The Song Poet
Kao Kalia Yang

It's fascinating to learn about Yang's family and the traditions of the Hmong. "The Song Poet" refers to Yang's father, whose role in the community was that of historian/story teller. I love a scene in the beginning of the book in which Yang's father is urged to go on stage to perform and Yang is embarrassed in the way that any girl in nearly any culture would be—until she sees what a star her father is. The language and writing are beautiful, the story both familiar and new. I'm looking forward to a discussion of the book with the Beagle Women's book group! This book will also be discussed at our fall retreat. Here's a trailer for the book.

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
Arundhati Roy

I'm listening to The Ministry of Utmost Happiness on libro.fm. If the author's name rings a distant bell, you might remember her incredible book, The God of Small Things published 20 years ago. In The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, set in India, the story begins with the birth of Aftab, a baby who appears to be a boy at first glance, but in fact has genitalia of both male and female. As Aftab grows up, it becomes clear that identifying as a woman is more comfortable and Aftab (a male name) becomes Anjum (a female name). The reader is introduced to the people in Anjum's life and how their lives intersect. Like God of Small Things, this book is filled with beautiful writing, honest characters, and taboos. The audio is read by the author, which I'm enjoying immensely.

The Last Flapper
William Luce

I've been reading the script of The Last Flapper by William Luce many MANY times lately. The Last Flapper, a one woman show about the last day of Zelda Fitzgerald's life, is being produced by Vision Theatre at Long Lake Theater in September! Julie Kaisier portrays Zelda in a powerful performance. (You may remember that an excerpt of the play was performed at the store a few years ago.)

Bad Days in History: A Gleefully Grim Chronicle of Misfortune, Mayhem, and Misery for Every Day of the Year
Michael Farquhar

I'm reading, very slowly (on purpose!) Bad Days in History. I learned of this book from Jason Gobble at our recent Lit Bits event. There are 365 entries (one for each day of the year) of bad things that have happened in history. As Jason predicted, while it's all "bad news,” it's strangely uplifting knowing that no matter how bad my day may be, it's been a whole lot worse for someone else.

Shylock Is My Name
Howard Jacobson

I'll be re-reading Shylock Is My Name by Howard Jacobson this month for the Sort-of-Shakespeare book group. Shylock is a re-telling Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice.The Sort-of-Shakespeare book group has been great fun. For those who couldn't make it to our recent discussion of Jeanette Winterson's The Gap of Time (a re-telling of A Winter Tale), here’s a video clip we watched of Winterson talking about Gap of Time.

Important announcement about this book group..........
After our September discussion of Shylock, we'll be taking a break until April—we don't want to but we've read everything in the series that's available in paperback and we have to wait for more books to be released!

Beartown
Fredrik Backman

Beartown is a small town located deep in the forest. The town is in decline and the townspeople are counting on their talented junior hockey team to reverse that trend. Hockey is everything in Bear Town, but when a shocking event occurs life changes drastically.  People are faced with a situation that forces them to confront their beliefs, values, and identity. Beartown is an intense and thought provoking story, presenting interesting characters and plenty of topics for discussion.

Autonomous
Annalee Newitz

Finally, a decent Sci-Fi book! A book where humans and androids are really working together. OK, if you read that last sentence and don’t have a clue as to what I’m talking about, you probably need to stop reading. Unless of course you are a nerd (or a want-to-be nerd), then you’re going to love this book. And yes, of course, I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

The setting is the year 2144 and you’re seeing it through the eyes of a bioengineer (for lack of a better term) who reverse-engineered a recent and amazing drug so she could sell it illegally on the black market. The problem is, it’s killing people by working them to death. She’s got to warn the world about this drug that she’s essentially stolen from a big conglomerate before they eliminate her. Moving around in this modern world with its android “slaves” is fascinating, considering these slaves are like Mr. Spock from Star Trek on steroids (think about that!) I made a note on page 34 that I was hooked at this point but looking back, it really had me at page 1, “The student wouldn’t stop doing her homework, and it was going to kill her.” Never in all my years of teaching did I ever see a student in such a state. The book jumps back and forth in time to establish the female bioengineer’s background, feeding you bits and pieces to put it all together. A fun book. You know, maybe even a non-nerd might enjoy this futuristic mystery.

House Girl
Tara Conklin

This story alternates between Lisa Sparrow, a young lawyer working on a class action suit seeking reparation for slaves, and Josephine, house girl slave of the Bells. Josephine wants to run to freedom but is torn because her mistress is ill. Mrs. Bell teaches Josephine to read and lets her paint. The paintings turn up years later. The story reminds one of The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd, but has an added dimension with Lisa's modern story. This is a fast moving tale which really keeps one wondering what will happen next. Not always an easy read, but well worth the effort.

The Boston Girl
Anita Diamant

The Boston Girl begins when Addie's 22 year-old grandchild asks, "How did you get to be the woman you are today?" The daughter of immigrant parents, Addie was born in 1900. Her life changed when she joined the library group at a neighborhood settlement house near her tenement home. I really enjoyed Addie's story. Diamant has written several books, including the best seller The Red Tent. This is a wonderful portrait of growing up in historical Boston and becoming a modern woman. There is lots of humor and this is a story that women can certainly relate to.

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry
Neil deGrasse Tyson I can't say I understand all of this, but I'm really glad I read it. It feels good to have even a vague sense of what the universe is. (The last time I tried to get my mind around, well, everything everywhere, I read about string theory and steady state theory. Tyson doesn't mention either, so I'm imagining that they have fallen out of favor.) And there are delightful bits in this book, like now I understand why incandescent bulbs get so much hotter than LEDs, and that if you stand on the equator you are going 1,000 MPH as the world rotates. The last two chapters are particularly interesting. The penultimate is about how difficult it would be for someone on a far away planet to find us. The last is about why we should care about astrophysics. I was convinced.

All the Light We Cannot See
Anthony Doerr

I read this shortly after seeing Dunkirk. They start the same way, leaflets dropped onto a town on the western coast of France warning everyone to flee. Doerr's book is about two young victims who cannot flee. A blind girl, daughter of a locksmith at France's National Museum of Natural History, is stuck in a tower. A brilliant German orphan had been destined to serve in the coal mine that killed his father, as soon as the boy reaches his 15th birthday. I wasn't drawn to the cover of the book, so I only read it because of this website. I am grateful: it's a wonderful book!

One for the Money
Janet Evanovich

When I heard that New Jersey is abandoning the system of holding arrestees unless they can make bail, I wondered what sassy, silly, sexy Stephanie Plum will do for a living if she can't be a bounty hunter. I reread the first book in her series: it introduces her bad boy cop boyfriend Morelli, the even sexier super bounty hunter Ranger, her Italian parents and feisty grandmother, and her formerly-a-hooker friend Lula. She gets a job with her cousin Vinnie and mayhem ensues. Evanovich has written countless, well, counted, versions of this book. All are great fun.

Inheriting Edith
Zoe Fishman

A single mom inherits a house and the care of the elderly lady who lives in it. Both women have to deal with this new arrangement. The book is a great story of the journey we all take through life. I loved how the author grows these two women through their histories.

The Citadel
A. J. Cronin  

I’m a great believer of reading and re-reading classics. Early 20th century English writers have a style that reminds me of a well toasted, and buttery, English Muffin. I can’t get enough of it. A copy of The Citadel recently came to me through a happy accident. A not so well taken care of copy, yet once I opened it and read the first paragraph, I was hooked. A young man, just out of medical school, is in a compartment on a rattling train, heading to his first job in a remote Welsh mining town. It’s there he begins his career, with all its ups and downs, changes of scenery, loves (found and lost), successes and failures. The inevitable mid-life re-evaluation of what his life has become and whether he has the courage to re-align it with his better self. Is there anyone who can’t identify?

The Templars
Dan Jones

I’ve had a fascination with the Templars ever since I was a kid. When I was a young adult, they kept turning up in unexpected places, like in the film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, or in Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe. They always seem to occupy an important role, but I never was really sure what they represented, or why the characters merited their importance. In his history of the Templar order of warrior monks, Jones takes the reader through the entire history of the order, which was first established in Jerusalem, to guard Christian sites of pilgrimage. Two hundred years later, when the Templars had become one of the richest and most influential religious orders in the Near East, as well as in Europe, the order ended in a spectacular fall. If you like history, this book is a real treat.

Note: the book will be released September 19.

The Last Castle
Denise Kieran 

The Last Castle is the history behind the building of Biltmore, the largest house in the United States. Located in Asheville, North Carolina, the estate was developed by George Vanderbilt in the late 1880s. It was a time when social prominence was in part, maybe even largely, determined by display, hence the period being called “The Gilded Age.” Biltmore was sort of the American version of Versailles, with all the attendant personalities, money troubles, and politics that plague these sorts of immense undertakings. It’s also a history of Biltmore being a formative influence for the development of The United Stated Forest Service. I was interested to discover that some of the Vanderbilt decedents are even yet very well known. Anderson Cooper, if I’m not mistaken, is the son of Gloria Vanderbilt.

Note: the book will be released September 26.

Here’s a link to the web site of the Biltmore estate.