Learn about explorers: My First Face File-The Vikings (Steele) #MyFirstFactFileTheVikings #NetGalley

This is the second, My First Fact File entry that I have read.  I am certain that it will not be my last.  I look forward to reading every title in this engaging, well illustrated and informative series.

This entry is about the Vikings.  Imagine that you lived somewhere that was on the path of the Vikings explorations and conquests.  It is easy to understand how these sailing explorers and conquerors would have caused much fear.

Young readers will learn about all aspects of the Vikings lives from their long ships, to their communities, gods, celebrations, children’s lives and more. There are activities to further enhance the reader’s experience, as for example, to make a Viking coin or snack.

This is a book that makes non-fiction fun.  I wish that the series had been around when I was young.  It can really open children’s eyes to all of the amazing things that there are to learn.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this read in exchange for an honest review.

Storytime: A World Full of Spooky Stories (McAllister) #AWorldFullOfSpookyStories #NetGalley

This is a fantastic collection of stories, some of which will be known to readers and listeners while others may not. There is, for example, the story of Hansel and Gretel which, or course, I know. That is immediately followed by Grandfather’s Eyes, a tale from Czechoslovakia that was new to me.

The stories are organized into sections. A few examples include Into the Woods, Down by the Water, Enchanted Places, Strangers at the Door and many more. Each story is identified by region of the world and country. No story is very long so these tales make for perfect (slightly) scary bedtime or anytime reads. The illustrations reflect the tone of the book and are quite striking.

This is a wonderful book that I highly recommend. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for these spooky reads.

For those who enjoy books and historical fiction: The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek (Richardson)

This is a wonderful historical novel based upon the Book Women who delivered library materials to those in the out of the way sections of Kentucky.  The book women were part of a program started by President Roosevelt under the WPA.

There are many book women in Troublesome Creek, Kentucky but the protagonist of the novel is the unforgettable Cussy.  Cussy speaks in dialect which helps the reader to fully enter into her world.  Cussy faces special challenges because she is the last of the ‘blues.’  There really were blue-skinned people in America as a supplement at the back of the novel attests.  They were objects of curiosity and also of prejudice, just as was the case for the African American population.

Cussy wants to be independent both before and after her disastrous short term marriage.  And yet, what will happen with patron Jackson who is one of the few to call Cussy by name, rather than the derogatory Bluet?

Cussy’s love of books flows through the novel.  There are references to books that were popular at the time, including those by Steinbeck and Rex Stout.  Cussy’s inventiveness in making books and delivering what her patrons need is impressive.

The landscape of rural Kentucky, the small towns, the mines, the mountains are all well described.  Each patron that Cussy visits has a back story and readers will even come to learn more about the mule who transports her.

If you are a reader who enjoys historical fiction set in the U.S., consider this one.  Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher, Sourcebooks, for this book in exchange for an honest review.

Advance Praise

There’s no place like home: (Conan)#OurBigLittlePlace #NetGalley

This picture book has engaging illustrations that reflect the life and imagination of the child who lives in this apartment block. Children can look for the cat in many of the pictures; s/he is a charming addition to the story.

Lots of children live in houses, while many like our narrator, live in apartments. This little boy shows what fun it can be to have lots of neighbors, playgrounds and hallways to race in. There are also times when his parents think the apartment is too small and when he needs to use his imagination within the less than expansive space.

Our Big Little Place shows readers that a home is what one makes of it. If you live with those you love and who are attentive to you, whether you live in a mansion or an apartment, there is no place like home.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this book in exchange for an honest review.

Libraries can be murder: The Books of the Dead (Bernhard) #TheBooksOfTheDead #NetGalley

The Books of the Dead is the second in a series, following Death in Paris, which I have not yet read. I found The Books of the Dead to be a novel that will appeal to lovers of cozy mysteries who are able to suspend some disbelief.

Our two sleuths, Magda and Rachel, are American ex-pats who live in Paris. They have a relationship with a French Inspector, Boussicault, who involves them in solving some of his cases. Why this would happen is the what requires a reader’s suspension of disbelief.

The case involves several murders and the theft of valuable pages from historic books. Suspects include those who work for or do research at the Biblioteque Nationale. Each suspect has a backstory that gives credence to why they may have committed the crimes. While solving the case along with our detectives, the reader gets to dash around Paris, spending a sufficient amount of time in cafes and bars.

The end of the book includes some extras. For example, there is a glossary of French terms.

I found this book to be an easy and relaxing read. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this book in exchange for an honest review.

 

 

From the New York Times: Camilleri

By Neil Genzlinger

Andrea Camilleri, who took a late-career stab at writing a mystery novel and came up with the Inspector Montalbano detective books, which became wildly successful in Italy and were the basis for a popular television series, died on Wednesday morning in a hospital in Rome. He was 93.

A spokeswoman for the hospital, the Santo Spirito, confirmed the death, which came a month after Mr. Camilleri was hospitalized with complications of a broken thigh bone and heart problems.

“I have an extremely disorderly manner of writing,” Mr. Camilleri told The Times in 2002. “I don’t write like Snoopy: ‘It was a dark and stormy night.’ I couldn’t start with Chapter 1.”

A mystery, he thought, might force him into more manageable habits. “Everything has to follow a certain logic,” he said. “Everything has to be in a certain place.

The experiment resulted in “The Shape of Water,” published in Italy in 1994. (It was not related to the Guillermo del Toro movie of the same title released in 2017.) The novel introduced Inspector Salvo Montalbano, who investigates crimes in the fictional Sicilian town of Vigata. That isn’t easy, since corruption is endemic there.

In the opening novel, when a local power broker is found dead in a dicey part of town with his pants around his ankles, a coroner rules that he had died of natural causes, and officials pressure Montalbano not to look further. But Montalbano is a man with a strong sense of justice and a willingness to bend rules to achieve it.

The book, published when Mr. Camilleri was 69, sold well enough to warrant a sequel, “The Terra-Cotta Dog,” in 1996, and then another, and another. In a 1998 interview with the Italian magazine L’Espresso, he said word of mouth had done the trick.

“I sold 10,000 copies because people phoned each other, and in the same way you suggest a movie, they were suggesting my books,” he said.

 

The series, written in a combination of Italian and Sicilian, grew to more than two dozen titles.

Mr. Camilleri was four books into it when his inspector was elevated to a whole new level of popularity by “Il Commissario Montalbano,” a television series from the Italian state broadcaster RAI that has been running since 1999. It has also aired abroad, including on the BBC in Britain. Luca Zingaretti plays Montalbano.

Detective Montalbano 2013 (Trailer)CreditCreditVideo by MHz Choice

The Montalbano books, too, gained an international audience. The first English translations appeared in 2002 and quickly found fans, including among book critics.

Marilyn Stasio, writing in The Times that year, called “The Shape of Water” a “savagely funny police procedural.” Four years later, when “The Smell of Night” appeared in English, she advised, “For sunny views, explosive characters and a snappy plot constructed with great farcical ingenuity, the writer you want is Andrea Camilleri.”

“The Shape of Water,” published in Italy in 1994, introduced Inspector Salvo Montalbano, who tries to investigate crimes in the fictional Sicilian town of Vigata. The Inspector Montalbano books were wildly successful in Italy and were the basis for a popular television series that has been running for 20 years.CreditPenguin Random House
Image“The Shape of Water,” published in Italy in 1994, introduced Inspector Salvo Montalbano, who tries to investigate crimes in the fictional Sicilian town of Vigata. The Inspector Montalbano books were wildly successful in Italy and were the basis for a popular television series that has been running for 20 years.
CreditPenguin Random House

Andrea Calogero Camilleri was born on Sept. 6, 1925, to Carmella and Giuseppe Camilleri in Porto Empedocle, a town in southwestern Sicily that became a model for Vigata. (For a time in the last decade, the town changed its name to Porto Empedocle Vigata, hoping to capitalize on tourism inspired by the Montalbano books.)

His father worked for the Italian Coast Guard and, Mr. Camilleri told the British newspaper The Independent in 2007, was his model for Montalbano, a man with a certain disregard for authority, although that did not become clear to the author until several books into the series. His father, he told the newspaper, was a hard-line Fascist until the day in 1938 when Andrea told him a friend had been barred from school because he was Jewish.

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“My father hit the roof, saying, ‘That bastard,’ referring to Mussolini,” Mr. Camilleri said. The connection to his famous inspector? “I’ve always tried to make Montalbano critical about the behavior and orders of his bosses, the imbecility of power,” he said.

After high school in Porto Empedocle, Mr. Camilleri earned a degree in modern literature at the University of Palermo. As a teenager and young man, he had some success as a poet. He was also involved in theatrical productions, and in 1949 he won a scholarship to study at the National Academy of Dramatic Art in Rome. He lasted only a year there but stayed in Rome, working as a stage director.

Mr. Camilleri was hired by RAI’s radio division in 1958, then switched to the television side, directing and adapting scripts. He began teaching theater at the National Academy in 1974 and continued to do so for more than 20 years.

He had begun writing novels by this point, although the first, “The Way Things Go,” written in the late 1960s, wasn’t published until 1978. Several other novels in various genres followed, though none got much attention. The best known of the pre-Montalbano books was “Hunting Season,” a comic historical novel published in 1992. He was working on another when he got stuck and tried a detective tale.

The Montalbano books are known not just for their distinctive inspector but also for a colorful array of underlings and other recurring characters. And unlike most other crime series, they indulge in occasional commentary on Italian politics. Mr. Camilleri was not a fan of Silvio Berlusconi, the longtime prime minister, and his displeasure, which he voiced in a series of essays, could be detected in the books.

“In my books,” he told The Guardian in 2012, “I deliberately decided to smuggle into a detective novel a critical commentary on my times.”

More recently, he had been outspoken about Matteo Salvini, Italy’s far-right interior minister, and his anti-immigration positions. An episode of the TV show in February that included a pro-immigrant message brought a flurry of criticism from Salvini supporters.

“Salvini reminds me of a member of the Fascist regime,” Mr. Camilleri told The Guardian in the aftermath.

Mr. Camilleri is survived by his wife, Rosetta Dello Siesto, whom he married in 1957, as well as three daughters, four grandchildren and a great-granddaughter.

Mr. Camilleri prepared years ago for the end of the Montalbano series.

“I finished him off five years ago,” he said in 2012. “That’s to say, the final novel in the series of Montalbano is already written and deposited at the publishing house. When I get fed up with him or am not able to write any more, I’ll tell the publisher: Publish that book.”