This is early--the month isn't over yet--but I am only reading a nonfiction book at the moment, and I know I will not finish it in November, so twelve books it is, and twelve books it will still be when the month ends, so I am going to go ahead and list the dozen books right here, right now:
1. I started the month out reading about one of my favorite fictional families, the Vanderbeekers in The Vanderbeekers Make a Wish by Karina Yan Glaser. Dad is off to the midwest, helping out his best friend, and the kids are trying to plan a really great surprise for his birthday. One of the kids puts on an old jacket that their dad has, which belonged to his dad, and find something in his pocket which puts them on a quest to find out where their grandfather was planning to take their dad for the graduation trip that never happened--their grandfather died suddenly instead. The kids are excited to learn more about the grandfather they never met. Unfortunately, they are so absorbed in this that when their mother's parents unexpectedly arrive, they do not have the same enthusiasm to learn about their still-living grandparents. Everyone (in all of the generations) learns quite a bit about appreciating family, and the situation is nicely set up for the NEXT Vanderbeeker novel. Which I will be happy to read once it is published!
2. How did I learn about the Dr. Ruth Galloway novels? I can't remember! She is a character that I like and also do not like simultaneously! But the books are very interesting. The first one is The Crossing Places, and the author is Elly Griffiths (which is a pen name for Domenica de Rosa) in which we first meet forensic archaeologist Dr. Ruth Galloway. When the police find bones, Ruth is called in to help with dating them. They are the bones of a child, and the police think (hope?) they might be the bones of a missing child so they can solve an old case, but the bones are ancient. However, the mystery has only begun with the bones!
3. Conditional Citizens by Laila Lalami. My note to myself about this book reads: "Really good description of the inequities that exist in the US today. Comparison to Morocco, where Laila grew up." This is a very readable nonfiction book that I highly recommend. You would think that the "otherness" an immigrant feels would go away once they become a citizen, but not necessarily so. What is a “conditional citizen”? Anyone who doesn't have the same rights, protections, and liberties as other Americans. This happens to people of color, or people from certain parts of the world. People like Laila Lalami.
4. Even though the main character sometimes isn't my favorite person, I got kind of hooked on the Dr. Ruth Galloway novels, so after I read the first one, I put a hold on the second one, and The Janus Stone by Elly Griffiths was my next read of the month. The owner of some property is tearing down an old mansion, turned residential school, to build some luxury condos. Unfortunately, some bones are found. Their burial position suggests they might be old bones in a ceremonial position, but while the bones are old, they are not THAT old. The bones show evidence that a murder took place about 60 years in the past. The homicide detectives and the forensic archaeologist try to unravel that mystery.
5. All the devils are here by Louise Penny takes us to Paris, where the entire Gamache family is having a reunion in honor of the impending birth of Annie and Jean Guy's baby girl. On their very first evening together, when the Canadian contingent of the family has arrived, Stephen, Armand's godfather, is struck down by a hit and run driver in what appears to be a deliberate hit. Armand and Jean Guy need to find out why. What had Stephen been doing? Stephen is a billionaire invester in his 90s--what could he have become involved in that made someone want him dead? As they work with the Paris police to solve the crime, they also resolve some past hurts and hard feelings that had arisen between Armand and his son Daniel.
6. The paper dolls were my influence about what to read next! The October 1966 paper doll was Kate Nagy, from Kate Seredy's book The Good Master. I liked the look of her clothes, and wanted to find out what culture they came from, so I looked for the book, and we had in it the HBLL. So I visited Hungary and got to know Kate and her family. Her uncle is "the good master"--a very kind man who owns a lot of land and horses and sheep, and who is kind and fair and generous. Kate's cousin Jancsi resents her at first, and she is a bit of trouble for sure! But they become great friends. That name, Jancsi, is pronounced Yawnchee, by the way. I was fortunate to grow up with a number of children from Hungarian immigrant families. Like, families named Nagy and Cseke, for example. So I knew that Cs = Ch. But I still looked it up to be sure! Interesting thing about Kate Seredy--she was an illustrator, and her American editor suggested that she write a children's book about life in Hungary, where Kate grew up. So she did--this one, and then several more. Although her books are very solidly about Hungary, they were written in English and never really caught on in Hungary.
7. I loved The Good Master! It was such a great feel-good book. So I got the sequel, The Singing Tree (also by Kate Seredy, of course) and it was also a delightful, though much darker book. Because while the first book was set before WWI, this one was set during WWI, and that was a hard time. All the men were off to fight, and Jancsi, his mother, and Kate, are left to run the farm. They take in Lily (Kate's erstwhile enemy), six refugee children from Germany, six Russian POWs, Lily's mother, Jancsi's grandparents--the family circle grows as they learn that all people are alike. The Russians are not evil. The Germans are not evil. The Hungarians are not evil. They are all just people, caught up in a war they didn't want and they didn't create. An interesting and surprising thing to me was that the Hungarians were NOT overjoyed when the US entered the war late in the game--they were so ready to be DONE, and fresh troops just meant that the war was going to continue, instead of end, like they had hoped. By that point, they didn't care so much about who won; they just wanted an end to the fighting.
8. The Library of Lost and Found by Phaedra Patrick--this is another book that either was recommended to me or something. Maybe I read about it because it was like another book? Anyways, I put a hold on it and it came in and I read it. As a librarian, I always am interested in books about libraries and librarians. Martha is a library volunteer who is hoping to actually be hired, but when the opportunity comes up, she keeps being passed over. A single woman who devoted her life to caring for her parents who died recently, Martha volunteers for too many things. Her house is full to bursting with projects she has taken on to help other people, so much that it is overwhelming. Martha is given a book that is missing its cover, but is, surprisingly, dedicated to her, and seems to have been written by her grandmother--but AFTER the date upon which she thought her grandmother had died!! What is going on? Martha finds what had been lost, including maybe herself.
9. The Secret World of Og by Pierre Berton was another paper doll inspired book choice. The paper dolls were both Penny AND Pam. Though Pierre Berton is a Canadian author, I had not read this children's book before. First a bit about Pierre Berton--I definitely was aware of him as a child, but not as an author of children's books--as an author of history books, yes, and also as one of the panel on Front Page Challenge, a long running "game" show on CBC about history and politics. The show ran 1957 through 1995, and Pierre Berton was on it for the entire time. I also remember Betty Kennedy and Gordon Sinclair, and the host, Fred Davis. I watched this show when I was at home and the other kids were at school. It might have been a "game show" but it was pretty highbrow, and definitely educational, not entertainment per se. Anyways--I was thinking of buying this book for Nancy (but she already had it) and when I looked it up, a new hardback was selling for over $800!! What!! Don't worry--you can find it for about $14.95. Back to the book--I really liked it! It was an entertaining read. Who knew about the little green men in their secret world? Not me! Pierre Berton named the children in the novel after his own children: Penny, Pamela, Patsy, Peter, and Paul. He and his wife Janet had three more children after the book was published: Peggy, Perri and....wait for it...Eric. Seriously!!! After seven P names...ERIC!
10. Back to Elly Griffiths and The House at Sea's End. Six bodies are discovered at the base of a cliff where the sea has been eating away at the shore. They were clearly executed; their hands were tied behind their backs, one clean shot apiece. Who were they? The bodies are dated to about 1940, and tests on the bones revealed that the people whose bones they were had likely been from Germany. Ruth and the police end up investigating The Home Guard--few of them are still alive, and then, as the investigation goes along, these elderly survivors start turning up dead, too. Who is it that wants what happened in the past to stay in the past?
11. I grabbed Clover Twig and the Magical Cottage by Kaye Umansky on one of my quick forays into the juvenile section (since it is on my floor and adult fiction is not) to grab a book to take with me on a day that Josie had a doctor's appointment, so I needed to bring reading material. I am so glad I randomly picked this book!! I have never read anything by Kaye Umansky before, which is a shame because she is delightful! I looked her website up, and she just seems like such a fun, imaginative person. Also she was written 130 books. I was all like "how can somebody write 130 books (and a few musicals for children) and I have never heard of her before?" She is UK based, and I do not think all her books have made it across the pond, but she is definitely an author that I am interested in. Planning to read more of her books!
12. Last night I finished another Louise Perry novel, her newest, The Madness of Crowds. This book, written during the pandemic, imagines a post-pandemic world (is that EVER going to happen? Seems a remote possibility at this point!) in which people are getting together without masks or social distancing because they all got the vaccines, and the vaccines worked. (You can tell this is a work of fiction!!) Dr. Abigail Robinson was commissioned by the Canadian government to look into the pandemic, looking at statistics because she is a statistician, but they do not accept her findings. Her numbers are right, but the morality is--cold. So she promotes her own agenda which involves both euthanasia and eugenics. As Armand Gamache and the other police investigate an attempt on her life, readers learn some actual history. Or, if you look it up, it is actual history. Like, it is a novel, so you could think it is all made up, but Ewen Cameron and his controversial and then notorious lab at McGill that was funded by the CIA--she did not make that up. It happened. To our shame. The title of the book comes from an 1841 book, written by Charles Mackay called Extraordinary Popular Delusion and the Madness of Crowds. As I look at what seems like insanity around me in the world today, I think--crowds don't have to physically gather for the madness to set in. Social media, and just the media in general, is enough to create the madding crowd. (I have already requested Mackay's book, so it will appear on next month's list.)
