BookNAround

Review: The Cat Who Caught a Killer by L. T. Shearer

2026-01-29T23:49:00.000-08:00

Lulu Lewis is a retired police detective who lives on a houseboat. She lost her husband unexpectedly and now spends time caring for his elderly mother, Emily, who suffers from dementia and lives in a nearby care home. Then Emily dies and Lulu finds herself investigating her death as a homicide. Just prior to Emily’s death, a large calico tomcat walks into Lulu’s life and makes himself at home on her boat. Not only is it unusual that Conrad the cat is a male calico, but astoundingly he can talk to Lulu and he accompanies her on her investigations.

If I had known there was a talking cat in this book, I likely wouldn’t have picked it up. I’m not a huge fan of anthropomorphized animals and this one didn’t really engage me any more than previous ones have. In addition to this plot point not working for me, there are a lot of small, unnecessary details scattered throughout the novel and there is some uncomfortable political commentary sprinkled in as well. Plus, the mystery is quite simplistic and easily figured out.

Review: Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann

2026-01-28T23:47:00.000-08:00

Sheep who solve a murder? Yes, that is the premise of this mystery. Sounds crazy, right? It is but in a fun way.

Shepherd George Glenn cares deeply for his sheep. He even reads to them every day. His flock is very loyal to him in turn. When they find him dead in the pasture, killed by a spade, they decide that they need to figure out who killed him, using some of the knowledge they’ve gained from George reading them mysteries. The main sheep investigating the murder are Miss Maple, Othello, and Mopple the Whale. They are thoughtful and philosophical (there’s even a debate about whether human beings have souls or not) and they overhear a lot of information from the people around them. They are well drawn and have very distinct characters with their own foibles, strengths, and fears. Sometimes following the sheep’s reasoning is difficult and it’s hard to tell if that’s a translation issue or if it is meant to be written that way because, well, sheep. In general it was entertaining to be in the minds of the sheep, to watch them try to reason out the motive behind the murder, to try to understand the confounding humans, to get distracted by good grass and herbs, to try and connect the clues they’ve stumbled across, and in the end, to share their conclusion with the people who can bring the murderer to justice. The end was a little drawn out but overall it was a pleasing read.

Review: Mindful of Murder by Susan Juby

2026-01-27T23:44:00.000-08:00

I have been reading more cozy type mysteries this year and thought that this one set on an island in British Columbia sounded unusual. It turned out to be a pleasant read for an afternoon.

Helen Thorpe, a former Buddhist nun, is a newly graduated butler anticipating her first job working for a very and philanthropic family when she discovers that her former employer and friend, Edna, the owner of the Yatra Institute, a spiritual retreat, has died while on a silent retreat and her will asks that Helen help determine which of her often unpleasant nieces and nephews will inherit the Institute. Helen delays her job, and with the help of two of her butlering classmates, she heads to BC to try to determine who will best run the Institute in the future. That she starts to suspect foul play and then is certain Edna was murdered doesn’t help in her deliberations as she leads the potential heirs (and potential murderers) in classes on meditation, flower arranging, and dancing.

Juby has drawn quirky characters with all the flaws that make them fully human, even if they don’t seem like people this reader would have any interest in knowing in real life. The setting is beautifully rendered and offers an engaging backdrop to the shenanigans and personal growth of the heirs. Uncovering who murdered Edna should have taken more of the center stage but the mystery felt like a background to the characterizations. This would be a more enjoyable read for people who like slower, character driven tales than those looking for a plot driven cozy mystery.

Review: All Hands on Deck by Will Sofrin

2026-01-26T23:41:00.000-08:00

One of my kids is a sailor. I can just about bang around in a small sailboat without needing to be rescued and I’ve always thought learning more about sailboats would be fun. Not sure if the kid would be willing to teach me or not! Now that I’ve read Will Sofrin’s account of crewing on the 18th century replica, the tall ship Rose as the boat sailed from Cape Cod to San Diego to be refitted to serve as the HMS Surprise in the movie Master and Commander: Far Side of the World, I am both more and less certain that truly learning to sail would be fun. I might just stick to reading about sailing rather than sailing itself.

Sofrin was already a professional sailor and ship’s carpenter (chippy) when he signed on as a deckhand to get the Rose from the East Coast, through the Panama Canal, and up to California for the movie studio owners. He recounts the average, the extraordinary, and the terrifying that all made up the voyage, from daily watch, to a dismasting, to hurricane force winds threatening to sink the leaking wooden ship. Sofrin narrates the experience of sailing on Rose generally as well as his own personal experiences on and offshore with his fellow crew mates. These first person accounts are also combined with brief asides about what life would have been like on a warship like Rose in the 18th century as well as pieces of the O’Brian source material in the series Master and Commander. This is really a memoir of Sofrin’s months onboard, his friendships and a blossoming relationship, and account of the journey itself (there’s very little about the movie included) but sailors, unique bunch that they are, and those who are attracted by the romance of a sailing life will enjoy reading about this once in a lifetime trip.

Review: Chasing the Thrill by Daniel Barbarisi

2026-01-25T23:00:00.000-08:00

I love a good treasure hunt. I even created a treasure hunt birthday party for one of my kids when they were small. More than I like participating though, I like reading about them. I loved The Westing Game and Treasure Island when I was younger so this non-fiction look into the Forrest Fenn treasure hunt by author and casual hunt participant Daniel Barbarisi was right up my alley.

Combining both his own experiences trying to solve the riddle of where Fenn left his treasure with the history of the hunt, positive and negative, and the community surrounding the hunt, especially the most well-known searchers, Barbarisi looks at what compels people to join in a hunt of this kind, some even to the point of bankrupting themselves, and what compels a person like Forrest Fenn, eccentric as he was, to create the hunt in the first place. He is even-handed and fair in his reporting on the culture, the rumors, and the mythology of the search for Fenn’s treasure. Getting involved as a searcher himself gives the recounting a nice, participatory first person aspect that pure reportage would not have offered. There is some repetition here and there remain some unanswered questions but overall, this was an engaging read about a fascinating cultural phenomenon. Just don’t do too much research into it before reading if you want to maintain the rising tension of the tale.

Review: Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman

2026-01-24T23:33:00.000-08:00

I’m not sure why we think that any aliens who make contact with us will be benign but I suspect that we might be being a touch optimistic. Matt Dinniman’s Dungeon Crawler Carl (the first in the series) proves that for sure. I am very much not the demographic for this book, but it was an entertaining read even for this middle-aged, non-gamer, non-sci-fi fantasy reader.

All of a sudden, one night in the middle of the night, all the buildings on Earth collapse, killing everyone inside instantly. People outside all survive the “transformation” and then must decide if they are willing to play the televised, murderous game that aliens have devised for the planet. If they agree to play, they must find their way from dungeon level to level, fighting their way past scary creatures, earning points by finishing quests or killing the baddies, and learning who among the remaining humans are trustworthy and who are not. Carl is outside chasing his ex-girlfriend’s cat, Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk, when the buildings collapse so both he and Princess Donut survive. Carl is wearing less than optimal (and fairly ridiculous) clothing, boxers, a leather jacket, and pink ill-fitting Crocs, for the weather. When they go down into the first dungeon, it is very debatable whether Carl is in charge or whether he’s Donut’s sidekick. Fights to the death and much hilarity ensue as Carl and Donut try to both be entertaining enough to be tv crowd favorites who earn special bonuses from across the galaxy and to survive truly life threatening events together.

As this is the first in a series, Dinniman drops hints as to where the story line will go in future books, but the story is complete enough in its own right to be a satisfying read. The action is a gentle rising/falling structure that mimics video game quests and rpg fans will likely find gems in the story that I completely missed. There is a lot of humor here as well as cleverly interwoven commentary on human being’s moral compasses and the unknown, potentially nefarious goals of government. The fights are quite detailed, brutal, and visually evocative which might be tough going for some readers. The humor does help and the snark is definitely on point. I don’t know if I’ll continue with the series but I do know that both of my sons, for whom the book was actually bought (we pre-read Christmas presents in this family), will enjoy it a lot.

Christmas (well, really New Year's) letter for 2025

2026-01-01T10:55:00.000-08:00

Every year we get later and later with this letter but this year takes the cake as we’re officially writing it *after* Christmas. A big reason for that is that we were just too boring for words this year, giving us very little material to work with. In fact, when we called the kids to ask what we should include, one kid said he’d done nothing this year and one said to mention he’d gotten a massage gun and it was amazing. Thank heaven for the kid who got married so we had *something* of note! As for us, we did what we always do: traveling for work (D.) and reading and running (K.). And now, in case you wanted more than that tl;dr (and to see just how long-winded K. can be with nothing to report on), here’s the 2025 Knox year in review:

January: D. went to Chicago and Phoenix this month and K. went to Lexington to go wedding dress shopping with R. They found THE dress at the very first store, which was seriously good luck given K.’s longstanding dislike of shopping.

February: D. went to Chicago and Boston. K. had her first ever DNF (did not finish) in a race. She and the two friends she was running with planned to not finish (long story) but boy was it hard to abandon her first child perfectionist tendencies. D. wrecked his car this month, a rather expensive way to get a new car.

March: K. and T. both celebrated non-milestone birthdays this month. Other than that, no idea.

April: You know how they say bad things come in threes? Both T. and W. wrecked their cars this month. So much for “Do as I say, not as I do.” Definitely costly to imitate D.!

May: D. went to Detroit and K. ran the Mountains to Main half marathon with friends. R. passed the first of her six licensure exams to be a fully-fledged architect and T. was hired on full time as a Staff Geologist for Weaver Consulting. He’s still dealing with hot trash water but getting to do more interesting things too (although how you beat tramping around in hot trash water in a landfill, I don’t know). K. and D. quietly celebrated their 30th anniversary this month.

June: K. headed to Michigan for the summer and being gone means she had no idea where D. was traveling.

July: W. brought his girlfriend up north to meet some of the family this month. Her first day there, K.’s mom tripped and split her face open on a rock, requiring 13 stitches and some good painkillers. The second day, fishermen ran over the waterline leaving us without water so the poor girl was told “no flush, no brush, no shower” until it was all fixed. Pretty sure she didn’t run away screaming only because we’re on an island and she was trapped. Also of note, copious amounts of blood will stain wooden decking for a very long time and no amount of scrubbing helps, so plan your murders accordingly.

August: W. graduated from FAU with his MBA this month and K. and D. got to experience the dubiously sweaty pleasure of Florida in August. Also this month, T.’s girlfriend, A., moved in with him in Lexington so we’ve acquired another grandcat.

September: This month was all about the wedding. It was a beautiful, blustery day on Mackinac Island and K. can tell you all the things that went wrong behind the scenes (so many things!) but at the end of the day R. and J. ended up married and happy and that’s what counts. T. stepped up to be the DJ for the wedding and if you need him, I imagine you can book DJ Jazzy T at the friends and family discount. The weekend after the wedding found K. back in North Carolina running a 50K (31.2 miles for the non-metric among you). She had a great time and is planning to do it again next year—plus she’s likely to be insufferable and mention that she’s an ultramarathoner in every conversation from here to eternity. You’ve been warned.

October: D. went on a football guys’ weekend to Charleston and Columbia while K. went on a girls’ weekend to Dreher Lake State Park in South Carolina this month. Maybe soon they’ll actually take a trip together (like the 30th anniversary trip they’ve discussed but not planned yet!).

November: D. went to Denver. All the Ks. converged on Lexington for Thanksgiving. Cooking a meal for eleven out of an Airbnb kitchen is less than ideal but no one got food poisoning and everyone had food so we’re calling it a success even if several dishes didn’t make it on the table on the day of. Who needs cranberry anyway? (Short answer, we all do, but eating it with leftovers instead is okay too.) Also, K. convinced everyone to do the Turkey Trot with her. She beat them all (the only kid running it was injured and the rest of them walked but we don’t have to admit that) and has bragging rights for the next year.

December: D. went to New York. R. took her third licensure exam and is now legally 1/2 an architect. Most importantly this month, D. gave K. her Christmas present early and Miss Harper, the cutest little ball of schnauzer fluff you’ve ever seen, joined the family. We’re deep into housebreaking and it looks to be a long road but she’s worth it. Ozzie and Sammy were less than delighted by the gift of Harper but they’re coping, unless she keeps stealing their cat treats; then it might be out and out war.

As the year comes to a close, we once again hope that you are surrounded by peace, love, and happiness now and throughout the coming year.

Review: The Heaven and Earth Grovery Store by James McBride

2025-12-10T13:28:00.000-08:00

James McBride's The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store won all the awards the year it came out. It was never really on my list of books I *had* to get to in part because of all the accolades, which usually set me up for too high expectations and ultimately disappointment in the reading experience. One of my several book clubs pays no attention to my own personal issues with award winners and consistently chooses to read them. This was the case for this book and unfortunately, my experience was as expected. This wasn't a bad book; it just wasn't the amazing read the reviews had promised. It was fine. But fine wasn't what I was hoping for.

This is the story of the 1930s Chicken Hill neighborhood in Pottstown, Pennsylvania and its people, the European immigrant Jews who built a synagogue and a dance hall there, and their impoverished black neighbors. Opening with the discovery of a decades old skeleton, the story then moves back in time to the events that led up to said skeleton's burial in a well, the year that the state decided to insitutionalize a deaf black child the community had rallied to hide from the authorities and his family and the people who loved him organized to bring him home again.

McBride takes a long time building his unnecessarily extensive cast of characters (many of whom are not integral to the story in any way), their attitudes, and the place that they live before he even comes to Dodo's state sanctioned kidnapping. This was one of the biggest weaknesses of the novel; a tighter plot and fewer digressions would have made for a more enjoyable reading experience, at least for me. The chapters move from character to character, almost in the way of interconnnected short stories, which does build the sense of community but still makes for a lack of cohesiveness to the story. And although the author's acknowledgment section discusses McBride's bona fides as a camp counselor at a camp for handicapped children, his portrayal of Monkey Pants, a child with cerebral palsy at the the institution, was troubling. That he was the only character in the story not given an internal voice reduced him to only his disability in a way that the personable (and deaf) Dodo was not. There is a complex web of connection and difficut themes like racism, strength of community, and love and kindness here and the individual threads do all eventually come together to some degree but the pacing is slow and uneven and even the answer to the mystery of the skeleton isn't that gripping in the end. Ultimately I don't regret reading this and McBride does know how to write (if not edit his own work); it just wasn't what I had hoped.

My Running Life

2025-10-09T07:59:00.000-07:00

Almost exactly three years ago (October 2022) I walked into the Charlotte Running Company store nearest to me to start on a new journey. They were starting their Saturday group runs up again for the first time after Covid. I hadn't put running shoes on my feet in 13 years. I used to run but had gotten out of the habit, busy raising children and perfecting the body-shaped divot on my couch where my equally sedentary dog enjoyed being on my lap while I read my books. I went to Chicago to watch my baby, now a college kid, sail in a regatta and I met up with one of my oldest and dearest college friends who lived there. She said she couldn't stay out very late the night I was there because she was running the Chicago half marathon the next morning. I jokingly told her that I had just gotten a Facebook notification from CRC that they were starting group runs and even had a one mile route, that maybe before I turned 60 (I was 51 at the time--nothing like giving yourself a lot of lead time!) I could run a half with her and her running partner. Truthfully I was only following CRC on Facebook because my sailing kid had been a pole vaulter in high school and the store was willing to special order pole vault shoes for him (yes, there are special shoes; yes, they are expensive; yes, the Facebook page alerts you to sales; no, I hadn't remembered to unfollow after he graduated and hung up those fancy pole vault shoes). But in some weird algorithm glitch, Facebook, which had to know I was no runner, pushed that event to me as something I might be interested in. And by some strange confluence of the universe, I got that notification perfectly in time to mention it to my friend that weekend in Chicago and joke that I might go and try to run for a whole mile.

So why did I actually show up for that run? I have no idea. Nothing about it was really me. I was in my 50s. I was overweight. I was completely out of shape. It was an early morning and I have never been an early morning person. In fact, I convinced my college swim coach that 10 pm practices were far more reasonable than 6 am practices, which only lasted for my senior year as far as I can tell. (I'm either very convincing or so annoying it's just easiest to give me my own way--and I know which my family would vote for.) Most importantly, I didn't run anymore. But something made me set my alarm, get out of bed, and drive to the store. There had been a nasty storm, the remnants of a hurricane, the night before and the roads were littered with wet leaves and branches. I was the only person to show up for this newly revived group run. And I was horrified, having assumed that I could hide myself in a crowd of others. Matt and Armani greeted me warmly and enthusiastically. They said they weren't sure if anyone was going to show up given the storm and asked how far I wanted to go. The Facebook options had listed 1 mile, 2 miles, 4 miles, and 6 miles. Beyond embarrassed, I said I was just trying to run again for the first time in more than a decade so I was only going to do a mile. They smiled and said they'd happily run my mile with me and I could set the pace. More embarrassment. My pace was going to be "dirt slow and hope I don't die." They didn't care one iota. And they didn't make me feel badly about it either (although when I later--and by later I mean weeks or months--found out they could have run faster backwards than the pace we did that morning, I felt another little tinge of embarrassment, thankfully lesser by then because they were so kind). We set off on the run, with them comfortably behind me, chatting away. I only managed to run the entire mile because they were there behind me, encouraging me when they thought I needed it, and because I'm stubborn enough that I didn't want to have to stop and make even more clear what my slow, chunky, old lady self probably already telegraphed. I ran that whole mile that morning. And because they were so welcoming and accepting, I came back Saturday after Saturday until the week I decided I was ready to run two miles. And then there was the week I came in and told them I had run once in my neighborhood that week as well as showing up for Saturday. Every step of the way, folks in the store celebrated my every achievement, large or small. They reminded me of how far I'd come if I was disappointed in a run. They welcomed me into the running community, one of the nicest communities I've ever been a part of. They were there when I took my first running steps and they have had my back the whole way. I may not love running quite as much as so many other runners. It's hard and I'm still not that good at it. I'm still chunky (although less so). I'm still old. I'm still slow. But I'm not out of shape anymore. I'm proud of myself. And yes, I'm a runner.

Three years ago I ran a mile. Two weeks ago I ran 32 miles.

**Note: I do not necessarily think running is for everyone. But whatever path you take, I hope that you find as warm, welcoming, encouraging, maybe mixed with a little--or a lot--of crazy a community as I found at CRC and in the greater running community in Charlotte.

Review: The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

2025-09-24T12:30:00.000-07:00

I am a huge sucker for epistolary novels under any circumstances. I have written letters off and on my whole life to friends and to pen pals I have never met, and likely will never meet. Finding something personal in the mail, as opposed to bills and junk mail, is always a thrill. So when you combine that thrilling feeling with the slightly illicit feeling of reading someone else's letters as you do in an epistolary novel, it almost guarantees a good reading experience. Virginia Evans' novel, The Correspondent, was a delightfully good reading experience.

Slightly different than other novels in letters, this tells the entire story through the letters of Sybil Van Antwerp without supplying the reader almost any of the replies (with just a couple of notable exceptions). The reader learns who Sybil is, about her relationships, what she is most proud of, what she is most ashamed by, the way her life spun out of control only to be wrested back with determination and steel, and the sorrow and guilt she feels for something that happpened a life time ago. Sybil's accomplishments were many and her correspondence impressive. The people with whom she communicates, including contemporary authors, famous people (although we are only told of these letters), her family and friends, a thoughtful neighbor, the Dean of a local college, and more show different facets of the complex character that is Sybil. This is a quiet novel, very much character driven, rich and rewarding.

Review: The Fortnight in September by R.C. Sherriff

2025-09-12T08:48:00.000-07:00

I am packing up to head home from my annual summer vacation and I picked up R.C. Sherriff's The Fortnight in September as a final read of the season. It turns out that this gentle look at an ordinary, middle class British family's yearly seaside vacation to the sea was the perfect accompaniment to the end of my own summer, capturing as he does, the anticipation and flurry of getting ready for vacation, the pleasure of the vacation itself, and the melancholy of leaving mixed with the rightness of being once again at home.

Centered on the Stevens family of five, Mr. and Mrs. Stevens, twenty year old Mary, seventeen year old Dick, and ten year old Ernie, this charming novel shows the small pleasures of daily holiday living in a happy, familiar place, bathing in the sea, walking on the boardwalk, playing cricket, flying a kite, and so on. The Stevens go to Bognor Regis every year for two weeks in September. They stay at the same guesthouse and cheerfully follow roughly the same schedule during their time there. There are, of course, small changes each year, like choosing to splurge on renting a bathing hut this year or the increasingly noticeable shabbiness of their chosen guesthouse, but their fondness for the place, loyalty, and pleasant memories of past years keep them coming back, especially this year when there was a question of whether Mary and Dick, both out of school now and working, would join the family again or if they'd go off with their friends. There are no large dramas here, only small ones easily (and for the most part happily) navigated.

The novel is almost entirely character driven with little plot to speak of but it captures the appeal of the familiar, comfortable everyday life in a place the characters love and look forward to all year. The writing is old fashioned (although likely not so when it was published in 1931) and nostalgic feeling, and the story is warm and engaging, following each of the five family members on their own and together, giving the reader more insight into each of their thoughts and hopes both on vacation and in their usual life. It's a slow, quiet novel of annual rituals and small, contained pleasures that makes for an enjoyable reading experience.

Review: Lost in Michigan's Upper Peninsula by Mike Sonnenberg

2025-09-10T19:02:00.000-07:00

Since I spend every summer in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, I picked this book up with the thought that I might find new places to visit around me and across the UP. Disappointingly I'm not entirely certain I found exactly what I was looking for though.

The locations highlighted here are arranged by general area in the UP and give not only street addresses but also geographical coordinates. Each place is followed by a short history of the attraction and recommendations of things to do (for example to bring jugs to fill up at a certain spring). The tone of the writing is folksy and conversational but I have to question Sonnenberg's enthusiasm for many of the sites he highlights, especially when it takes a good long time to reach a particular location and all a visitor can do is park their car and gaze at abandoned ruins. He misses including interesting information about some of the highlighted sites (at least in my area), such as unique geological features or the potential to see endangered flora. I'd have loved to see more quirky things included like the troll in Germfask (although Benny the Beard Fisher might be too new to be included in this edition, this gives a sense of the kinds of hidden gems I was hoping to find) rather than including little towns that he's deemed to be good places to get gas, sandwiches, and cell service. Honestly, reading through this didn't make me want to travel throughout the UP, which is a real shame and the exact opposite of what this book was striving to do.

Review: BIg Gay Wedding by Byron Lane

2025-09-08T23:19:00.000-07:00

We can have hopes and dreams for our children but in the end, they are the only ones who get to choose what their lives look like. Sometimes this is hard for a parent to reconcile with what that parent wanted or had envisioned. This is especially true of Chrissy Durang, the mother in Byron Lane's novel Big Gay Wedding.

Chrissy has been running the Polite Society Ranch, a petting farm full of rescues, ever since she was widowed. She expects her only son Barnett to come home one day and take over the farm. Barnett is Chrissy's sun and moon and she can even semi-accept his homosexuality as long as he just keeps it quiet. But it turns out that Barnett's latest visit home isn't to tell his mother he's ready to take over, but to introduce her to his fiance, Ezra. And as for keeping his sexuality quiet, well, that's out too as the men want to hold the wedding on the ranch in this small Louisana town. There's a lot that will have to be overcome to make this wedding go off without a hitch, not least of which is Chrissy's and the town's homophobia.

Although the novel tackles some deep and important topics like homophobia, parental expectations, and acceptance, there is also a decidedly zany side to it as well. Barnett's grandfather, Paw Paw is a delight, loving and accepting his grandson as he is. Ezra's sister Nichole is completely over the top, especially in her wedding planning. Ezra's mother Victoria is crazy and has her own issues. Even Chrissy's constant elaborate checklists earn a giggle, with the checklist of things she doesn't like about Ezra coming back around positively in the end. Chrissy's struggle with her son's sexuality and his life choices, including not taking over the farm she's taken care of as his inheritance for so long, is hard and sometimes repugnant but realistic feeling. Seeking guidance from others on her struggle showcases the similarly misguided feelings of others in town but instead of reinforcing her feelings, seeing the homophobia in others helps her to reckon with and confront her own. Ultimately this ends up being a feel good novel with heart, even if it's not the most realistic you'll ever read and once you get past your anger at Chrissy's attitude in the beginning.

Review: The Trouble with Twins by Kathryn Siebel

2025-09-08T01:39:00.000-07:00

What better time to read a middle grade book than during back to school season? I am not much of a middle grade reader in general but when I was cleaning out my kids' books I found a small stash that looked fun so I kept them to read myself. Kathryn Siebels' The Trouble with Twins was one of the books I saved in the last purge. It's a cute story and was a nice change of pace from my usual reads.

Twins Arabella and Henrietta are very alike, except Arabella is somehow prettier, tidier, and more popular than her sister. Arabella is unquestionably their parents' favorite. Mostly this has been fine because the girls are each other's best friends. But when Arabella gets annoyed with Henrietta, flaunting her popularity and ignoring her sister's loneliness, Henrietta decides to do something she can't take back. Banished to live with her eccentric and intimidating great aunt Priscilla, Henrietta misses her sister desperately. Back at home, Arabella too, is discovering that living without Henrietta is sad and lonely. While Henrietta is making her first friend outside of Arabella, enduring her great aunt's appalling dinners, and generally trying to make her downhearted best of everything, Arabella sets out on an adventure to reunite her with Henrietta.

The story is told in a similar manner to The Princess Bride with a mother recounting the story to her daughter and the text including the asides and brief conversations they have over the contents of the story. The parents (and nanny) here are pretty reprehensible in the way that they neglect Henrietta and favor Arabella so clearly. Most of the other adults, with the exception of Inez, the bookstore owner, come off as bumbling ding-dongs, reinforcing the quirkiness of the novel. There are a few plot lines that receive the briefest of treatments and deep, loyal relationships with others happen too quickly in many cases. As is though, this is a pleasant fairy tale-ish read that will appeal to many middle grade readers.

Review: Mrs. Lorimer's Quiet Summer by Molly Clavering

2025-09-07T08:25:00.000-07:00

Dean Street Press is publishing some wonderful long out of print books from women writers of the early and mid-twentieth century. Molly Clavering's Mrs. Lorimer's Quiet Summer is one of these delightful reprints.

Lucy Lorimer is the middle-aged mother of four grown children and several noisy grandchildren, and a rather commercially successful writer. She is married to husband Jack, also known as the Colonel, who, at first blush, appears to leave all domestic dramas and organization to his wife. Her best friend Gray Douglas lives across the village from Lucy and is also a writer. The novel opens as Mrs. Lorimer is preparing to have her whole family descend on her for a visit and the logistics of where everyone will sleep is the biggest of her concerns. Of course, as the summer goes on, the adult children's problems, a health scare, and the unexpected reappearance of an old flame will complicate Lucy's life, leaving her to have anything but a quiet summer.

The novel really centers on Lucy and Gray's supportive friendship and the comfortable, respectful marriage between Lucy and Jack in this gossipy, quaint Scottish village. The stakes aren't terribly high, the worries and domestic difficulties small in the scheme of things, but they give just enough drama to keep the story moving forward. The result is an enjoyable and comfortable read with characters you can't help but smile over.

Review: Last Days of Summer by Steve Kluger

2025-09-05T13:13:00.000-07:00

If you ask me, I will tell you that I am more than a little tired of books set around World War II. I will also tell you that baseball bores me silly. And yet somehow, I picked up Steve Kluger's Last Days of Summer this summer (I've had it untouched long enough that I discovered Borders bookmarks in the front) and thoroughly enjoyed this warm, delightful, hilarious, and ultimately heartbreaking epistolary novel.

It's 1940, and twelve-year-old Joey Margolis lives in Brooklyn with his mother and his aunt, his father having remarried and abandoned his son. Joey is the only Jewish kid on the block and he's bullied pretty badly so he and his best friend Craig Nakamura cook up a way to get the bullies off Joey's (and Craig's) back. Joey sstarts writing to Charlie Banks, an up-and-coming star third baseman, albeit a hot-headed one, on the New York Giants asking him to hit a home run for Joey. But Joey doesn't just ask for the home run, he claims to be dying of every malady under the sun as each of his letters to Banks only gets him a signed photo of the slugger rather than a radio broadcast home run dedication. Finally Charlie snaps and writes back telling Joey to cut it out with the letters. And somehow thus is born one of the most entertaining letter-writing relationships ever. Joey is precocious and highly amusing (and smart and Machiavellian) and no adult who comes into his orbit can resist him for long, not President Roosevelt's press secretary, not Charlie's teammate Stuke, not Charlie's singer girlfriend Hazel, not the rabbi in charge of Joey's Bar Mitzvah, not even his principal (although he might give his teacher a nervous breakdown). The letters that Joey sends and receives are priceless and his correspondence gives the reader a close look at what a boy his age was thinking and worrying about in the run up to WWII. In addition to hounding Charlie, he watches and interprets the situation in Europe writing to advise the president based on his deductions, and he and Craig keep eyes on their elderly German neighbor, convinced she's a spy.

All of the characters here are written convincingly and the reader will be as taken in by Joey's charm as all the other characters are. The news clippings score cards, school papers, and other ephemera included in and amongst the letters add to the period detail. Kluger includes difficult subjects here, such as the Japanese internment camps and Hitler's unchecked military advances in Europe, with a light touch but doesn't minimize them. And while the reader can see the ending coming many pages before it actually arrives, the book has to end that way. This is a book of both laughter and tears, each completely earned. You'll be touched by both Joey and Charlie and will continue to giggle when you think of them and their relationship long after you close the cover.

Review: Little Weirds by Jenny Slate

2025-08-25T07:54:00.000-07:00

What happens when you have a reader who is almost completely unaware of pop culture who picks up a book written by a comedian and actress she has actually never heard of, one who apparently is celebrated for her whimsy and oddness? Well, you get one seriously disappointed reader who wonders if she should have taken the title of Little Weirds more seriously. Although this reader would argue that these are more than little; they are outsized weirds, potentially dreamed up under the influence of something mind altering that was never going to be as profound to someone not on the same trip as the author.

This collection of (semi?) autobiographical essays and strange imagined short fictions are often written in stream of consciousness or in choppy prose poem form. It was honestly exhausting to try and follow Slate's random trains of thought within each piece, never mind reading multiple pieces back to back. The pieces themselves feel as if they are trying too hard to be as quirky as possible, forcing the weird of the title, overwhelming the organic flow of the stories she's ostensibly trying to tell. This is billed as feminist and funny and universal and I have to wonder about the critics and readers claiming this. I missed the humor entirely (admittedly this could be a me thing rather than a her thing). I found some of her rage at the patriarchy manufactured simply for the sake of rage (and I say this as a woman who is not blind to the many faults of the patriarchy). And there was not one universal thing here as compared to my life (could I be too old to relate?). I am trying to give this book the benefit of the doubt with my parenthetical comments but to be completely honest, the reading experience was tedious and I was bored throughout.

Review: Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

2025-08-24T18:42:00.000-07:00

Several years ago, I reluctantly picked up Charlotte McConaghy's debut novel, Migrations. It just didn't seem like the sort of novel I wanted to read. How incredibly wrong I was. Fast forward to this year when, despite Migrations being one of my top ten books for the year when I read it, I was conflicted by the idea of Wild Dark Shore. I bought it but then read everything else but it until finally, something pushed me to pick it up. And once again, I wondered why I hadn't devoured this tense and gripping novel immediately.

Opening with an injured woman rescued from the freezing water around Shearwater Island, this is cli-fi, a thriller, a warning, and a beautifully written literary novel all wrapped in one. Rowan is badly injured and nursed back to health by Dominic Salt, the island and former research base's caretaker, and his three children, Raff, Fen, and Orly. Dominic doesn't trust Rowan. Why would she be coming to Shearwater, this remote island near Antarctica? Rowan doesn't trust Dominic either. She's asking questions about the now abandoned research base and is skeptical about his assertion that all their communications equipment has been destroyed, severing their connection to mainland Australia. While Rowan and Dominic might be wary of each other and the secrets each senses the other is keeping, the Salt children are much more open to this enigmatic woman who has arrived on their shores, especially the youngest child, nine-year-old Orly who has a keen interest in the seeds kept in the seed vault on the island, a vault which is now in danger of imminent collapse due to encroaching sea water. As the sea water continues to rise and the characters have no choice but to wait six weeks for the scheduled arrival of the ship coming to evacuate them and the most vital of the banked seeds, so does the tension in the novel. All five of the characters narrate their own stories, giving glimpses of their pasts, fleshing out their characters, and sharing their tragic losses with the reader.

McConaghy's evocation of a windswept island being inexorably consumed by the sea, the wild life that makes their home on its shores, and the plants that survive in such an inhospitable environment made even more inhospitable by climate change is beautiful. Her slow reveals of each character's secrets, even as they forge deeper relationships to each other keep the reader turning the pages. There is an otherworldly feel to the novel but also a sense of reckoning, both for the characters and for the reader who must acknowledge that this apocalyptic version of the world could be scarily prescient. And although this is a novel grappling with the damage that human beings do to the earth, to the animals and plants around us, to each other, it is also a novel about love and hope and perseverence. Grief winds its way throughout the narrative but so does deep love. This is a stunning read.

Review: Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala

2025-08-22T09:20:00.000-07:00

I chose this book for my book club this summer, mainly because I wanted to read it myself and decided that I was going to drag others along on what was guaranteed to be a difficult read. The first response I got, long before the meeting, was "Why on earth would you choose this book for us. It's terrible!" And by terrible, the reader/commenter meant not that it wasn't well written but that it was horrific to be reading about the sudden, unexpected, and gut wrenching deaths of almost an entire family and the subsequent grief and despair of the lone survivor, daughter, wife, mother. Luckily this reader kept pushing through and ultimately appreciated the book and we all went on to have a deep, if somber, discussion.

In 2004, economist Sonali Deraniyagala was on holiday in Sri Lanka with her husband and their two school aged sons, spending Christmas with her parents at a seaside resort she'd been visiting since she was a child growing up in the country, when in an instant everything changed. As Deraniyagala stood and watched, a tumbling white wave came rushing toward their room. She and her husband grabbed both of their boys and ran, finding a Jeep to climb into to try and escape the onslaught of the ocean. But the Jeep couldn't outrun the wave and it was upended, with Deraniyagala losing sight of her family while fighting for her own life. Miraculously surviving the tsunami and in shock, she then faced the darkest time of her entire life, fearing and then knowing for sure that Steve, their boys Vik and Malli, and both of her parents were missing and had lost their lives while she had not.

This memoir is not just the account of the terrible wave that swept into her life and devastated it, but also of the aftermath, of her desperate madness, the overwhelming desire for her own death, the stark grief she suffered, and her own soul stripped bare. She shied away from looking too closely at such an all-encompassing loss until she could no longer avoid it, protecting her mind from the personal remembrances that could derail her, and yet she had to go on living, go on in a world without her most beloved people in it. She writes beautifully and movingly of the natural world, shares the intense and harrowing feelings that grief engendered in her, and gives glimpses of who her husband, her sons, and her parents were and how she continues to navigate a world without them so many years on from her loss. The book is raw and unfiltered, emotional and crushing. It is also a powerful testament to love.

Review: Train Go Sorry by Leah Hager Cohen

2025-08-11T19:19:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, I thought it would be wonderful to learn sign language. I never really got beyond the alphabet in the Girl Scout Handbook, aside from learning some quite rude signs from Instagram, but I remain fascinated by the language. Because of that fascination, somewhere along the way I picked up Train Go Sorry: Inside a Deaf World by Leah Hager Cohen, thinking to read and learn more about the deaf community but I let the book languish on my shelves for ages. While some of it is unfortunately quite dated now (published in 1994), it still gives an interesting and thought-provoking look into a community and culture I've read very little about, and interacted with even less.

At the time of her writing of the book, Cohen's father Oscar was the superintendent of the Lexington School for the Deaf in New York so Cohen herself spent quite a lot of time in or adjacent to the deaf community, although as a hearing child she didn't attend the school or learn ASL herself until adulthood. She had a unique entre into the deaf community via her father and via her paternal grandparents, both of whom were deaf. The book jumps around touching on a variety of topics, from the politics, debates, and discussions within the deaf community (students and staff at Gallaudet University had just successfully protested against a hearing president) to the fears that things like the pressure to mainstream deaf children instead of maintaining dedicated schools and the push towards cochlear implants would lead to an erasure of deaf culture. She presents the arguments for and against ASL, signed exact English, and vocalization without offering a value judgment on any of them as options in the world. She discusses sign language interpreting, including her own experience learning to interpret, and considers how interpreters are not native speakers of sign language, presenting challenges that most hearing people wouldn't ever have thought about (I sure hadn't!). She shares tales of her own deaf grandparents, telling of both the difficulties (and tragedies) and the joys in their lives in a hearing world. And finally, she weaves stories of two students at the school throughout the rest of her narrative, sharing the extra challenges that James, whose family is economically disadvantaged, and Sophia, whose family is non-native English speaking, face as they work toward their high school degrees and toward a future that they are just starting to envision.

The book hops back and forth between all of Cohen's focuses, which can be a bit choppy but the information she presents is consistently interesting. She draws the attention of hearing readers to issues and concerns that they've probably never spared even one second of time thinking about, and has presented the needs and wants of the deaf community, which is not a monolith, in a balanced and thoughtful manner. There's history and personal stories both in this detailed and engaging non-fiction book. People who want insight into a people and community they probably don't have much knowledge about will learn a lot from this book, and yet leave it with a lot to think about.

Review: That Quail, Robert by Margaret A. Stanger

2025-06-25T14:43:00.000-07:00

If you're an animal lover, this sweet little 1960s book written by Margaret Stanger and based on the true story of Robert the quail is for you.

Tommy and Mildred Kienzle watch a small quail build a nest in their yard. After mama quail and her twelve hatchlings leave the nest, the Kienzles eventually go to examine the abandoned nest and discover two remaining eggs. One is cracked but one is tiny and perfect. Imagine their surprise when the small egg shows signs of hatching. Imprinting on the humans whose house she hatched in, Robert (initially thought to be a male, he turned out to be female) joined the family as a dearly cherished little bird. Stanger, a close friend of the Kienzles, had a front row seat watching this little feathered ball of personality grow up and captivate so many people, both near and far. She also quail-sat when her friends needed to be out of town or out of the country. Robert was entertaining, quirky, and very particular about her routines. She was a good ambassador of her species and the stories recounted of the little quail are endearing. The book is quite short but charming, with reproduction drawings scattered through it. The language is very much of its time and often feels like reportage. Readers looking for a quick feel good book will certainly find it here.

Review: Women Discoverers: Top Women in Science by Marie Moinard and Christelle Pecout

2025-06-23T07:34:00.000-07:00

Graphic novels, memoirs, and biographies are good inital ways to introduce readers to people, places, and things. This particular book, written by Marie Moinard and illustrated by Christelle Pecout is a nice introduction to a diverse set of women in science, both well known and a quite a few whose accomplishments should be better remembered or acknowledged than they are. The women in the collection are from all over the world and are from varied scientific disciplines. Some are still living while others are long since dead. The more well known women, Marie Curie, Ada Lovelace, Hedy Lamarr, Rosalind Franklin, and Mae Jemison, are given full comics, several pages long, depicting their lives while the less well known are given very brief one page biographies. The information on each woman is simple and easy to understand. The art is in the realistic style and shows not only a head shot of each woman but also each woman at work with her notable discovery. This is very much an introductory book, one that will hopefully inspire interested girls and women (and boys and men) to dive deeper into these impressive women.

Review: This Is Not a Game by Kelly Mullen

2025-06-22T06:36:00.000-07:00

When I saw that Kelly Mullen's debut novel, This Is Not a Game, was a locked room mystery set on Mackinac Island, I couldn't hand over my credit card fast enough. I spend my summers on an island near Mackinac, have visited every summer, and have friends who live there year round. It is a beautiful and unique place and the perfect setting for a mystery so I was disappointed that this didn't really land for me.

Addie has not only been dumped by her fiance but he is taking full credit for the wildly successful, both in terms of popularity and monetarily, video game that they developed together (although Addie really did the lion's share of the work). Addie is unhappy and flailing, suing Brian and searching for proof that the game is at least as much hers as his when her widowed grandmother Mimi, who lives on Mackinac Island, a small, quaint island in Lake Huron, calls to request that Addie come to visit. Mimi and Addie have had a bit of a strained relationship over the ex-fiance so the request is unusual. It turns out that Mimi has been invited to the island socialite's charity auction and commanded, via a blackmail letter, to bid on and win a particular piece of memorabilia. Mimi needs Addie's support at the gala, although she doesn't want to tell Addie she's being blackmailed, and certainly doesn't want to reveal what she's done to warrant said blackmail. At the event itself, there's a large cast of characters, all of whom seem uncomfortable and unhappy. Strange atmosphere for a party. When a fierce winter storm comes through, trapping them all in the mansion, the hostess is murdered and almost everyone there had a motive. She is not the last to die though. With the weather forcing the police to stay on the mainland rather than risk coming to the island, Mimi and Addie decide to do some sleuthing of their own.

The plot itself is fairly complex with not only the murders, the blackmail mystery, but also with what is going on with Addie's video game dispute. The characters are quirky but only a small handful are fleshed out enough to be actual suspects. Mimi is meant to be an irrascible but fun character but just misses the mark and Addie is rather colorless as her grandmother's sidekick. Not connecting with either main character didn't help when I also wanted (and didn't get) more of Mackinac island itself. There was a distinct lack of the flavor of the island, perhaps due to the timing of the book (it is difficult for outsiders to get to the island in the off season, as so many of the auction guests must do), or perhaps because the island seems chosen only because it can be cut off from the mainland, not for its unique characteristics, or perhaps because the majority of the story takes place inside an elaborate mansion that could have been built anywhere (incidentally, the geology of the island is all wrong for the deep and forbidding moat around the house). Then, despite the title declaring this not a game, uncovering the mysteries, murders and blackmail, is in fact treated as a game, with references to Murderscape, Addie's game, helping to make sense of the clues rather often. All of this added up to me being disappointed and I wish I had enjoyed this more than I ultimately did.

Review: In Castle and Court House: Being Reminiscences of 30 Years in Ireland by Ramsay Colles

2025-06-21T06:08:00.000-07:00

I like to buy books about the places I've traveled and if I can do so while in that place, at a local bookshop, even better. So I picked up this reprint of Ramsay Colles' work while in Dublin, thinking that it would be an interesting read about a long disappeared Ireland and of Colles' experiences there. Clearly I didn't examine the book closely enough before I brought it home because this was quite possibly the driest and most boring thing I've ever read about this fascinating and beautiful country full of a million stories worth telling.

Colles spends an inordinate amount of time recounting his own (and his family's) importance by name dropping and patting himself on the back for his own intelligence. He talks of his role in the politics of the day, diving into minutia that has not stood the test of time, extolls his connections and details his letter writing. Colles writes of people he has known, many of whom have since become much more obscure than they must have been in his day, and he feels compelled to share any actual or quasi-notable thing that relations, no matter how distant, of his have accomplished not only in Ireland but around the globe. He may well have been an important figure in Ireland's history (this ignorant American had never heard of him before) but even after reading this reminiscence of his own, I still couldn't say whether he was actually important or merely puffed up by a feeling of his own importance. I can, however, say unreservedly that he is an insufferable bore, as is this book. Did I miss kernels of interesting things? Perhaps. But when your eyes are so glazed over that you can hardly see the words, you might be forgiven for this possible failing.

Review: Daughters of Shandong by Eve J. Chung

2025-06-20T03:56:00.000-07:00

There is so much history in the world that we often aren't familiar with unless it is the history of our own country or of our own family, the former taught in schools and the latter passed down through the generations, often incomplete. I did learn a bit about the Chinese Civil War between Communist Mao Zedong and Nationalist Chiang Kai-shek in school but certainly didn't learn it in depth, especially the atrocities that accompanied this brutal war. Author Eve J. Chung was also unaware of the whole of this history and of the extent of the suffering that her own grandmother faced during this period in her life. Daughters of Shandong is Chung's attempt at giving a fictionalized voice to the grandmother who survived so much and never shared the full extent of the trauma that marked her life.

Hai Ang is a child, the oldest daughter of the Ang heir. That she is a daughter makes her less than in the eyes of the family, especially her cruel grandmother. She tries hard to be a dutiful daughter, even as she watches her mother be cruelly abused and denigrated for not producing a male heir for the next generation, birthing only daughter after daughter. Although her family is wealthy and land-owning, Hai, her younger sisters, and their mother are treated poorly, akin to the peasants who work the Ang land. Hai suffers throughout much of the story, first as a "worthless" daughter in a family that only valued sons, then at the hands of the Communists intent on punishing this young girl for the landowner sins of her father and grandfather since the men had disappeared and couldn't be tried in person, and finally as a refugee fleeing almost certain death and enduring extreme hardship with her mother and sisters as they sought to find and be reunited in Taiwan with the family who left them behind without a second thought. The trials and tribulations that these women endure over the years are almost unbelievable; they move from harrowing experience to harrowing experience with only small tokens of hope or kindness between them. Hai is a fully sympathetic character, her mother is part downtrodden and submissive and part strength. Younger sister Di is the least likeable of the women (aside from the truly evil grandmother), retaining her selfishness despite the unceasing love and care she receives from Hai and their mother.

The story of the women's experiences and journey is a compelling one, at least until they are reunited with the family that discarded them. It is at this point that the narrative timeline compresses and wraps up each of the women's fates quickly and incompletely. I'd speculate that this is where the fictional Hai's story converges with what Chung knows for certain about her grandmother's story. It certainly feels like she had full creative control over the first three quarters of the novel but felt constrained to stay within the bounds of reality for the last quarter, making it impossible to fully flesh out a satisfying ending. Despite this shortcoming, this is an interesting tale of survival and the resilience of women and one that the majority of my book club thoroughly enjoyed.