April Books

    Hi everyone. Today's post is  my monthly "what I read" last month write up.  It was another good reading month, and I finished quite a few books. That's what happens when I do a lot of spring yard work because when I come inside I'm ready to relax a bit so I read awhile.  My reading was a bit all over the place last month and not just mostly mysteries. (Although there were still a few. 😉)

    My first listen for April (which I started but didn't finish in March) was this newly published fictional tale of Queen Cleopatra, the last of the Egyptian Pharaohs.   As you can see it is called Cleopatra and  is written by Sara El-Arifi who (from what I read online) has written some popular fantasy stories. I realized that I had only read one fiction, non-mystery book by late March, and this sounded like an interesting story. Since I had several audible credits left that will expire come early June, I picked up this book. I'm glad I did as it was a pretty good story too. 

   This is a fictional story that is woven around real known events in Cleopatra's life.  Historically there is little first hand information about this queen, and much of what we know is written even centuries later by the Romans who did not give women very much  high praise.  It's reasonable to assume that  a queen who ruled and who had a lot of money to live a luxurious life would not be looked on with high opinions by those Roman male writers.  Therefore, this story, although all events may not be true, is certainly plausible.

   What this story does is give a personality to Cleopatra. Whether it is her real one or not, it is hard to say. In this book she is strong, queenly, and not afraid to speak out. But she is also vulnerable.   I think the author did a good job creating a woman who would be queen. The other interesting thing is that Cleopatra is telling her own story once her life is over. Every now  and again  she mentions things in the same vein as this  comment from the book.  "That is the first time I met Mark Antony, and I didn't yet know there would be more of him to  come."

   This was a very good book to listen to. I very much enjoyed it. The author put her own little twists to a well known story. I was wondering how she would spin out the end of Cleopatra's life,  and this is when there is a huge twist, which was a surprise for me. I thought the twist was a great way to end the story.    Probably my only negative was how the reader, Adjoa Andoh,  read the Roman men's voices. They sounded more Italian to me, but then we don't really know how Latin spoken by the Romans would have sounded. However, she did a great job with the rest of the narration and the story overall.

   This book, Daughter of Egypt by Marie Benedict, is also a new publication. I like Marie Benedict's style and her stories of women, and as you might have guessed from my last book, I like Ancient Egyptian stories too. 

   This book jumps back and forth between the lead up to the  discovery of King Tutankhamen's tomb by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon as well as  going into the life of Hatsheput, a rare female Egytian Pharaoh who lived before Tutankhamen.  The connection between the two timelines is Lord Carnarvon's daughter Lady Evelyn Hebert. Evelyn has been fascinated by Egyptian history ever since girlhood, and her favorite Pharaoh was Hatsheput. She is thrilled when she gets to join her father and Howard Carter in Egypt during an archaeological dig. 

    One part I did find a bit tiresome in this book was how Evelyn's mother was super focused on her coming out and getting married as well as how Evelyn was quietly rebelling. Yes, I think a woman's role in 1919 was pretty well defined, and this was a pretty common event among her class, but I do think the author spent a little too much time on it. I did enjoy the parts where the author took us back to the reign of Hatsheput, and I did enjoy learning a little bit about the characters involved in the rebellion that happened in the early 1920's for Egypt's Independence from Great Britain. I am also glad that the author brought in the high taxes in England after the First World War and how financially hard it was for many of the landed gentry to maintain their large expensive to run homes. 

   It took a while for the story of Lady Evelyn  to pick up, but even so, I didn't find her all that interesting of a main character. (But she was I guess what you'd expect an aristocratic young woman right before and after World War One to be.) I looked her up online, and the book is quite true to her actual story. Overall, I wanted to enjoy this book more than I did. It wasn't a bad story, and I didn't want to stop reading it, but I guess I had higher hopes for what it was. However, the ending, after Tutankhamen's tomb was discovered was very well done. I wish that part had been longer. The author's notes at the end were also very interesting to read. I might have enjoyed the book more had I read the author's notes at the end first. It was a decent story, but not the author's most interesting main character at least for me. 

    David, over at Travels with Birds, mentioned this book to me to help sort out some bird ID-ing issues I was having. When I looked for it, I found there was an edition called Birds of New Hampshire and Vermont, which I thought might be even better. However, a new edition is due out in July, so I decided to wait for that and instead picked up birds of Maine. There are a only few differences, especially for Down East Coastal Maine and way up north in Maine, but otherwise many of the birds are the same.

   I also realized after going through this book that I already owned another Stan Tekiela book, Trees of New England.  These really are handy little guides. The bird book separates the book in bird colors, which is useful in quick situations. And if a male is colored differently from the female, then there is a small photo to help show you the female. To explain that more clearly, let me use an example.  If you take a bird like a rose breasted grosbeak, where the male is black and white and the female is brown and white,  you wouldn't necessarily think those 2 are the same bird. But on the male rose breasted grosbeak page, there is a small photo of the female, and on the female page, there is  a small photo of the male.

   I liked this format and book so much I pre-ordered the New Hampshire and Vermont edition because there seems to be some differences between the two. I also picked up the Birds of Prey of the Northeast book also.  Both the Birds of Maine  and the Birds of Prey of the Northeast have proved quite useful.  I've  even recommended these books to couple of really new to birding friends. Thanks David for the recommendation. 

  

    Then mysteries were calling me again, and I decided to reread book #9, The Chalk Pit,  in the Dr. Ruth Galloway stories.  Ruth is an archaeologist who also works with the police when bones are found. This time the book starts off with Ruth in one of the chalk tunnels that run under Norfolk (England) gathering bits of bones that were found during some construction work. She doesn't find a whole skeleton, and she questions the condition of the bones which don't look old and undisturbed.

   Meanwhile, the police under Harry Nelson (better known as just Nelson) get word that a homeless woman has gone missing. After that there are a couple more deaths of other people living rough, but strangely, these men both knew the missing woman and had spoken to the police about her.  The questions are, who murdered these men and did they get killed because they spoke to the police about the missing woman? 

   When 2 other women go missing, the stories of people living underground begin to surface. On top of that, the romantic tension between Ruth and Nelson heats up when Nelson is stabbed. But when Nelson's wife announces she is pregnant, the story takes another twist. It will be interesting to reread book 10 and follow a new crime, a new archaeological dig and also the watch relationships change and develop.  As you can probably tell, these stories continue onward, so as I've mentioned before, they are best read in order starting with book 1. 

   

    I'd seen this book, Theo of Golden by Allen Levi,  recommended in many places, including a couple of friends of mine who mentioned they really liked it. Then I read Jeanie's (at the Marmalade Gypsy blog) review, and that clinched it for me.  I decided to use another one of those too many Audible credits I had and picked up this book. I am definitely glad I did. 

   Theo is an older man in his eighties that has financially done well for himself.  He comes to Golden, Georgia to live for a while.  While there, you follow him doing  some kind things to others.  You also  learn little by little about him as he does these good deeds. As you read these stories about Theo's  kindnesses, you get to meet a lot of the people in Golden and learn their stories.  You meet an accountant, a homeless woman, a cellist, an artist, the local bookshop owner, a man who lost his wife and almost his daughter in a car accident. Plus many other people. I can't say this was the fastest moving book I've ever read; however, many of the stories make you think about yourself and other people you know.  Many of these stories are quite touching.  And I'll mention my favorite character is the homeless woman Ellen.

    There is also the "mystery" of why Theo came to this small Georgia town. At one point in the book, the lawyer  who lets him rent one of his apartments tells his secretary that Theo is an old client. Hmm. I will say as the book went on I became less interested in this mystery and more interested in Theo himself. Plus, the book brings many of the people you meet early on back into the story, so I felt like  I was part of a community.   

   The end of the book came with a big surprise. It was also quite touching  in many ways too. In some  books this ending would have seemed as though the author was cheating and trying too hard to create  a big finish, but in this story, it felt like it belonged. I'm writing that because by the ending I knew and liked the characters, plus it was wonderful the way the author pulled this story together. And yes, you do figure out who Theo was at the end of the book, and I didn't expect him to be who he was. 

 

   My daughter lent me this  next book, Wrong Place Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister. It was sitting next to my bed for about a month, and I knew my daughter would be asking me about it.  It was time to read it.

   This book starts when a teenage boy, Todd, stabs someone to death in his front yard overnight on a Saturday. His mother (Jen) is mortified as she views this event from a front window of their home. After her son is arrested, Jen and her husband Kelly spend  the night at the police station. When she  gets home and the police leave her home, Jen finally falls asleep. When she wakes up, it now only Friday. She has lost a day. However, she hasn't forgotten that the murder happened, even if her family is looking at her as though she has lost her mind.

  From there the book goes backwards in time. Well, it goes backward for Jen. Everyone else sees it going forward because the only person who knows what happened that night in her front yard is Jen. Even when she proves to other people that she is not going crazy, they never remember what she shows them when their next day comes around. 

  Jen decides to try to stop the awful event from happening. She starts to follow Todd. That's when she discovers some things both her son and her husband don't want her to know about. 

 

   This book was a fast read and a page turner. I had some suspicions about what was going to happen and where this story was going. I was right about Jen's husband (I won't spoil it for you should you ever read this novel), but that doesn't mean this book was predictable. There were definitely some twists and turns in this story that  I didn't see coming. This book was definitely a mystery but with a time twist. Plus, it was a unique way to tell a story.  And one that ends up making perfect sense at the end. 

   Keigo Higashino  is Japanese mystery author who I enjoy reading. His 2 series (that I know of) are one  where the main character is Detective Galileo, a physic professor who helps solve some police cases, and another one where the main character is Inspector Kaga also from the Tokyo police. He's also written some stand alone stories. This is book is one of those stand alone stories that was recently released.

   A well respected Tokyo lawyer is found murdered, and the police investigate. While searching the dead man's phone log, they find the name of a man who lives outside of Tokyo who was not a regular client or friend. When they investigate this "out-of-towner", they discover he came to Tokyo a few times a year, supposedly to visit his son. However, his actual Tokyo visits didn't seem to totally fit with what he had told the police.

   Then this out-of towner confesses not only to killing the lawyer but also inadvertently being responsible for the death of a man in a closed case from 1984. However, it doesn't take long for the Tokyo investigative team to find some  holes in this story, and as a reader I was left wondering if this man actually murdered the lawyer. 

   This book is partly a straight police investigation story. It also goes into some legal aspects dealing with the families of the murdered lawyer, the man who died in 1984 and also the son of the man who was arrested after confessing.  As the story evolves, the son of the man imprisoned for the crimes and the daughter of the lawyer who was murdered start to do some investigating on their own too.

   There are a lot of layers to this story, and it was an interesting look at how a murder can not only leave lots of questions, but how it reverberates down through families and even society. Even though this book was set in Japan, many of those same situations would be similar wherever you live. As the book continues, the murder mystery also continues with an interesting twist. I would never have guessed where this one ended up. 

    I do like how Higashino manages to come up with so many unique stories.   And yummy, this one has lots of delicious sounding Japanese food in it too.

    

    My other bird read for April was this large coffee-table sized book by David Allen Sibley. It had an interesting set-up. After some introductory pages with lots of general bird information, the author chose to make the main part of the book the highlights of many specific  birds or bird groups. There are some nice illustrations, and then some short information. However,  the information the author chose  was not only just enough to explain some basics about that bird but often included   some fascinating tidbits about birds in general. 

    Let me give you an example to explain. On the Bluebird pages, you not  only see bluebirds and blue bird eggs, but you learn a tad bit about bluebirds. You also learn that there are no actual blue feathers in the bird world. Blue feathers come from the microscopic structure of the feathers. When light hits these features, only the blue light matches the structure and therefore, that is what you see. All of these microscopic structures are the same within the feather, so no matter which direction you look, you only see blue.

  This is a good book to look through and learn about about birds without having to read a heavy duty text style book. That doesn't mean it's better or worse than a text style book; it would just depend on what you want and how much depth you require. I've picked it up several times and looked at different birds. One flaw I do think it has is that although it is organized, it is not always easy to find certain birds unless you book mark them. It really isn't a guide for  identifying birds, although I guess you could use it for that.  And one other  bit of information I will pass on since not everyone who reads my books posts lives in North America, the birds here are really those more common ones found in much of the US and  Canada. 

  I still have this book out on my coffee table, and I'm still going back to it. I'm glad I picked it up because I am still learning a lot whenever I open  it up. 

    

    My last listen for April was this 1944 fairly short book by Mary Westmacott called Absent in the Spring.  Westmacott  was the pseudonym Agatha Christie used when she wrote these non-mystery novels. 

    I might have read a Mary Westmacott novel years ago, but I can't say I remember anything about any of them if I did. Nor do I have any in my Agatha Christie collection. In this book, I did miss the mystery, and I didn't really like the main character, but it still was an interesting and well written read. I'm glad it was under a six hour read because the main character was  a one dimensional and kind of depressing person so I don't think I could have read hours and hours more of this story.  I suppose since this book was written 80 years ago, she might (?) have been a more typical woman at that time. She also made me say to myself "I hope I am not like her." But that was all part of Christie's  plan for this story.  

     Although after saying this, I'm still interested in reading more by Westmacott/Christie because it is interesting to see what other ideas the Queen of Mystery  had.

     Joan Scrudmore had gone to Bagdad to visit her daughter. On the way home to England, she first meets an old childhood school friend Hazel. They talk a bit, mostly about how different their lives have been. Then, after  another day's journey, there is a flood, and Joan becomes stranded in the middle of the desert in what I believe was Turkey or if not,  some place in the Middle East. Joan doesn't have a lot to do, and she spends her time thinking. Thoughts that would not have crossed her mind until she spoke with her old friend Hazel now come to her. Some of these thoughts were rather shocking since Joan seemed to have ignored or missed what was going on around her in many aspects of her life and also her friend's and family's lives up until then. 

    After a couple of hours in, I certainly hoped Joan had a major  personal catharsis and a new outlook on life. Westmacott/ Christie did have Joan finally go through an eye opening look back on her life, but  since you don't see much of Joan's life after she returns home, you don't know if what she learned about herself is ever shown in her daily life. I hope that it did, but I'm not sure Joan would be able to stop being who she was. 

    

  My final completed read for April was this one, Lincoln's Lady Spymaster  by Gerri Willis.  I was drawn to this history  after coming home from Charleston (South Carolina) because I always like to read more about a place I've been. There is more to Charleston than American Civil War stories, however, we did visit Fort Sumter where in 1861 the first shots of the Civil War were fired. This visit was part of a National Park tour, and it made me want to read more about that time period which I already found rather fascinating to start with.

   I loved this book.  This non-fiction history had a lot going for it. It had an interesting main character. It had  summaries of parts of the war and how those events related to the main character, plus, it had a lot of what life would have been like if you had been there. All this was squeezed into a 250-ish page book that didn't feel like it was being rushed. (But it did get right to the point of whatever the author was writing about.)

   The main character of this history was a Pennsylvania born turned Richmond, Virginia belle named Elizabeth Van Lew. From her large home she not only ran a secret Union spy ring, but she interacted with many escaped Union prisoners that she sheltered in a hidden third floor area of her house.  Plus this book looked at the bigger picture and included interesting stories of some of the other big figures of the time like General Ulysses S. Grant, John Wilkes Booth, and even Abraham Lincoln, just to name a few. Obviously in 250 pages you didn't get an in-depth biography of anyone, but you had enough information to fill in the story and show you what Van Lew's life was like between late 1860 to 1865. (And there is even a bit about her life after the war too.)

   A lot of what Van Lew  did was help Union prisoners held/jailed in Richmond (even some with  dramatic escapes), but she also was the  invisible head honcho in  a bigger spy ring. My one negative is that the book didn't really go in depth with Elizabeth's role in each of those spy ring events and prison outbreaks. It was more just mentioned that she along with people she had working for her  were involved. I would have liked to know more about each of those people and the ring itself.  However, much of the information was not recorded for posterity because of course it was not in formal document form and except for Van Lew's personal journal, much of it was not saved due to the nature of what it was. Had Van Lew been caught with this written information, she would have been at the least imprisoned or perhaps even put to death for espionage.

    I'm sure if Van Lew was a man there would be more about her  in standard histories of this conflict. I'm also sure if you like more about battle plans and in depth civil war details you might not care for this book. But I definitely enjoyed it and found it hard to put down.

   *****

   As you can see April was a great reading month. I even managed to start a couple of other books, but since I didn't finish them, you'll have to wait and read about that story next month. 

   Hope (if you like reading) you have a fantastic book filled May!