Where Lara Chooses Her Life

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a very sweet, touching book, beautifully written. Not all of it is sweet, TBH; there are real touches, real life and real pain, even bits of darkness. But overall, it's got a kindness and gentleness that is endearing and pleasant and funny and then, I guess like real life, melancholy.

Any story that tells most of a life always feels that way to me.

I liked it, actually. I loved the narration, the story of young Lara in the past and the grown woman in the present. (I've seen Ann Patchett enough on social media that I heard the whole thing in her voice. She seems like a good person. So does Lara.) I appreciated the writing, which is seldom my main interest, but is very... smooth. And overall, I thought it was a successful book, one that wasn't quite aimed at me but I still liked, one that would probably be somebody's favorite. For me, it's a 4-star book--good, not always fun, but pleasant enough, and skillfully imagined. I didn't fly through it, though I took the last fifth of it at a gulp. Others would surely see it as a 5/5 book. (Some others might never open it. So--you know.)

Lara is retelling the story of her life to her three daughters over many days as they work on their Traverse City cherry farm, and the story goes back and forth between that present reality (in the time of COVID) and her youth, when she became a pretty successful actress but didn't keep it up. The center of the story was her relationship with Duke, a character who, in the novel's world, became a famous actor loved by everyone. We get a little Lara and Duke, a love story, then we get some Mom and daughters (with her husband making small appearances). Past and then present. The author does a great job of helping us keep straight what is happening when, which words are meant for the characters and which are only for the reader, and so on, and she does it seamlessly within the narration. Very nice.

A bigger star of the story, in a way, though he gets fewer pages, is Duke's more responsible brother, Sebastian, and the scene at the very end between Lara and Sebastian is the most emotional part of this book for me. They both loved Duke, but neither could save him from himself.

One of the things I liked about this was how real it seemed, filled with regular (to me) people, not being set in all the usual places. Yes, there's a bit of New York and a bit of LA, but it's mostly New Hampshire and Northern Michigan. It felt to me, as a native of Michigan, that this story could have actually happened (I guess at Interlochen Center for the Arts instead of Tom Lake, though Traverse City is a real place). And it could have happened to the kind of people I grew up with, I suppose, people from the midwest or small towns. That added a layer of reality to the novel that set it apart for me.

Lots to like. Recommended. I actually only picked it up because Ann Patchett is so likable on TikTok. Now I'm required to try another book. Not a new book, necessarily, but if I've never read it, it's new to me.

(IYKYK.)

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Where Jane Solves a Christmas Murder

Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas by Stephanie Barron
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book, like the entire series, is such a pleasure to read. It isn't just that Stephanie Barron gets the language of Jane Austen and the time right, which she really does, or that she gets the details so right, with the appropriate and measured inclusion of all of her meticulous research into Jane Austen's personal story. That's part of it, but not all. As a mystery writer, she has such a deft touch with clues and characters that readers like myself can master the details without growing confused, and can enjoy the story set during the twelve days of Christmas without constantly searching for missed connections or buried clues.

As an observer of human nature, Stephanie Barron always impresses, creating a wide range of characters and behavior while always making them feel familiar and real, their concerns genuine and their motivations human. And as a historian, she grounds the novel in the very real history of England after the loss of the colonies, during Napoleon's rise and fall and subsequent rise.

Sometimes, I appreciate Jane Austen novels (the original novels) for being set almost outside of time, in a bubble made up of the well-dressed and well-mannered, where members of that polite society mingle in balls and drawing rooms, engaging in witty and bright conversation, safe from the darkness of the outside world--our world. But I appreciate this novel, and whole series, for the opposite reason. The author vividly creates the time and place, establishing the characters in that timeline, so that it is real as our own world, so that it IS our world--no bubble--a place where war and invasion is the frequent topic of conversation and constant concern, where the poor and the unfortunate also have their roles and their lives, and where well-mannered ladies might sew tiny dresses for a niece's new doll or drink tea with the neighbors, but might also investigate a murder or regret the passage of time or feel the pain of grief and lost love. The author has done well to create such a real place, and people it with such engaging characters, and craft so satisfying a story.

I enjoyed this book, and I recommend it.

Edit [and spoiler] on rereading: Still love it. Still 5 stars. Still sad that Raphael West, a man similar in many ways to the "Gentleman Rogue" love-interest of the early books, a man who can appreciate our Jane for who she is and who she appreciates for who he is, does not end up with her in an HEA kind of way. I know it's impossible, because we know what really did and didn't happen to Jane Austen. She never married. But you still hope, kinda. And I forgot how the same man appealed to her sister Cassandra, and how she had a hope for a short period of time. It's a bummer. We only know through Cassandra through Jane, but in real life (and in the novels, in our imaginations) she was someone who mattered, someone with her own wishes and dreams, and they don't matter less than those who we know better. Like her sister, Cassandra almost certainly had to leave many of those dreams behind. Poignant reminder about the inner lives of the quiet people in our midst...

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Where Chaloner Is the Worst Possible Investigator. Ever.

A Conspiracy of Violence by Susanna Gregory
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I did not enjoy this book. I should have DNF'ed when I first considered it. But for ~waves hands~ reasons I'll give this a passable three.

My problem with this novel? The plot is buried under boring details, random clues adding up to nothing, names of characters that matter but never enter into the story, and just too many distractions that aren't even entertaining let alone informative. Probably half of the novel is just the main character, alone or in dialogue, trying to fit cryptic clues into some kind of meaning, wondering if it proves this or shows that, trying to decide which of a dozen people might have done a thing, who among those dozen knew about the little factoid at the time, who knows now, who is on the wrong track about it... It's exhausting. A spreadsheet wouldn't help.

Here--literally a random page, the first one I turned to:

Who had sent the Lord Chancellor a missive containing that particular phrase, and what did it mean? Or had it been intended for someone else, and the Earl had intercepted it? And why had Clarke converted the same words to cipher and hidden them in his secret pocket? Were the Earl and Clarke associated with John Hewson, who had ordered Chaloner to praise God's one son as he lay dying, or was that coincidence?

Half the book is like that. And almost everything he does know comes directly from other characters who either volunteer the information or discuss it while he's accidentally almost right beside them. Everyone knows more than him, including knowing everything he's doing. His skills are nonexistent.

Oh, yeah, he can decipher messages. That's it.

But most annoying is the fact that Chaloner is the worst hero I've ever seen. He's supposed to be a veteran spy and investigator, and yet he's mistaken and on the wrong track almost the whole book so much that it feels like he's brand new at all of this. Besides that, he almost screws up every. single. time. that someone is trying to stop him or chase him off or pump him for information or kill him. It's horrible. He's inept, incompetent, foolish, and lucky to survive this book, let alone a whole series of them. In the last big scene, he bumbles unprepared into danger, where he is captured. Given a lucky chance, he shoots a gun, and misses. He gets shot at, and should have died, but she misses. He tries to escape during the chaos of a fire, but a woman grabs him and is choking him out, and he needs help to escape her. Then he gets trapped under a man's body with fire creeping toward the gunpowder and would have died except someone pulls him out. He achieves nothing. A bungler.

Not to mention the fact that he's wrong about everybody in that room, who should be trusted and who should not, who is on which side, who is behind everything--meaning he's discovered almost nothing in 480/500 pages. In fact, we get to the epilogue and find out he's still wrong about what supposedly happened and who did it.

He's this incompetent all the time. FFS. How is he the hero?

There is some good research behind the setting and setup of the book. 17th Century London is well described. I like a few things. Just enough interest to push myself to finish--which means (by my own personal policy) I give it a 3. I kept hoping it would pick up and he would become an impressive spy, because it feels like the kind of book I love. But I never want to read another book with him as the main character.

Unless it's a comedy. In the movie, he'd be played by a young Don Knotts. Or maybe Jim Carrey.

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Where Gotzkowsky Gets Disappointed

The Merchant of Berlin by Luise Mühlbach
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This novel by the 19th century German author Louise Mühlbach tells part of the life story of a real merchant from the 1700s in Berlin. It is a novel--this is fiction--but the factual heart of this is based on his own autobiography. I liked it and thought it worked pretty well as a novel.

[The antisemitism is open, though, and unrepentant. Many readers will find it disqualifying, even when taking into account the time and social conditions it was written under. I am sympathetic to that perspective, but I'll proceed as if it's possible to forgive long-dead writers for their bigotry, or at least temporarily ignore it.]

The story follows the contours of Shakespeare's Timon of Athens. Here we have a rich merchant who treats his workers well, supports his city, is generous with his money, and is beloved--at the beginning. Timon started the same. Gotzkowsky uses his money and influence to protect Berlin when it is invaded by the Russians, personally cosigning a huge ransom for the city if they would not destroy the place. He intercedes for journalists, other merchants, and the residents of the Jewish quarter, all of whom were going to be beaten or impoverished, and after the Russians leave the whole city celebrates their hero. But near the end of the novel--as in Timon of Athens--reversals beyond his control make him unable to pay his debts, including the ransom owed to the Russians. All those he had helped refused to help him, just as Athens refused to help Timon. He ends bankrupt. (Timon goes off into the wilderness and curses humanity from that point on. Gotzkowsky doesn't go that far, though he's pretty mad.)

There is more to the book, including his daughter's love story and some other subplots, and it's entertaining in that old historical novel way. The business and financing stuff reminded me of similar events in The Count of Monte Cristo, which I must confess to not completely understanding... But it reads pretty fast and actually has a pretty happy ending. I thought.

Half the point in reading a novel like this (for me) is learning about the time and place, in this case how people lived in Berlin in the 1700s, what their world was like. I found that interesting. And the theme of a principled, generous man being forgotten by all those he had benefitted is as timely now as ever. Timon regretted all his generosity and hated all men for the rest of his life; Gotzkowsky celebrated keeping his honor even in poverty. That's probably a better way to react.

Some readers will enjoy this. Cautiously recommended.

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Where Mitch Rapp Gets Some Teeth Knocked Out

Order to Kill by Kyle Mills
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I liked this quite a bit, and didn't think I would. This is my first book in this series (this particular title being written by Kyle Mills, not the original author Vince Flynn), and I hoped it would be pretty good, maybe sorta fun. It was better than that. I seldom read thriller/bestseller-type novels, and haven't usually enjoyed them much, but this one I did.

I was leaning toward 4.5 stars, but why be a jerk? I liked it, and it cost like a dollar at the library book store, so the least I can do is bump it up to a full 5.

This is an action novel, and it starts right in from the beginning. There is a tiny lull a fraction of the way in, IMO, but after that the story just ramps up pretty much continuously until the conclusion. By the end, I was won over, unironically enjoying it, and I think I might like to go back to the beginning of this series and see if I like all of them. (I started with #15 just because that's the one I picked up when I was in a buying mood.) One of my preferences is having a character with intelligence or superior skills who uses those skills. If you're awesome, be awesome. That's what's fun to read. Sherlock has to be smarter than everyone else. John Wick doesn't miss. An Oscar Wilde character has to be witty. And Mitch Rapp has to be the most badass guy around.

(I hate the books where the character is supposed to be an amazing investigator but he or she dithers and screws up and makes no progress for 90% of the book before pulling it out at the end. That's a drag and a missed opportunity. I want to see them be awesome. I want to see Reacher beat up an obnoxious bully, and I want to watch Patrick Jane trick a suspect into revealing what they're trying their best to hide, and I want to watch President Jed Bartlet school someone who was trying to make him look bad, and I want to hear Mona Lisa Vito tell the prosecutor the exact ignition timing for a 1964 Bel Air with a 327. I love that. Be awesome.)

It definitely costs Mitch something, though. He's not superman. Mitch has to suffer a lot of pain and misery to do what needs to be done, which feels fair in a novel. His goals are something easy to root for, which is stopping some pretty bad terrorism, and his bad guys are generally pretty hateful, so it's easy to side with him. But suprisingly (for me, for this type of book) even the really bad guys can also have a bit of heart, and I think that works. It's largely black-and-white, but the bits of gray help, so that it feels like real life, just with very skilled people.

So--good character, exciting story, lots of action, and clear, sharp writing. It works.

I've usually overlooked this author (well, the original author) and series, because this isn't my usual fare, but I'm adding it to the list. I'll probably find lots more at the thrift shops....

Recommended. Good summer reading, anyway.

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Where Jonny Finds a Cave Deep in the Sea

The Demon of the Deep by Brad Quentin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Overall, this MG novel does a pretty good job of updating the great 60s cartoon of Jonny Quest. Four stars seems about right. That's how much I approved of it; I think a young reader could be from 3 to 5 with it, but I dunno.

This doesn't have quite as much zing as the old cartoons, which were strangely compelling and exciting in an era when cartoons were usually pretty tame, but it does a good job of giving us a very similar story and feel. Like the cartoon, there is genuine danger, even if it's treated a little like everything will work out. (Nobody is freaking out the way they would in real life.) The characters interact with one another in the same way. They've added a female character, Race Bannon's daughter, and that's a nice update. Makes the story slightly different, more modern, and that's great. She integrates with the team very well. They also sprinkle in concerns for the environment and wildlife in a way I liked. Not heavy-handed, but very direct anyway.

Like the cartoons, we have an exotic setting, off in the south Pacific, including underwater, with some cool science and a dangerous creature. (Not a giant metal spider or Komodo dragon; here we have a giant squid.) From about 25 pages in, this felt a lot like it could have been a Jonny Quest episode on TV. (No, not exactly. But close.)

Compared to an Indiana Jones book I just finished, which for most of the novel didn't seem like the same character or franchise as the movies, this felt quite a bit like the original, especially the dialogue. Dr. Quest gives little speeches, Race is professional and worries about keeping everyone safe, Jonny and Hadji (and Jessie, the new character) joke around like kids, and Bandit the dog--well, he barks. I could picture the characters in my head saying and doing the things they do in this book.

I wouldn't say it will please every reader, but I think it comes close to the target for this franchise. It's a MG book, pretty standard at a bit over 100 pages, with good pacing, so I think a lot of readers would like this, even though they only made a few titles in the series. (Eleven. I checked. That's actually pretty good.) Too bad it didn't catch on--maybe they'll try again.

Some of us old people haven't forgotten Saturday mornings, and we have grandkids who might like the same stuff. :) Recommended.

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Where Indy Meets Zombies

Indiana Jones and the Army of the Dead by Steve Perry
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I enjoyed maybe the last 100 pages or so--maybe less--but it's not a great book. Average? Okay. I gave it 3 stars--good enough to finish, maybe read another.

My biggest complaint as I read this was that it was very hard to imagine Indiana Jones as the person in the story. A few times in the last couple scenes, a recognizable Indy seemed to emerge, but for most of the book it felt like just some random character with his name. He was just a guy walking in the jungle without much to do. He should have been much more enterprising, more impressive, doing cooler stuff.

IMO.

Some of this works as an Indiana Jones adventure. Nicely exotic setting? Check. Some Nazis (and some Japanese soldiers, too)? Check. Some supernatural stuff going on? Check. Even a love interest. But it's thin. The whole story takes place in Haiti and a smaller island off Haiti, unlike the variety of settings you get in an Indiana Jones adventure. And the first half at least is very slow, with a long walk across an island that seems kinda pointless. You want a fast pace with lots of action, but we don't get that until the very end.

And in fact, to be fair, the very end is pretty good. There just wasn't enough story leading up to that to make this a full adventure novel. Should have been a novella. Or maybe a tight short story.

I liked bits of this, and I'm curious about all the other tie-in novels that I've never read. So I may look at some more of these. But I hope they feel more like the movies...

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