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!
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The Quality of Mercy by Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: From 2022 Windham Campbell Prize winner Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu, the breathtaking conclusion to her multiple award-winning City of Kings trilogy, including The Theory of Flight and The History of Man, “Perhaps the most monumental trilogy to come out of Southern Africa.”—Afrocritik
Everyone saw Emil Coetzee drive into the bush the day the ceasefire was announced. Beatrice, busy consoling her friend Kuki over the loss of her son and marriage. Dikeledi, the postwoman who refuses to lean. Tom, the drunk who makes his living impersonating Emil in backroads bars. Vida de Villiers, stuck in a coin-toss choice. Saskia, the feisty reporter determined to ruin Emil’s name. Marion, the enigmatic lover he left behind. Mrs. Louisa Alcott, the lonely farm wife reading Mills & Boon romances in her best dress, waiting for her life to begin. But nobody saw him drive out of it.
So begins the investigation of Spokes Moloi, the first black chief inspector in the City of Kings, who on the eve of his retirement is handed one final crime: the possible murder of Mr. Coetzee, the notorious head of the Organization of Domestic Affairs, who disappeared on the same day the country's independence beckoned. In investigating Emil’s disappearance, Spokes' path collides with an assortment of witnesses with the best and worst of intentions—including a pair of corrupt investigators with an eye towards framing the guerrilla icon Golide Gumede for Emil’s murder, and the insatiable public, infatuated with Emil and unable to come to terms with the fact that the future they had so long anticipated had, at last, arrived.
With a nation in flux and his beloved wife Loveness forever present in his mind, Spokes’ investigation leads him back to the very beginning— and gives him one last chance to solve the twenty-year-old murder case that determined both the path of his life and destiny of his country.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: I made a fatal error with this book. I accepted it not knowing it was the third of three mysteries. I was swept up in the prose, and absolutely loved the setting and cast, but couldn't figure out what the hell was going on or why.
Now, of course, I've read The Creation of Half-Broken People so I am all the more aware of how very little I *got* about the read. Start your journey with The Theory of Flight.
Catalyst Press (non-affiliate Amazon link) lists the ebook for $9.99, and that would be great if you're current with the series.
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To Catch a Spy by Mark Oneill
Rating: 3* of five
The Publisher Says: "A worthy sequel to the classic." — Harlan Coben
Estate approved sequel to the novel To Catch a Thief by David Dodge and 1955 Academy Award-winning film by Alfred Hitchcock
It's been a year since John Robie, notorious Riviera jewel thief, proved his innocence by catching a copycat burglar. And it's been a year since John has seen Francie Stevens, the adventurous socialite who not only saw through his disguise, but helped him catch the copycat. Now Francie is returning to the Riviera for its first-ever Fashion Week as a model for a top French designer, and John plans on rekindling their romance. But there's a problem. While helping a friend, John chases down a mysterious courier, whose ruthless associates now want John dead. To make matters worse, when Francie arrives, she has a boyfriend in tow, and tells John that she wants nothing to do with him.
John has to figure out why he's a hunted man, and why Francie is acting suspiciously. Digging deeper, he discovers a spy ring with evil intent. As John works unofficially to gather evidence, a question begins to haunt him—could Francie Stevens be a spy? With his enemies closing in, John turns to his cat burglar skills to try to save his life and expose the traitors. To survive, he has to catch the spies before they catch—and kill—a retired thief!
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: Remember To Catch a Thief? It was based on a novel I haven't read so I can't comment on. This novel is a take on the same basic plot, and tries its best to make the same cool, smooth, stylish impression.
It's good to aim high. You're not likely to get too terribly close to the target. This book passed some time pleasantly. It's not up to Alfred Hitchock's film's sheer lush gorgeousness. But what is?
Poisoned Pen Press (non-affiliate Amazon link) asks you for $7.99 for the ebook.
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The snares : a novel by Rav Grewal-Kök
Rating: 2.5* of five
The Publisher Says: A Punjabi American lawyer at a mysterious new federal intelligence agency fights to keep his career, marriage, and morality intact in this gripping post-9/11 drama from a thrilling new voice.
“Are you happy where you are? Toiling in the trenches of the Justice Department?”
In the waning months of George W. Bush’s presidency, Neel Chima, a former Naval officer and federal prosecutor, is recruited to join a new federal intelligence agency—one with greater-than-usual powers and fewer-than-usual restrictions. Neel soon finds himself intimately involved in the surveillance of domestic terrorism suspects and the selection of foreigners for drone assassination—men who often look just like his Sikh family members. As both his ambitions and moral qualms mount, he is drawn further and further away from his wife and two young daughters. When he makes a critical mistake at work, he is left vulnerable to shadowy figures in the intelligence world who seek to use him in their own, still more radical counterterrorism missions. If he agrees, the world of power will open up even wider to him. If he doesn’t . . .
Is Neel an insider or an outsider? The hunter or the hunted? An idealist or a mercenary? What truths, and whose lives, is he willing to sacrifice? The novel plunges readers into the human turmoil behind the faceless operations—the torture, secret assassinations, and drone strikes—of the American security state, creating an eye-opening meditation on morality, violence, and the price of a human soul.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: Like reading the diary of someone you didn't know, feel sure must be dead now, but are pretty sure you wouldn't like. Watching this bad-tempered goon make an endless series of truly foolish decisions was painful.
The storytelling was a mess. I can't really say much that isn't carping and whining about this read, except that it tells a well-known historical event from a perspective it had never occurred to me I should think about.
Random House (non-affiliate Amazon link) thinks $13.99 is a goer for their ebook. I disagree. Use the library if you feel drawn to the read.
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The Imperial Mode of Living: Everyday Life and the Ecological Crisis of Capitalism by Ulrich Brand & Markus Wissen
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: Our Unsustainable Life: Why We Can't Have Everything We Want
With the concept of the Imperial Mode of Living, Brand and Wissen highlight the fact that capitalism implies uneven development as well as a constant and accelerating universalisation of a Western mode of production and living. The logic of liberal markets since the 19th Century, and especially since World War II, has been inscribed into everyday practices that are usually unconsciously reproduced. The authors show that they are a main driver of the ecological crisis and economic and political instability.
The Imperial Mode of Living implies that people's everyday practices, including individual and societal orientations, as well as identities, rely heavily on the unlimited appropriation of resources; a disproportionate claim on global and local ecosystems and sinks; and cheap labour from elsewhere. This availability of commodities is largely organised through the world market, backed by military force and/or the asymmetric relations of forces as they have been inscribed in international institutions. Moreover, the Imperial Mode of Living implies asymmetrical social relations along class, gender and race within the respective countries. Here too, it is driven by the capitalist accumulation imperative, growth-oriented state policies and status consumption. The concrete production conditions of commodities are rendered invisible in the places where the commodities are consumed. The imperialist world order is normalized through the mode of production and living.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: Not a rigorous academic text, with in-line citations and dense argumentative paragraph-length sentences. I feel sure most of y'all just blew out held breaths of dread. It's not like an eat-your-spinach read. It's not soothing, either; it pulls nary a punch. It's written by committed leftists for those not far off their own beam.
Given where we are in the US it's a deeply helpful way to crystallize the "why"s of the creeping sense many of us have, or are getting, that wrongness in political action is not even close to the whole story. It's only possible to prepare for what you're aware of.
Verso Books, in keeping with their principles (non-affiliate Amazon link), asks you to chip in $9.99 for an ebook. If you're new to the idea that capitalism ≡ imperialism, this will catch you up.
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Women's Hotel by Daniel M. Lavery
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: From the New York Times bestselling author and advice columnist, a poignant and funny debut novel about the residents of a women’s hotel in 1960s New York City.
The Beidermeier might be several rungs lower on the ladder than the real-life Barbizon, but its residents manage to occupy one another nonetheless. There’s Katherine, the first-floor manager, lightly cynical and more than lightly suggestible. There’s Lucianne, a workshy party girl caught between the love of comfort and an instinctive bridling at convention, Kitty the sponger, Ruth the failed hairdresser, and Pauline the typesetter. And there’s Stephen, the daytime elevator operator and part-time Cooper Union student.
The residents give up breakfast, juggle competing jobs at rival presses, abandon their children, get laid off from the telephone company, attempt to retrain as stenographers, all with the shared awareness that their days as an institution are numbered, and they’d better make the most of it while it lasts.
As trenchant as the novels of Dawn Powell and Rona Jaffe and as immersive as The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Lessons in Chemistry, Women’s Hotel is a modern classic—and it is very, very funny.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: Comparing this pleasant entertainment to the extraordinary, outstanding The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel let alone the Olympian heights of Dawn Powell's New York novels verges on lèse-majesté. I was very entertained, never made to think, and left with little impression of the characters after the read. The olden-days New Yorkness was dusted on lightly, but agreeably.
Splendid for use as a line-standing or repair-waiting read because you'll pick it right back up the minute you crack it open.
Offered for $12.99 as an ebook by HarperVia (non-affiliate Amazon link), I'm of the "use your library" school on this one.
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Lost in Thought by Deborah Serra
Rating: 3* of five
The Publisher Says: "Not everything is meant to know, Ilana. Some things need their mystery to survive."
Ilana has an enviable job at the opera house, a committed relationship, and a cozy Greenwich Village apartment, but the questions inside of her are growing insistent. Is it due to her scientist boyfriend's research on how people make their decisions, or is she suffering suppressed grief from the death of her adoptive mother? She becomes curious about who she would be if she'd grown up in her birth home. Is she truly who she thinks she is? Has she ever freely chosen anything at all? When Ilana learns that her birth mom owns a pub upstate, well, what harm could there be in furtively dropping by for a drink? To see, just to see. What begins as curiosity about her choices evolves into a traumatic shift in her world. She loses control of her life. And then, chaos.
Lost in Thought is a novel about unconscious decision-making and the illusion of free will.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: Philosophical maunderings wrapped around a handy plot the author found lying around. Neither the plot nor the maunderings did much for me. Then again, they wouldn't...I've been in therapy of some sort since before the author was walking on her own.
Quite a few people will light up like streetlights at dusk when they cotton on to the larger point she's making. James Redfield made boatloads of cash on the same highway, and with far less accomplished prose. I hope Author Serra does, too.
Koehler Books (non-affiliate Amazon link) wants $7.99 for an ebook.
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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.
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One Night Two Souls Went Walking by Ellen Cooney (2%)
Rating: 2.5* of five
The Publisher Says: A young interfaith chaplain is joined on her hospital rounds one night by an unusual companion: a rough-and-tumble dog who may or may not be a ghost. As she tends to the souls of her patients—young and old, living last moments or navigating fundamentally altered lives—their stories provide unexpected healing for her own heartbreak. Balancing wonder and mystery with pragmatism and humor, Ellen Cooney (A Mountaintop School for Dogs and Other Second Chances) returns to Coffee House Press with a generous, intelligent novel that grants the most challenging moments of the human experience a shimmer of light and magical possibility.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: I hit my reinforced concrete wall here:
In the stacks of the library where I wandered, where almost no one went, where everything was old and a little beat up, a ray of sunshine came in, filled with swirling bits of dust, when nothing else was moving, and I saw it wasn't dust but particles of the spirits of those books, free and out playing around, like no one was watching.
Oh dear gawd. And this was at 2%! I hopped around randomly to see if this was an aberration.
It wasn't.
Coffee House Press (non-affiliate Amazon link) asks for $9.99. I couldn't even read a freebie, so...
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Notes from Africa : a musical journey with Youssou N'Dour by Jenny Cathcart (41%)
Rating: 3* of five
The Publisher Says: Notes from Africa traces the rise of popular music on the continent—beginning in the 1980s when the term ‘world music’ was coined as a marketing label and African musicians, notably Youssou N’Dour and his contemporaries, began to appear on the international stage. This book explains the musical styles that developed from the 1960s, when many African countries gained their independence. It covers developments in music and society in Senegal, in West Africa and around the continent during the post-independence years and right up to the present day.
Jenny Cathcart, drawing on her personal experience in Senegal and her work alongside Youssou N’Dour, offers stories and portraits of daily life in Africa. The results are fresh insights into contemporary culture, religion and politics—as well as future collaborations and developments not only on the continent but in the African diaspora too.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: I admit defeat. I've tried and failed to finish this book for years. I care deeply about the history of West Africa, and moreso the "world music" that came from there, from the 1960s onward. But I can not get past Cathcart's breathless celebratory celebrity-loving tone. I was starting chapter 12...again...when a list of photographer Iain McKell's subjects stopped me cold...again.
It's the problem I've had every time I try to get into the book. I hit walls of names I don't care about, I strike descriptions of fashionable things I never knew existed. It's a thing that, on film as it was when this was released as a documentary, I would've seen, subliminally noted, and never thought about again. I'm sad about it but Tempus is Fugiting ever faster.
Unbound Digital (non-affiliate Amazon link) lists the trade paper edition for $16.95. I'm not cool enough to care.
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On trend : the business of forecasting the future (34%) by Devon Powers
Rating: 3.5* of five
The Publisher Says: Trends have become a commodity—an element of culture in their own right and the very currency of our cultural life. Consumer culture relies on a new class of professionals who explain trends, predict trends, and in profound ways even manufacture trends.
On Trend delves into one of the most powerful forces in global consumer culture. From forecasting to cool hunting to design thinking, the work done by trend professionals influences how we live, work, play, shop, and learn.
Devon Powers' provocative insights open up how the business of the future kindles exciting opportunity even as its practices raise questions about an economy increasingly built on nonstop disruption and innovation. Merging industry history with vivid portraits of today's trend visionaries, Powers reveals how trends took over, what it means for cultural change, and the price all of us pay to see—and live—the future.
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.
My Review: As I began chapter four for the second time, I realized that I do not need this book's in-depth analysis and its erudite information sourcing. I'm an old man blogging about books to a few hundred loyal souls. I've done it for thirteen years and counting. I'm not likely to become "cool" at this late stage of the game.
Footnoted to a fare-thee-well and clearly in conversation with major figures in the marketing sphere, this is a framework for thinking through one's placement and one's purpose in marketing...whatever. I recommend it for seekers after that information. I vouch for its clarity of purpose and felicity of prose.
University of Illinois Press, one of the best academic outfits going, (non-affiliate Amazon link) only wants $9.99 for an ebook. If you're in need of a text to refine your ideas about how and why to make marketing choices, that's cheap!
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