Author 'Nathan Burgoine posted this simple, direct method of not getting paralyzed by the prospect of having to write reviews. The Three-Sentence Review is, as he notes, very helpful and also simple to achieve. I get completely unmanned at the idea of saying something trenchant about each book I read, when there often just isn't that much to say...now I can use this structure to say what I think is the most important idea I took away from the read and not try to dig for more.
Think about using it yourselves!
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Library at the Edge of the World (Finfarran Peninsula #1) by Felicity Hayes-McCoy
Rating: 3* of five
The Publisher Says: In the bestselling tradition of Fannie Flagg and Jenny Colgan comes Felicity Hayes-McCoy’s U.S. debut about a local librarian who must find a way to rebuild her community and her own life in this touching, enchanting novel set on Ireland’s stunning West Coast.
As she drives her mobile library van between villages of Ireland’s West Coast, Hanna Casey tries not to think about a lot of things. Like the sophisticated lifestyle she abandoned after finding her English barrister husband in bed with another woman. Or that she’s back in Lissbeg, the rural Irish town she walked away from in her teens, living in the back bedroom of her overbearing mother’s retirement bungalow. Or, worse yet, her nagging fear that, as the local librarian and a prominent figure in the community, her failed marriage and ignominious return have made her a focus of gossip.
With her teenage daughter, Jazz, off travelling the world and her relationship with her own mother growing increasingly tense, Hanna is determined to reclaim her independence by restoring a derelict cottage left to her by her great-aunt. But when the threatened closure of the Lissbeg Library puts her personal plans in jeopardy, Hanna finds herself leading a battle to restore the heart and soul of the Finfarran Peninsula’s fragmented community. And she’s about to discover that the neighbors she’d always kept at a distance have come to mean more to her than she ever could have imagined.
Told with heart and abundant charm, The Library at the Edge of the World is a joyous story about the meaning of home and the importance of finding a place where you truly belong.
I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT OF MY LOCAL LIBRARY. USE THEIR SERVICES OFTEN, THEY NEED US!
My Review: The thing is, when I read a book about a librarian, I'm set up to expect I'll hear about her relationship to and love of books. Absent from this read, for the most part, as we get her life's events surrounding family and community and the ever-tightening grip of the dead hand of The Market on social services like libraries.
The prose is adequate to the task of giving me a sense of the landscape she's traveling around in, as well as her complicated relationship to aging. Parents not being kind and supportive, childresn being their needy, solipsistic selves, exes hurting her by simply continuing to breathe...nothing ground-breaking, nothing badly handled. The publisher's comps above are accurate, so you know what you're getting.
HarperPerennial (their trade paperback imprint) will vend one to you for $16.99, but I'd use the library if I were you.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Calypso's Guest: A Short Story by Andrew Sean Greer
Rating: 3* of five
The Publisher Says: A bargain with the gods throws two men together in a timeless short story of adventure and unrequited love inspired by The Odyssey by Andrew Sean Greer, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Less . A man in exile, banished to a planet far from home and cursed with immortality, discovers that a ship has crash-landed near his settlement. After two hundred years, his heart’s desire has come true. A visitor has finally arrived on his lonely little speck in the stars. He’ll have companionship again. Someone he could love forever. As the weary traveler heals, the two men form a tender bond. But all they’ve come to share may not be enough to curb the visitor’s irrepressible wanderlust. Now the exile, who thought nothing in his endless life would ever change, must make a decision that will change everything.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM NETGALLEY
My Review: First, read this:
You saved him. Surely you should have been the one to send him {away}.
What is a person except this heap of loss? Otherwise—what wasted breath.
The Odyssey's Calypso passage, between two men and in outer space instead of among Greece's islands. Beware of asking the gods for favors because the answer might be yes. Few things in life hurt more than getting what you ask for because no thing, not a person a place a thought a feeling, no thing is fully knowable. And it's what you don't know about a thing that will stab you and leave you to bleed slowly, weaker with every loss, yet never granted the gift of oblivion.
Like everything of Author Greer's I've read, it does a fine job of filling time agreeably in terms of writing. The way it ends is in the myth it retells and is exactly what one would expect from a man of later middle years whose life is accelerating the process of takings-away that aging represents. If you already like his stuff, this will not disappoint.
It's free to read for Amazon Prime members, or $1.99 to buy (non-affiliate Amazon link).
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
This World Does Not Belong to Us by Natalia García Freire (tr. Victor Meadowcroft)
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: A journey to the bowels of the earth
After years away, Lucas returns uninvited to the home he was expelled from as a child. The garden has been conquered by weeds, which blanket his mother’s beloved flowerbeds and his father’s grave alike. A lot has changed since Eloy and Felisberto were invited into the family home to work for Lucas’s father, long ago. The two hulking strangers have brought the land and everyone on it under their control—and removed nuisances like Lucas. Now everything rots.
Lucas, a hardened young man, turns to a world that thrives in dirt and darkness: the world of insects. In raw, lyrical prose, García Freire portrays a world brought low by human greed, while hinting at glimmers of hope in the unlikeliest places.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: A very short, relatively dense novella-length story of the eternal balancing act between fathers and sons that never ends, never changes, and can't be resolved.
What makes this book unique is its fairly unpleasant fascination with rot, rotting, rottenness, and the hugely productive life the inarguable primacy of this process sustains. The role of the strongmen who take over this deeply rotten family system play is the first among those battening on the rot. The inevitable fall of the father from his position of control is prefigured in the title. What makes it a good read is its attentive eye on the metaphor of rotting...nothing in the story is even slightly out of sync with that central spine of meaning.
It's a $17.99 trade paperback and comes in at 200ish pages, but feels like a much more substantial literary meal. World Editions sells them direct to you.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Urgent Matters by Paula Rodríguez (tr. Sarah Moses)
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: An electric Argentinian thriller featuring a deadly train crash, two unidentified bodies, and a missing murder suspect—perfect for fans of Attica Locke and Steph Cha
The Americans are more astute when it comes to matters like these. They say “not guilty”. They don’t say “innocent”. Because as far as innocence goes, no one can make that claim.
A train crashes in the suburbs of Buenos Aires, leaving forty-three fatalities, two of which have not been identified. A prayer card of Saint Expeditus, the patron saint of urgent matters, flutters above the wreckage.
Hugo, a criminal on the run for murder, is on the train. He seizes his chance to sneak out of the wreckage unsuspected, abandoning his possessions—and, he hopes, his identity—among bodies mangled beyond recognition.
As the police descend on the scene, only grizzled Detective Domínguez sees a link between the crash and his murder case. Soon, he’s on Hugo’s tail. But he hasn’t banked on everything from the media to his mother-in-law getting in the way.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: Fast, fun, mordantly funny...I hope the publisher's comps of Cha and Locke are resonating with you, because I think they're spot-on. There's little to mark this very entertaining read out of a crowded field, though, except some they-work-for-you or don't hints of hilariously implied Heavenly intercession. As foreshadowed in the synopsis, guilt and/or innocence really aren't the point here, so the ma'at-oriented mystery reader might not be well-served by this read...more, to me, of a Highsmith/gray hero vibe.
An $11.99 Kindle purchase later (non-affiliate Amazon link), a late-summer/early fall travel read doesn't get much more fun than this.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
This space is dedicated to Nancy Pearl's Rule of 50, or "the Pearl Rule" as I've always called it. After realizing five times in December 2021 alone that I'd already Pearl-Ruled a book I picked up on a whim, I realized how close my Half-heimer's is getting to the full-on article. Hence my decision to track my Pearls!
As she says:
People frequently ask me how many pages they should give a book before they give up on it. In response to that question, I came up with my “rule of fifty,” which is based on the shortness of time and the immensity of the world of books. If you’re fifty years of age or younger, give a book fifty pages before you decide to commit to reading it or give it up. If you’re over fifty, which is when time gets even shorter, subtract your age from 100—the result is the number of pages you should read before making your decision to stay with it or quit.
So this space will be each month's listing of Pearl-Ruled books. Earlier Pearl-Rule posts will be linked below the current month's crop.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
PEARL RULED @ 40%
The Bridge (Detective Louise Blackwell #6) by Matt Brolly
Rating: 3* of five
The Publisher Says: Accident? Dangerous game gone wrong? Or murder? DI Blackwell faces her toughest case yet.
When the body of a young woman is discovered in a shipping container in Bristol, the police suspect she was an illegal immigrant whose death was a tragic accident. But their theory is shot down by two pieces of evidence: the container was due to ship out, not in; and, even more sinister, a video camera with a live feed was filming her from a hidden compartment.
Someone watched her die. Slowly.
DI Louise Blackwell is ten weeks pregnant, a fact she has largely kept to herself, and between bouts of morning sickness she now has a murder to investigate. While the docks offer few other clues, the discovery of more live feeds convinces Blackwell that there are other trapped women…and that some of them are still alive.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: At the end of chapter seventeen, I realized I could not justify the expenditure of eyeblinks on this story any more. It isn't bad, or poorly written. It's just indistinguishable from many, many other women-in-sexual-jeopardy books and I don't like reading those all that much. This is #6 in a series but, I say this without a trace of malice, it's enough like so many books that it doesn't matter. The main character is newly pregnant and facing an uncertain future in the police...the boyfriend's a brick who wants more than she's interested in giving...her family's pretty crappy, but have hearts of gold...need I say more? It's okay.
I'm not okay with that anymore.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.