The Phone Booth at the Edge of the World by Laura Imai Messina: Book Beginning

 

The phone booth at the edge of the world by Laura Imai Messina
Published March 9, 2021, Harry N. Abrams

Book description: "grief, mourning, and the joy of survival, inspired by a real phone booth in Japan with its disconnected “wind” phone, a place of pilgrimage and solace since the 2011 tsunami."

Yui makes a pilgrimage to the phone booth in the garden of Bel Gardia, at the foot of the Mountain of the Whale. Here people find solace in talking on the disconnected phone to the ones they lost in the tsunami of March 11, 2011, their voices carried away by the wind. 

Book beginning:

Prologue

In the vast, steep garden of Bel Gardia, great gusts of wind lashed the plants.

The woman instinctively raised an elbow to her face, rounding her back. Then, almost immediately, she straightened up again. 

She had arrived before dawn, and watched as the sun came up but the sun remained hidden....

Page 56:

"She's stopped talking, yes, but I'm optimistic, and so is the pediatrician."

 

Would you read on?

The Friday 56. Find any sentence that grabs you on page 56 of your book. Post it, and add your URL to Freda's Voice. Also visit Book Beginnings at Rose City Reader.

Sunday Salon: Ishiguro and Edmund White Novels

 A new purchase:

A Saint from Texas by Edmund White, August 6, 2020, Bloomsbury

Description: From Edmund White, a bold and sweeping new novel that traces the extraordinary fates of twin sisters, one destined for Parisian nobility and the other for Catholic sainthood. Yvette and Yvonne Crawford are twin sisters, born on a humble patch of East Texas prairie but bound for far grander fates. (publisher)

I opened this book at the bookstore and decided to try reading it over a cup of hot tea. Intrigued by the story line and the characters, I then decided to buy it, along with the novel I came in to get, Klara and the Sun by Ishiguro. 

Two nice books for today!

What are you reading this week? 

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also,  It's Monday: What Are You Reading, and Sunday Salon

First Chapter: Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk

 

Welcome to First Chapter/Intros, hosted by Yvonne @ Socrates Book Reviews. Each week, share the first paragraph of a book you are now reading or plan to read soon.

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokaraczuk

After I started reading and was enjoying this novel, I realized that the Polish author not only won the Man Booker International Prize for a previous book, Flights, but is also a Nobel Prize winner for literature. I immediately borrowed the ebook of Flights from our library and so have that to look forward to after this book. 

First Chapter/First Paragraph:

I am already at an age and additionally at a stage where I must always wash my feet thoroughly before bed, in the event of having to be removed by an ambulance in the Night.

Had I examined the Ephemerides that evening to see what was happening in the sky, I wouldn't have gone to bed at all. Meanwhile, I had fallen very fast asleep; I had helped myself with an infusion of hops, and I also took two valerian pills. So when I was woken in the middle of the Night by hammering on the door - violent, immoderate and thus ill-omened - I was unable to come round. 

 

Would you read on?  

Review: The Dragonfly Sea by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

The Dragonfly Sea

The Dragonfly Sea by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, March 12, 2019, Knopf Publishing Group

Book beginning:

To cross the vast ocean to their south, water-chasing dragonflies with forbears in Northern India had hitched a ride on a sedate "inbetween seasons" morning wind, one of the season's introits, the matlai. One day in 1992, four generations later, under dark-purplish-blue clouds, these fleeting beings settled on the mangrove-fringed southwest cove of a little girl's island.... 

And so we are introduced to that little girl, Ayaana, whose life on the Kenyan island of Pate is described in the first sections of the novel. It's a life full of her love for the sea, her rescued little white kitten, and the man she adopts as her father who teaches her at home because of bullying and bias in her island school,

The next sections of the book sees an older Ayaana in China, which has claimed her as a Descendant, one with Chinese ancestry, and sent her to study in a college, a way to help cement her and Kenya's ties to China.

Aayana struggles with all the changes in her life, the new faces, languages, places, while searching to find out who she really is, who she truly loves, and where she truly belongs.

Written in a poetic style, with multiple plays on language and imagery and symbols, The Dragonfly Sea is a literary novel about a girl's universal search for meaning and belonging in a complex and diverse world. I gave it an enthusiastic five stars.

Location: 56 %

Ayaana walked as one condemned. She ached for a return to life aboard the ship.
Ni shi shei? the sea still called out to her. Who are you? She ignored it. 

Memes: The Friday 56. Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% of your eReader. Find any sentence that grabs you. Post it, and add your URL post in Linky at Freda's Voice. Also visit Book Beginning at Rose City Reader

Sunday Salon: Exciting New Books

Books on my reading list: 

Tahoe Deep

Tahoe Deep by Todd Borg, August 1, 2019, Thriller Press

Genre: mystery, thriller set in Tahoe

In 1940, a teenage blind boy named Danny Callahan witnessed the scuttling of the SS Tahoe Steamer, the grandest ship to ever sail Lake Tahoe. Eighty years later, a killer beats up old man Daniel Callahan, demanding to know the truth about a secret that went down with the ship. (publisher)

A Killer Edition

A Killer Edition by Lorna Barrett, August 13, 2019, Berkley

Mystery bookstore owner and amateur sleuth Tricia Miles overhears an argument in a bookstore, and later finds that one of the people in the argument has been killed. 

My lucky library find:

The Dragonfly Sea

The Dragonfly Sea by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, March 12, 2019, Knopf Publishing Group

I opened this tantalizing cover of a book at the library and found a dedication to  the author's mother, whose name I thought I recognized. Sure enough, the author is the daughter of a former college classmate of mine from over 50 years ago. We had lost contact, but are soon to be in touch. How amazing and exciting to recover a friend through this book! 

Setting: island of Pate, off the coast of Kenya

Book description: a coming-of-age novel about a young woman struggling to find her place in a vast world--a poignant exploration of fate, mortality, love, and loss.

Memes: 

The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also,  It's Monday: What Are You Reading, and the Sunday Salon,  Mailbox Monday.

Sunday Post: Currently Reading

My current reads:

Malice by 4th in the Keigo Higashino
First published September 1996
Genre: crime fiction, police procedural, 4th in the Inspector K. Kaga series
Source: ebook, library

Written by the author of The Devotion of Suspect X and Salvation of a Saint, Malice has been translated and reprinted many times in English by different publishers in 2014.

Improvement by Joan Silber
Published November 14, 2017 by Counterpoint LLC
Genre: literary fiction, contemporary fiction
Source: library book

I am caught up in the intriguing, interlocking stories of differing characters whose lives intersect, if only on the periphery, moving from one situation into what is arguably some improvement.

What books will you be reading this week?
Memes:  
The Sunday Post  hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer,
It's Monday, What Are You Reading? by Book Date.

New Books for Summer

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by 

Ottessa Moshfegh

July 10, 2018; Penguin Press

Genre: contemporary literature...a young woman’s efforts to duck the ills of the world by embarking on an extended hibernation with the help of one of the worst psychiatrists in the annals of literature and the battery of medicines she prescribes. (publisher)
 
The Secrets Between Us by Thrity Umrigar
June 26, 2018; Harper
Genre: contemporary international fiction
...the former servant struggles against the circumstances of class and misfortune to forge a new path for herself and her granddaughter in modern India. (publisher)


The Word Is Murder by Anthony Horowitz
June 5, 2018; Harper
Genre: mystery, thriller
SHE PLANNED HER OWN FUNERAL. BUT DID SHE ARRANGE HER MURDER? (publisher)

Books finished last week and reviewed on goodreads:

t was amazing Chemistry by Weike Wang, 5 stars	: 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars[ 5 of 5 stars ]
The Chinese family in juxtaposition with Western culture, as well as family dynamics in general and how these affect children, their careers and their marriage choices.

The Waters &The Wild by DeSales Harrison, 5 stars	: 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars[ 5 of 5 stars ]
An unusual "literary mystery" with emphasis on poetic writing and lots of psychoanalysis through the voice of the narrator. Surprises and "plot twists" at the end. Worth reading.

it was amazing Still Waters (Sandhamn, #1)  by Viveca Sten, October 2015; Amazon Crossing Rating: 5 stars

1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars[ 5 of 5 stars ]

The first in the Sandhamn mystery series, the novel is set in the Swedish archipelago with its hundreds of islands, including Sandhamn. The main characters are a police officer and his childhood friend, a lawyer, who try to solve the mystery of a man found dead, tangled in a fishing net off the island. Atmospheric and suspenseful, the novel has a good plot, interesting characters, and a splendid description of the picturesque islands in this part of Sweden.

My current read was a free download from amazon:

The Question of Red by 

Laksmi Pamuntjak, published 2013

...the story of two lovers, Amba and Bhisma, driven apart by one of the bloodiest Communist purges in the 20th century—the massacres that took place in Indonesia between 1965 and 1968, during which nearly one million people were killed. (publisher)

What books are you reading this week?

The Sunday Post  hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer,  It's Monday, What Are You Reading? by Book Date., and Mailbox Monday.What books are you reading this week?

Book Review: The Light-Keeper's Daughters by Jean E. Pendziwol

The Lightkeeper's Daughters by Jean E. Pendziwol, July 4, 2017, HarperCollins.
Setting: Lighthouse on Porphyry Island, Lake Superior, Canada

Between 1918 and the early 1930s, a lighthouse keeper on an island in Lake Superior kept journals that would later be read by an orphan teenage girl, Morgan, to a blind woman in a retirement home. 

The blind woman is Elizabeth, one of the twin daughters of the lighthouse keeper and his wife on Porphyry Island. Elizabeth and her twin Emily lived in the lighthouse until the death of their parents, when they were taken in by old friends.  Now an old woman, Elizabeth becomes interested in her father's newly found notebooks, as she has unanswered questions about all that occurred to their family so many years ago on the lighthouse island.  

The novel reveals the  complicated lives of Elizabeth and Emily, the twin girls, and their older brother Charles, growing up largely isolated on an island in Lake Superior, especially during the long harsh winters.  

There are secrets in the family, and Morgan, who reads the lightkeeper's journals to the aged Elizabeth in the present time, is curious about the twin Emily's nature drawings. Morgan has copies of Emily's drawings, which she found long ago in her grandfather's violin case. What the connection is, between her grandfather and the twins, is what drives Morgan to read the notebooks carefully. 

Comments: The book was very suspenseful at times, and I could not wait to find out more about the intriguing characters and their lives. The story makes for excellent reading. I was curious about the similarities of parts of the plot to another lighthouse novel, The Light Between Oceans, published in 2013. However, this novel's added complexity makes up for that coincidence that readers of both books might notice. Overall, I gave The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughters  5 stars.

Book beginning:
Arnie Richardson

The black Lab is aging. His arthritic legs stiffly pick their way along the well-worn path, stepping carefully over roots and carrying his stout form between the trunks of spruce and poplar. His muzzle, flecked with gray, tracks close to the ground, gathering the scent of his master's trail. 

Page 56:

....I pause for a moment, and I hear her whisper,"Oh, dear God. It was him. All those years later. Grayson." She isn't talking to me. 

Thanks to Harper Collins for providing a proof of the book.

Memes: The Friday 56. Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% of your eReader. Find any sentence that grabs you. Post it, and add your URL post in Linky at Freda's Voice. Also visit Book Beginning at Rose City Reader

Book Beginning: Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien

Title: Do Not Say We Have Nothing

Author: Madeleine Thien

Published October 11, 2016, W.W. Norton

Source: library

A novel about musicians studying Western classical music at the Shanghai Conservatory in the 1960s, and about the legacy of the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations. 

Book beginning:
In a single year, my father left us twice. The first time, to end his marriage, and the second, when he took his own life. That year, 1989, my mother flew to Hong Kong and laid my father to rest in a cemetery near the Chinese border. Afterwards, distraught, she rushed home to Vancouver where I had been alone. I was ten years old.
Here is what I remember. 

Page 56:
Still, those pretty piano notes were mocking all the movements she made. They dripped from the kitchen to the bedroom to the parlour, seeping like rainwater over the persimmons on the table, the winter coats of her family, and the placid softness of Chairman Mao's face in the grey portrait framed on the wall. 

I like the descriptive writing, evocative and conveying a certain mood.  What are you reading this week?

Memes: The Friday 56. Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% of your eReader. Find any sentence that grabs you. Post it, and add your URL post in Linky at Freda's Voice. Also visit Book Beginning at Rose City Reader

Sunday Salon: Literary Fiction and Cozies

The cold freeze has broken, at least for a while, and I can go about doing chores again without bundling up like a bear. Next week will be busy.

Everything Here is Beautiful by Mira T. Lee is a new book I found while browsing with no thought of buying until I started reading and had to take it home.

It's a heartbreaking page turner that pulls you into the lives of two sisters, how the elder one, Miranda, handles her younger sister's severe bipolar disorder. I was left wondering, what if...? Could a different approach have made a difference? Maybe, but then again, maybe not.

I recommend the novel for its insight into family dynamics, the immigrant experience, and the problem of mental illness in families. The book covers several timely topics.

Rating: 5/5

Three paperback cozies I received from Berkley Prime Crime have the expected teasing titles and eye catching covers.

Clairvoyant and Present Danger

Clairvoyant and Present Danger by Lena Gregory is #3 in the Bay Island Psychic Mystery.
After communications with a ghost land her in the middle of a murder investigation, Cass Donovan has to wonder if her gifts are really more a curse.

Pekoe Most Poison by Laura Childs is the 18th in the Tea Shop Mystery Series.  I love these books for their descriptions of the more genteel and traditional side of the south, in particular Charleston, and for the recipes for sandwiches, scones, and cookies always included at the end of each book. 

The setting is the Indigo Tea Shop with owner Theodosia Browning and her tea expert/sommelier Drayton, who manage to become embroiled in intrigues and murders that they have to help solve. In this book, Theodosia is invited to a "Rat Tea" by a prominent Charleston hostess. I can't wait to find out just what a rat tea is and why it has this off-putting name.

The Fast and the Furriest by Sofie Ryan is #5 in the Second Chance Cat Mystery series set in North Harbor, Maine. Sarah Grayson runs the Second Chance bookstore with the help of her right-hand man Mac and her rescue cat, Elvis. Mac gets into trouble when an old flame shows up in town and then get killed. He is the main suspect. 

What are you reading this week?

The Sunday Post  hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer,  It's Monday, What Are You Reading? by Book Date., and Mailbox Monday.

My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk: First Chapter

"At once a fiendishly devious mystery, a beguiling love story, and a brilliant symposium on the power of art, My Name Is Red (2002) is a transporting tale set amid the splendor and religious intrigue of sixteenth-century Istanbul, from one of the most prominent contemporary Turkish writers. 

The Sultan has commissioned a cadre of the most acclaimed artists in the land to create a great book celebrating the glories of his realm. Their task: to illuminate the work in the European style. But because figurative art can be deemed an affront to Islam, this commission is a dangerous proposition indeed. 

Part fantasy and part philosophical puzzle, My Name is Red is a kaleidoscopic journey to the intersection of art, religion, love, sex and power."(publisher)

First chapter:
I Am a Corpse

I am nothing but a corpse now, a body at the bottom of a well. Though I drew my last breath long ago and my heart has stopped beating, no one, apart from that vile murderer, knows what's happened to me.  As for that wretch, he felt for my pulse and listened for my breath to be sure I was dead, then he kicked me in the midriff, carried me to the edge of the well, raised me up and dropped me below....

for nearly four days I've been missing. My wife and children must be searching for me: my daughter, spent from crying, must be staring fretfully at the courtyard gate. Yes, I know they are all at the window, hoping for my return. 

I am listening to this as an audiobook, which has a pretty good narrator. 

MEME: Every Tuesday Bibliophile by the Sea hosts First Chapter First Paragraph, Tuesday Intros sharing the first paragraph or two, from a book you are reading or will be reading soon.

Book Beginning: Solar Bones by Mike McCormack

Solar Bones by Mike McCormack, September 12, 2017, galley courtesy of Soho Press. This book is a Man Booker Prize 2017 nominee. 

On All Souls Day, the late Marcus Conway returns home. Solar Bones captures in a single relentless sentence the life and death of this rural Irish engineer, and his place in the globally interconnected 21st century. (publisher)

Book beginning:

the bell
  the bell as
  hearing the bell as
        hearing the bell as standing here
        the bell being heard standing here
        hearing it ring through the grey light of this
        morning, noon or night
        god knows
        this gray day standing here and 
        listening to this bell in the middle of the day, the middle of
the day bell, the Angelus bell in the middle of the day, ringing out
through the gray light
         to here 
          standing in the kitchen 
          hearing this bell 


It will be very interesting reading this. I think I'd read it as a poem, one long sentence, a new experience. Other book awards for Solar Bones:

Longlisted for the 2017 Man Booker Prize
Winner of the Goldsmiths Prize
Winner of the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year
An Irish Times Book Club Choice

Meme: visit Book Beginning at Rose City Reader.

Review: Little Fires Everywhere, a novel by Celeste Ng

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng, published September 12, 2017, review copy thanks to Penguin Press
Genre: literary fiction
Objective rating: 5/5

This is a story not only about Chinese-Americans but about adoptions, infertility, mother-daughter relationships, and teen angst.  Set in an affluent suburb of Cleveland, Mia and her daughter Pearl arrive and hope this time this is a place they can stay after years of wandering around the U.S.

But the adoption of an abandoned Chinese infant by an American family brings conflict to the town and involves Mia and her daughter. What happens when the mother of the child appears and wants her baby returned?

I loved that the book involved so many different issues and themes. The characters are complex yet believable and the plot very revealing of human nature.

I highly recommend this novel for those interested in the above themes and those who enjoy good literary fiction.

Library Find: The Grand Tour by Adam O'Fallon Price

A road novel with two unlikely characters on a book tour by car....My lucky library find.....

The Grand Tour by Adam O'Fallon Price, published August 9, 2016 by Doubleday
A bitingly funny, smart and moving road novel about two hapless lost souls—an alcoholic Vietnam veteran turned bestselling author, and his awkward, shy college student superfan—who form an unlikely connection on the world's most disastrous book tour. (publisher)

Richard Lazar is advancing in years but regressing in life. After a career as a literary novelist that has ground to a halt and landed him in a trailer in Phoenix, Richard is surprised to find sudden success publishing a gritty memoir about his service in Vietnam. Sent on a book tour by his publishing house, Richard encounters his biggest (and really only) fan: an awkward, despondent student named Vance with issues of his own (an absentee father, a depressive mother, his own acute shyness). Soon Vance has volunteered to chauffeur Richard for the rest of the book tour, and the two embark on a disastrous but often hilarious cross-country trip. . (publisher)

I am half way through the book, a psychological study as much as a road trip that is only slightly predictable, about two people who help each other along the way.  I recommend it already though I don't know what the ending will be....