The Glass Chateau

 The Glass Chateau by Stephen Kiernan

France, 1945. Much of the country lies in ruins, as does the home of Asher, a man tormented by the memory of his wife and two year old daughter being shot by a German soldier. His furious need for revenge led him to join the Resistance where he did things of which he'd never in his life thought himself capable. Now he carries the weight of those actions in addition to his grief and unmitigated rage. Without purpose he wanders, like many others, from place to place, seeking only a bit of food and to survive another day. 

When he hears of a place, a sanctuary, where it is said men have gone and found some kind of peace, he sets out to find it, in time coming to the door of Le Chateau Guerin. Hoping only for a meal, he is surprised to be welcomed, and given a room to sleep in and work to do. His job will be to feed the furnaces burning day and night as glass is made to replace the blown out windows of France's cathedrals. In time he'll move on to learning the delicate skills needed for making stained glass and will come to find he has a talent for it.

He is only one of several broken souls being cared for at the Chateau, each carrying their own scars and secrets. As Asher settles in he fears what will happen if they should find out not only what he's done, but who he is.

A moving story with writing that seemed to droop a bit toward the end but still offered a satisfying conclusion. It was the glass-making aspect that first drew me to the book, but it also helped me see the aftermath of war from a different perspective. I'd never thought about damage done to the many beautiful cathedrals of Europe or what it would take to repair them and was interested to learn about that. Those things and the convincing characters made this a very enjoyable read. 

James

 James by Percival Everett

A companion book - or perhaps the author's setting straight of  - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It begins by following Huck's story as told from the viewpoint of the slave, Jim, then veers off into something very different. 

I didn't enjoy the Huck book or this one either. For one thing, Jim in the first book is a sage - wise, with a rich thought life and unending patience. In this one Jim becomes a cold-blooded murderer, an angry man whose anger, yes, is justified, but not very relatable to who he was in Huck. We are all certainly capable of all kinds of evil we think we aren't, but for me the change here was just too drastic.

I was looking forward to reading about Jim, the only character I liked in the Huck book, but I didn't recognize him in this story.

The Women in Black / This Calling Master

 The Women in Black by Madeleine St. John

A charming story about ladies working at a dress shop in the late 1950s. I was doing a poor job of putting down my thoughts about this book so I'm going to direct you to a better review here. It says everything I wanted to say in a far more articulate manner than I could have. 

I listened to the audio from Chirp Books and loved the narrator, but still think I might have liked the book better if I'd read a hard copy. Audio books aren't conducive to much thinking about what you're reading and I do think this one deserved a bit more than I could give it.   

This Calling Master by Steven Evans

I don't know what made me think I'd want to read this, but there it was on my Kobo so something about it must have appealed to me at one time. Half way through it didn't seem to be going anywhere, but I finished it anyway and now cannot for the life of me think why. 

It's about Michael who lives alone, has a girlfriend he hasn't seen for at least a couple of years, and holds down a mundane job with an insurance company. He doesn't have any real friends but doesn't mind as he's not sociable anyway. 

He does have one interesting hobby. Calling himself an urban archeologist, he breaks into abandoned buildings at night to look around. He wanders through the rooms checking out old furniture and other belongings left behind, taking home anything he thinks could be useful someday. 

One night he's in an old boarded up mansion when the door opens and three men come in carrying another who's been shot. Michael hides in a pantry and listens to them argue about the crime they'd just committed and whether or not to get help for the guy bleeding out on the table. 

From there it gets ridiculous. Michael does all kinds of terribly risky things but for some reason he never gets caught or hurt. It's like he's two people - the guy vegetating at home in his messy apartment doing nothing but whining about  the girlfriend who doesn't answer his calls or letters, and the guy skulking around at night who seems to have skills not learned at the office, getting involved in situations illegal and even deadly.  And he gets away every time. He commits a pretty bloody revenge murder and still, no consequences.    

In the end he gets a new job and moves away. Everything is fine. What?!

So, is the point of the story that murder is ok when a good guy takes out a bad guy who killed a different good guy? If this was a paperback I'd throw it somewhere but I don't want to break my Kobo so I'll just emphatically hit "Remove from My Books" a few times. 

I want my 8 hours back. 

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.