The Unwedding

The Unwedding by Ally Condie (2024)

Ellery is alone at an exclusive, isolated California resort where she would have been spending her 20th wedding anniversary with her husband who is now her ex. Her best friend is unavailable this weekend, so Ellery chose to go alone rather than let the nonrefundable reservations be used by her ex and his new girlfriend. Ellery finds herself missing her children and grieving the loss of her marriage, exacerbated by the fact that a wedding will be taking place while she is there.

Ellery goes for an early morning swim and discovers the body of the groom in the pool. Meanwhile, it's been raining a lot and mudslides have made the resort inaccessible to the police. And the electric generators are struggling. Cellphones are not getting any signals. And then someone else is found dead.

Ellery teams up with a couple of others to try to figure out who the murderer could be. But because she and the others stuck at the resort don't know if they can trust anyone, it makes for a tricky situation. Fast read.

No Longer at Ease

No Longer at Ease by Chinua Achebe, 194 pages

No Longer at Ease is the third book chronologically in The African Trilogy, though it was the second one written. Set during the final days of British colonial rule of Nigeria, the book follows Obi Okonkwo, grandson of the protagonist of Things Fall Apart, as he returns to Nigeria after four years studying in England. It's an awkward reintroduction, as Obi fumbles his way through conflicting cultures and finds a job working in the colonial government civil service. As he settles into the job and tries to figure out his relationship with his fiancée, Obi's experiences are both specific to the era and place, and universal (who among us didn't deal with money woes in their 20s?). It's a fascinating read, and an excellent end to our 2024 Big Book Challenge.

Romantic Comedy

Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld (2023) 305 pages

It's no accident that the backdrop of this book reminds one of Saturday Night Live. In her acknowledgement section, Sittenfeld lists the most humongous list of materials related to the long-running show, which she drew upon to get the full flavor of The Night Owls (TNO). Sally is a writer for TNO, and although she reminds me a bit of Liz Lemon from Thirty Rock, Sally's character is deeper, with a better story line.

Sally had married young, but her husband was done with the marriage when she got her job at TNO. He'd never expected her to be successful in her attempts to get onboard. Since then, Sally has had only one relationship that she wished would have gone further, but ultimately, she's grateful for her career at TNO over these past 10 years, and for the close friends she has made at the show.

It's April 2018. A good-looking and talented musical guest, Noah Brewster, is also the host of the upcoming show. Sally works with him on the sketches, and she's not sure if he's feeling the sparks that she is, but she decides that if the feeling is real, that it won't last. She's just not as desirable as other women Noah has reportedly dated. Good-looking women will pair up with ordinary men, but the reverse just doesn't happen.

Sittenfeld leans into this concept and takes it two years into the future, during the Covid lockdown. Sally gets an email from Noah and starts corresponding with him. Their interactions are mostly fun, but also reveal their inner feelings. Could their relationship work in the real world, or is heartbreak inevitable?

The Jazzmen

 The Jazzmen: How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie Transformed America by Larry Tye, 393 pages

You could probably get more out of an official bio of any one of these jazz greats, but the author does a brilliant job of tying everyone's careers and history together in a way that shows each bandleader coming into their own and carving out an indelible space in the jazz age. Each of the three are treated to an in-depth examination of their early lives, the hardships they endured and the excitement they brought to their individual styles. Basie was the country's foremost dance enthusiast, while Ellington brought a sense of refinement and sophistication to a much maligned genre, composing over 100 original works. And Armstrong was the man with the golden trumpet whose chops rivaled Gabriel at the gates--he would eventually become a symbol for American greatness. But with his daily marijuana habit, it's no wonder the man was always smiling.  

Love and Hot Chicken

Love and Hot Chicken by Mary Liza Hartong, 260 pages

PJ Spoon is midway through her PhD at Vanderbilt when the death of her father brings her back to her podunk hometown, Pennywhistle, Tennessee. Rather than deal with grief or talk to her mother about anything, PJ gets a job as a fry cook at the local hot chicken joint, the Chickie Shak. But before long, all of the female employees of the southern chain (plus two in New Jersey) are forced into a pageant to find Miss Chickie Shak, and PJ finds herself competing against her coworkers — cutie pie Boof and cranky Linda — and ignoring calls from her PhD advisor.

This is a quirky book, full of folksy Southernisms ("cuter than a piglet in jorts" is uttered at one point), to the point that the caricature of the South almost overwhelms the plot (which is plenty stereotypical South, in and of itself). Looking at the characters and their arcs, they're a bit flat, even with the meaty backstory that PJ has behind her. But if you're in the mood for laughing your way through something that doesn't really have a lot of substance, go ahead and pick this one up. Just make sure you're fully armed with your rhinestone gun and Velveeta when you start reading. 

Open Up and Bleed

 Iggy Pop: Open Up and Bleed, by Paul Trynka pg. 371

Our first book in the Rhythm n Books book club was a David Bowie book, so it seemed only fitting to end our summer reading list with a bio about Bowie's estranged friend and sometime collaborater, the Godfather of Punk himself, Iggy Pop (aka Jim Osterberg). 

This was a pretty good deep dive into Iggy's entire life, starting out in his childhood in Detroit, Michigan where he was voted most likely to succeed in school--yes, Iggy Pop was a pretty straight-laced young person before he heard the call of rock n' roll music. As his first offical group, The Stooges, started picking-up steam, Iggy realized he could really wow audiences with his high energy, violent and weird performances. They got people talking and that got the word around about how they were a great group to see, eventually garnering the attention of the starman himself, Bowie, who took Iggy under his wing and tried to help him create a long lasting music career, which in some very real ways, he did. But the addition of drugs into his life made him more erratic and brazen, which over time only fueled the very legend he was trying to construct. The book even delves into his 80's period, when he was trying to clean-up his act. Incredible that as strung out and awful as Iggy could be, girlfriends, friends, radio execs, kept giving him chance after chance to succeed. In the 2000's with song royalties finally coming in, his band reformed, a growing back catalog, and a new generation of listeners, punk enthusiasts finally gave Iggy Pop his due as the Godfather of punk. Adults only. 

Iron Kissed

 Iron Kissed by Patricia Briggs  287 pp.

Mercy Thompson is an auto mechanic specializing in VWs. She is also a shapeshifter who can change into a coyote at will. She also has two love interests from a pack of werewolves and has to choose between them before they choose for her. To complicate her life even more, her fae mentor has been charged with a murder he didn't commit and Mercy is trying to find the true killer and stirs up another creature who tries to kill her and injures a number of the werewolves. Then their are the angry fae who want her stopped. Mercy suffers a lot of physical and mental trauma in this book but her love life seems to be resolved. I mistakenly thought this was the first book in the series when it is actually the third so I need to go back and begin the series to see what I missed. 

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin (2022) 401 pages

I listened to the audiobook on Libby narrated by Jennifer Kim with a short section narrated by Julian Cihi. The title comes from a speech in Shakespeare's Macbeth. A couple of my co-workers have also read and reviewed this novel here on the blog. I really enjoyed this story of two friends, their love of video games, and their careers as game designers. The characters of Sam and Sadie are just a bit older than I am growing up in the '80s and '90s. I remember learning computer skills in elementary school, in part, by playing Oregon Trail. Sadie also shares a love of Magic Eye images, those repetitive patterns that you stare beyond to bring out a hidden 3D object. Their lives and the other people in their lives are so richly drawn and realistic. I found exploring the process of video game design fascinating. The ups and downs of building and marketing their games, as well as family and romantic relationships kept me engaged.

 

The Briar Club

The Briar Club by Kate Quinn, 423 pages

It's Thanksgiving, 1954, and there's a dead body in a women's boardinghouse in Washington, D.C. The police are there, all of the women who live there are in shock, and nobody (including the detectives) seem to know what to do. That's the opening scene for a novel that spends most of the rest of the book revealing the inner lives of the many women who live in the house, from the elderly Hungarian immigrant to the HUAC secretary to the young mother whose husband is stuck in Japan during the Korean War. It's a lovely book, beautifully told, and I'll happily recommend it to all!

Into the Twilight, Endlessly Grousing

 

Into the Twilight, Endlessly Grousing by Patrick F. McManus 225 pp.

I've read a number of Patrick McManus books over the years and found them all entertaining. McManus is a long time writer for Outdoor Life Magazine and his stories have frequently been compared to Mark Twain in humor. This collection didn't seem quite as good as some of the others. However, it does have episodes that include some of the "usual suspects" like Retch Sweeney and Rancid Crabtree. There are frequent outdoor mishaps recalled from childhood and adulthood along with unsuccessful fishing trips. If you're looking for a light, amusing read, that doesn't require a lot of brain power, this is the book for you.

NOTE: The grousing in the title can and does mean complaining and/or hunting the elusive grouse.