The Best Part of Us

 The Best Part of Us by Sally Cole-Misch

Eleven year old Beth loves spending summers on her grandparents island near the Canadian border. As a young married couple they bought the island, built a cabin and cleared walking paths though the forests and along the cliffs. Beth's father spent his childhood summers there and loves it as Beth does, but her mother spends those few weeks every year anxious for the safety of her family. The river, the cliffs, the rocky trails - all threats to the ones she loves. 

When Beth find indiginous artifacts near the fort she built with neighbour, Ben, she wants to show them to him but her family says no. Her grandfather knows of another family who were forced to cede five acres of their property to the Ojibwe people when artifacts were discovered on their land. He is adamant that he will not give up an inch of the land he paid for and worked hard to maintain most of his life. 

Then a storm blows in, Beth's sister gets hurt and her brother goes missing. In the midst of their grief and fear they receive yet another devestating blow when they are ordered off the island, given 24 hours to pack up and leave the place that means so much to them.

Skip 14 years into the future and we find Beth married with a son and working in the city. Her grandfather, realizing he doesn't have much time left, writes two wills and leaves it to Beth to decide which one he should sign. One will gives the island to the Ojibwe people, the other leaves it to Beth. 

If she goes back to the place that took her brother from them, her mother may never forgive her, further fracturing a family already distant and angry. But she sees no way to make a decision without returning to the scene of both her happiest memories and the trauma that has haunted her family every since. She has to see for herself if anyone is living there now, if the cabin still stands, if the Ojibwe have taken it over, or if it's been abandoned altogether. 

Descriptions of the island are rich and memorable. I wanted - still want - to be there. Weeks after finishing the books I miss the smell of the pines and sea air. It was just that real.  

The characters are well-rounded and believable, each one necessary to the story. I can't think of any I didn't like, and though I may not have liked everything they did, the author made them real and relatable so their motivations could be understood.

The plot was a little slow starting - appropriate really to the setting - but later it had me reading too late, needing to see what would happen. The storm scene is particularly intense. 

I was left with a few unanswered questions - the plot set up a showdown between Beth and her mother that then never took place, and things seemed to work out maybe a little too easily in the end. Still it was a wonderful story. I love an island story and from this one, about finding our place in family and in the natural world, it's the island I will carry with me.

Cider With Rosie / The Swedish Art of Aging Exuberantly

 Cider With Rosie by Laurie Lee

This is a memoir of author Laurie Lee's childhood in the Cotswalds. His lyrical descriptions of the places where he grew up are so rich and vivid you can almost feel the hot sunshine on your face and breathe in the sweet country air. 

I was unfamiliar with the author but have since read some of his poems, which I liked very much, and found a list of his other books. It seems he's best known for this one and three successive memoirs As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, A Moment of War, and A Rose for Winter. There's one called Village Christmas, and Other Notes on the English Year that I'd like to read. Our public library unfortunately doesn't have it so I'll hunt for a used copy online.

If I was to use one word to describe Cider With Rosie, I think it must be "charming". I enjoyed viewing the world through his three year old eyes (at the beginning of the story) and visiting for awhile in a time and place so very different from what they are now. It isn't just a pretty story - life was hard at times and he's honest about that. But what I'll remember about this book more than the story is the poetic language in which it was told. It was simply a lovely thing to read. 

The Swedish Art of Aging Exuberantly by Margareta Magnusson

Oh dear, this is one of those books we're supposed to like and I didn't. The author is a Swedish lady in her 80's who shares some of the things she's learned about aging and offers advice on how to do it well. 

The title rather overstates things. There isn't anything particularly Swedish about what she writes, or anything very exuberant about the way she lives. I did find it pleasant - if rambling - reading with a few funny stories, but it didn't speak to me the way it has to many others. Probably my loss, but such is the reading life. Moving on. 

The Woman Who Died A Lot and The Puzzler

 The Woman Who Died a Lot by Jasper Fforde

This is #7 in the Thursday next series, books I've found utterly ridiculous and wonderfully entertaining. 

This one sees Thursday appointed to the position of head librarian a few days before her hometown is scheduled for a "smiting" that will take out a large part of the town. Her old nemisis "Aornis Hades" is still messing with Thursday's memories and now her husband's, while their brilliant daughter is building a weapon they hope will fend off the "smiting". With the number of preposterous things simultaneously going on in these books it's hard to give a sensible sounding description. 

I didn't enjoy this one was quite as much as some of the earlier ones in the series. My favourite was The Well of Lost Plots where it's all about Book World and every page is filled with literary references. Still, the world of these books is so ingenious and absurd I'll keep reading them as long as Fforde keeps writing them. Besides, they're expanding my vocabulary as I continue to seek new synonyms for "crazy".

The Puzzler by A.J. Jacobs

Jacobs looks at every kind of puzzle you can imagine: Rubik's cube types, jigsaws, crosswords, wooden puzzles, Japanese puzzle boxes, and more I can't remember right now. I loaned the book to another puzzle lover without first taking the notes I needed. Why I keep doing that is another puzzle.

He dives into the history of various puzzles and interviews the people who have mastered them. Parts of it are quite funny when he describes his experiences taking part - sometimes dragging family members with him - in contests and competitions around the world. 

Entertaining reading for anyone, more so for puzzler lovers.    

Our Homesick Songs

 Our Homesick Songs by Emma Hooper

Mrs. Callaghan? he asked. Would they sing the same songs we play?
Mostly, yes.
So we’re learning homesick songs?
All songs are homesick songs, Finn.
Even the happy ones?
Especially the happy ones.

These words set the tone for a quiet, atmospheric story of a Newfoundland family trying to hold on to their life in an abandoned outport town. 

Mother, Martha, and Father, Aiden, have been traveling on alternating months to jobs out west since overfishing decimated the cod fishery, returning home tired and frustrated at having no time to be together. 

Daughter, Cora, hopes her family will leave their all but deserted town and move to where there are more people and things to do. She spends her time in now empty neighbour's houses putting up posters and advertisements for different travel destinations.  

Her younger brother, Finn, is still hoping the fish will return, bringing the people back and returning things to the way they once were. He takes accordion lessons from a lady across the harbour, playing the folk songs and traditional music of Newfoundland, thinking to lure the fish back with homesick songs. 

The writing is spare and lyrical. It felt like a poem - a haunting ode to a dying way of life. Hooper writes about the rocky coast, the ocean, and the wind and weather in a way that takes me there. I want to read this book in one of those abandoned houses by the water, breathing in the sea air and listening to the waves crash on the rocks below. Settings like this are my happy place.

The setting, the writing, the characters, the story - I loved it all.  

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn/The Further Adventures of Ebenezer Scrooge

 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

I didn't like it when I first read it a few years ago, and upon reading it again I still don't. I tried to enjoy it as a boy's adventure story but whenever my mind goes to this book it's always in terms of Jim, not Huck. I do love Twain's writing and his sense of humour but I can't say I found much of this funny. I couldn't get past the way they treated Jim - the most decent character in the book - and I found Tom Sawyer so annoying and ridiculous I just wanted him to go away and stay there. Not my thing at all.  

The Further Adventures of Ebenezer Scrooge by Charlie Lovett

This was unexpected. I was familiar with the author from The Bookman's Tale, which was nothing at all like this, and was surprised by how much like Dickens it sounded. I listened to the audio version read by Tim Gerard Reynolds, who did a stellar job of creating a setting and characters authentic to the original story. 

Having seen the error of his stingy ways in A Christmas Carol, Scrooge now goes to the opposite extreme, giving away more money than he can afford and causing his banker no end of headaches. Bob Cratchit, Jacob Marley, and the three spirits all make an appearance and help bring Scrooge back to his senses.

Though I didn't find the plot all that interesting, the writing and narration were such a delight I didn't want to stop listening. I'll try it again next Christmas, maybe right after the first one so it will feel more like one integrated story.  

This is How You Lose the Time War

 This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone 

A friend told me I would either love or hate this book, but that either way, I should absolutely read it. I borrowed her library copy and two days later I'm trying to put into words the effect it had on me. First I'll try to tell you what it's about.

In a future world, or maybe it's a world apart from time altogther, two soldiers on opposite sides of an ongoing war, battle each other in various times and places. Red fights for The Agency, which I think is a race (?) of advanced robot/AI...people (?). Blue fights for Garden, which is a sort of biological force/entity whose people (?) are all connected by the same root. Red and Blue travel up and down the time line - which in this imagined world is a braid of ropes... or strings...or something -  following orders to intervene in any situation their commanders believe will mess with the timeline or otherwise interfere with their side's plans. 

Red and Blue are sworn enemies, leaving each other taunting letters written in and on the weirdest, most brilliantly inventive places you could imagine, or not imagine. In these letters they come to know one another and begin to develop feelings they shouldn't have for an enemy soldier. The Agency and Garden follow their every move and even seem to know what they're thinking most of the time, so Red and Blue are risking their lives just communicating with one another, let alone being in a relationship.

That isn't a terribly clear picture but I'm still trying to figure out what it all means myself. It's strange and wonderful and way out there and one of the most moving stories I've read lately. 

The writing is lovely. There's a wistful - almost ethereal at times - tone to it even as Red and Blue carryout out their rather brutal assignments. One particular thought has stuck with me -  

 "Adventure works in any strand - 

  it calls to those who care more for living

than for their lives."

I don't think I'm in that brave group any longer but reading this book certainly was an adventure. The unique ways the author developed the relationship between Red and Blue and sent them travelling through the timeline made it quite exciting. I got completely invested in these two and their strange lives, without ever knowing for sure what they are. 

I've been thinking about the love/hate prediction. I absolutely didn't hate it but did I love it? It's not the sort of story I'm usually drawn to, but I was so moved by it I know it's one I'll never forget. 

So, yes, I think my friend was right. I loved it.