You may know Junot Diaz from his novels which include The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Drown and This is How You Lose Her. He has just published a piece, The Silence: The Legacy of Childhood Trauma, in The New Yorker Magazine. It is about his having been a victim of childhood sexual abuse, the profound impact of this, how he both avoided and tried to come to terms with the abuse and how it has impacted his life. This is a riveting, heartbreaking and incredibly important article about how we can create ways to seemingly survive when we are breaking on the inside and how we might slowly get better. You should not miss this one!!
Category: Uncategorized
Two good E-book deals (Bryson and Gee)
Bill Bryson’s take on life in England is humorous and fun. This one is perfect for the curmudgeonly armchair traveler. If you enjoy Notes…, I would also recommend his more recent book, The Road to Little Dribbling. Yes, it is a real place in England!
I also enjoyed The Avalon Ladies Scrapbooking Society when I read it years ago. I recall it as good women’s fiction with likeable characters. A blurb:
From Booklist
Isabel Kidd is having enough trouble getting over her cheating almost-ex-husband’s death without the interference of her busybody neighbor, Bettie Shelton, cajoling her into hosting a scrapbooking party. Ava is struggling to make ends meet for her and her son, Max, making bottle-cap jewelry. Frances Latham and her husband discover some troubling news about Mei Ling, their prospective adoptive daughter from China. And there’s a goat loose behind Madeline’s Tea Salon. There are many threads to this story (including a female plumber with a secret past), but, like a good scrapbooker, Gee puts them all together beautifully. Bettie is the glue that holds the residents of Avalon together—whether they like it or not—and as she seems to unravel, the town comes together. This funny, moving book is the follow-up to Friendship Bread (2011), although The Avalon Ladies Scrapbooking Society can stand on its own. A welcome addition to any women’s-fiction collection and a good choice for fans of Debbie Macomber’s knitting series. Recipes and scrapbooking tips are included. –Susan Maguire
Happy reading!
A cozy mystery (Chapman)
Date with Malice is the second book in Julia Chapman’s series, following on last year’s Date with Death which I read and enjoyed. Best in this novel are the recurring characters and the setting in the English countryside/Dales. This time, there are suspicious goings on at a residential community for seniors. Who is creating havoc and threatening the residents? Samson, a former undercover cop, and Delilah (yes, the names) are protagonists who spar, care for one another and have a history. Of course, there is a romance brewing. The mystery itself was not that hard to solve but all in all, this is an easy, pleasant novel for cozy lovers. Thanks for letting me read this NetGalley!
#DateWithMalice #NetGalley
A great cozy-ish series (Albert)
I have been spending time in Pecan Springs, Texas for over twenty years. Pictured are the first and last books of the series with over twenty novels in the middle. In these books, Susan Wittig Albert has created a place that feels real, peopled with characters that feel genuine, decent and real while also having a central mystery in each book. The characters grow over time as we learn more about their histories. China Bayles, the protagonist, is a Texas lawyer who did not want to pursue that career any longer. She moves to small town Texas where she opens an herb and plant shop. China meets a number of folks along the way, including the crystal reading Ruby who owns a shop nearby. There is also Mike McQuaid and his son, Brian along with their dog. Mike represents the police in the early books. Each of the novels has a self-contained mystery with the author bringing in enough information that you do not have to read the series in order (though I recommend reading in order).
SPOILERS: Ruby had a baby for whom she planned adoption; China’s mother has a complex history while what happened to China’s father and half brother?
SPOILERS DONE: You will want to know what happens to each of these characters. I am eager to begin the latest novel which came out last week. I have not missed a single one and will continue to read about China and Co for as long as the author lets me. Please keep writing Ms. Albert!
thanks for this, criminal element website-a look at last year’s winners before the new winners are declared
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A pub day re-post
Twenty-one Days is an offshoot of Anne Perry’s Charlotte and Thomas Pitt series. I read the first book, The Cater Street Hangman, in 1979. I can still remember not wanting to arrive at my destination on the subway because I wanted to keep reading.
So, it was with much anticipation that I began this novel in which Charlotte and Thomas’s son, Daniel, is the protagonist. He is all grown up, has attended Cambridge and is a newly qualified lawyer. Daniel is assigned several cases in this story, the 21 days has to do with the number of days it will be until a man convicted of murder will be hanged…or will he? Is he guilty? Read the story for a somewhat complex and engrossing solution.
It was lovely to see Thomas and Charlotte as peripheral characters and to read about Jemima, Thomas’s sister, who is now in New York. Victor Narraway and Aunt Vespasia also are mentioned. There are also new and very likeable characters as well.
If you like Anne Perry, read this! If you don’t know Anne Perry, read this and then work your way through the series starting with the book mentioned above. Highly recommended by me.
Start a new series: e-book bargains at $2.99 each
This well known historical mystery series is on sale today. I have shown you just three of the seven titles that you may purchase. Cadfael is beloved by many. The novels were even made into a tv series starring Derek Jacobi. These come highly recommended.
Everyone’s favorite beagle (Schulz)
I had bought this book a while ago but only started to look at it recently. The comics are adorable and gently hit on some home truths. Save this, or any other volume in the series, for when you need a sweet laugh with the great Peanuts gang.
For budding social scientists (Berger and Luckmann) in search of an e-book bargain
Invitation to Sociology is the book that made me become a Sociology major . New to college, I had never even heard of the field. Peter Berger made the subject intriguing, applicable to every day life and a route to understanding more about the world. Many courses later, I still felt a fondness for this book.
The Social Construction of Reality ($2.99 today) quickly followed in my studies. It provided a framework for understanding. A blurb on this one from Amazon:
The classic work that redefined the sociology of knowledge and has inspired a generation of philosophers and thinkers
In this seminal book, Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann examine how knowledge forms and how it is preserved and altered within a society. Unlike earlier theorists and philosophers, Berger and Luckmann go beyond intellectual history and focus on commonsense, everyday knowledge—the proverbs, morals, values, and beliefs shared among ordinary people.
When first published in 1966, this systematic, theoretical treatise introduced the term social construction,effectively creating a new thought and transforming Western philosophy.
So…if you were a Soc major and want to revisit the classics, here is your chance. It is also a good opportunity for those who would like to learn a bit more about this academic discipline.
An e-book bargain (Carr)
As readers who are acquainted with this author know, she likes to write series. There was the Grace Valley trilogy, the Virgin River books and the Thunder Point novels. Now we have the Sullivan’s Crossing books. In all of the author’s series, new characters are introduced while the reader also meets up with friends from the previous novels. This successful formula appears again in Sullivan’s Crossing. The first novel is What We Find, while the second, Any Day Now is a $1.99 book today, The third book in the series will be released this spring. If you enjoy women’s fiction, like to run a series and become involved with a community, these may be just the books for you.
Joyce's mystery and fiction book reviews with some non-fiction too! 