Seven Days of Us

 Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak

The Birch family - father, Andrew; mother, Emma; elder daughter, Olivia; younger daughter, Phoebe - gather for Christmas. Olivia, a doctor, has just returned from Africa where she was treating victims of a viral epidemic and is now required, along with anyone she stays with, to quarantine for seven days. Emma sees it as a wonderful opportunity for the family to spend some quality time together over the holidays, though no one else is quite so sure.

Phoebe, who can be a little self-centered, is pre-occupied with planning the perfect wedding to a man she's trying to believe she loves. Olivia, coming across as distant and critical after years of being away, is hiding the fact that she has put herself and her family at far more risk than she's admitting. Emma, trying desperately to be what everyone needs her to be, has devastating news she's keeping until after quarantine so it won't put a damper on what she hopes will be a happy time. And then there's Andrew, who has a whopper of a secret that is about to change everything.

From health problems to secret lovers to long lost family members, this book has everything...maybe a little more everything than is reasonably credible. Each character seemed just a bit too much, but my preference for subtlety is not everyone's and most reviews I've read were very positive. I enjoyed reading it, in fact was eager to see how it could all possibly be resolved. It does all resolve but it's not your typical everything-turns-out-great-for-everybody Christmas story. 

Entertaining, if slightly over the top.

December Reading Part - 2

 Wild Mind by Natalie Goldberg

A book of essays on writing with a number of "Try this" exercises. The first half of the book had the most practical information for me and the exercises in that section were, and are, fun. I'll be working at them for a few weeks.   

The Nightshift Before Christmas by Adam Kay

A few pages into this I didn't think I'd like it, but the author, who was a Doctor in England at the time, is such a compassionate human being, and so funny, it's hard not to like him and his writing. These are stories from his five years of working through the Christmas holidays, the interesting cases and crazy situations he found himself in. He worked mostly in genecology so the stories get...let's say colourful... but he has a heart for those truly suffering and that is beautiful to see. He's also an entertaining writer, good with unexpected metaphors and similes that made me laugh out loud. There is some vulgar language to get past, but if that's not a deal breaker for you - it almost was for me but his humour appealed to me and kept me reading - you'll probably enjoy this.

Old Tyme Christmas in New Brunswick by David Goss

I found this one at the library, but it wasn't quite what I expected. I was hoping for stories, instead it was largely photographs from nineteenth and early twentieth century Christmas celebrations, mostly in the Saint John area. The captions were interesting though.

Hat Girl by Wanda Campbell

A girl inherits a small home on an island in the Bay of Fundy, on the condition that she wear the previous owner's hats which will be delivered to her at the beginning of each month. Some of the hats are quite dramatic making her stand out in the crowd and earning her the name "Hat Girl". 

I liked this one particularly because it's set in my corner of the world so I recognized the island she lived on and lots of other place names. I love islands and stories set on them, and feel the same way about the sea as the girl in the book: "The sea gave you a sense of what eternity might look like, a thing that glistened with light and went on and on. The largeness of it seemed able to fill up the smallness in a person. Hemingway's old man said the sea is kind and very beautiful, but that she could also be cruel. I knew this blue sea in summer was only one side, but for now I was content with this gorgeous generosity." Those lines reached a place in me that longs for the sea and filled it up, for a while anyway.   

It's a charming story with an unusual premise, though I guess when you get right down to it you'd have to call it a romance. I have nothing against romance, as long as there's more to the story than that, and this one had enough in it to make it a pleasant escape.   

Zanna's Gift by Orson Scott Card

A brief audio book - 2 hours or so - about a little girl, Zanna, whose older brother, Ernie, is the only one in the family who can tell what her drawings are about. Everyone else sees only the simplistic scribbling of a four year old child. When Ernie dies suddenly the family tells Zanna he has gone far away, but Zanna creates another drawing for him anyway. Zanna later becomes a well-known artist, but it's that childhood picture that becomes a touchstone for the family through the years as Zanna grows up, gets married and has children and grandchildren of her own. A story of family ties and memories that is touching but not very Christmassy.

The Romance of a Christmas Card by Kate Douglas Wiggin 

A 1916 story about a Pastor's wife who creates and mails out her own Christmas cards, her efforts resulting in the homecoming of two young men and their reconciliation with their families. It's all a bit too perfect; still it's a nice, cozy, Christmas story for seasonal reading.

December Reading - Part 1

 The Christmas Clock by Kat Martin

A lovely holiday story about a little boy whose guardian, his grandmother, has Alzheimer's and must find someone else to care for him. The other characters are a married couple who have grown apart after decades of marriage, and another couple who dated and split up when they were very young and are just meeting again now. It's a Christmas story, so you can guess how it will all turn out and you'll be right. A light seasonal read, sweet, just not very memorable.

The Christmas List by Richard Paul Evans

A hard-nosed business man reads his own obituary in the paper. His picture and information were mistakenly published when another man by the same name died. As startling as that was to see, what really got to him were the online comments in reaction to it. Most of them told of horrible things he'd done to people and how glad they were that he was dead. This brings about a change of heart and he sets out to right some of the wrongs he'd done, though he won't find it as easy as he might have hoped. This is my second time reading this one, with my original review here.

Christmas in Prose and Verse - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance ed. by Allison C. Putala

This is a compilation of old stories and poems by the likes of Ben Jonson, Charles Wesley, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Milton, Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth, Hans Christian Anderson, Washington Irving, and many others. I've been reading bits of it each Christmas for years but this year wanted to start at the beginning and read through in case I'd missed anything. I read to page 442 of 758 and have bookmarked it so I can pick up next year where I left off. This is a treasure filled with beautifully written thoughts on the season. It's a true joy to read.   

An Audience of Chairs

 An Audience of Chairs by Joan Clark

A well-written, gut-wrenching story about a woman trying to cope with losing her children when manic-depressive disorder leaves her unable to care for them. Some of it is very painful to read and I wasn't sure I could finish it, but as she started to get better and gain some control over her moods I stopped holding my breath and read on. 

Spoiler alert...sort of...not sure...

She had two very young daughters whose health and safety were compromised by her neglect of them. It wasn't that she didn't love them - she did, deeply - but her mind would get so focused on other things that she'd legitimately forget them and their needs. On one such occasion she left them unattended on a beach far from home for hours and didn't remember them until well after dark. Her youngest was 2 at the time. Her husband took the girls away from her then and was right to do so, but he shows himself to be a jerk by keeping them away from her for the remainder of their childhood.

It's fascinating to look at life from inside the mind of a person with this illness. Fascinating and heart-breaking. And infuriating. I had a hard time getting into it at first simply because I didn't like her. She has good qualities - she loves her girls, she's artistically talented and she usually means well, but the victims of her behaviour suffer and she doesn't care. I know that's a symptom of her condition, but she was offered help and didn't want it. She wouldn't take meds because she felt they made her less of who she really was, and it didn't matter to her that that decision affected other lives than her own. I found myself angry with her; I've been in their place and know the wreckage it leaves.

I was glad that as the book progressed, she did, too. She began to identify things that triggered her mood swings and was able to better control them. She made amends to a certain extent, and as relationships began to heal, the story came to a satisfying conclusion. I hope it's like that for many people, but what I've seen in reality leaves me skeptical.  

The Essex Serpent & Whose Body

 The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry

This is a book I should have liked. It's an unusual story, about a woman and her slightly creepy young son moving to a village where a rumored creature in the water is being blamed for various recent misfortunes. The woman and the local minister become friends - maybe more - and her son forms a bond with the minister's ailing wife, who since her illness has become infatuated with the colour blue. There are several other romantic storylines but this is not a romance per se. Well, maybe it is, but it also touches on socialism, abuse, geology, social justice, medicine, and a woman's place in society.

So, a good story, interesting characters, and excellent writing. The first two pages, in which she writes about time and how it affects people in different situations, were breath-taking. I couldn't wait to read on, but then something seemed to stall. I can't explain it. It had everything it needed to be a good book, but I had a hard time getting into it. I pushed on and found the middle section held my attention better, but then it seemed to sort of fizzle out at the end. 

Maybe at a different time in a different frame of mind I'd have seen more in it and I wouldn't have to say with some regret that I didn't like it. Do read this outstanding review at  Kirkus Reviews though to see all the reasons why you might like it very much indeed. 

Whose Body by Dorothy L. Sayers

This is the first of Sayers's Lord Peter Whimsey novels and I'm not quite sure I like Lord Peter. My book club read Busman's Honeymoon, which I think is #11 in the series, a couple of years ago and I very much liked it, and him, so maybe he'll grow on me as the series progresses. 

In this first book he's flippant, a little too self-confident, and his diction seemed strange. He's upper class British, but leaves the last letter off of some words, so that going becomes goin' and reading is readin'. I was hearing it in the accent of the southern U.S. and seeing him as plantation owner rather than British Lord. It was...odd. However, I love the way Sayers writes - a little less cozy than Agatha and with a bit more of an intellectual bent - and will probably try another after a while. 

It might be a long while. I still have two shelves of unread books, two dozen audio books and 4 dozen e-books waiting, almost 300 titles on my Goodreads want-to-read page, and over 160 on my wish list at the local library. And then there's a spread sheet with another 20 lists or so of authors and titles I want to check out when I get a chance. I might live long enough to read them all if I never add another title to any of those lists, but that seems unlikely. And anyway, I like lists and these ones are comforting in some way.

About Whose Body I'll just say I didn't enjoy it but I hope to try another. 

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket

 The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe

This book is on so many "must read" lists that I felt almost obligated to read it. I'm not familiar with much of Edgar Allan Poe's writing, but I did like The Fall of the House of Usher and his poems Annabel Lee and The Raven. I knew this one, too, would be dark but looked forward to some excellent writing.

It started out as a sea-faring adventure that became a sea-faring disaster and finally a sea-faring horror story. Every time I thought the situation couldn't get worse, it did, and then it got worse than that. When they drew straws to see which of them to kill and eat I really wished they'd just jump overboard and let themselves be swept away by the tides. Wouldn't that have been easier?

I'm sure it's an important piece of literature - people more astute than I find much to admire in it - but I did not enjoy it. At all. Even with the excellent writing.