What are you reading the week of January 13, 2024?

I finished up Voroshilovgrad by Serhiy Zhadan. It was an interesting read. There were parts that seemed almost magical. I'm still not sure how to interpret the soccer match. Was it real? Was it imagined? I'll probably reread it again in a few years to see if I can unlock some of its mysteries.

I'm now about halfway through Our Enemies Will Vanish by Yaroslav Trofimov. (If I'm not mistaken, the title is a line from the Ukrainian national anthem.) Trofimov is a Ukrainian born journalist who writes for the Wall Street Journal. The book is a mixture of first person reportage and a first draft of a history of the Russo-Ukrainian War. You get to know the author and his traveling companions as they crisscross Ukraine to cover the war. The book is a gripping read. Once you begin, you don't want to stop reading, even when you know you need to go to work in the morning. I highly recommend this book.

Still slogging along with The Art of Destiny, which I'm finding to be something of a chore; will wrap it up one way or another in the course of the day. Next up will be The Lost Pilots and The Warrior Generals.

Starting Chaos Terminal.

>1 fredbacon: "I'm still not sure how to interpret the soccer match. Was it real? Was it imagined?"

I recently read Voroshilovgrad as well. I think "Was it real? Was it imagined?" is pretty much exactly the impression Zhadan would like us to come away with. To my eye, the uncertainty was the point. Or the third possibility: was it a real game played mostly by ghosts? It might be that the mysteries are baked in, and not meant to be unlockable. But that's just one knucklehead's reading of it all.

I'm about halfway through Lauren Groff's lovely novel, The Vaster Wilds.

Requiem for a Mezzo – Carola Dunn
3***

From the book jacket: The Honourable Daisy Dalrymple attends a performance of Verdi’s Requiem at the Royal Albert Hall with Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher of Scotland Yard. What should be a pleasant afternoon is disrupted when Bettina Westlea, the mezzo-soprano, falls dead onstage. But it was no accident – she was poisoned.

My reactions
Book number three in this delightful cozy mystery series set in 1920s England. Daisy may be “to the manor born,” but she is fiercely independent. She’s also observant, intelligent and an astute judge of character. DCI Fletcher seems to rely on her more in this episode, as she was present when the death occurred, and the mezzo was her next-door neighbor. There are plenty of suspects including other performers, jealous lovers, a long-suffering sister, and a possible anarchist. I wish I had been listening to the audiobook, only because of the many “foreign” characters; I think the narrator might have had a great time with all those accents!

It's a fast read with a satisfying resolution. I’ll keep on with this series.

I'm still reading The Last House Guest by Megan Miranda. I have 90 pages to go. Can't wait to find out whodunnit.

I'm also still reading The Book of Delights by Ross Gay. I didn't make a lot of progress this week, but once I finish The Last House Guest I can attack it.

I'm reading The River We Remember by William Kent Krueger. Good, so far!

>1 fredbacon: Fred, I've added that book to my Amazon wishlist. Thanks for the recommendation!
>2 Shrike58: I read two of Lauren Groff's books last year and thought them excellent. I'll have to hunt down the one that you're reading!

This week I read Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte. I did not like it. The protagonist, Miss Grey, was so pious and so judgemental about everyone's behaviour, that she was a trial to me. I gave it 2 1/2 stars. I figured I should give at least two stars just for the author is a Bronte. I'm now listening to Brain on Fire, which is more to my liking.

I decided that this year I would worry less about how many books I read, and concentrate instead on reading the great doorstopper books I've got on my shelves, inches thick and never touched. It's not working. I don't want to read fat, heavy books, no matter how good. Right now I'm struggling with The Family Moskat, which I should love, as Jewish life is something that fascinates me. But - I'm not liking it because it's large. How does that make sense?

Foster – Claire Keegan
Digital Audiobook read by Aoife McMahon.
5*****

Facing tough times, a rural Irish family sends their oldest daughter to another community to live with distant relatives she hardly knows. Keegan explores what it means to be family in this short novella. She also deals with grief and the ways we show love without words being said.

Our narrator is the young girl, who is never named, though I loved that the patriarch of her guest family calls her pet names such as “petal.” The Kinsellas are a quiet couple who have had their share of heartache. They work their farm with quiet dignity and grace. Edna takes in the young girl, never judging but showing her how to maintain a clean and healthy environment. John is a bit more taciturn, but he allows the girl to tag along as he milks the cows or repairs equipment, and he encourages her to build up her confidence. It is he who notices that she needs new clothes and makes the move to “tog her out” so that she has a nice dress and new shoes for going to Mass on Sunday. And it is he who gently gives her a lesson in empathy and compassion and tact.

The somewhat ambiguous ending is perfect for this award-winning tale.

Aoife McMahan does a fine job of narrating the audiobook, though I wound up reading the second half of the book in text format. And have re-read it twice already since first finishing it.

>3 rocketjk: I see Herman's bus trip and soccer game with his old friends as him being haunted by his past. This haunting was both personal and symbolic of the country's relationship with its Soviet past. But it also hints at the unrealized losses in his life and the cost of the changes in post-Soviet Ukraine. Herman is able to travel and play soccer with his old friends because he never knew that they had become victims of the unbridled gangsterism of the transition to capitalism.

You should read Andrey Kurkov's Death and the Penguin. It's another terrific novel about Ukraine during the late 1990s.

In many ways, what happened to Russia and Ukraine after the fall of communism was the result of the caricature of capitalism and capitalists they were brought up with. In their minds capitalism was a world of unfettered, lawless exploitation. With that as their model it is little surprise that gangsterism ran rampant during the transition. Russia leaned into it, and you ended up with a mafia style state with Putin as the Godfather. In Ukraine, the people fought back and sought to put an end to the corruption; you ended up with Maidan and The Revolution of Dignity.

>9 fredbacon: A great take on it all. Thanks!

A Girl from Yamhill
Beverly Cleary
4/5 stars
This is one of two biographies written by Beverly Cleary. This is the first one and it details her life growing up in Yamhill, Oregon. This is a juvenile biography but I really enjoyed it and I think adults will really enjoy this book too. I am going to read her second book My Own Two Feet and am looking forward to that one also!

I finished The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff. My review can be found on my 50-Book Challenge thread.

Next up, I'll finally be reading The Sentence by Louise Erdrich.

Midnight Howl – Clare Hutton
3.5***

This is the fifth entry in the Poison Apple series of middle-school books dealing with various paranormal phenomena. Each book can easily be read as a stand-alone work, however. In this case, it’s werewolves who are at the center of the story.

Marisol and her mom have to vacate their Austin, Texas apartment complex during renovations, so they take up her mom’s college roommate’s offer to stay at their Montana bed-and-breakfast during the off-season. The host family has twins who are Marisol’s age, so the three can go to school together. But the wilderness is a very foreign environment for city-girl Marisol. The howls of wolves are bad enough, but the rumors that werewolves roam the valley during a full moon get her imagination working overtime.

I participated in my public library’s pen-pal program this summer (pairing children ages 5-12 with senior citizens to write letters to one another), and my pen pel recommended this book to me.

I’m not a great fan of paranormal genre, but this one is light on the paranormal and focuses more on the relationships between the kids. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the story. I liked the cautious way Marisol made friends and how she tried to research the history of the valley to determine the truth behind the rumors.

At its core, this is a story of friendship, loyalty and compassion.

Red Berries, White Clouds, Blue Sky – Sandra Dallas
3.5***

Dallas returns to the issue of internment camps where US residents of Japanese heritage were interred during World War II. Her previous novel, Tallgrass was an adult book, told from the perspective of the townsfolk near where the camp is located. In this novel, suitable for middle-school children, she focuses on one Japanese-American family and their experiences inside the camp.

Tomi Itano is the middle child and only girl in her family. She’s a good student and has heard the news of Pearl Harbor. Still, when “No Japs allowed” signs begin appearing in local stores she’s taken aback. Then her family is forced to leave the strawberry farm they’ve worked so hard to make successful to be moved first to a horse barn at a race track and finally to the camp known as Tallgrass, near Ellis, Colorado.

Dallas deals well with this episode of USA’s history. She explores how the knee-jerk reactions of politicians and a scared populace resulted in the imprisonment of many completely innocent people of Japanese heritage. She shows how ill-equipped the camps were for the influx of residents, and details the efforts made by the Japanese-Americans to improve the conditions, and form their own governing groups within the camps. I liked how she showed the different attitudes and coping mechanisms that people employed. Some despaired, while others overcame their fears and uncertainties to become leaders. Some used humor, while others channeled their anger and outrage into positive action. Some held themselves apart, while others joined the community to make the best of a terrible situation.

I finished Birds of America. This is book ostensibly about a young boy brought up in a liberal family and then his junior year abroad in Paris. It, however, felt more like a scaffolding upon which to provide an exploration and critique of philosophical ideas and society. Much of this was spot on and thought provoking.

I'm about 300 pages in Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King, trying to complete the Dark Tower series by the end of the year.

The new thread is up over here.