Mount TBR 2022 | NancyElin.blog

Jan

#Fiction The Art of Racing in the Rain

#GoMax “…Keep pushing!!”

JANUARY

20. by Garth Stein

Finish date: 22 January 2022
Genre: Fiction
Rating: B+
Review:

Bad news: Push through the first chapters….sentimental as flowers pressed between the pages of a diary.

Good news: A beloved philosopher dog named Enzo is the one who teaches us everything we need to know about being human. Let the story embrace you…every reader will find a moment to connect at some level. I mean a dog is the narrator…what’s not to love?

Good news: My first impression was wrong. This turned out to be a great book…I loved it! Title The Art of Racing in the Rain was just perfect…captures the essence of the book! Drivers are afraid of the rain. Rain amplifies your mistakes.

Good news: I love the sport of Formula 1 so all the references to great champions of the past Emmo (Fittipaldi), Schumi, Senna etc were wonderful. I didn’t realize so many life lessons can be learned in the paddock and on the grid. My life lesson? No race has ever been won in the first corner…but plenty of races have been lost there.

Personal: New rule…never write the book review on the same day you finished the book! Sleep on it. After a few chapters of sugar-spin sentimentality I hoped the book would get better…and it did. Apart from the ‘tear-jerker’ content (dying dog, newlyweds, baby, dying wife and in-laws from hell) the book had a larger message for me. The Art of Racing in the Rain was a metaphor teaching me (us) how to overcome obstacles in the long race we call life (pg 314). We all race in the rain at some point. Remember the motto in the book:
The visible becomes inevitable.
The car goes where the eyes go (ch 37)
With fresh tires and a full load of fuel he would prove a formidable force.

Jan

#Novella Captains Courageous

JANUARY

13. by Rudyard Kipling

Finish date: 17 January 2022
Genre: novella
Rating: F
Review:

Bad news:
I think this would be one of the most difficult book to teach young readers. Dialogue?
Fergit ut. (forget it) ‘T wuz… (it was…)
They’ll tell that tale again us fer years.
Fwhat’s th good ‘o bodderin’ fwhat…
Ha’af on the taown, and ‘t’ other ha’af blame fool. (awful!)

Bad news: While reading Captains Courageous I had difficulty with the dialogue. Despite my attempt to read the book…while listening to the and audio version the story never appealed to me. Kipling describes the boats, sail, cross-trees, trawl-buoys, rigging
…in excessive nautical detail. Pages and pages of ‘tall tales’ the crew members tell each other …and the ‘sing-alongs’ sounded corny. My only hope was to find some ‘cracker-barrel philosophy’ in the text (somewhere)…that would inspire young readers.

Personal
The book is unbalanced: 70% boats, sea conditions, fishing – 20% the crew – 10% Harvey Kipling eventually rejected the novel as simply a “boy’s story” …and he was right. I doubt a young reader would really enjoy this story.
This book was written in 1897 and times….and children have changed.
#NotFavorite childern’s classic…at all!

Jan

#Short stories Isaac Bashevis Singer

JANUARY

12. by Isaac Bashevis Singer

Finish date: 15 January 2022
Genre: Short stories
Rating: C
Review:

Bad news: I didn’t have to go far to find the PERFECT words to describe this book.
I found them on page 370 in the story “A Day in Coney Island.
Singer’s friend an editor of a Yiddish paper says it so clearly:
“…no one give a hoot about demons, duybbuks (Yid: wandering souls) and imps of 200 years ago!”

Bad news: Stories are nice, nostalgic but some feel so long and describe just about everything in the village and synagogue! A few stories are TOO long…they feel like novellas.
A lot of devils, the Evil spirit, Satan and imps…sometimes Satan in the narrator and main character!
Sorry, after 5-6 stories about “old Poland” and village life I started to skim them. The stories I most enjoyed took place in Miami Florida or New York City!

Good news: I.B. Singer had the talent to pierce into the hearts of men who are staring at an empty wall and not in the mood for a conversation. (The Cabalist of East Broadway).
Most of the stories are humorous, with an undercurrent of tragedy, and very readable (just sometimes too long as I said earlier). authentically Jewish short stories with wry humor.

Good news:
Style: combined Jewish mysticism with demonology (devils, imps etc)
Nearly all of the stories in this collection make use of the supernatural in some way
Scope: this volume represent roughly one-third of Singer’s published work in short fiction (excluding his children’s books).
Topics: telepathy, clairvoyance, premonition, ability to converse with the dead, Ouija boards, improbable tall tales….about dubbyks (wandering souls), imps and devils.
Theme Individual choice and romantic love thwarted by parental edict and tradition. Singer also touches on “old age”. Some of his most lovable characters were either the doddering, depresssed pensioner or an agelss-in-spirit quirky oddball.

Personal
New rule: Avoid buying collected short stories books by any author…it is just TOO much of a good thing. It took me 2 days to read 40 stories and I skipped about 7. They were the same old narrative: Polish village, frantic marriage matchmakers, frantic mothers, dogmatic rabbis and daughters and sons that just want to live their own life.
My favorite story was The Letter Writer: …connection between a among a solitary man, a mouse, and a lonely woman…will touch a heart string for sure! If you can find this story…enjoy!

I finally can check this book off on my TBR…it has been collecting dust since 18 July 2015.
47 short stories and I really enjoyed 15 …that is only 30%
Many stories felt outdated, old-fashioned tales about life in pre-WW II Polish villages. The best stories took place later in Singer’s life …settings: New York City, Coney Island, Miami, Florida and Tel Aviv, Israel.
Isaac Bashevis Singer won the #Nobel Prize 1978
…and if you can find them…there are some great stories/novels to read!

Jan

#Mystery Gaudy Night

Magdalen Bridge, Oxford University (…last scene in the book)

JANUARY

11. by Dorothy L. Sayers

Finish date: 13 January 2022
Genre: novel wrapped in a mystery
Rating: D
Review:

Bad news: The first chapters are all about a bevy of young women meeting at a 10 yr class reunion at Oxford University. There’s no suspense…no tension…no push to propel the plot! Where is the hook?

Bad news: I was NOT given what I expected. I wanted a “scratch your head” puzzle…who is trolling all these academics with threats?
The center of the story….is NOT the poison-pen letters…but Harriet Vane’s issues with marriage!

Good news: Literary challenge – Each chapter is introduced by a quote by an Elizabethan poet/writer and I had fun researching the words mentioned and tied to find the connection Sayers intended to make with that particular chapter.

Bad news: Unfortunately….this literary adventure fizzled out. The clues about the book are so deeply embedded it lofty poetic allusions….I lost interest. This is just not something I was looking for in a mystery.

Examples:

Sir Philip Sidney – (1554-1586) ch 1 – “Thou blind man’s mark, thou fool’s self-chosen snare….” (desire is the snare).
So if desire is a swamp we become lost in, then virtue is the brilliant and guiding sun that leads us out of the it. Once you finish the book this idea could be applicable to the relationship between Harriet Vane and Lord Wimsey)…but you’ll have to get through some soporific (23 chapters) to understand this high moral, intellectual value Sayers wants to give us.
Not what I’m looking for in a mystery!

Robert Burton (1577-1640) ch 2 – “’Tis proper to all melancholy men…”
Burton treats suicide as an outcome of melancholy, depression. One character we NEVER see unfortunately “blows his brains out” ends. Again you must slog through the book to find out who! Not my idea of building tension throughout the book. I read this and asked myself “Who is this character….?”

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) ch 3 – “…They do best who, if they cannot but admit love…”

Is love and marriage are worth…the sacrifice? Need she (Harriet Vane) sacrifice her brain to achieve keeping a husband and a home? “…washing, cooking, feeding the cattle and digging potatoes…these things take the edge of the razor.” (ch 3).

W. Shakespeare (1564-1616) ch 4 – “…Thou canst not, love, disgrace me half so ill,…

Harriet Vane fears the proposed bond of marriage to Lord Wimsey will not be one of of equals.

Personal: If you want to dream away and enter the gothic and hallowed grounds of Oxford University …this is your book. If you want a thrilling, dazzling mystery that will keep you up thinking “whodunnit?” …this is NOT your book. I tired to stay engaged…I tried not falling asleep…I tried to give Dorothy Sayers (one of the Queens of Golden Age English mystery) the respect she deserves but I could not. I did discover Lord Wimsey is the great sleuth….NOT Harriet! He narrows down the list of suspects responsible for poison-pen messages while Harriet sits shell-shocked in the corner of the room!
IMO this would have been a good novel…just a love story and leave the mystery element on the “editing floor”.

Jan

#CF Kolymsky Heights

Siberia...

JANUARY

10. by Lionel Davidson

Finish date: 10 January 2022
Genre: CF
Rating: F-
Review:

Bad news: I found it deadly boring, but I was determined to finish it and after skimming lots of pages (the middle section…completely!!) I managed to get to the moderately exciting last 50 pages. The characters had zero depth, the plot completely implausible, and the writing to be flat. It took “Raven” (main character Johnny Porter) 250 pages to get from Nagasaki-Murmansk 3757 nautical miles on a tramp boat (28 days)….it felt like a lifetime.

Good news: ZILCH!

Personal: I found myself drifting off mid-sentence as the descriptions became ever more elaborate and lengthy. In general, this book was just too long, offering pages of minute details just information on top of information, but not the connection to me as a reader. I would rather do my dirty dishes then read this book! This was a source of invigorating hair-shirt agony.

#TOTAL waste of my reading time….

Jan

#Nordic noir The Hunting Dogs

Setting for The Hunting Dogs – Vestfold, Norway

JANUARY

9. by Jørn Lier Horst

Finished date: 11 January 2022
Genre: Nordic noir
Rating: B+
Review:

Motives: Lust and…concealment (1 murder is committed to conceal another murder!
Irony: Wisting’s police badge and gun are taken away. Wisting investigates murder case while he himself is being investigated!

Bad news: I jumped into the middle of the William Wisting Nordic noir books (this is the 3rd book in the Wisting Mysteries)….and the case itself in The Hunting Dogs is stand-alone, much of this story’s impact relies on our connection to its characters, and having a bit of background exposure to them will make readers all the more invested in their fates.

Good news: Wisting series (season 1) is streaming on Netflix!

Good news: Title: Police work in an unconscious process like hunting dogs following the scent (pg 91). …like other hunting dogs, they had followed the warmest scent without further thought. (pg 166)

Good news: The hook…
JonasR had received a phone call 14:17 hr that casued him to call a lawyer and arrange a meeting….7 hours later he was dead. The first pages capture my attention, this is why Nordic noir writers are so successful…the hook! But the book just keeps on giving….so many chapters end with cliffhangers. This is excellent CF writing!

Good news: The book juxtaposes a race against the clock (deadline for newspaper story (Wisting’s daughter is a journalist), tense stakeout trying to catch an ex-criminal (Haglund planning his next murder?) ….in one chapter with a by-the-book interview in a dreary room at Internal Affairs (is Wisting charged with tampering the evidence in Haglund’s conviction?)…the juxtaposition invites the reader to look more closely at the possible relationship between these two situations!!

Good news: The book is divided into 84 chapters!! Yes, 320 pages in 84 chapters and that is a good thing because I read pages like potato chip bites! Chapters are long enough for a quick read (during commute..between household chores) and an excellent place to stick the bookmark. But a funny thing happens when I have a place to pause……I just keep reading!

Personal:
I cannot for the life of me understand why this book did not win Petrona Prize 2015!
The Silence of the Sea was the winner for the judges….but I thought it was poorly written. Jorn Lier Horst is an exceptional Nordic noir writer and would recommend his books to any CF lover or reluctant CF reader like me!

Jan

#CF The Silence of the Sea

JANUARY

7. by Yrsa Sigurðardóttir

Finish date: 09 January 2022
Genre: CF
Rating: D
Review:

Bad news: The motive in this book was greed. That does not spark my interest. I want the book to be a white knuckling roller-coaster ride….a race against time (kidnapping for example)
not this long dragged out killing off crew members one-by-one on a glamorous yacht mid Atlantic.
Characters were not captivating…just not. The dialogue turned clumsy and the story line became less and less believable too melodramatic (..oh, the last chapter… who green-lighted that?)

Good news: Main character Thóra Gudmundsdóttir (investigating lawyer)…her personal life was kept to a bare minimum in the book.

Personal Not a fan of thrillers, CF or mystery so I read them…and that is it. Why do I buy them you wonder? Sucked into a good review, a prize winning CF and I’m just curious if the book meets the grade. Has the required standard been met to render it prize winning. IMO this book did not live up to the Petrona Prize 2015 for a CF set in Scandinavia or written by a Scandinavian author.

I would like to leave this review with a recommendation for one of the most unpredictable suspense novel I have ever read. I read it in 2014 and it still haunts me.
by Pierre Lemaitre.

On a lighter note….I couldn’t fall asleep last night so instead of counting sheep I tried to name all the characters in The Silence of the Sea . I feel asleep at 23…and counting!

Jan

#Cultural History Motive for Murder?

6. by Stephen Kern (no photo)

Finish date: 09 January 2022
Genre: cultural history
Rating: C
Review:

Stephen Kern is an Distinguished Research Professor so I should not have been surprised how ‘academic, scholarly’ this book was But I was a bit bushwhacked. My rating is still C because the book delivered exactly what was intended but it was a difficult read.

Good news: Kern examines a specific factors or motives for murder.
Insightful to read the differences between
19th C Victor Hugo/Charles Dickens:
overbearing religious training producing killers like Frollo Hunchback of ND and Headstone Our Mutual Friend
20th C Patricia Highsmith/André Gide protecting loss of identity (Tom kills Dickie Greenleaf) in The Talented Mr. Ripley and the desire to commit a ‘motiveless crime’ (Lafcadio pushes man to his death on a train …for nothing. In other words: “I kill, therefore I am!”) in Lafcadio .

Bad news Not really bad….but you should be warned this book is not for the fainthearted!

Personal There is a lot to be learned in this book and if you see it in the library….take a look!
The best advice I can give is to skim the chapters and select the items that refer to a books (literature) that catch your eye. I will certainly look more carefully in CF, detectives and novels for the
true motive (class difference, greed, fear, revenge, hatred, sexually repressed, traumatic childhood) for murder!

Jan

#Memoir Out of Africa

JANUARY

5. by Isak Dinesen, Karen Blixen (no photo)

Finshed date: 07 January 2022
Genre: autobiographical anecdotes
Rating: Rating: D-
Review:

The book describes events in 5 parts during the period from 1914 to 1931 concerning the European settlers and the native people in the bush country of Kenya “in British East Africa”… told from the lyrical, poetic viewpoint of Danish Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke.

Good News: I finally finished the book. #GoodRiddance

Bad News: The reading was slow going, lukewarm storytelling and I was bored from cover to cover.

It was a combination of:
Details: native people, the wildlife, the weather and …her farm being a type of paradise.
Short fragments: stories, ideas.
Shift to tragedy: (part 5)
coffee harvest fails….Denys Finch-Hatton dies. The author sells the farm and paradise is lost.

Personal: Do yourself a favor and just watch the movie Out of Africa
The cinematograpy is truly breath-taking, especially in the scene with the biplane. As a romance, the story is almost perfect, the performances are brilliant and the soundtrack will haunt you.

Jan