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 and 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.    

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.