I had really high hopes for this. Perhaps I'm just not smart enough but I've read a LOT of the books featured here and often did not really "get" the cartoon. Perhaps it is only me, the art is interesting, I just didn't always see the connection.
Thursday, February 11, 2021
Long Story Short
Third Girl
Third Girl by Agatha Christie (1966) 218 pages
Norma and her mother had been abandoned by Norma's father 15 years ago when Norma was five. After Norma's mother died, Norma's father reappeared with a new wife to run the prosperous company that his now-deceased brother owned. Norma doesn't get along well with her stepmother, and takes a room in an apartment with two other young women, including one who works for Norma's father. Norma is involved with a young man who just doesn't seem suitable. Is he really interested in her or is he out for her eventual inheritance? As facts come out, Poirot and Mrs. Oliver (and a private investigator that Poirot has hired) try to figure out why Norma thinks she might have murdered someone and who it might be.
This is a classic Christie, one that I'd first read years ago. As Poirot often says, once the puzzle pieces are there, one needs to work to rearrange them to see the truth.
Wednesday, February 10, 2021
A week in winter
Chicky Starr left Stoneybridge to follow Walter to the States. When they break up, she deceives her family and instead says they are married. She finds work in a rooming house and works hard. Years go by and she has saved some money and is thinking of returning home. Now she makes up a car accident to explain Walter's absence. Back in Stoneybridge, she fixes up an old place to become a lodging and is now ready for her first guests. This book focuses on one character at a time starting with Chicky and going through all the people involved. Like almost all of Binchy's work that I've read, this is a feel-good trip down a predictable but pleasant lane.
Good Company
Twenty years into their marriage, actors Flora and Julian seem to have finally reached a level of comfort, career-wise. Flora finally has a regular voice-acting role on an animated TV series, while Julian's star is rising as he's been promoted to series regular on his police procedural role. Their daughter, Ruby, is getting ready to graduate and begin college. But when Flora finds Julian's long-lost wedding ring — and nowhere near the pond where he claims to have lost it — she begins reevaluating their relationship.
Told in chapters that bounce back and forth between the early days of their relationship and their current situation, as well as between Flora and their close friend Margot (a much more successful actress), this sophomore effort from Sweeney offers up a nuanced look at the evolution of relationships, both romantic and platonic. I loved this book and I can't wait for others to read it!
*This book is scheduled for publication April 6, 2021.
Monday, February 8, 2021
A Game of Cones
Just six months after the village of Chagrin Falls, Ohio, experienced its first murder investigation, another dead body turns up. This time, it's the representative of an out-of-state corporation that's planning on buying up real estate in the central business district to create a vertical mini-mall. Having had her fill of amateur sleuthing, ice cream shop owner Win Crewse would love to pass this investigation by, but when a friend visiting her from out of town becomes implicated, Win and her pals must start sleuthing once again.
This is the second book in the Ice Cream Parlor mystery series by Collette, and while it's still full of the quirky fun side characters of the first book, this one doesn't quite hold up as well. That said, it's so nice to see a cozy mystery series centering on a young Black woman and her family. I hope that Collette's series continues, and that the stories tighten up a bit as they go. The characters and location have so much potential!
*This book is scheduled to be released March 2, 2021
Thursday, February 4, 2021
Six Wakes
When Maria Arena wakes up in a new clone, she knows that she must have died in some mysterious manner just days after embarking on a 400-year journey aboard a colony ship. The trouble is, she's not the only new clone awakening. It turns out the entire six-clone crew of the Dormire has been slaughtered and reawakened, and if that wasn't disturbing enough, they're 25 years into the journey with no memory of that time in space, and someone disabled the AI that's running the ship's processes, including navigation and gravity. Suddenly, they're in a race to fix the ship and find the killer, who must be the previous version of one of those clones. But will they be able to do it with no witnesses and unknown motives?
This is a fascinating locked-room murder mystery, with an innovative twist in that the killer certainly has no memory of their deeds. That said, it also raises a lot of fantastic questions about humanity, the ethics of cloning, and where the laws of Earth end. I can't wait to discuss this with the Orcs & Aliens book group on Monday night!
Wednesday, February 3, 2021
Snow, Glass, Apples
What if the story of Snow White is a little wrong. What if the step mother was just misunderstood? What if Snow White wasn't really the innocent? This beautiful graphic novel is told from the step mother's viewpoint. The art here is absolutely stunning. Just gaze at that cover and imagine how much is inside.
Monday, February 1, 2021
The Secret Chapter
The sixth book in the Invisible Library series finds Librarian (and spy and book "procurer") Irene and her dragon friend Kai heading off to a world trapped in the 1980s to get a rare copy of an ancient text — only to find out when they get there that they have to go to *another* world and pull off a high-stakes art heist in order for the book owner to turn over his book to the Library. Of course Irene and Kai also have to work with the chaotic and untrustworthy Fae on this heist, though as they start planning their theft, it turns out that the orderly dragons might have a dog in this fight too.
As Cogman mentions in the acknowledgements, there comes a point in this series where you simply MUST have a heist, and this is that book. As much as I love heists and this series, though, this one just doesn't rise to the top for me. It's still a barrel of fun, and some of the characters are fantastic...I just wish we had a bit more insight into the heist-prep side of things. (Heists are always more fun when you get hints at what the thieves are planning, after all.) Oh well, it's still a fun book and a favorite series, so I'll definitely be devouring whatever Cogman cooks up next.
The truants, by Kate Weinberg
This debut novel is an Agatha Christie type mystery with a charismatic teacher as the central figure. Impressionable young minds in thrall to a teacher seems to be a somewhat common theme in books I’ve recently read. The narrator, first-year student Jess Walker, has given up a chance at an Oxbridge education to attend one of the newer universities established in industrial areas of Great Britain in the sixties. She is studying English in East Anglia because she has been so impressed a book, “The Truants,” by Lorna Clay, who teaches there. Lorna, as everyone calls her, lectures on the works of Agatha Christie and is an expert on the author, who was a bit of a mystery herself. Not long after Christie’s “The murder of Roger Ackroyd” was published, and at the height of her fame, she disappeared for almost two weeks. Police throughout England frantically searched for her. She reappeared at a hotel 11 days afterwards claiming to remember nothing. Disappearances feature in Weinberg’s novel, as well as unreliable characters like Roger Ackroyd. Jess falls in with three other Lorna acolytes, Georgie, an aristocratic girl with a penchant for drugs; Nick, a geology major of Indian ethnicity (and the most “grounded” so to speak of the three); and the somewhat older Alec, a journalist from South Africa, who is visiting because of an earlier connection with Lorna. Various triangles, romantic and otherwise, form among the characters as they all vie for Lorna’s attention. Eventually, one of them will die. Fun and well-written. 311 pp.
January totals!
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| Bernie's keeping an eye on our book drop for us. |
Jan 6/1779
Josh 1/497
Kara 23/8098
Linda 7/2096
TOTAL: 53/17,084
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