Sunday Salon: Books Read in 2016

I completed my Goodreads Challenge this year by reading 81 books, one more than my stated goal. Click here to see the list of books.

Right now I'm reading Here Comes the Sun, a novel about travel in the U.S. by Nicole Dennis-Benn, and also just finished an historical mystery I bought as an e-book.

Jade Dragon Mountain by Elsa Hart, published September 2015.
Publisher description: "On the mountainous border of China and Tibet in 1708, a detective must learn what a killer already knows: that empires rise and fall on the strength of the stories they tell.

Li Du was an imperial librarian. Now he is an exile. Arriving in Dayan, the last Chinese town before the Tibetan border, he is surprised to find it teeming with travelers, soldiers, and merchants. When a Jesuit astronomer is found murdered in the home of the local magistrate, blame is hastily placed on Tibetan bandits. But Li Du suspects this was no random killing."

This is the first in the Li Du mystery series and I am eager to read the next in the series, The White Mirror, published September this year.

Happy reading this new year!

Welcome to the Sunday Salon where bloggers share their reading each week. Visit The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer.
Also visit It's Monday, What Are You Reading? hosted by Book Date


Book Beginning: Road to Paradise by Paullina Simons

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.

 

Road to Paradise by Paullina Simons. November 29, 2016. William Morrow Paperbacks

Book beginning:
PROLOGUE "Motel"

Do what you like, Shelby Sloane, the bartered bride had said to me, smiling like an enigma, just remember: all roads lead to where you stand.
 

Back then I said, what does that mean?

 

This morning I knew. It was the morning of the third day I had been trapped in a room, two miles from the main drag of the Reno strip in a place called “Motel.”

I stood alone, broke, and in Reno.

Page 56:
"So we're off," Gina said. "Are you excited?"
"Sure," I said.

Book description:
There’s no telling where a journey will lead you…
Shelby Sloane has big plans for the summer of 1981. She’ll drive cross country in her graduation present—a classic yellow Mustang....  Her childhood friend Gina has convinced Shelby to bring her along.

With Gina on board, Shelby’s carefully mapped-out itinerary is quickly abandoned.  

It's Monday: Here's What I'm Reading

It's Monday, What Are You Reading? hosted by Book Date Also, visit Mailbox Monday.

Dead Cold Brew by Cleo Coyle, to be released January 10, 2017, Berkley.

Very enjoyable and complex plot, intriguing characters. Love the NYC setting of the coffee shop mystery series.  I finished this book while I was recovering from surgery. It was a great comfort during that trying time! I am reading a galley of When All the Girls Have Gone by Jayne Ann Krentz, November 29, 2016, Berkley  A fairly suspenseful story of a woman trying to find her stepsister and solve the murder of her sister's best friend.  Metaphors Be With You: An Z to Z dictionary of history's greatest metaphorical quotations by Dr. Mardy Grothe,  December 6, 2016, Harper A book to open at random and savor a few pages at a time. Here's a quote from the section on Poets: To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession. - Robert Graves And on Writing: Writing is seduction. - Stephen King On Committees: A camel is a horse designed by a committee. - Author Unknown Add a cozy to my reading list: Pop Goes the Murder: A Popcorn Shop Mystery by Kristi Abbott, January 3, 2017; Berkley First paragraph: I knocked on the hotel room door. No  one answered. I glanced at my watch. Seven forty-five in the morning. I was right on time.... Building suspense from the start, this cozy mystery is next on my reading list. How about your reading?

It's Monday: What Are You Reading?

It's Monday, What Are You Reading? hosted by Book Date

I borrowed several books of poetry from the library written by Mary Oliver, including Dog Songs, The Leaf and the Cloud, and Blue Iris. Oliver tends to write a lot about the beauty of nature - flowers, the seasons, dogs - though her poems are not limited to these. Oliver has won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

The bluebird

is dropping the pearls of his song

out of the sky.

- from "Rhapsody," The Leaf and the Cloud

Shelter by Jung Yun, March 15, 2016 by Picador.

Why should a man care for his parents when they failed to take care of him as a child? A debut novel that asks what it means to provide for one's family. (publisher)

I have been reading this on and off, not an easy story as there are lots of heartbreak on the part of the parents and a slow realization by their son of his responsibilities.

What are you reading this week?

Book Review: Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn

Review of Here Comes the Sun, a novel by Nicole Dennis-Benn, published June 2, 2016, Norton

I didn't think I'd want to finish the book, but as I kept reading it pulled me in - the characters, the story, the writing. This is a candid look at some of the lives of the less fortunate local people who live behind the scenes in the Jamaican tourist industry, the ones who serve in the hotels and cater to the tourists, legally or not. It also looks at the island culture of homophobia, prejudice, superstition, and lack of opportunity and education that keep many miserable and hold them back. I didn't think I'd want to finish the book, but as I kept reading it pulled me in - the vivid characters, the story, the, at times, poetic writing. This is a candid look at some of the lives of the less fortunate local people who live behind the scenes in the Jamaican tourist industry, the ones who serve in the hotels and cater to the tourists, legally or not. It also looks at the island culture of homophobia, superstition, and lack of opportunity and education that keep many miserable and hold them back. You won't look at the local people the same way the next time you vacation in paradise! Written by a Jamaican-American who knows the island, the dialect, and its life rhythms. I recommend the book for all readers interested in the Caribbean.

First Chapter: Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn

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.

Today's book I got yesterday from the library after seeing it by chance. I'm really enjoying it, a book set in Jamaica, written by a Jamaican-American writer and teacher now living in Brooklyn.

Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn, June 2, 2016, Norton
"Capturing the distinct rhythms of Jamaican life and dialect..." Margot works at a hotel in Montego Bay to support her mother Delores and her younger sister Thandi, whom she wants to further her education to lift herself out of relative poverty.

Margot herself is a clandestine member of the gay community and will probably have to leave the homophobic island culture at some time. As I read along, I'm waiting to see if this happens.

First paragraph:
The long hours Margot works at the hotel are never documented. Her real work is not in answering the telephones that ring off the hook, or writing up delinquent housekeepers for sleeping on the beds and watching TV when they're supposed to be cleaning. Her real work is after hours when everyone had bid their goodbyes and piled up in the white Corollas --robot taxis -- at the massive gate of the resort, which will take them home to their shabby neighborhoods, away from the fantasy they help create about a country where they are as important as washed-up seaweed.

What do you think? Would you read on?
 

Sunday Salon: Older Books and New

Welcome to the Sunday Salon where bloggers share their reading each week. Visit The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer.
Also visit It's Monday, What Are You Reading? hosted by Book Date.

I read Jamaica Inn years ago and am rereading a 2015 reprint of this mystery/romance about smugglers in 1820 Cornwall, England. It's just as intriguing as I remember though I did notice now that one of the characters seems much more modern than the others in his action and speech.

Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier, republished September 1, 2015 by William Morrow Paperbacks.

Another book on my desk is

The Fall of Heaven: The Pahlavis and the Final Days of Imperial Iran by Andrew Scott Cooper, August 2, 2016, Henry Holt. This one I am reading slowly as it's a history book, very detailed history of the man, his empire, his rule, and his death, yet written in a way that is interesting and easy to read. I see it as a tragedy of sorts.

A galley of a new book, the first in a few weeks, arrived.

My Last Lament by James William Brown is described as "a poignant and evocative novel of one Greek woman's story of her own and her nation's epic struggle in the aftermath of World War II." It's written in the first person, which I don't normally like, but the story does look intriguing. It highlights the Greek folk art of lamenting, its history, and the people who serve as "lamenters" and is an "eulogy to a way of life." I am looking forward to it, thanks to Berkley Books. It is to be released March 2017.

How was your Thanksgiving holidays? I ate at a relative's house and avoided having political disagreements.