A Spring in My Step

 Yes, I am obsessed with Spring. Now, with daylight savings time, I still struggle in the morning but am relishing the evening light. 

I have five flats started under grow lights--Roma tomatoes, Moneymaker tomatoes, cherry tomatoes jalapeno peppers, yellow bell peppers, ancho peppers, coleus, and viola. Everthing sprouted in less than a week. I love those Botanical Interests seeds! This weekend I plan to get the snapdragons, marigolds, impatiens, tomatillos, and anaheims started. Last year I put in my native (to my region in CO) flower garden, and things are starting to green up!

Now on to what I've been reading...

The Last Ranger, by Peter Heller

Ren is a park ranger in Yellowstone, working hard to keep the park, its fauna, and the people who love and study them safe from ruffians and those who want to exploit the land and its resources. I found the plot reasonably interesting, with lots of tension, and I loved learning about the ways of the wolf packs that have been gaining a foothold in the park. I liked reading about the life of a park ranger in one of the premier national parks, and one that I have visited several times and love. I don't love Heller, and I definitely am not interested in his dystopian stuff, but this was a good solid outdoor adventure novel. 

The Spy Coast (The Martini Club, #1), by Tess Gerritsen

Definitely a story inspired by the massive success of The Thursday Murder Club--the latter was published in 2020 and took off like a rocket, and The Spy Coast was published in 2023. Maybe I'm just cynical, but the premises of both are so similar. The Spy Coast is set in Maine and features a group of retired CIA spies who all live in the same village and have to dust off their spy skills when the past catches up with them. I'm not saying I didn't really enjoy the book and am looking forward to reading the second in the series. It has a good, interesting set of characters with a good, interesting plot. Appealing to us aging Baby Boomers is definitely a good idea!

The Berry Pickers, by Amanda Peters

Loved this book--also set in Maine. The story is narrated by two characters--a Native American girl/woman, kidnapped when she was five years old and raised by adoptive parents, and her brother, who was the last person to see her before she went missing. The two stories run parallel as the sister and brother live out their lives, struggling to figure out their place in the world. Reading about the treatment of Native Americans is rough, but I definitely feel I understand a bit more of how life was in Maine and maritime Canada in the mid/late 20th century. This is a debut novel, so I am eager to see what Peters writes next.

Death at the Sign of the Rook (Jackson Brody, #6), by Kate Atkinson

I just love Jackson Brody novels, and this one was such a treat to read. Jackson is his usual self-deprecating self, Reggie is there with all her baggage and snark and earnestness (which is a charming combination), and the premise is such fun. A murder mystery evening set at a dilapidated Downton Abbey-esque estate, with actual murders as well as stolen art (one of my favorite themes anyway) and goofy characters. Just so much fun!

The Annotated Emma, by Jane Austen with introduction and annotations by David Shapard

My JASNA regional book club decided to read Emma for our March book, so I decided to read the annotations by David Shapard while listening to an audio version. The older I got, the more I love Emma--she is just delightful to watch growing up. The annotations were pretty good--Shapard promised not to interpret but to try to illuminate details that a 21st reader might not get. He did a good job.

That's all for now, folks! Hope you are finding some great books that put a spring in your step as well.

RIP Roundup

I had a particularly good RIP this year, one might say I had a RIP roaring time! I completed six and a half mystery books in Sept/Oct and had a marvelous time doing so.

Started Early, Took My Dog, by Kate Atkinson - #4 in her Jackson Brodie series, I loved this, of course, as the setting (north of England and Scotland), the characters, and the writing are all superb. Very interesting with an unresolved ending. I am hoping Tracy Waterhouse surfaces in this next book.

A Tiding of Magpies, by Steve Burrows - #5 in his Birder Murder mysteries. These are always interesting with good characters and good settings.

The Guest List, by Lucy Foley - absolutely terrific. All the hype wasn't far off the mark, and I really enjoyed this page-turner. Definitely channeling Lord of the Flies in this variation on the classic locked room mystery with all the suspects and victim being on an island off of Ireland. Now, I am eager to read Foley's next book, The Hunting Party.

The Long Call, by Ann Cleeves - #1 in Cleeves latest series. Really enjoyed it--Matthew Venn shows great promise as the starring detective with plenty of family baggage for the long haul. Love the small town setting and the bird references.

Thornyhold, by Mary Stewart - I'm a Mary Stewart fan and Lark of Lark Writes recommended it as terrific, and it was! A wonderful good witch story with romance and magic wrapped in a comfortable package. 

Jane and the Waterloo Map, by Stephanie Barron - my JASNA bookclub has invited the author to our November meeting and so I wanted to read one of her more recent books in the Jane Austen mystery series. This was enormously fun with a spunky Jane and I enjoyed her visits to Carleton House (this is during the time when she was reviewing proofs of Emma) and the mystery itself and the characters it involved were all interesting. I love maps and watercolors, so this was just all around perfect.

Final book, half way finished, is Witch Elm, by Tana French. This might actually be the best read of the season--so good. I really cannot predict how it is going to work out.

Happy Halloween!

 

Potpourri - What I've Been Reading

It's time once again for Potpourri - a look at what I've been reading but haven't gotten around to blogging about yet.

And now, in the order read...

The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo, by Tom Reiss - a biography of the father of French novelist Alexandre Dumas. Despite loving the various adaptations of The Three Musketeers, I've never read anything by Dumas and really knew nothing about him before I read this book. In a nutshell, Dumas modeled many of the heroes of his novels on the life of his father, who was a black swashbuckler from Santo Domingo. The illegitimate son of a French count, Alexandre the father emigrated to France as a teenager, joined the army and rose to be a general in the Republican Army, fighting with Napoleon and was imprisoned for several years when he was captured by the Spanish. Not only was this a fascinating life to read about, but I was also very interested to discover that the early years of  the French Revolution were characterized by less racial prejudice than the rest of Europe and definitely the US.

One Good Turn and When Will There Be Good News, by Kate Atkinson - books 2 and 3 in the author's Jackson Brodie series, I listened to both back to back because I just couldn't stop after book 2. Atkinson is one of my favorite authors these days and these are remarkably well-written, thoughtful mysteries. Set in Scotland and northern England, I love the settings, the plot, and the interesting, side characters. I actually think every book in the series gets better, which is really saying something.

The Night Portrait: A Novel of World War II and da Vinci's Italy, by Laura Morelli - this ticked all the boxes for me -  Nazi confiscation and the Monuments Men recovery of Europe's art during WWII and the fictional backstory of the creation of da Vinci's painting of Portrait of a Lady with an Ermine. Three main characters - Cecilia Gallerani, the subject of the portrait and the Duke of Milan's mistress, Edith, the young German art conservator who is enlisted to procure art masterpieces for Goering and Hitler, and Dominic, an American soldier assigned to help the Monuments Men recover the stolen art after D-Day. The writing is a bit wobbly (the narrator uses too many cliches for my taste) but the story and characters are great.

The Fortunate Ones, by Ed Tarkington - a riff on The Great Gatsby, an interesting story about how a poor boy and his single-parent mother are befriended by the upper echelon in Nashville in the early 21st century. Definitely an interesting story and well-written, and it was fun to track the parallels with Gatsby.

What It's Like to Be a Bird: From Flying to Nesting, Eating to Singing--What Birds are Doing, and Why, by David Allen Sibley - a beautiful oversized hardbound book that my darling son got me for my birthday back in November. I read it slowly - only a page or two a night - but I enjoyed it immensely and intend to keep it handy to dip into whenever the mood strikes. Beautiful illustrations and chock full of interesting facts. 

April Roundup

April was a tough month on so many fronts, but at least I read some great books!

The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz, by Erik Larson - I like Larson's books and have read most of them and this is one of the best. Focus is on the Churchill family and the prime minister's staff. Larson's primary sources were the diaries of Churchill's youngest daughters, Mary, and one of his private secretaries, John Colville. While most of the narrative is on the British experience, it was interesting to read about the German perspective of the same events. Absolutely powerful book - one of the best of 2020 for me.

Case Histories, by Kate Atkinson - the first in Atkinson's Jackson Brodie mysteries, I absolutely loved this book. Atkinson is a very literary writer and this was a very literary mystery - she did a superb job of telling 4-5 different stories simultaneously, while also introducing her main character and giving us his back story. Eager to read the rest in this series.

Empire Falls, by Richard Russo - this is part of my Maine reading project for 2020, and was a very interesting story about a depressing little town in Maine. The mill has closed, no jobs or prospects of jobs, and the main character Miles is struggling with family, his past, his faith, and his job. Nevertheless, I thought it a compelling novel, and I plan to read more of Russo. Sadly, as expected, our trip to Maine this summer is cancelled, but I am enjoying digging into the fiction of the region.

Girl, Woman, Other, by Evaristo Bernardine - just finished this incredible book last night, and recommend it to anyone who wants to get a different view of Britain than the land served up by most of the novels I read. This is a collection of short stories about women of color in Britain whose lives intersect in the most interesting ways. This was one of the Tournament of Books contenders in 2020, making it to the quarter finals. I had read a few reviews that made it intriguing to me, and I thought it powerful, well-written and inventive, and broadened my horizons considerably.

The Atomic City Girls, by Janet Beard - I picked this up on impulse and wasn't disappointed. A novel about the women who worked at the Oak Ridge, TN factories that processed the plutonium used in the Manhattan Project (aka the atomic bomb). A fascinating story about race, naivete, patriotism, and ambition. I liked the main character, June, and thought her coming of age story was interesting and believable.

Hope you are all staying well and healthy, practicing social distancing, and finding comfort and strength or whatever you need from the reading you are able to do.

Notes from Colorado

I joke with my family that I've been practicing social distancing for years. My hobbies are reading and writing and gardening and birding and hiking, and I've had a home office for about ten years. My life right now is not a lot different from what it has been with the huge exception that I worry about my 96 year old Mom and my kids who are in NY and CA even more than before. I can't go to the library (I have some books that are due, so I need to check and see if they want me to drop them off), or the bookstore, or the grocery store, but I can walk the dog and pay it forward as much as possible.

I hope you all are well and being diligent about staying safe from harm's way.

I am happy to report that my time on Duolingo Italian is surging and I am leaping from level to level, though clitics and pronouns are my downfall. I now feel reasonably comfortable conversing in the present and present perfect tenses about sharks, dolphins, chickens, ducks, fish, dogs, and cats, as long as they are eating, coming and going, waiting, or traveling by train or bus. If any of you have attempted to learn a language via Duolingo, you'll know what I'm talking about :)

On the reading front, I just finished John Irving's Cider House Rules, and gave it a whopping 5 stars on Goodreads. Seriously, the books from the 70's and 80's are well worth visiting and revisiting. I picked this book because it is set in Maine, and we are still hoping to spend 3 weeks in Maine this summer...but like everything else, who knows whether that will be feasible.

Cider House Rules was multi-layered with complex, flawed, fascinating characters. It was also quirky and ironic and  the writing was sophisticated--reading it was like watching a master class on how to write. I especially loved how David Copperfield, Great Expectations, and Jane Eyre provided the structural and thematic framework for this 20th century tour de force.  I cannot wait to watch the movie, which was nominated for some Academy Awards and one won.

I also reread the first book in Donna Leon's Guido Brunetti mystery series, Death at La Fenice. I read with the backdrop of the virus that has paralyzed Italy and Venice providing an extra layer of pathos to the story. I love Guido and his family and hope they are safe, as well has his author, of course. I've been listening to Maurizio Marchini sing to his fellow quarantined Florentines, and now know the words to Nessun Dorma. I love Italy and dream of visiting again when we are through this nightmare.

I just finished watching Case Histories with the marvelous Jason Isaacs (Lucius Malfoy), which is based on Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie mystery series. I will be reading the first book in the series, titled Case Histories, in April. I don't usually watch the movie/TV before the book, but I did this time. It was great and I was disappointed that there were only 3 seasons with only a few episodes per season. It was great to spot Dawn Steele (Lexie from Monarch of the Glen) in season 3 as well as Gary Lewis (Colum Mackenzie from Outlander).

Speaking of Outlander, I have officially given up watching the series. I'm not sure why I started finding the series so oppressive since I've read the full book series  all the way through, but season 5 was just one over-the-top scene after another. I didn't like where they were going with the Murtagh/Jamie thread (Murtagh dies at Culloden in the books) and I was dreading Roger's story. It was bad enough to read it in the book, but I really decided I couldn't bear to watch it.

So, I just started rewatching White Collar, which is what my mood needs now!

I'm looking forward to getting into the garden. We had snow on Thursday and Friday, and so everything is muddy, slushy, and mucky right now...maybe I will find some spring flowers after it all melts. Please!!!!

Stay well--do what you need to do to get through these troubled, uncertain times--Read on!