JANUARY 2022

 Hello All!

Last week we met for Bookshare at Geri Christensen's home.  We didn't have a very large group, but we had some wonderful discussions on the books that were read over the past month.  Here is the list:

MARYANN STEVENS:

Defend & Betray by Anne Perry 3.5️ Wm Monk & Hester Latterly detective/courtroom drama. Setting very similar to Perry’s other books in series.

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr. 4️ Doerr employs three disparate settings: 15th century Constantinople, a Korean War POW camp, modern day Idaho, & an interstellar spaceship decades in the future. Against these backdrops, Doerr exams youth, our interconnectedness with past, present & future. My praise is not as high as the reviewers. I had to force myself to continue to read, only getting hooked once I got halfway through. Fantasy readers will like more than I did.

About Grace by Anthony Doerr 3.5 ️ Even as a boy in his native Alaska, David Winkler dreams events before they happen. Later in life he dreams his daughter Grace will die as he is rescuing her in a flood. To avoid this future he runs away to the Caribbean for 25 years. His life unravels several times as he tries to rebuild. Kind of depressing.

Code Girls by Liza Mundy 3.5 ️

Non-fiction. During WWII, ten thousand young women, graduates from elite women’s universities & small science & math school teachers, were recruited by the US Army & the Navy to break Japanese & German messaging codes. Revealing battle plans of the enemies was important, tedious, exciting & heartbreaking work. Sworn to absolute eternal secrecy, these women went unheralded; a few even suffered mental illness from the required silence. Records now unclassified, this book reveals their story.

Cater Street Hangman by Anne Perry 2️ Tedious, unnecessary details of lives & customs of a well born 1880 London family went on for 2 hours before Inspector Pitt is even introduced. Terrible ending, not the identification of the murderer - I had guessed who- but the development of relationships that seemed so contrived & the sudden end-no wrap up at all.

Small Wonder essays by Barbara Kingsolver 5️ nonfiction. Kingsolver never disappoints fiction or non. I loved this book but the topics are so close to home, I have to read something frivolous. Kingsolver is a deeply devoted wife & mother, a woman of faith. She is passionate about world peace, ending homelessness, saving the environment, valuing the interests of humanity over corporate greed. She is a proud American who defines patriotism as defending the vulnerable, honoring goodness, equal opportunity and moral character. She word paints with the prowess of Picasso & DaVinci. Her humor is tongue in cheek as well as blatant. I loved this book & now I want to re-read some of her earlier books.

Moss: Cultural History by Dr Robin Wall Kimmerer 4.5️. Nonfiction Second book I’ve listened to, Braiding Sweet Grass was the other. She writes about science using common place analogies making it accessible to all.

Key thoughts:

1. One learns more about nature by repeated listening & careful observation than any other way.
2. Reciprocity - what is our responsibility to the earth whose resources we plunder
3. Indigenous knowledge- example: The plants purpose is revealed by its location; it generally grows near its use - antidote for poison ivy grows nearby. Example: Best Moss for - the first disposable diapers & also for sanitary napkins grows on the stream bed where the women wash laundry. Also- Menstrual Seclusion is a time of spiritual meditation & sharing, much like the men’s sweat lodges.
4. Documenting the growth of Successional forest on mine tailings - interesting description of investigative work entailed in thesis.
5. Discovering Horizontal strata of mosses on the canyon wall along the Kickapoo River in Wisconsin inspired Wall’s thesis .
6. “Plant ecologists study Reproductive effort”. Spores vs sexual.
7. When do the ecological

Patterns of the large (Amazonian rainforest) transfer to the small- (moss in the NE forests). Really interesting.

1. Moss can measure air quality & are used by urban biologists like the canary in the mine.

The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny 4️ the title comes from a literary illusion to April whose warm days lure early flowers to bloom only to be buried in late spring snows. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache returns to Three Pines at Easter to investigate a death at a séance held in the old, creepy Hadley house. Is it murder or death by fright?

Firefly island by Lisa Wingate 3 ️ Christian author love story/mystery. Story is kinda cute. Can’t recommend - not my style. I canceled my hold on all other books in this series.

MARLENE MATHESON

Who Was? Sports Biographies: Muhammad Ali, Roberto Clemente, Wayne Gretzky, and Derek Jeter. It was very interesting to learn the stories of how their skills developed into great achievements.

I've always disliked Muhammad Ali's brashness, and still do, but now I have more understanding of how he became that way.

The Book of Lost Friends by Lisa Wingate - Two books in one, alternating between 1975 and 1987, eventually tying the two together. The story of slaves, bought, sold, abused, lost from their families who continued to hope and search for their lost loved ones. The Book of Lost Friends was created by this search and was instrumental in some being able to find each other. 

Facing the Mountain by Daniel James Brown - A detailed account of what happened to the world and to specific Japanese-American families after the bombing of Pearl Harbor: the interment camps, the discrimination, terrible injustices, the brave Japanese-American boys who fought for the country they loved, and then the difficulties in trying to rebuild their lives after the War ended. 

Anyone who thinks that black people are the only ones who've endured injustices, should definitely read this book! 

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi - A powerful memoir by a medical student, specializing in neurosurgery who becomes the patient (with lung cancer) at age 36. He tells his journey all the way through the illness, and finished by his wife. They were both physicians, having met in medical school, had a baby girl who brought much joy in the late stages of his illness. Powerful insights..

GERI CHRISTENSEN

THE LAST THINGN HE TOLD ME by Laura Dave.  This was a compelling book about a woman whose husband of just one year disappears.  She and her newly-acquired step-daughter are frantically searching for him, following up on the few meagre clues he left behind.  During this time they are building a much-needed relationship that will need to sustain them throughout the coming years. It was interesting, believable and thoroughly entertaining. The characters except for the missing husband were all strong and well-developed.  It stayed very intense right up to the very last chapter.  4.5 Stars.

THE ROOSTER BAR by John Grisham.  I love books by this author but some are admittedly better than others. I was almost halfway through this book when I realized I had already read it 3 years earlier.  It took me that long to realize it was familiar, but I kept reading and did enjoy it, especially the ending.  The story is about 4 law students who are right up to their last semester in a very low-grade law school in DC who decide it isn't worth the massive debt they have accrued and decide to try something different even though it is totally illegal.  It is fun seeing how they evade the loan officers, the school trustees and the FBI who are after them.  They are definitely loyal to each other and do everything to keep their little charade going until they are able to make their get-way and start new lives in a different place.  3 Stars

THE HYPNOTIST'S LOVE STORY by Lianne Moriarty.  I also enjoy books by this author and this was a new one I hadn't yet heard about.  The story is about a professional hypnotist who has a very successful practice in a coastal town in Australia.  She becomes romantically involved with a single guy she met on-line and things are going well until he explains that he has an ex-girlfriend who has been incessantly stalking him for the past two years. This ex is relentless and does everything to make his life and his new-found relationship miserable. The interesting part is that this ex-girlfriend becomes a client of the hypnotist who has no idea that she is her boyfriend's stalker. It becomes very intense and entangled as they navigate through all the different scenarios until the final point when it all becomes revealed and hard choices have to be made. i thoroughly enjoyed this book and recommend it as a good red.  4 Stars.

THE JUDGE'S LIST by John Grisham. This is Mr. Grisham's latest novel and it was one that I enjoyed reading although not as much as some of his earlier ones. (My favorite is still one of his first books called THE FIRM).  This book is the second in a series with the Lacey ??? as the main character, an attorney who works in a special office in Florida that investigates judges who are suspected of criminal wrong-doing.  The book is about a judge who is a serial-killer but who leaves no clues or evidence behind and so, in effect, commits the perfect crime over and over again each time he kills someone who has offended him in some way in the past. It was interesting in that it shows just how hard it is to catch a killer, especially one who is a highly respected and revered judge.  4 Stars