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.   

The Joy of X

 The Joy of X: A Guided Tour of Math From One to Infinityby Steven Strogatz

This was a lot of fun. I got a bit lost at times but forged ahead and came out of each chapter knowing something I didn't before. 

There are 30 chapters, with titles that hint at the author's playful approach to math:

1. Fish to Infinity - an introduction to numbers 

3. The Enemy of My Enemy - the disturbing concept of subtraction

5. Division and Its Discontents

8. Finding Your Roots - complex numbers

10. Working Your Quads - the quadraic formula

11. Power Tools - the function of functions

16. Take It To The Limit - the power of the infinite (calculus)

20. Loves Me, Loves Me Not - differential equations

23. Chances Are - the improbable thrills of probablility theory

25. The Loneliest Numbers - prime numbers

27. Twist and Shout - playing with mobius strips and music boxes

Some of that sounded pretty intimidating to me, and it was, but even if I didn't grasp all the finer points, just getting the broader concepts into my head was invigorating. 

I don't know if I'll ever use what I learned, but it doesn't matter. I had fun trying to figure it out, it was entertaining reading, and it was good mental exercise. I'll keep it on my shelf and am sure I'll be referring to it again. 

The Sound of Fire

 The Sound of Fire by Renee Belliveau

In 1941, a fire broke out in the men's residence at Mount Allison University in Sackville, NB, Canada. That's about 45 mins from where I live - not sure of the distance in kms, we tend to measure distance in driving time up here - and though I'm familiar with the university and have known a number of people who received their education there, I had never heard this part of its history.

The author, Renee Belliveau, an archivist who discovered this story searching through University records, has written a heart-breaking novel based on a true and tragic story in which four students lost their lives when the raging fire burned the residence to the ground.  

Each chapter tells the story from a different viewpoint - students, a journalist, the University President, and the fire itself. As each one woke to someone pounding on their door, or the smell of smoke, or the alarm bell ringing, they fought their way through thickening smoke to whatever exit they could find. Some reached the fire escape, an iron ladder on the outside of the residence, and some were left with no choice but to jump from 3rd and 4th floor windows. Four students found no way of escape.

It was a little choppy in the beginning. In the middle of intense action it would stall to tell us about someone's background or family. Frustrating, but I forgot about it as I got lost in the gripping stories of what each one experienced in those terrifying moments. Their worry and fear were palpable, as were the grief and trauma later. The author did a good job of getting emotion across without resorting to sentimentality or melodrama.

I liked this one not only for its local history but for the story itself, a well-told one I think anyone could get into.