to stay, because I was just so delighted with the protagonist being a retirement-age Italian granny. So I guess my "dozen" will have to be fifteen entries and sixteen books this year.

 The Bowery Boys Adventures in Old New York, Greg Young and Tom Meyers (taken from a podcast about historical areas of NYC, both still extant and now demolished)

 Cool Hand Lou: My Fifty Years in Hollywood and on Broadway, Lou Antonio (an autobiography of the actor and director)

 A Forgotten Place, Charles Todd (the latest Bess Crawford mystery, written in a Gothic style)

 Dear Mrs. Bird, A.J. Pearce (a young British girl survives the Blitz while working on a stodgy women's magazine)

 Dorothy L. Sayers: Her Life and Soul, Barbara Reynolds (biography of the Lord Peter Wimsey author)

 Underland, Robert MacFarlane (MacFarlane's tour-de-force about places underground from caves to crevasses to the catacombs of Paris)

 Saving Jemima: Life and Love with a Hard-Luck Jay, Julie Zickefoose (Zickefoose's story of the rescue and raising of a blue jay)

 The Rise of the Rocket Girls, Nathalia Holt (great story of the women who would work with the first rocket programs)

 A Death of No Importance/Death of a New American, Mariah Fredericks (the first two books in Fredericks' new series taking place in the 1920s, with a heroine who is not a 21st century woman in 20th century clothes)

 How Star Wars Conquered the Universe, Chris Taylor (the film series from George Lucas' original idea to hark back to the old movie serials to the present, with chapters on SW fandom)

 Moonbound: Apollo 11 and the Dream of Spaceflight, Jonathan Fetter-Vorm (the American space program that put man on the moon, told in a graphic novel—perfect!)

 Murder on Memory Lake, J.D. Griffo (starting new series with an unconventional heroine: a 60-ish Italian grandmother—when she exclaimed "Ah, Madon!" I knew I was home)

 A Gentleman's Murder, Christopher Huang (British murder mystery with an unconventional narrator, a biracial man, post First World War)

 The Body on the Train, Frances Brody (the latest in Brody's Kate Shackleton mystery series, and, if not the best, probably in the top three—great story!)

 On the Map, Simon Garfield (another great book from Garfield, this time on the history of maps and mapmaking)

What's next? Oh, as Betty Roberts would say with delight, so many things! I have three ARCs to read first, one the latest Maggie Hope mystery story, and then I have Nathalia Holt's new book about the women at Walt Disney's animation department, The Secret Commonwealth as well as Philip Pullman's book about writing, and I still haven't gotten to Tony Horwitz's final book...