This was a beautifully written book – dominated by a character who we never meet and see only through other people’s memories and impressions. The story is remarkably suspenseful, and kept me turning those pages.

Written in the 1930’s, it feels fresh and not dated at all. The book captures the lifestyle of British aristocrats and shows how much stock people put into appearances and (outward) behavior.

The first two chapters drop us into the story through the main character’s memories, and so there is definitely some confusion at first. Once I finished the book I went back and re-read it, and it made a lot more sense. But it is important to persevere and get through the beginning stages in order to get caught up in it.

I was really impressed with the writing style of the author. She takes her time and adds little descriptors to minor elements of the scene, drawing us in without overdoing the tension. The ending was harrowing, and I wasn’t surprised later to find that the book was adapted into a Hitchcock movie (that won an Academy Award!)

I’m glad I stumbled on this book – one of the better reads of the year for me.

Next I am reading Muir’s Gambit by Michael Frost Beckner.

This book was a well-researched look at a con man who managed to keep a long con going for most of his life – fooling greedy people who hoped to make a profit on an imaginary stash of gold that was supposedly spirited out of Ghana. The story was incredibly complex – layers and layers of lies and all of it exacerbated by the formidable power of greed.

I can’t imagine how much work went into the research for this book – from the 1950’s to the 2000’s. There are a lot of reasons why many people wouldn’t want this stuff coming out, and even if only half of the stories in this non-fiction book are true, it is still a pretty incredible tale.

In this book we also learn about this particular scam and others that prey on people’s greed. I had no idea they had been around so long (since Sir Francis Drake’s time) and that there were so effective. People stayed in the scam long after they should have known better. After being promised a hundred-fold return in a few months they were still throwing money in ten years later with no return in sight.

This was an educational book for me. There is some insight into other cultish leaders that are selling lies these days, especially when we wonder how people could ever fall for this stuff. Plenty of people did – and have been falling for it for hundreds of years.

It was particularly interesting to go back and watch some of the YouTube clips of 60 minutes and other news stories about this scam. Just watching the raw greed on everyone’s face was pretty eye-opening.

Next I am reading Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier.

A very unique reading experience – following the progression of the changes in the main character’s intelligence. At first it felt like a bit of a gimmick, but finally I could understand why the writer did it as it brought forth a lot of emotion as we could start to predict the curve.

This book contains a lot of thoughts on intelligence and its role in personality and what makes a person. The way the story progresses allows the reader to make their own judgements rather than listening to someone preaching an idea.

I did feel like the book was a little dated, and there is a sort of odd preoccupation with sex that was eventually resolved in a weird way. But I can imagine that in its time the book was pretty groundbreaking. But I’m glad I read this (literally) thought-provoking book.

Next I am reading Anansi’s Gold by Yepoka Yeebo.

I am always curious about cuisines from other countries, and we are mixing it up on the weekends and trying new dishes and flavor combinations to see what we like. Every time we travel we try new dishes, and so it is a struggle to manage our pantry with so many different ingredients.

This book puts together some of those ingredients and introduces them to an American audience. I think it is pretty easy to get these things (especially using the web) and there are plenty of recipes in the book to try these (perhaps) new ingredients out.

I like the idea behind the book and we already had most of these ingredients already, or else local substitutes that play the same role. The real value of this book to me was trying out some non-traditional ways to use them, and so I was happy to get some new ideas from the book.

I haven’t cooked any of these recipes yet but just having looked them over it seems like they are aiming to really hit the tastebuds hard with bold flavors, which seems to be popular in the USA these days (e.g. Flavortown). So if you’re considering this cookbook be prepared for it.

Over the next few months I’ll try to work in the recipes and see how they turn out. Next I am reading Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes.

This book is the latest in the Murderbot series. It gives the reader more of the same – that is, if you liked the previous books you’ll find that this book is a satisfying read. Since it has been a while since I read the previous book some of the characters were a little hard to remember, but the story starts off gradually.

I heard that they want to make a TV series or movie based on these books, but I can tell you right now that it won’t be able to capture the magic of the books. The attraction of this series is that most of the big events and excitement happen as the robots and AI are hacking each other, working out how to get out of tight situations, and using multiple drone points of view to ascertain their situation. I think that wouldn’t translate well to the screen.

But it is fun to read, and I hope that sooner or later the author will push a little bit harder to expand the scope of the series.

Next I am reading The Global Pantry Cookbook by Scott Mowbray and Ann Taylor Pittman.

Here’s a book that I liked a lot – at the end I was sort of surprised how much I enjoyed it. Because books about lesbian space necromancers seems to be a pretty narrow niche.

I like books with deep worldbuilding, and the author handles this admirably. Things aren’t over-explained. Take the basic idea of a necromancer – raise the dead, magic, whatever – you’ve got enough to follow the story. And then the writer gives you more information as you need it.

The plot itself is filled with stuff that I enjoy – a group of people totally isolated, a competition, hidden doors and missing keys and tests and betrayals. There is lots of backstory that we get in fragments (again, as needed) and this never feels like an information dump.

The writing of the characters is for the most part well done. The main character of this book, Gideon, talks like a smart-ass teenager in contemporary, decidedly not like a member of this world the author has introduced. Because of this she gets some great lines and funny scenes but it does break the suspension of disbelief quite often. If you can get past this, the book is well worth the read.

I’m looking forward to the next book in the series. For my next book I am reading System Collapse by Martha Wells.

This is my first book by this author, and it was good to head back to Boston to meet a new private investigator. Since I like the Spenser books so much, it was inevitable that I’d be comparing with Robert B. Parker’s mystery books in that series.

While Spenser (basically) works alone, this book introduced the private eye pair of Kenzie and Gennaro. The point of view is from Kenzie, and he shares the same smart-ass and occasionally self-deprecating humor with Spenser. The level of humor is a little more simple here – sometimes it felt a bit like dad jokes.

This book contains a lot of racial issues that are boiling in Boston at the time, and rather than joke about it from the side they take it head on, which is kind of refreshing but also a little oversimplified to fit into the genre.

Unlike Spenser, Kenzie is a fallible guy who has a hard time getting the drop on his pursuers and can’t shoot very well. He has friends to bail him out but there is only so much they can do.

All in all it was an entertaining read, but it felt a little too ham-fisted sometimes – certainly not up to the task of analyzing race relations. But I understand there are more books in the series, so I may try some more and see if they have aged better.

Next I am reading Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir.

Every once in a while I run across a pretty weird book. That isn’t necessarily good or bad – I like variation in my reading – and this book had some good weird and some bad weird.

It is certainly an ambitious work. It tells several stories in layers, written in a mocking academic style, and it is a pretty big reading project to get through it. A lot of the content is meant as an effect to show some of the characters’ mental health state at the time, so it isn’t necessary (or advisable) to follow every footnote and reference (some of which are fake – again to show characters’ mental health state at the time).

For me the more interesting part of the book was the story within the story – the exploration of a spooky house full of empty spaces in the dark that change and expand and have the effect of driving people mad. There is allusion to the labyrinth and Minotaur, and large sections are dedicated to considering what this might mean.

In the end after about 20 hours of reading time I got through the book – I liked the creativity of the novel, and the spookiness of the house made it worth the read. But it can be a tough one to get through and it falls pretty far off the mainstream.

Next I am reading A Drink Before the War by Dennis LeHane.

To me this is the ultimate locked room mystery – ten people isolated on an island, all of them murdered – who did it? How did they pull it off? Agatha Christie apparently wrote this book as a challenge to herself.

As a reader you know that you are being fooled somehow, but how to identify when it happens? And is it the trick fair? In this book I was pleased that the result seemed fair to me. Without giving away the story I was only a little unsatisfied with the fate of the murderer,and wondered if the explanation would truly be so simple to bring about.

The book contains an epilogue that explains how everything worked, similar to the end of a Scooby-Do episode. Without this I never would have figured it out – all my theories proved incorrect.

The book was sometimes hard to follow – there are ten people and ten backstories and we peek into each person’s head now and then in seemingly random order, so I was sometimes re-reading to figure out who was thinking what. Luckily as they are murdered things get easier to keep track of.

Next I am reading House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski.

This cookbook is centered around Caribbean cuisine, specifically the West Indies. This is an area I haven’t really had much experience with, and so I wanted to get an idea of what to expect in their local foods.

As usual I ran across a lot of recipes that sounded good, so over the next month or so I’ll try to cook a few and see how they go. The use of coconut, turmeric and ginger is in line with our usual weekday meals, so it should be a good fit for us. Also these are all vegetarian recipes – another good fit.

Besides the recipes there is a lot of historical background on the role of women and the slave trade in the development of some of these dishes and ingredients. While somewhat interesting I felt like I wanted to read more about the food than the history, and it was easy enough to skip ahead.

In addition, some of the recipes were a little more modern, incorporating flavors and ingredients from the author’s vacations to other parts of the world. While I am sure they are delicious I was aiming for dishes reflecting the cuisine of the area. These sort of hybrid dishes weren’t so helpful.

I’m looking forward to cooking some Caribbean dishes soon! Next I am reading And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie.

This was a well-written account of one young woman’s battle with leukemia, how she got through it, and also a very detailed log of what effects it had on her and her loved ones. In an unusual twist, it also contained a brutally honest look at what she could have done better with her friends and relationships.

In the first part of the book she explains her disease, and all the steps from the beginning to what will hopefully be the end. There is a detailed description of each medical procedure, the decisions to be made along the way, and how these decisions played out later on.

I imagine this kind of detail would be especially useful for people going through a similar ordeal. For people that are not, I thought it was sometimes almost too much. It was admirable to be honest about some of the regrettable things she said or did – even if it put her in a poor light.

But the best writing and storytelling comes in the second part, where she describes her path back to “normality”, and what she had to do to get herself back. Most of this part involves a 100 day trip driving around the United States, seeing new things, meeting people that supported here during her cancer fight, and getting used to some solitude.

This book was ambitious and I am sure was cathartic. I know that the contents will be helpful for other people and that alone makes it a significant piece of work.

Next I am reading Provisions by Michelle Rousseau and Suzanne Rousseau.

This book had a lot of the elements that I enjoy while reading fiction. It is set in a weird, not quite real world that is sort of an alternate reality of our own. It is full of mysterious characters as seen through the eyes of a girl growing up out of her mother’s shadow. It also had elements of lost civilization, and things falling apart due to neglect.

But despite all of this somehow the book didn’t sit well with me. The story itself was fine, although the ending didn’t quite bring the resolution I was looking for. The book derives much of its plot from the poor communication between the mother and the daughter – if they were more open with their experiences much of the tension of drama would have been avoided, and perhaps they would have lived life a lot easier.

I did like the insights into the life of immigrants, which is tucked into the backgrounds of characters and comes out occasionally.

I guess with all this setup and fictional world that was created I was hoping for it to take a darker turn. There could have been some spooky twists and hidden underworlds and real danger – but most of this world is just falling apart with the people around doing nothing to stop it. Maybe some active evil would have brought the stakes higher?

Next I am reading Between Two Kingdoms by Suleika Jaouad.

This non-fiction book covers some of the major episodes in the author’s life – his time as a mail pilot between France and the front lines of the African continent, his adventures exploring South America by plane, a flight from Paris to Saigon that ended with a crash and subsequent rescue, and his firsthand look at the Spanish Civil War.

The book is written with gusto – there is a lot of talk about what makes a life worth living, what makes a man a man, and some very romantic views of humanity and civilization. These are coupled with the stories of adventure, and his love affair with the Sahara desert.

I enjoyed reading about his adventures, especially the descriptions of the places in between roads – places accessible only by plane. You can tell that he was enjoying immensely the life he was leading. Sometimes the book got a little overly philosophical for me, and a little technical in describing his flights and the operation of the aircraft of that age.

Since it was written back in the 1920’s he doesn’t seem like someone who would be much of a feminist. There are also little bits of racism now and then, but you must expect to have to put up with these to get such a detailed glimpse into that adventurous age of exploration.

Next I am reading The Morningside by Tea Obreht.

This book was recommended by an online list of works that involve time travel. Since I’m always into books that deal with the flow of time, I decided to check it out. Unfortunately it really wasn’t my cup of tea.

The blurb and short descriptions I heard sounded promising, but as I started the story it read a little like an old pulp novel, with very bad bad guys and handsome and pure good guys. There is a ton of exposition – things are explained from character to character where it might have been more entertaining to show it rather than tell it.

But I knew I was in trouble when several chapters are dedicated to a kiss – should I kiss her? Should I have kissed him? When will I kiss her again? Is it proper to kiss at this point?

OK, so I guess I got sort of tricked into reading a bad romance novel. All the time travel stuff is simply a set up to this sappy story that gets many more pages.

The story goes on, the time travel background is illuminated a little more but now I see it as just a cool down before we can get back to:

“He caught her delicious bottom in his hands and brought her gasping against his thighs.”

I guess I need to be more careful when choosing books based on random internet recommendations.

Next I am reading Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine De Saint-Exupery.

This collection of short stories deals with the theme of memory – what it is, how it lives and how it dies, and its role in our lives.

I’m already a big fan of the author – his writing style really brings out the emotions while illustrating beautiful moments in people’s lives. This theme of memory really works well here. Of the six stories in these pages, the first and last had the biggest effect on me. The first story is the title of the book as well, and despite being a bit like the movie Memento it really struck me how precious some memories could be.

In the last story the author takes some chances with a slightly supernatural element, but he pulls it off perfectly and I’ll be thinking about the story for a long time.

I tend to like stories that span lifetimes, and due to the nature of the theme we can peek back and forth through memories and see how people have lived – without all the dreary repetitiveness of regular life. The writer provides the highlights for us, like a chef giving us only the best portions of the dish.

Another good point was that the stories take place all over the world, and each location is described so well that you feel like you’re there. Compared with some other books I’ve read recently with clumsy culture references dropped in – this author does it the right way.

Next for me is The River of No Return by Bee Ridgway.