What are you reading the week of April 29, 2023?

I have about 50 pages left to go in The Beetle in the Anthill by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. It's a novel in their Noon Universe series. The Strugatsky brothers wrote some of the most interesting science fiction to come out of the Soviet Union in the mid-twentieth century. This is a new English translation, which is great, but the copy editing is awful. The book is filled with errors such as missing or duplicated words. I suspect that the translation was delivered too close to the publication date for anyone to proof read it.

Having finished Cattle Kingdom, next up is Ancestral Night. After that I'll probably read Bag Man and Exit Rommel.

I enjoyed an Icelandic crime novel by a new-to-me author: The Fox by Solveig Palsdottir. It was very good and i will be looking for more of her books.

I am currently reading an e-book called When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole, which isn't great, but readable. My audiobook is sublime: Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr.

I'm finally wrapping up The Dark Tower series with The Wind Through the Keyhole by Stephen King. It's nice to be back.

Still reading A Day of Fallen Night by Samantha Shannon and House of Gold by C. T. Rwizi.

Remarkably Bright Creatures – Shelby Van Pelt
Digital audiobook performed by Marin Ireland and Michael Urie
4****

Tova Sullivan is a 70-year-old widow who works mopping floors and cleaning the glass on the tanks at the Sowell Bay Aquarium. She’s a quiet, steady presence, but in addition to her late husband, Tova is also mourning the loss of her son Erik, who was only eighteen when he disappeared in Puget Sound some thirty years ago.

Cameron is a young man who’s a bit lost. He can’t seem to keep a job and has landed in this part of Washington, still hoping to find the father who left him when he was a child.

Marcellus is a Giant Pacific Octopus who is very bright, quite wise, and observes the people who come to see him more closely than they realize. He develops a strong relationship to Tova, and is determined to help her understand what he knows.

These three characters take turns narrating the story in Van Pelt’s marvelous debut. I totally believed in Marcellus (and no, he doesn’t actually talk to the other characters) and came to love his wry observations and how he puzzled out these strange people and their odd sayings. Reminded me a bit of Chet in the Chet & Bernie mysteries when he hears a colloquialism and takes it literally (There are SMART cookies? Where are the wild geese we’re supposed to be chasing?), though Marcellus is far less prone to distraction.

They are supported by a number of characters who help flesh out the story and give depth to the main players.

Van Pelt weaves disparate characters into a tapestry of love, forgiveness and second chances. The story is tender and heart-warming and charming, if a little unbelievable. I was completely captured by it and loved every minute I spent with them. The ending is pretty perfect, though I did long for one more Marcellus chapter. This is a strong debut and I eagerly await the author’s next effort!

The audiobook is wonderfully performed by two talented voice artists: Marin Ireland and Michael Urie. I particularly loved how Urie voiced Marcellus!

I am currently reading Wonder by R.J. Palacio and slowly reading through The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes: A Calvin and Hobbes Treasury by Bill Watterson. I am also giving audiobooks another try. The audio format has never worked for me in the past. So on audio I am listening to The Violence by Delilah Dawson.

I'm about 450 pages into the 800 page thriller Natchez Burning by Greg Iles. This is the fourth book in Iles' Penn Cage series. I remember the first book being quite good, though I read it long enough ago that my memory of details is hazy. The second book was sort of fun but the plot was implausible. The third book was sort of fun but extremely violent. This book is back to being quite good, with an interesting premise having to do with old Jim Crow era hate crimes. However, 800 pages is just too long for me in terms of time commitment for a thriller. I will finish this one, but the next two in the series are just as long or longer, so I'll probably give them a miss.

Starting this audio via Libby ~

Every City Is Every Other City: A Gordon Stewart Mystery, #1
by John McFetridge
(Canada)

I finished Rock Springs which I did not particularly enjoy, not because it wasn't good. I just wasn't in the mood for it. It is a series of bleak stories set in Montana about people on the edge trying to come to terms with their failures and the sad lonely lives they had been dealt.

Angel With Two Faces – Nicola Upson
3***

Book two in the mystery series featuring Josephine Tey and Detective Inspector Archie Penrose. Tey was a real person, and Upson uses elements of her life as well as historical events of the mid 1930s as jumping off points for these mysteries. In this episode Tey has been invited to join her friends the Motleys in Cornwall where they’ve gotten involved in the local Minock Theatre. Archie arrives in the same area to attend the funeral of a family friend, and then is convinced to take on the role the friend was to play in the community dramatic performance.

There are more family secrets here than Carter has pills. I had a difficult time at first keeping the characters straight, in part because of their interconnectedness and in part due to everyone’s tendency to speak in riddles and half-truths. Josephine and Archie have different approaches to gathering information, but complement one another in their efforts to ferret out the truth. There are a couple of shocking reveals and more than one twist to the plot.

As mysteries go, this was somewhat slow to get started. The action picks up once the murder happens (on page 200). It is more of a psychological drama than anything else. I’m willing to continue the series, but I hope the action picks up.

From the library: A Tempest at Sea by Sherry Thomas
New & #7 in the "Lady Sherlock" series

A Single Thread – Tracy Chevalier
Book on CD narrated by Fenella Woolgar
3***

From the book jacket: 1932. Since the Great War took both her brother and her fiancé, Violet Speedwell has become a “surplus woman,” one of a generation destined to remain unmarried after the war killed so many young men. Yet Violet cannot reconcile herself to a future spent caring for her grieving mother. Setting out for Winchester she finds both a job and a room of her own in a boardinghouse. Violet also falls in with the broderers, a group of women charged with embroidering cushions and kneelers for the grand Winchester Cathedral. She finds friendship in her new circle, fulfillment in the work they create, and love.

My reactions
This is a selection for my F2F book club. I have read and greatly enjoyed other works by Chevalier, so was looking forward to it. But I came away a little disappointed. I suppose if I had read the jacket blurb I’d have known there would be a romance and my expectations would have been different. But I really wanted to know more about the cathedral, its history, and the work of the broderers.

Chevalier managed to include issues of the era’s expectations (or lack thereof) of women, and a lesbian couple’s struggles to find acceptance. She also includes the beginnings of the Nazi party with Hitler’s rise to power and hints at what is coming.

I really liked Violet, and several of the women she came to know and befriend. Her landlady was a peach, and Miss Pesel was a treasure. I thought she treated Violet’s relationship with Arthur fairly, and realistically. But I wish the author had left out the romance.

Fenella Woolgar does a marvelous job narrating the audiobook. There are many women characters and she managed to give them sufficiently unique voices so I was never confused about who was speaking.

Rich People Problems – Kevin Kwan
3***

Book three (and I hope the final installment) in the story of the uber wealthy Singaporean Young family. Nick hasn’t seen his grandmother in several years, since she disinherited him over his marriage to Rachel. But now Su Yi’s health crisis brings him … and his aunts and cousins … rushing back to Singapore to get one more visit with the dying matriarch.

There’s plenty of drama, what with divorces, engagements, sex video scandals, stepchildren misbehaving, mega efforts to one-up each other, extravagant parties, and even plastic surgery for a pet fish. But the prize everyone wants is the fabulous estate – Tyersall Park. WHO will get it?

I didn’t find this effort very engaging. I really wanted more of Nick and Rachel’s story, but they were side characters to all the drama. I did like the flashbacks to Su Yi’s youth and her experiences during WW2. However, on the whole Kwan writes these people so over-the-top that it’s hard to relate to any of them. I’m not even all that interested in what brand names they are touting. They are shallower that the damp spot on the sidewalk where I splashed a few drops of water.

Oh well, it’s a relatively fast read and I found all the gossiping and back-biting mildly entertaining.

The True Tails of Baker and Taylor: The Library Cats Who Left Their Pawprints on a Small Town . . . and the World
Jan Louch
5/5 stars
What a wonderful story about a library who took in two Scottish Fold cats, Baker and Taylor. The library and the patrons embraced them and let them live in their library. After the cats were photographed for a poster they became minor celebrities and their fans traveled to the library to see them or write letters to them.

The new thread is up over here.