Karen

Kate Bowler's cancer diagnosis when she was a young mother came as a shock. As a professor of theology who studies the Prosperity Gospel and its adherents, it also put her directly in the path of some of the toxic messages American society, and in particular some evangelical communities, send to people suffering adversity. Her memoir is a readable and somewhat lighthearted (given the topic) story about how she grappled with her illness amid the cognitive dissonance.

I read this for a book club.

Because her mistress shows her off to her dinner guests, Luzia Cortado's "milagritos," little pieces of magic that make her life of drudgery as a kitchen maid a bit easier, get her noticed by a nobleman who is trying to win the favor of King Philip of Spain. She gains a patron and is entered in a contest for holy magicians, the winner of which will be presented as a gift to the King. In preparation, her patron's servant (or familiar) Santangel, who is a striking man with white hair, light eyes, and a presence that strikes fear in people's hearts, gives her lessons in how to develop her magic.

Everyone in this book has a very human longing for something--a better social position, a more secure life, a life with beauty and pleasure in it, a chance to be powerful, love, what have you. The longing propels them, but it doesn't lead them where they expect or hope to go. This fact of life is explicit in the story. It's Valentina's longing that gets everything started, and at the end almost everyone's life has been completely altered.

The Familiar turned out to be more of a romance than I expected, but it's well written, with an unusual plot. I enjoyed the historical setting of late 16th century Spain, with the shadows of King Philip, Elizabeth I of England, and the Inquisition.

This biography of Virginia Hall tells an amazing story of a tough, independent young American woman who was out to blaze a trail for herself in the 1930s working abroad for the State Department when she suffered a disabling accident that effectively ended any chance she might have had to become a diplomat. However, she went on to distinguish herself working for first British and then American intelligence during World War II by organizing and aiding the French Resistance as an undercover agent. She endured physical and emotional hardships living in occupied France, evaded capture by the Gestapo and the French police in spite of their best efforts to find her, and was instrumental in helping to liberate France from the Nazis. There are many edge-of-your-seat moments, both for Virginia Hall herself, and for her many comrades who weren't able to evade capture. The book has an index, end notes, and a bibliography, plus photos.

The one thing that disappointed me was that at times the tone of the book was a little too much like a fan magazine. I thought the facts spoke well enough for themselves that I didn't need to be told repeatedly in so many words what a hero she was, and that sexism held her back in her career. Otherwise, highly recommend this book about a war hero I had never heard of before.

This family drama concerns the Madigans, an 21st centurt Irish family whose four children are coming home from far flung places to visit their mother, Rosaleen, for Christmas. Rosaleen has hinted that she is going to sell the house they all grew up in, so there is some consternation among the siblings, Dan, Emmet, Constance, and Hanna. We get to see the siblings as children together, and then individually as adults, before we see them back together as a family. We see their weaknesses and faults, their attempts to manage their relationships with their mother and siblings, and where the family rifts are. Rosaleen is a formidable character herself, with the power to raise storms within her family and then quiet them. If you like complex family relationships, this is a great book for you.

This novel is a genre bender. Or maybe it would be better to say it has some of almost every genre in it. It has prose narrative from almost every perspective, in different styles, from a doctor's case notes to true crime tabloid, and plenty of third person omniscient that flows along so seamlessly that you might forget that you are reading as you are mesmerized by the stories of a house on a plot of land in the western Massachusetts woodlands and the succession of people (and animals and insects) who lived there over the years since colonization. There is poetry, song, photography, thwarted romance, and an unabashed ghost story. Some of this sits together a little awkwardly. When you start to get comfortable in one section of the book, look out, because you are about to be unseated and it may take you a while to settle in again. I found the end pulled everything together for me, though, so the disparate parts made a convincing, beautiful, slightly melancholy whole.

I really enjoyed this detective story, where Elizabeth II is the detective behind the scenes. The main characters are well fleshed out, so I felt I got to know them as I read the book. One of the characters who was almost universally disliked was humanized by the Queen (for the reader, not for the characters in the book). Each time I thought I knew where the story was going, it went somewhere else instead. As far as mysteries go, it was not formulaic, nor was it too cozy. Apparently this is book #2 in a series, and I am thinking about looking around my library system to see if the first book is available. I would definitely read another book by this author.

I've been keeping my reading light this summer because I have a lot of stressful stuff on my plate. I read this in my back yard over 3 days.

This is a collection of ALL of the Father Brown stories by GK Chesterton. In retrospect, although I mostly enjoyed them and I finished the book, 718 pages was too much for me. The stories contain quite a bit of social criticism--of people's ideas about science and the supernatural, the place and purpose of religion in life, among other things.

The stories are full of melodrama and strangeness. Quite a few of them involve characters from former British colonies, especially India, or British people who had served in the colonies. A common framework for one of these stories has a somewhat lurid atmosphere and characters who are afraid that supernatural forces are at work. Father Brown, a Catholic priest who seems to have a lot of time off from his regular duties, serves in these stories as the dispeller of superstition. He applies reasoning to his astute observations and shows how an ordinary human being accomplished the crime and why. As he does this, he also cautions his observers that the answers he provides are not less disturbing than the supernatural explanations they originally feared.

The copyright on this volume is 1963, with copyrights from the original books starting in 1911. The attitudes towards people and ideas from the former British colonies reflect the attitudes from those times. Racial slurs are used with no consciousness that they are offensive.

I also have a bone to pick with the publisher, Penguin, who calls Father Brown "Fiction's best loved amateur sleuth" on the cover of this volume. I would argue that title belongs to Sherlock Holmes.

I'm not a big romance reader, but sometimes life calls for it. I read this in my back yard over about a day and a half. It isn't demanding, but it is enjoyable. My one major disappointment with it was that there weren't any explicitly non-white characters as there are in the TV show. I didn't mark this as historical fiction because, although it is set in a specific historical period, there is so much about it that is anachronistic. If you read it expecting it to be historically accurate in any way, you'll be disappointed. However, it does deal with some real issues that challenge people's relationships with loved ones, especially shame and unresolved anger. I liked it.

** spoiler alert ** This retelling of The Children of Lir is in the voice of Aife, the woman (foster child of Bodhbh, sister of Aebh, wife, after Aebh, of Lir) who turns her stepchildren into swans for 900 years. I picked this book up not knowing the original story, so I was frustrated by the narrator referring to and ruminating on "what I did" for a good 98 pages before the deed was done. After that, I thought the writing and narration was strong. This book has been called a "feminist retelling" of the story, and that makes me want to read other versions to compare.

Niamh Power was born in Ireland, immigrated with her parents to New York as a young girl in the 1920's, and then lost her parents and the rest of her family in a fire when she was 9. The Children's Aid Society took her in and then shipped her and other orphaned children out to the Midwest to be "adopted." In Niamh's case, and others', adoption meant being brought to someone's farm, home, or place of business to work.

Niamh's story is told alongside Molly's, a 17 year old modern day foster child who is having conflict with her foster mother. When Molly steals a copy of Jane Eyre from her high school library, she has to do community service. The mother of her boyfriend arranges for her to help the elderly lady she works for clean out her attic, and Molly and the elderly lady strike up a bit of a friendship.

The two stories illustrate the vulnerability of foster children, and how, although the surrounding culture has changed, many things about being a foster child have not. Although this is not specifically marketed as a YA book, it is empathetic about the issues that young adults face, especially in a foster family. It might be a good choice for a teen.

A widowed white Irish American father and his two black adopted sons are at a Jesse Jackson event in Boston when they are involved in an accident. Another person involved in the accident, seemingly an unrelated bystander, turns out to be much more connected to their family than they initially thought. On top of that, the ne'er do well estranged older son (not adopted) chooses that night to reappear at home. Family drama ensues.

This is family drama, but it is very polite, well behaved drama. Characters disagree with each other vehemently, but there is no yelling, banishing/disowning each other, or even cursing. Still, the characters are interesting people and the story is compelling. The title, "Run," refers both to the sport and running for office, with a pleasant bit of ambiguity, since the widowed father is a former Mayor of Boston and would like one or both of his adopted sons to become President of the United States. My one complaint about this book is that it becomes hard to believe the eleven year old girl is really only eleven as the story advances.

I read this book because I encountered James Rebanks on Twitter and enjoyed his posts about raising sheep in England's Lake District. Rebanks writes about how his experience of the Lake District as his ancestral home, where his family has been raising sheep for hundreds of years at least, is different from the romantic vision that non-farmers have of the place. As he describes the work he does throughout the seasons, the relationships he has with his parents and neighbors, and a bit of the history of sheep farming in his part of England, you gain some appreciation of what he means. The book is engaging, even for a non-farmer. Well worth reading.

This book is an epic consideration of parenthood in circumstances where the child profoundly challenges the parents' expectations: cases of deafness, Down Syndrome, dwarfism, schizophrenia, transgender, prodigies, children of rape, and children who become criminals are all examined. While it is a doorstop of a book (702 pages of narrative, 960 pages including notes, bibliography, and index), it is compulsively readable. Andrew Solomon's narrative is precise about difficult or nuanced emotions, but never dense.

One of the most fascinating discussions in this book is about the tension between whether to "cure" conditions like deafness, or celebrate the distinct identity that the condition confers. Solomon examines this dilemma and the nuances it takes on with each case that he considers. Is the condition a disability or an identity? Can a disability be separated from a person's identity? Would it be appropriate to grieve if, for instance, no more children were born with dwarfism, deafness, or autism?

Until the final chapter, Solomon's prose is measured and calm in its description and analysis of people's relationships to the challenges presented by their children. The final chapter, where he describes his own journey to fatherhood in light of all the work he had done for this book, is a shift to a much more emotional tone. It felt like a radical change after 600 pages of his previous tone, but was fitting to his subject matter and allowed him to sum up the wide ranging investigation of his book.

Read if you're looking for stories about people adjusting to parenting situations that are radically different from what they expected. It's mostly uplifting, boosts empathy.

This is a Pulitzer Prize nominated novel from 1991 about the killings of Osage people in Oklahoma in the 1920's to take over their land and the oil beneath it. It covers the same events that were covered by David Grann's non-fiction book Killers of the Flower Moon, but it tells the story from the perspective of the extended family of Belle and Moses Greycloud, an aging couple who own valuable land and who repeatedly lose family members in the killing. As a novel, it's a beautiful but wrenching story, with a cast of unique, likeable characters who are caught in a system that is rigged against them. As a reader, you are drawn in to feel a part of the community surrounding Greycloud family so that you can feel the weight of their grief and their helplessness to protect themselves against more loss. It's not an easy read, but the story is so well told that you will want to keep showing up to read it.

I enjoyed the historical setting of this book, the picture of life and society in England during the reign of Richard II. The lesser known poet John Gower (a friend of Geoffrey Chaucer) is also a blackmailer and a fixer, so he comes to hear about some unaccounted for corpses that appear in a ditch below a public privy. So the story begins, and it involves sheriffs, mayors, lords, a smith, a poacher, an abused wife, and a nation expecting a war with France.

John Gower as a character leaves me cold, but I like his setting, so I keep reading these books.

I liked the characters and stories of Leonard and Mitchell (the two suitors). The main character, Madeline, is rather thin by comparison (except in the imaginations of her suitors). I was drawn into the book and stayed up late to read the last 100 pages, but found it unsatisfying. At Madeline's final “yes”, I thought “OK, now her story can begin”, which is not that different from the feeling I have after the heroines in traditional “marriage plot” novels accept their marriage proposals, that it is dishonest to end the story there.

So, don't read this expecting to have a story about a woman. It's really a story about the suitors of a young college girl. The woman's story hasn't started yet.

I enjoyed this book about a nurse enjoying a post WWII holiday with her recently discharged husband who falls through some standing stones at the top of a hill in Scotland and winds up in mid-18th century Scotland. I couldn't help but see many echoes of Dorothy Dunnett's Francis Crawford of Lymond, though, and of the two, the Lymond Chronicles are less domestic, more prickly, and more interesting. I'm not convinced I'll read another book in this series.

This was a fantastic book, so much fun to read. I picked it up at the library only because of the title. I have memories of walking down Telegraph Ave. in Berkeley with my parents in the early 1970's and what a wild place it was, even though I was just a little kid. So, I didn't know what the book was about, but the title was evocative for me and I liked the ornate orange and blue cover.

The two main characters, Archy Stallings and Nat Jaffe, own a used record store that specializes in jazz and have been close friends for many years. The future of the record store and their friendship is called into question when a wealthy former football player announces his plan to open a media superstore a block away in their economically depressed neighborhood.

Alongside that major source of conflict, Gwen and Aviva, married to Archy and Nat respectively, work together as midwives and are also close friends. As the book opens, Gwen and Aviva are attending a home birth that goes wrong and then get into a conflict with the doctor who takes over their patient's care when they take her to the hospital.

SO much more happens in the book after all of this is introduced. You will be in the company of delightful characters who struggle with father/son relationships, sexuality, marriage, neighborhood politics, issues of gentrification, relations between whites and blacks, among other topics. Several of these people have encyclopedic knowledge of music, especially jazz. A couple of them are movie buffs, and in particular are fans of blaxploitation films. Barack Obama makes a guest appearance. I really loved this book and I think you should read it.

I did enjoy this novel about the relationship between three Henrys: Henry Bolingbroke (Henry IV of England), his son Prince Hal, and Harry Percy (Hotspur). It's a complex psychological portrait of these three historical characters. Bolingbroke and Hotspur are old friends, drawn into a political drama that has leapt out of their control and has broken the trust in their friendship. Bolingbroke and Hal are father and son who have never had an intimate knowledge of each other, so they have no trust. Hotspur and Hal have a kind of foster-relationship which both struggle to protect and of which Bolingbroke is jealous.

In common with the other Edith Pargeter novel I've read, The Heaven Tree, the hero Hotspur is too honest for his own good. The significant female character, Julian, is in love with the hero, but fearless and independent–a female counterpart to the hero. However, I rate this book only three stars because there is no real role for Julian to fill in the story. Despite the fact that she is one of only two female characters in the story, and she is supposed to be so independent and fearless, her function in the story could be filled without loss by someone else. She seems only to be there to serve as an affirmation of Hotspur's honesty and integrity. That annoyed me, especially in a story so deep in other ways.

A poor but plucky heroine with wit, ambition and a carefully hidden heart of gold makes her way through New York society in 1937-38. This is a fairy tale, where Kate Kontent impresses influential people with her hard work, grasp of grammar and love of literature and makes socially advantageous friends because of her integrity and kindness. She endures romantic disappointment and dramatic revelations with fortitude and imagination, and, in general, her friends and lovers do too. I enjoyed reading this–in fact, I stayed up too late one night to finish it–but I did think that everyone had a little too much civility for some of the events of the story. In her anger, Kate allows herself to be rude to the man who deceives her, but then she repents and actually goes to apologize. But what do I expect of a fairy tale heroine? She has to be virtuous enough to deserve the happy ending that inevitably comes.

Meh. There were aspects of this comic about the immortal librarian Rex Libris that made me laugh–details about the daily duties of real life librarians alongside of Rex's intergalactic adventures, such as checking to see whether his library owns a book mentioned by another character–but I wasn't charmed enough to want to read any more in the series.

I confess that I did not read the entire book, but I leafed through it many times and read the first two chapters. It is a fascinating and beautiful book about the fraught relationship of the Dutch to the water that surrounds them; about the battle to hold back the sea from land wanted for conventional farming, but also to make use of the sea; about the importance of the sea to the Dutch financially as well as culturally; and about new efforts to work differently with the sea in light of rising sea levels due to climate change. There are pages and pages of photographs of water works, art installations, cultural events, and plans for water projects that have not been built, as well as reproductions of works of art that illustrate the place of water in Dutch culture, from paintings of storm tossed boats at sea representing hard times in human life to paintings commemorating famous floods in Dutch history, to more contemporary representations of human life alongside water.

I borrowed this from a library and I'm sad that I have to return it without being able to spend more time with it. It's a book to savour.

I found this in the children's section at Common Good Books. It's a quick and charming read, telling the true story of the Cottingley Fairies. I liked that Mary Losure avoided telling the story in a simplistic way. She doesn't just present the girls, Elsie and Frances, as liars, or become an apologist for fairies. She suggests explanations for why the girls behaved as they did, but doesn't push any of them as absolute. Her delicate handling of the story allows subtleties to come out.

This book is about the culture of cats–big cats as well as house cats, wild cats as well as domesticated cats. The author, who is an anthropologist and has also written books about dog and deer behavior, has many fascinating stories to tell about the behavior of house cats, lions and tigers in the wild and captivity, and American pumas. The book meanders a bit–it doesn't progress toward a central argument so much as give many examples of cats teaching/learning culture from different types of cat life.

This is NOT a cute book of cat stories, though. I had to take a break from it for a few weeks because I found it too hard to read about dwindling wild cat populations, unwanted tigers being sold to people who provide “game” for hunters to shoot, zoos euthanizing tigers after they've passed their breeding age, and so forth. These depressing topics were discussed in a matter of fact way, but I was not in a frame of mind to be able to deal with them one after the other, page after page.

I was surprised by Thomas's argument for why the life of a circus tiger was better than that of a zoo tiger–especially since I have recently received a rash of emails from an animal rights group which wants me to oppose animal circuses in my city. Also, her description of the time she spent in the Kalahari with a community of bushmen, observing, among other things, their relationship with the lion population there, was very beautiful. I recommend this book, but approach with care if you are sensitive.