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Wednesday, November 24, 2021

Book Round-Up

 Goodnight Nobody by Jennifer Weiner: Weiner's mystery is set in a very wealthy suburb of New York. One glamorous mother is killed, and another, not-so-glamorous mother tries to figure out who did it. The mystery itself and its resolution was interesting, but the narrator drove me nuts -- a very wealthy, white, educated woman who felt sorry for herself because she didn't fit in with the others, but she never really tried, she judged them just as much as they judged her, and she wasn't actually that different from them.

The Bookshop of Second Chances by Jackie Fraser: A delightful romance with grown-ups who (mostly) behaved like grown-ups, set in a bookshop, against the backdrop of Scotland's wild terrain. What's not to like?

Ombria in Shadows by Patricia McKillip: Another of her lyrical, somewhat unconventional novels. The various characters, and the city of Ombria as a whole, face a great upheaval with the death of the Prince, and lurking behind and underneath everything is a shadow city that may take over without anyone being the wiser. This last element reminded me of both Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere and China Miéville's The City and the City. But these three stories could not be more different in their interpretation of a hidden city.

Fossil Men by Kermit Pattison: my lone nonfiction read for Nonfiction November (not that I read a lot of nonfiction). In college I took a course in paleo-anthropology and read Donald Johanson's Lucy: the Beginnings of Humankind. This book served nicely to update me on all the advances, discoveries, and revisions since Lucy.

1 comment:

  1. Good round up. Ombria in Shadows appeals the most. I just finished Wolf Den by Elodie Harper, that was a good read but I needed to let the character live in my mind for a bit before starting another adult novel! Been reading various kids books again.

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