It's Monday: Books of Love and Loss

Books I'm reading this week:

My Coney Island Baby, Published January 17th 2019 by Jonathan Cape

I am finally getting into this novel about two married lovers who, for years, have been meeting once a month at Coney Island for an overnight assignation. Real life back home happens and they are dealing in the first chapters with the serious illness of the man's wife at home. The book is basically character-driven, though I am interested in the outcome of this unusual love situation.

The Translation of Love by Lynne Kutsukake, a Canadian author, April, 2016, Doubleday

Here is story of family love, and love and loss of home and country.  Fumi is searching for her older sister in post-war Japan, during the MacArthur era and the American occupation in Japan, and her unlikely helper is a displaced Japanese-Canadian who is in Japan with her father, a Canadian sent back to Japan after the war, rather than be sent to unknown parts of Canada away from the west coast that had been their home.  

I am eager to see how this story unfolds.

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

Sunday Salon: Poems and Two Cozies

New books on the shelves:

Almost Home: Poems by Madison Kuhn

October 1, 2019; Gallery Books

Illustrations and poems of "home"

A Killer Carol by Laura Bradford, September 24, 2019; Berkley

Gift shop owner Claire tries to solve the murder of an elderly Amish couple in Pennsylvania.

 A Night's Tail by Sofie Kelly, September 3, 2019; Berkley

Librarian Kathleen and her two cats try to catch the killer of a visiting businessman in town.

Currently reading:

I was reading too many books to finish even one last week. Going from book to book, print to ebook and back, means that a book doesn't get read all the way through. Not a good habit, I am finding out.

I finished The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion for our book club early next month, but that's about it. 

How about you? Do you find yourself doing this too?

Memes: 

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

The Bodies in the Library by Marty Wingate: Book Beginning

The Bodies in the Library by Marty Wingate, October 2019, Berkley/Penguin Random House

Book beginning:

"I'll be leaving now, Ms. Burke."

I leapt up from the desk at this announcement -  knocking the phone on the floor in the process - and hurried out of my office.

"Yes, Mrs. Woolgar," I said, tugging on my jacket. "Have a lovely evening."

Page 56:

"Yes, that's right. I saw her late one afternoon -- running."

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: Autumn Line-Up of Books

Word to the Wise (Library Lover's Mystery, #10)

Word to the Wise (Library Lover's Mystery, #10) by Jenn McKinlay, September 3, 2019, Berkley

In this Library Lover's Mystery, librarian Lindsey must clear her fiancee Sully from suspicions of murdering an unwelcome suitor.

Mrs. Jeffries and the Alms of the Angel (Mrs. Jeffries #38)

Mrs. Jeffries and the Alms of the Angel (Mrs. Jeffries #38), September 24, 2019, Berkley

In this Victorian mystery series, Mrs. Jeffries investigates the death of a wealthy widow. 

Elevator Pitch

Elevator Pitch by Linwood Barclay,  September 17, 2019, Willliam Morrow

In this suspenseful thriller, two detectives and a reporter must discover why elevators across New York City are plunging with their victims to the bottom of the shafts, terrorizing the city. 

Those are the new books on my shelves. How about yours?

In the middle of reading:

Gun Island  by Amitev Ghosh
The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion, our book club selection
Singapore Sapphire by A.M. Stuart is the first Harriet Gordon Mystery

I bought the ebooks:

On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo

Memes: 

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

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: The Memory Police/ Tahoe Deep/Gun Island

Currently reading:

The Memory Police

by Yoko Ogawa

August 13, 2019, Pantheon 

What would it be like to lose memory of things and not miss them? And what if you do remember the things you lost, but were not allowed to, what then?  

I'm in the middle of this fascinating dystopian-like novel where Memory Police make things disappear and make the memories of them also disappear. The people who resist and do and can remember are also made to disappear. 

A study in memory and what a suppressed memory or lost memories can mean for a group of people as well as for the individual.

In this novel, a young woman hides her book editor, one of those whose memory of things that have disappeared make him a target for the Memory Police, who make sure no one stays who remembers what have been taken from them.

See my goodreads review.

Finished reading:

Tahoe Deep

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

Genre: mystery, thriller set around Lake Tahoe

Source: review copy from publisher/author

Review: I have been following Todd Borg's Owen McKenna Mystery series for quite a while and enjoy reading his thrillers set in this lovely mountain, lake, and ski resort area in California and Nevada.

When a 90-year-old man is found beaten in his home and a body washes up on the beaches of Lake Tahoe, PI Owen McKenna is called on to investigate. His sidekick Spot, a giant Great Dane, is always there to help, as is his girlfriend and entymologist Street. The mystery involves the scuttling years before of the SS Tahoe Steamer, which lies under the lake's deep and cold waters.

A boy saw people board the steamer before it was sunk, and this becomes dangerous for him, even though this boy is now a 90-year-old man.

McKenna takes us on an investigative ride with thrills, suspense, and danger, especially involving diving or free diving (diving without equipment) in Lake Tahoe. 

The author has made Lake Tahoe and its surroundings the setting for his series, and it is still a magnificent and unusual place, lending its aura and uniqueness to the mystery novel. Highly recommended.

Other reading:

I am in the middle of another fascinating book, a literary novel about a young traveler in a new place, who must find out who she really is and where she really belongs. 

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

I'm also reading Swedish crime writer Viveca Sten's Guiltless,  Sandhamn mystery #3,  and plan to finish the entire series of 9 books. A new one, the 10th,  comes out later this year. 

E-Books borrowed:

Gun Island  by Amitev Ghosh

September 10, 2019, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

The novel is described as a "globetrotting, folkloric adventure novel" involving family and heritage.  A young man leaves India and takes a trip of discovery from India to Los Angeles and then Venice. Seems like the book for me!

What are you reading this week?

Memes: 

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

First Chapter: Hope Is Our Only Wing by Rutendo Tavengerwei

Hope Is Our Only Wing by Rutendo Tavengerwei

September 10, 2019, Soho Teen

Setting: Zimbabwe 2008

A fifteen-year-old girl and her new friend find courage in the face of terrible personal losses during a time of upheaval in Zimbabwe

First chapter, first paragraph:

Shamiso's heart broke into a shudder of beats. She could hear the jazzy trails of the mbira spiraling in the air. Her father would have loved that sound. She glanced at her mother, who stood next to her, fanning her sweaty neck. She seemed preoccupied. The music played on, painful and familiar.

Meme: Each Tuesday, Vicki, from I’d Rather Be At The Beach hosts First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros where  readers post the opening paragraph (sometime two) of a book they are reading or that they plan to read.