January's Books

Hi everyone.  Happy weekend. I hope yours is going well.

My weekend is a quiet one so I thought I would share my January books today. January was a decent month of reading, although a few of the books I read were not what I hoped they would be.

My first listen for 2024 was this fantasy book, The Tropic of Serpents, book 2 in this series by Marie Brennan.

 This fictional book is written as the memoir of Lady Isabella Trent, the world's top dragon scientific expert.  Since this book is a fantasy,  it doesn't follow our normal calendar. Lady Trent could be described as a Victorian woman, even though that term isn't used in the story. But she is definitely not your average Victorian lady. She reminds me of Amelia Peabody (if you've read any of those mysteries by Elizabeth Peters). Isabella Trent is clever; someone who doesn't need a man, and someone who is willing to break the rules.

 Since I read book one 7 years ago, did I remember enough of book 1 to make sense of this book? I don't remember Isabella's husband dying on an expedition to the fictional Vystrana, but otherwise,I could follow along without any issues. One of these days I may reread book 1 just to get that fact straight, but I don't think it's really necessary.

In book 2, Lady Trent, along with a young heiress stowaway and a long time companion, travel to Eriga. They'll put up with high heat, living on the edges of swamps with wild tribes, and obvious from the title, lots of snake like dragons. All for the sake of science of course.   Lady Trent also has a series of mishaps like falling off a bridge into a river infested with crocodile-like fish, catching yellow fever, and being pursued romantically by one of her native hosts.  She is also kidnapped by a different group of people and prevents a dam from being built. Of course, she makes some enemies when it comes to dam, and I'm guessing  this storyline shows up in book 3. 

This book is pure fantasy, and it is a fun listen. Since I enjoyed this book, I'm glad there's still a few left in this series.  I hope it doesn't take me 7 years to get back to book 3. (grin)

My daughter has been bugging me to read this book because she loved it. I am more of a mystery than a thriller book lover, but I thought if I read it we could talk about it (which we did). It was a quick and easy read, and not a bad choice for when I was sick with covid and had an afternoon with no energy.

Millie committed a crime as a teenager, and now, out of jail, she is looking for a secure job. She becomes a house maid at a home on Long Island (New York) for Nina and Andrew Winchester. Nina seems like she's crazy, but is she? And what about the room in the attic that Millie is given to sleep in with the tiny refrigerator and 3 small bottles of water? And Enzio, the gardener, tells Millie this place is dangerous. Dangerous? Andrew Winchester is such a handsome man,  that  when he makes a pass at Millie, is it all what it seems?

This is a quick and easy read. It has a great twist. Is it the best book I've ever read? No. Did I enjoy it? Yes.  Especially the twist which was a total surprise.   When I was sick, it was a good way to take my mind off not feeling great because it is not the most complex of stories, but still well worth a couple hours of my time. This would also be a great beach read on a hot summer day. 

My next read was this Hercule Poirot mystery published in 1927. The Big 4 is definitely a different style Poirot story, but sadly I can't say it was one of my favorite Christie novels. 

This book originally started off as a series of short stories with events that happened over the course of several months. Poirot has been offered a job in South America he can't refuse. Part of his motivation for the big trip is that it would allow him to visit his good friend Hastings. However, when Hastings shows up at his door just before he leaves, Poirot realizes this job offer was really part of a cover up to get him out of the country.

What then takes place in this book are many small "events" all related to an international crime ring called the Big 4. Number 1 is a Chinese man called Li Chang Yen. Number 2 is probably an American.  Number 3 is a French woman, and Number 4 is only known as the Destroyer.   This time instead of a classic murder story, Christie plays around with a bigger espionage theme. (And of course some murders; the best parts of the story.) You also get to meet Poirot's twin brother Achilles. 

I don't mind that Christie tried stepping out of her mystery writing, but  I think in 2024, these events don't really translate well. I'm hardly one to judge how they held up in 1927. 

Even though it was not my favorite Christie, I made a few hours of interesting reading. And, if you read a lot of one author, I don't think you should ignore a book just because it isn't as good as most of the others.

Since I was then feeling better from covid and since I had recently visited the house that inspired this novel, I thought I would reread Nathaniel Hawthorne's famous The House of Seven Gables.  This book was first published in 1851, and I first read it back in my 20's. I don't remember anything about it except that I liked it then. I was curious if my 35+ year older self would have the same feeling after reading it. Plus, after seeing some of the additions put on the actual house to match the book, I was really curious.

Although most of this fictional  story is about the house in mid-1800's, there are flashbacks to the years in the 1600's when the house was built by Colonel Pyncheon. He  obtained the property in a rather sketchy legal way. Pyncheon was able to get the land he coveted when Matthew Maule  was accused and hung for witchcraft. It seems so many of the Pyncheon family members are living with the curse Maule placed in Colonel Pyncheon just before he was hanged. 

In the mid-1800's, the family has shrunk to Hepzibah, a 60 something lady,  and her older, childlike brother Clifford, as well as cousins Phoebe and the Judge Jaffrey. There are a few other characters  also but the main story is about the Pyncheons.  Since this book was published in 1851, life moved at a slower pace, which is noticeable in the story. I did get very involved with characters. There were touching moments, like the elderly Clifford blowing bubbles, and anger inducing moments, like when Judge Jaffrey feels he is entitled to bully Clifford for a supposed money making hidden family secret. You have to love Phoebe and even Hepzibah grows on you. One way I think this is considered a classic is how the characters really could be modern people, because people are still and will always be people.

Yes, I liked this book.  The tough thing is Hawthorne's writing. It's not that he is a bad writer by any means, but he does carry on and write some of the longest sentences I have ever read. I do think that is partially because of the era he wrote in, but also his style. I will say he tells a great story, even if you have to wade through parts of it to get to the next event.  The last part of the book was quite exciting, and the ending, although just a little  bit soppy, was still quite satisfactory. 

36 Views of Mount Fuji was published in 1993 and is by Cathy N. Davidson. It is a memoir about her time being a college English professor at an elite women's college in Japan during the 1980's. 

The author discusses many learning moments from her time in that country. I found the perspective of how we see Japan and how the Japanese see us quite interesting. There were definitely some cultural insights that I had never heard of in this book. 

One example the author talks about is how women in 1980's Japan didn't make up much of the white collar workforce. They did however make up most of the investing and banking community.   Although the Japanese  workplace was almost exclusively male, it was the wife at home that handled the money. In fact, most men's paychecks went directly into the wife's bank account. One woman spoke of buying a house that her husband had not even seen, and she had to draw him a map so he could make it to his new home after his day of work. When the author explained to this woman that in the US most married women wouldn't just go by a house without their husband with them, her Japanese friend couldn't believe how little freedom these American woman had. In her view, not only did they have to cook, clean and care for the children, but they had to get their husband's agreement on a place to live.

My biggest question was how much of this book's culture is still true 35-45 years later. I do know that when I visited Japan in 2018, women's roles in society still appeared more traditional, but now I wonder how much of that tradition is really about obedience and being old fashioned.  Perhaps it is just the way my western eye takes it in. I do know schools didn't seem all that different from what this book describes (having spent half of my trip in school related events) , but even since when I visited, things could have changed.

I enjoyed reading this book, even if Japanese culture is one I don't think I will,  can, or ever fully understand. This book certainly gave some great insight.

I was hoping my next book would be a fun and low-pressure read. That is what I got, even if it wasn't exactly the kind of low-pressure book I wanted. This  book, Charlotte Illes is Not a Detective,  is a very light read/listen, and maybe even a bit too young for me-grin. This was a cute story, entertaining enough to listen to the whole book, but I think it is definitely geared for  a young-adult to 20 something audience.  I won't likely read/listen to any more in this series, even though this story did suck me in.

Charlotte (Lottie) Illes was a successful kid detective. Jobs would come for her over her old baby blue princess phone. She thought the phone was long gone, just like the part of her life when she was a kid  detective,  until she discovered  the phone in her mother's garage, still hooked up.

At 25, Charlotte's life isn't going anywhere fast. She lives at home with her mother, is jobless, and she can't seem to find a relationship that lasts longer than 1 date. Perhaps it is because she is a bit quirky. When the blue phone rings and her brother has a mystery for her to work on, she decides she has nothing to lose and goes to visit him outside of NYC in New Jersey. During this visit she gets mugged and pulled into some big changes going on in a company. These changes even lead to a murder.

This book was even more cozy than cozy mysteries are. It also had its share of computer programming, social media, and LBGQ people.  I did enjoy most of my listen, but in sections I felt like I was a parent snooping on my kids.  The question did cross my mind more than once- why was I continuing to listen to this story?   This book was a little over 10 hours long, which is quite a lot of time, but I did want to know who the murderer was. If this book was a paper bound volume, I would have skimmed through the club scenes, the sitting around eating pizza scenes and the other kind of waste of the reader's time scenes. As I already said, even though it wasn't a bad story, it wasn't quite what I thought I was getting or quite what I wanted to read.

My next book is #2 in Ann Cleeve's newest mystery series. This is the Two Rivers series, with detective Matthew Venn and his team. These stories are set in North Devon. 

This mystery begins almost immediately with a murder. Dr. Nigel Yeo has been murdered by a large shard of glass stuck into his neck. His death occurred at  his daughter's glass studio which is on a rural farm where other artisans live. The farm is owned by a wealthy man, who not only grew up on this farm, but who comes back and spends some of his time there.  

The evening before he is murdered, the doctor is at a party with Jen Rafferty, one of Venn's detectives,  and he tells her that he would like to meet and discuss something with her. That conversation never happens.  What did the doctor know that he needed to share?  Not much later another murder happens. This time  a glass shard is once again stuck into another man's neck. This second murdered man not only knew the first victim, but lived out at the farm where that man had been killed. 

Venn and his team need to find the murderer before anyone else is killed.  Cleeve's is a master of her genre, and this book was not only very readable but a well done mystery. The pool of suspects was small, and the most obvious suspect seemed the least likely to be the killer.  Saying that doesn't give anything away either, because the ending surprised me.  Although this book could be read without reading book 1, I would recommend reading book 1 first. 

My next listen  was this Icelandic mystery, The Fox. It is book 1 in a series known as the Ice and Crime mysteries by Solveig Palsdottir.  Once again, this is a dark Nordic mystery and not a cozy read. 

In this story, a Sri Lankan immigrant name Sajee arrives in a very small town in Eastern Iceland for a job in a non-existent beauty salon. She realizes quickly she has been scammed because her "friend" actually wanted her room in the boarding house where they both lived in  Reykjavik. What happens to her after she arrives becomes the basis for this story.

Also in this town is former detective Guodeir  Fransson. After his police partner is killed in his home in Reykjavik, Fransson's life has become full of turmoil. Not only is his job in trouble, but his marriage is on hold. His wife is still in Reykjavik, but Fransson needed to escape so he goes east where he becomes involved in finding out what happened to the Sri Lankan woman.

This book really captured my attention, and I had a hard time  shutting it off. It took a while for this story to get rolling and also for me to get used to the narrator's voice. I'm glad I was patient because all of the details in the beginning pull together into parts of a terrifying story.  The people that  the Sri Lankan woman get involved with are really scary. One weakness in this story (for me) was how Fransson gets involved in finding Sajee, the missing woman. It just doesn't seem like someone would see the vague clues this woman left behind, but of course Fransson is a detective and he should see things most people would miss. However, if you don't get hung up on that point, this is a really good mystery. It definitely kept my attention.

My last listen for January was this fascinating nonfiction book that combines science and a cave adventure. Lee Berger is paleoanthropologist who studies human evolution. He is known for some of his discoveries including Australopithecus sediba. The Australopithecus species are one of the links between our closest non-human relatives (Chimps and Bonobos) and early human species.  This book focuses on another discovery Berger was involved with. This time it was the discovery of some early human-like fossils found in a cave in South Africa.  These early humans are known as Homo naledi, and they were found in the Rising Star Cave system.

Prior to this discovery, it was believed that only 2 species of Homo humans had intentional burial, controlled use of fire, and  carved  into rocks (Home sapiens and Homo neanderthal). With this discovery, it was shown that that old belief was not true. However, moving through this cave was  extremely difficult. In order for Berger to actually see these discoveries and not watch them being done through a remote video, he needed to lose a lot of weight (around 50 pounds) to make it down to the chamber with the fossils. The opening to this chamber was only 19 inches ( about 48 cm) wide. Even then, it was difficult for him to come back out and he seriously thought he would have to dislocate his knee in order to get through the hole. (And luckily he made it out.)

I watched a show on TV about this discovery. Although I had forgotten about it, some details came back to me while listening to this book. At a little over 5 hours long, it was a fascinating listen, and if you like evolution or even like caving, then you'd probably enjoy this book.

Those are my first round of books for 2024. I hope you're having a great reading start to the new year, and if you read anything outstanding, please feel free pass it on in your comment. 

And I know this post isn't exciting except for book post lovers, but I am linking up to Gillena's Sunday Smiles too.