May's Reading

      Hi everyone. It's already time for another book post; this time my books from May. This month's list is not as long as last month's list; that's what happens when I have a lot of art and garden projects going on. However, I enjoyed all the books I managed to have time for, and this month, after couple of show business themed books seem to have found their way into my hands, you can see how one book inspired me to read some of the others. 

      And I'll apologize in advance for a couple of book reviews that are longer than I usually write.

     I started my reading month off with another book from the Chet and Bernie mystery  series. You do not have to read these books in order, and if you want to hear or read a mystery through the eyes of a dog who flunked out of obedience school, then this series might be for you. 

     Chet is the narrator, and his partner is Bernie Little, who runs Bernie Little Detective agency. Bernie is a likable guy who used to be on the police force, but now he hangs out with Chet. The two of them solve crimes together.  And Spencer Quinn, the author, definitely knows dogs because Chet is a really believable character. Plus, he made me laugh a lot too. 

     In this book Bernie runs into a former high school baseball team mate. This team mate has had  some hard times and is homeless. When Chet and Bernie go to bring him some food, they discover he has gone missing. And not only is he missing, but they come across the dead body of the man running a homeless encampment. This story takes Bernie back to his high school days, and opens his eyes to many things that were going on in high school that Bernie missed due to his youthful immaturity. This included a teacher involved in some sketchy behavior and even his old prom date. This was another good read in this series.

     I was curious about Tom Hanks the fiction author. I knew he was a big reader, and obviously he's a talented actor, but as a writer, I was curious. I decided to read this book, his first novel. 

      You meet many characters in this story. This book starts off in the 1940's when Robby Andersen is a young boy in a small northern California town.  You meet Robby's family, including his motorcycle riding uncle who was once a marine and once a trouble-maker. And you learn how Robby has some great drawing ability.  The book then jumps to 1970 when Robbie is an underground comic book creator. 

      Then the book jumps  to the present time (around 2020) when one of Robbie's comic books is being made into a movie. You get to meet all kinds of people who work in the film's production. I enjoyed the big picture view this book has, and how you get to know many of the people who Hanks writes about. However, all the people in the story are just supporting characters. The movie and comic book story is the  novel's main character and the people are just people in it's life.  

     The bulk of the book is about making this fictional movie.  I enjoyed the movie making scenes from the book, and I didn't enjoy the movie making scenes. Some parts caught my attention and I really enjoyed them, and some parts made me wish the book was shorter. One thing I decided reading this book is I would not want to be the movie making business, but overall it was an interesting look at the process.

     I also enjoyed how Hanks portrays the times as you move through this book. I did wonder what happened to a lot of the characters after they no longer had a starring role in this book. Hanks went into so much detail about them, and then, with many of them, he just moved on.  I enjoyed this book, even though I wished the movie making section was a bit shorter overall.  I think taking off 50 or so pages would have meant this part of the book wouldn't have had so many "reading potholes" that slowed down the flow (at least) for me.  And if you like comic books, Hanks actually drew and wrote the story to one that this novel is based on. 

      The day I finished my Chet and Bernie listen, Audible had this book for their daily deal. The Queen of Sugar Hill is about actress Hattie McDaniel. Hattie McDaniel was the woman who played Mammy in Gone With the Wind, and she was the first African American woman to win an Oscar. 

       If you love old Hollywood, you might love this book. This book starts with Hattie winning her Oscar for best supporting actress in 1940.  Being black in Hollywood wasn't easy, and not just because of white people's prejudice. Winning an Oscar didn't guarantee anything for Hattie. But thank goodness for a few people of influence like Clark Gable; he was a close friend of Hattie’s. This book includes many other famous and many not so famous names. 

     This story is historical fiction, but I felt like I got to know Hattie as well as if this book was a biography. Tate winds Hattie’s past in with the time setting of the story. Not everyone thought this daughter of former slaves did her race justice, but Hattie was in her own way opening up doors for others. Hattie's life was not only successful, but also contained some tragedies, especially with her husbands. She must have been a woman with a strong backbone, and I agree with the author that she is a role model, even if she ended up playing a lot of roles not exactly flattering to her race.

     This was an excellent book. ReShonda Tate wrote a great story, and she sucked me in within 5 or 10 minutes of listening. The narrator, Lynnette R. Freeman, was excellent also.  Plus Hattie’s life was really fascinating. I also liked how the author wrote a what's true and what's fiction chapter at the end of the book.  Even though there is some fiction, most of that is dialogue and other things to make the story move along better.

     It's never a bad time to read an Agatha Christie mystery in my mind. This book, Five Little Pigs, was first published in 1942 and 1943 under the title Murder in Retrospect. I can't say this book sounded familiar to me in any way, so it might actually be one  Agatha that I never read before . (And I've read quite a few Christie's in the past.)

     Hercule Poirot is approached by a 21 year old  woman who wants to prove that her mother is innocent of killing her father. The murder happened 16 years in the past, when this woman was only 5, but  the woman (who goes by Carla but is really named Caroline after her mother), received a letter from her mother shortly after she was interned saying she was innocent. Her mother had since died, and the girl wants  to prove that her mother didn't commit the crime before she gets married and moves on with her life. 

     One thing I enjoy about Christie's books is how many scenarios she came up with for her stories. This time Poirot first visits those people who were around when the Carla's father is murdered. Her father was a talented and famous artist, and Poirot tells everyone he is writing a book about the murder. He even visits the site where the murder occurs. 

In the second part of this mystery, you read the letters Poirot received. He asked each person when he visited them to write their memory of the day. And finally, in the last part of the book, you have the meeting between Poirot and the people who were there when the murder occurred. Based on what he learns, he figures out who the murderer actually was. Was it Carla's mother, the woman who was found guilty and died in prison, or did someone escape justice for the crime? I won't give that answer away in case some day you want to read this book. (grin.)

      I have been trying NOT to buy any  cookbooks this year, because, as some of you might know, I enjoy reading cookbooks as much as I enjoy cooking from them. However after a while you get more cookbooks than you can actually make things from, and I must admit I own too many. 😏 BUT, I am especially fond of baking books, especially baking books with a twist. And especially books about pie (and cakes and cookies and bread)...  Like I need another pie making book.

     This is a good pie book. The author starts with a few pies as a tribute to places where she lived before she came to the United States, and then she goes into all 50 states and has a pie for each of them. Pie is her balancing activity when times are stressful. You can tell she has made a lot of pies from the writing, and even though some pies are not anything out of the ordinary, she is creative and makes them with her own twist. A couple of examples are  cherry pie with a corn flake crumble  or mashed potato pie with a hash brown crust.

  This book has some fun basic introductions to each state. It’s light reading,  and the recipes look relatively straightforward.  After  reading this cookbook, I've decided I've avoided making pies for too long, so it is time to start baking more of them.  My first will be a coffee cream pie from this cookbook. 😏

      For my next book I did something a little different. I listened to and read the book. Meaning, I'd finish my listening time at the end of a chapter, and then instead of actually picking up a different book when I felt like relaxing and reading, I'd read the next chapter or few in this book.

     This photo of the book  Gone with the Wind is of the copy I bought back when I was in high school and that I still have. Check out the price!  I read it one summer in high school, and I know I read it at least once more. But maybe twice. I hadn't read it in years however, and I picked up the Audible version a few years back on a sale they were having. I've been meaning to reread/listen to it, but the length (approximately 50 hours to listen to the story, and my book with tiny print is 1024 pages)  put me off. However, after reading about Hattie McDaniel and her role in the film version (which is a great film but NOT as good as the book), and the weather warming up ( this is a great afternoon in the hammock book) I decided it was time for another reread.

      If you don't know this novel, this is the story (which was published in 1936) of a fictional young woman named Scarlett O'Hara. It's about her  life from just before the American Civil War begins (1860) until several years after the war ends. It's really also a story about the old south (of the US).  Scarlet is a teenager when the war begins, only interested in finding a husband and having men swoon over her. As time goes forward she doesn't get the man she thinks she wants, life as she knows it is destroyed, and she becomes a strong adult woman, although maybe not one that people really like.

      My thoughts this time: 

     1) When I read  this book in high school I thought it was very romantic, and although there is some romance to it, I see Scarlet O'Hara and her story differently now.  She was a typical teenager, and in some ways never grew up being  still blinded by her first teenage love, even when he was in love and married to someone else.  I know first loves are special, but it did take Scarlet a long time to accept what was and move on with her life.  In other ways I see Scarlet as more of an early feminist because she was a go getter and really didn't let all of the "rules" of being female get in her way.  She makes an interesting character to read about, and if she didn't have those faults, this book probably wouldn't be as good.

     2) I can see why African Americans did NOT like how they were portrayed in this book, and how in this story their lives were washed over and made to look like they liked being slaves. I can't say I liked that portrayal myself either. 

     3) I think of Rhett Butler as Clark Gable (from the 1940 film version) as I read and listened to this story.  Now I wish I could remember how I pictured Rhett  when I first read the novel because at that time I hadn't yet seen the film. 

     3) I still think Mitchell did a good job describing how wealthy white folks lived and what being one during those years that the book is set in was like. 

      4) I did especially enjoy the last part of the book, after the war had ended, because the book is so much more in depth than the film especially in that era.

   Mitchell  did write an excellent story of the times. She created some interesting characters and situations. And she did know how to write. This book moves right along, and it definitely takes you into the story. Now, I wonder if Scarlet will ever get Rhett back into her life. I'm not sure she deserved him.  And maybe vice versa. (And I have never read the sequel that came out by a different author in the 1990's, but maybe I should.)

    

And my last book for the month was this listen by James L. Swanson.

    Manhunt is a history telling the story of John Wilkes Booth's last days. If that name doesn't ring a bell, back in 1865 he was the man who planned and carried out the assignation of President Abraham Lincoln at the end of the American War Between the States/Civil War. That war was fought for many reasons, but to  simplify those reasons I can say it was because the Southern states decided to succeed from the Union , and the northern states fought to keep the country as one. 

      Booth was an actor with strong southern sympathies. When the South surrendered and ended the war in early April of 1865, he decided first that he and his gang would kidnap the president, the vice-president as well as the secretary of state. They also talked about going after the Union General in Charge (Ulysses S. Grant) but he was not in town on the night that Booth's plan was going to be carried out. Not only did that not happen, but the plan changed to murdering those people.  I had never heard the story about what happened to Secretary of State Seward on that night in April of 1865, and this book does an excellent job of describing that event.

   This book reads like a well written murder mystery, which it actually is, only it is non-faction and not something from an author’s imagination.  I very much enjoyed listening to this book. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. The author, James L. Swanson, not only writes about the hunt to capture Booth (and that took several days), but it also talks about Lincoln's death and funeral. That event really charged the nation and made Lincoln more of a martyr. This book also answered some questions I had about why certain people, some who inadvertently aided Booth, were also taken prisoner. I recommended this volume if you have any interest.

     And those are my books for May. I never expected to be on a Civil War kick or even to read fewer mysteries. (That had been my plan, to make May a mystery month.) Well, my books aren't going anyplace, so we'll see what June brings. And as always, if you have any good recommendations, I'd love to learn about them. And if you read this whole post, thank you for making it all the way through.