Ring for Jeeves

Ring for Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse, 256 pages.

A Jeeves and Wooster book without much Wooster. Bertie has lent Jeeves out to Lord Rowcester, who is trying to make a go of it making book on horse races. A good solid addition to the Wodehouse canon. Available on Hoopla as a downloadable audio book. Wodehouse on audio is almost always a treat.

Mr Splitfoot

Mr. Splitfoot by Samantha Hunt, 322 pages.
The novel veers back and forth between a couple of genres, starting off as a tale of two orphans being raised on some weird combination of orphanage and cult, to something near horror, as a weird, off-kilter ghost story. Nat and Ruth were always looking out for each other when they were young and living on the farm. Something separated them when they got older and the next time we see Ruth she's older, mute and leading her pregnant niece on a strange cross-country walking tour.
Strange and kind of wonderfully fun.

Who Thought This Was a Good Idea

Who Thought This Was a Good Idea by Alyssa Mastromonaco, 244 pages.
Drawing on her decade-long career working for Barack Obama, first as a campaign volunteer, and then through many different jobs, like Director of Scheduling and Advance, until she ended as his Deputy Chief of Staff. Mastromonaco is a clever and humane person and this comes across in her writing. Her admiration and appreciation of the 44th President of the United States comes across as well. She tells a lot of great stories that make going into politics as an aide seem like a really good idea. A great read for anyone nostalgic for the long-ago days of 2008-2016.

The Hate U Give

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, 444 pages.
I remember, based on the first review thinking that this was going to be a preachy sort of novel, with an angry point of view. It isn't preachy though; it is sort of angry, but the author shows the confusion and the pain behind her character's anger, and her reasons for that anger so well that you are right there with her.
When Starr sees her childhood friend Khalil killed by a police officer she is frightened and somewhat shattered. When it becomes apparent that nothing much will happen to the officer, she becomes more and more angry. Starr must decide what to do, and what she stands for. All of the characters in the book are complex, very few lack nuance.
A remarkable book , very powerful, moving and deep.

You Don't Have To Say You Love Me

You Don't Have To Say You Love Me by Sherman Alexie, 457 pages.

A long, chanted poem, full of pain and longing, by one of America's preeminent poet and novelists, celebrating and excoriating his past, his life on  the reservation, his relationship with white America, his family, and in particular his mother.
Alexie uses humor and shocking revelations as he plays with language, and with memory and with stories told as he tries to sort the "what happened" from the "what might have happened" and the "what we were told happened." Aicoholism, medical issues, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and assorted trauma figure in to the author's life and the lives of everyone around him. His father died after a lifetime of alcoholism, his mother (or maybe it was his grandmother) had something horrible happen in her youth. Alexie tells his story with rage and tears and laughter. He repeats the story with a different ending, with a more frantic and frenetic sort of laugh. It's a beautiful, sad and hypnotic tale. Worth every minute of  reading or listening.

4 3 2 1

4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster, 866 pages.
This extraordinary novel opens with a joke a that tells how the main character's grandfather, Isaac Reznikoff became Ichabod Ferguson. The joke is repeated near the end of the book, and this framing, and it's accompanying explanation somehow tie together the four different lives of Archie Ferguson. The novel presents four different lives for Archie, four different paths that his life could take based on different decisions made when Archie was still young. Each chapter has four versions, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, then 2.1, etc. (chapter 1 actually has a 1.0, too, before the split)
A phenomenal book, really one of my all-time favorites. Strongly recommended for fans of Kate Atkinson's Life after Life (and, of course, A God in Ruins), David Mitchell's The Cloud Atlas, and other literary works with a speculative edge.

Sula

Sula by Toni Morrison, 178 pages.
Morrison's second novel, from 1973, is still considered a classic.
The story of two women living in an African-American community in post-World War I Ohio. They are friends with a secret from their childhood; they accidentally caused the death of a younger boy, and that haunts them both. Sula's family swirls in casual violence, her grandmother, Eva, desperate for money to feed her starving children, allegedly let a train amputate her leg for the insurance money, her uncle was killed in a fire, as was her mother, though under drastically different circumstances. Morrison's second novel, it's puzzling to see now, with my clear and wondrous hindsight, that Sula won no major awards. Sure, I can see giving the Pulitzer to The Killer Angels, but two novels won the National Book award that year (and since I haven't read either of them, I won't cast stones), and neither one of those was Sula. Really one of those must-reads.

A View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfictions

A View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfictions by Neil Gaiman, 522 pages.

I read this collection of essays, book review, movie reviews, and biographical bits early this year and I know that it has stuck with me since I have listened to music he talked about, including Amanda Palmer's band The Dresden Dolls, and I have read 4 or 5 of the books he talked about. Neil Gaiman has a lot of interests and he can make anything interesting.

Saga: Volume 6

Saga: Volume 6 by Fiona Staples and Brian Vaughn, 152 pages
The sixth volume has its focus on Hazel for a good part of the book. She is getting older and going to school.

Volume 7 and 8 are out now too, so soon we'll see where the series goes.

Norse Mythology

Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman, 293 pages.

Gaiman does a great job recounting the Norse myths and an even better job at reading them on the downloadable audio.
Odin, Thor, Loki, and Ragnorak are all featured here, along with some tellings of tales of dwarves, giants, and the forming of the nine worlds.
A lot of fun.

They Can't Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore

They Can't Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America by Wesley Lowery, 248 pages.
A reporter for the Washington Post, Lowery tells of the behind the scenes stories of the protests in Ferguson and Baltimore.
Well-researched and well-told.

Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race

Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly, 346 pages.
Shetterly focuses on four African-American women who were hired by the NACA, and the organization that followed it, NASA. Approximately 1,000 women with math and engineering skills were hired as computers during World War II, the Cold War, and during the space program. Of those, some were African American and Shetterly focuses on telling the stories of four of those women.

Things from the Flood

Things from the Flood by Simon Stalenhag, 129 pages.
The follow-up to Tales from the Loop continues with the artwork and stories from a familiar landscape strewn with abandoned alien technology.

The Dry

The Dry by Jane Hunter, 328 pages.

An Australian federal investigator is called back to his childhood hometown, also the scene of an unsolved murder for which he was and still is a suspect. Aaron Falk must return to the town where his girlfriend was murdered when their childhood friend Luke apparently killed his wife and child and then committed suicide. Aaron doesn't believe that Luke, who was also Aaron's alibi for the long ago murder, would do such a thing, but there are a lot of secrets to be uncovered.

The Summer before the War

The Summer before the War by Helen Simonson, 479 pages
Beatrice Nash, whose father died and left her with far less than she thought she would have, has to find a job in pre-World War I England. She finds a home, friends and possibly love in her new home in the village of Rye, but then the looming war intervenes.
By the author of Major Pettigrew's Last Stand.

Speaking American: How Y'all, Youse, and You Guys Talk, A Visual Guide

Speaking American: How Y'all, Youse, and You Guys Talk, A Visual Guide by Josh Katz, 203 pages.

A collection of essays about regionalisms throughout the US. Katz discusses where we use sneakers, or gym shoes; garage sale, or yard sale; or, as in the title, where we say y'all or youse.
He shows the regional choices on maps with darker colors indicating heavier usage.
Interesting.

Skim

Skim by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki, 144 pages.
Mariko Tamaki and her cousin Jillian teamed up to produce this 2008 graphic novel about the life of Canadian teen, nicknamed Skim. She goes to an all-girls Catholic School, thinks of herself as a practicing Wiccan, and a bit of a goth. Skim and her best friend are beginning to drift apart just as Skim longs to be closer to one of her teachers.
A well-done book.

David Copperfield

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, 974 pages.
Our seventh big-book summer is over and we finally got to a Dickens novel.
I can't remember if this is the novel that my sister got when she was very young, or if it was Oliver Twist, either way there was always a fair amount of Dickens around the house when I was growing up, and I always meant to read it, but never quite got around to it. I read (along with about half of everybody, it seems) Great Expectations in High School, but then didn't read any of Dickens's larger novels until the 1990s when I read, and quite enjoyed, Bleak House. The characters in Copperfield, especially Traddles, Aunt Betsey, and the Micawbers are quite charming. Uriah Heep is as bad as you'd ever heard. David's obliviousness to Agnes and his own heart are a bit hard to take after a while, but all-in-all a good read.

Perpetrators: The World of the Holocaust Killers

Perpetrators: The World of the Holocaust Killers by Guenter Lewy, 195 pages.
Lewy seems to be wanting to get to some definitive answers as to the motives of the perpetrators of the Holocaust, without going too far in any one direction. The book is massively sourced and footnoted,  with  over 30 pages of source material, and 156 footnotes in the second chapter alone. At the same time, with only 136 pages of text including the introduction, he doesn't seem to leave himself a lot of room to explore his several topics in depth.
He covers the concentration camps, deaths by shootings, the development of more efficient ways of killing (seeking to avoid stresses on the killers), the hunt for and trials of those responsible, all while trying to give individual and group motivations for killing thousands and thousands of people. An interesting, but ultimately unsatisfying book.

Whereas

Whereas: Poems by Layli Long Soldier, 101 pages.

The poets words play with form and formality as single percussive words and short sharp sentences give way to missives, sections of treaties, and paragraphs of declarations.
While grief and betrayal haunt many of the verses, playfulness resides within many others.
All is experienced
               throu
                        g
                          h
                      the
                                                                         body
somebody told me.
I am glad that I like this books as I will now have to purchase what remains of it after our Newfie / Rottweiler chewed it up.