Remarkably Bright Creatures

I loved Remarkably Bright Creatures. Some consider the main character to be Marcellus, the giant Pacific octopus in an aquarium in Washington state. He was an important character, but not the main character. And while I did learn a good amount about giant Pacific octopuses, this was not a book about them.

Tova has been working as a cleaner at the aquarium for years. Keeping busy after the mysterious death of her son has always been important. She has her Knit Wit friends but otherwise keeps to herself. Somehow, she develops a relationship with Marcellus. And perhaps he holds the key to figuring out what happened to Tova's son.

Cameron is a young man dealing with one crappy thing after another and he's going to use his time of unemployment to find out a little more about his past. He believes that he might be able to learn more about his mother and find his father if he travels to Washington where her mother went to high school and where he believes he was conceived. 

The audiobook is narrated alternatively by Tova, Marcellus and Cameron. The voices of each were just perfect. The pace of the novel was wonderful. I enjoyed every minute. 

And then... I was mesmerized when I went to the Florida Aquarium a week or so after finishing the novel and spent a good amount of my time staring at their giant Pacific octopus. If only I could have gotten a better photograph of her. The reflections, the light (or lack of light), the water, the glass all contributed to making this a very hard photograph to capture. Watching her gave me such pleasure and made me think of Marcellus. How did she wind up in the aquarium? Did she long to be out of the aquarium and in the wild?

Ordinary Grace

I discovered Ordinary Grace while scrolling through the books available at the library last week. I recognized the name William Kent Krueger as being the author of This Tender Land, a much talked about novel these days, one that I haven't (yet?) read. Next I checked the reviews on goodreads.com. They seemed fabulous. Having nothing else to read, I checked this novel out of the library and began to read.

I was quickly caught up in the summer story of brothers, 13-year old Frankie Drum and  his younger brother, Jake.

It was the summer of 1961. Their father, Nathan, has been a minister in the southern Minnesota town of New Bremen, the hometown of their mother, Ruth. There's a lot of personal history in this small town.

The summer of 1961 is a summer of tragedy for the Drum family and for the people of New Bremen. Each person's faith is tested numerous times over the summer. As such, this is a book about faith. It's also a mystery, a genre I don't typically enjoy. But in this case the mystery was secondary.

For a book full of heartache, this was a pleasant book to lose oneself in.
 

For the Love of Libraries

I started reading The Library Book by Sudan Orlean as an e-book. I was juggling books, needed to finish reading something for a book club, put it to the side... and it expired off my iPad. And then I picked it up as a physical paper-and-ink book. If ever there was a book to read while holding it in my hand, turning the pages, breathing in the scent of the book, really feeling the book, this was this book.

The Library Book is two things. It's a love affair with libraries - and books. It's also a chronicle of the great library fire at the Los Angeles' Central Library. I really enjoyed the book because it evoked memories of times spent at the library. First at my first library, the Brooklyn Public Library, the library of my childhood, and later at other libraries where I've happened to live. I'm just not sure that the story of the unsolved mystery of the Central Library fire meshed well with that love story. It did, however, serve as a backdrop to Orlean's exploration of the Los Angeles Public Library system. So perhaps it did make sense to pair the two.

I'll be discussing this book with my community book club later in the year. I hope I can remember all I'd like to share with my fellow readers at that time.

Orleans has great memories of going to the library as a young girl with her mother. (Her mother passed away shortly before the publication of this book.) She moves to Los Angeles as a young mother and knows with certainty that she is going to share the library with her small son. Her love of the library - and of books - is so clear.

I loved the library as a young girl. As an older teen, I was reading mostly mass market paperbacks which I could easily afford on my babysitter's budget. I continued buying my books from bookstores until my tastes turned more to recent bestsellers. Although I could still afford them, I was more mature and somewhat wiser and realized that the cost per minute of enjoyment just wasn't there for most books. I became more selective in what I purchased from bookstores. Orlean must have gone through something similar.

I couldn’t walk into a bookstore without leaving with something, or several somethings. I loved the fresh alkaline tang of new ink and paper, a smell that never emanated from a broken-in library book.

The story of why Harry Peak was the prime suspect in the library fire and why he was never convicted dragged on somewhat for me. I'm not really a "true crime" kind of reader. I didn't really care about the details of his poor, sorry life. Hearing what the library fire meant to others was very powerful. Plus this was interspersed with tales of the history of public libraries in America, about how and why people became librarians and about the love of so many for libraries, their books, and what they stand for.

Orlean clearly states her purpose at the conclusion of the book.

I looked around the room at the few people scattered here and there. Some were leaning into books, and a few were just resting, having a private moment in a public place, and I felt buoyed by being here. This is why I wanted to write this book, to tell about a place I love that doesn't belong to me but feels like it is mine, and how that feels marvelous and exceptional. All the things that are wrong in the world seem conquered by a library's simple unspoken promise: Here I am, please tell me your story; here is my story, please listen.

If her purpose resonates with you, this is probably a book you should explore. And I'd encourage you to visit your local public library, browse a little book, and then borrow this gem.

How cool is this book?

The October List

May is Mystery Month for Books & Beer Club. After quickly picking last month's romance book, a little more time was spent selecting our mystery. I wish I could remember the three final choices. One was a classic, written in the 1880s, supposedly the first in it's genre. I totally can't remember what the second one was. And The October List by Jeffery Deaver was the third. We did a vote and The October List won.

I liked the sound of the synopsis on goodreads.com.

Gabriela waits desperately for news of her abducted daughter.
At last, the door opens.
But it's not the negotiators. It's not the FBI.
It's the kidnapper.
And he has a gun.

How did it come to this?

Two days ago, Gabriela's life was normal. Then, out of the blue, she gets word that her six-year-old daughter has been taken. She's given an ultimatum: pay half a million dollars and find a mysterious document known as the "October List" within 30 hours, or she'll never see her child again.

A mind-bending novel with twists and turns that unfold from its dramatic climax back to its surprising beginning, THE OCTOBER LIST is Jeffery Deaver at his masterful, inventive best.

I was most intrigued by the fact that the book works backwards. And that turned out to be what I most enjoyed about The October List. I felt like I had to pay a little bit more attention to what was going on so I'd be able to follow the sequence of events going back in time. I will admit to being very surprised when I opened the e-book on my iPad and Chapter 36. Hmm, did I not get the entire book? Then I realized that the chapter numbers were even in reverse.

Climax after climax occurs, but we don't know what led to each individual climax. Each chapter starts... and ends... with a sort of cliffhanger. I wanted to know How did we get here? more than once, rather than the more normal, Where is this author taking this next? It made for a quick read, although it did require a bit of rereading when I'd put the book down for a few hours and then pick it up and need to remember what I'd been wondering about. Different time of continuity problem for me.

The main character, Gabriela, is a photographer. So each chapter, even in the e-book, shows a photograph that is somehow related to the chapter. I didn't catch on to that until I was up to Chapter 10 or 9... but once I did, I went back to see how each photograph related to the chapter that followed. That was very clever.

Did I like the book? No, not really. I liked the clever way it was written from ending to beginning. But crime thriller really isn't my genre. About three quarters of the way through the book, I had an idea of how the story might have begun. I wasn't exactly correct, but I was definitely on the right track. I also realized at that point that I really didn't like the characters much at all. But on the other hand, it made me really determined to finish the book and learn what set this story in motion.

Since this isn't a genre I usually read but it is the genre of my author friend, Ronnie Allen, I was able to gain a better appreciation of the way Ronnie develops her characters and weaves subplots throughout. My b rain just doesn't think that way - not forward and certainly not in reverse!

When I finished the book, I thought, yay! I have a week and a half with no book club title pending. I can read whatever I'd like for the next 10 days. What was I thinking? Community book club is this Tuesday. That gives me three days to read a book that has nothing to do with book club - and isn't part of the Outlander series. I guess I'll see what's available from the library and take it from there.

Eight reasons why I loved Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

I didn't expect to like Murder on the Orient Express. I expected to plod through it. Why? I'm not a fan of mysteries. And Agatha Christie (whom I'd never read before), well, she's just not for me. When it came time to select a mystery to read for Books and Beer Club's May meeting, I was okay with reading this one. I felt it was probably I book I should read at some point. Agatha Christie is classic. The book wasn't too long. And I've always loved the idea of luxury travel aboard a train such as the Orient Express. Maybe that's the number one reason why I loved reading this book.

1.     I love the idea of the Orient Express. I mean the train, not the novel. Travel was so classy and dignified back then. In my mind, I always liken the Orient Express to a cruise to no where. It wasn't all about the transportation. The journey was the important part. Granted, my impressions of the Orient Express were based on my experiences with the Venice-Simplon Orient Express, a tour company that ran restored carriages from the 1920s and 1930s between Venice and London during the time I was a FIT agent in the early 1980s. FIT stands for foreign independent travel. And in the 80s,  in the years before internet bookings, and probably in the years since, foreign independent travel was the epitome of luxury. We'd plan out every aspect of a client's trip. Itineraries were pages long and included phrases like "car and driver at your disposal" and "reservation at <insert Michelin-rated restaurant> for 2". I had the opportunity to book the Venice-Simplon Orient Express at least twice. It was sure a lot more luxurious than booking Amtrak.


2.     The passengers on this Orient Express lived up to my expectations. There was a Count and a Contessa. There was a princess. There was a wealthy American. People traveled with valets and lady's maids.

3.     The murder takes places early enough in the story so that basically the entirety of the book is based on the solving of the crime.

4.     The train is snowbound in the midst of Yugo-Slavia with no contact with the outside world. This means that our detective, Hercule Poirot had no way to verify the identities or the alibis of the passengers on the train. Can you imagine anything comparable today in this day and age? I suppose in a blizzard in the middle of nowhere it would be possible to be stuck in an information void. It seemed somehow romantic in the novel, but if something like that happened today, the rest of the world would know about it in short order and rescuers would be quickly sent in to get the train back on its tracks. (Just sharing my thinking right here. Even if HP did have a way to contact the outside world, how quickly would he have been able to get information about the passengers on the train? I guess the importance of being stuck in the snow was to prove the point that the murderer had to be one of the passengers on the train. I'm also amazed that HP was so quickly able to discern the real identity of the murdered passenger who was traveling under an alias.)

5.     Hercule Poirot is clever. (I'm not talking about the way he cleverly solves the mystery. He's clever in a totally different way.)  The interplay amongst HP, M. Bouc, the high up guy from Wagon Lits, the company that operates the train, and Constantine, the doctor who examines the dead body, is extremely clever. The writing is clever. We can forgive Ms. Christie for all the stereotypes used in the book because the writing is so clever.

6.     I love saying Wagon Lits. It's pronounced VAH-guhn-lee.

7.      I love the way the book was organized. The facts, the evidence and finally Hercule Poirot sits back and thinks. Everything is clearly laid out, including HP's completely far-fetched thinking. A map of the train carriage is included. And the motives and alibis of all the passengers is reiterated in summary format.
 
8.     It was okay that the story was totally unbelievable. Totally. And the solution that Hercule Poirot developed was nothing short of miraculous.

Will I read another of Agatha Christie's mysteries again? I might. Probably not anytime soon. Too many books, too little time and all that. But I certainly wouldn't be averse to selecting a title from the Miss Marple series if the need arises to read another mystery book! Everyone should read a little Agatha Christie.

Now I'm off to find a version of the movie to watch. Just because I can...